MARK MORRIS

The majority of my working life is spent sitting at my computer, toiling away at whatever latest project I'm working on, with nothing much happening from one week to the next. Occasionally, though, I have weeks where lots of good stuff comes in a rush, and last week turned out to be one of those. Here's what happened:

On Tuesday I travelled to Lincoln to take part in the Lincoln Book Festival. Lincoln is a northern cathedral city with the feel of a small town. Our hotel was opposite the cathedral itself, in a beautiful part of town full of steep, winding, cobbled streets, quaint cafes and the best kind of second-hand bookshops - musty and labyrinthine. I say "our" hotel because I was attending the Festival with a couple of old mates, Simon Clark and Graham Joyce. Our evening event was listed simply as 'Masters of the Macabre', and ultimately took the form of a freewheeling discussion, which ended up encompassing such topics as 'horror' stories and writing in general, our own personal influences, ancient superstitions and human belief systems, and lots more besides. The audience was modest, but attentive and enthusiastic, and to be honest we could all have rabbited on for far longer than our allotted ninety minutes. Everyone went away happy, judging by the feedback we received, and afterwards Graham, Simon and I had a curry and a few drinks with the Festival organisers. A thoroughly enjoyable night.

A couple of days later I was in Borders bookstore in Leeds when who should walk in but crime writer and thoroughly nice bloke, John Connolly. I don't know John very well, but we'd done a panel together at last year's FantasyCon, so I wandered over to say hi. He was on a whistle-stop tour of the UK to promote his latest novel, The Unquiet (doing something like four towns and cities a day), and promptly invited me out to lunch at his publisher's expense. So, once his signing was out of the way, off we toddled to a nearby Chinese restaurant and its all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet, where we stuffed ourselves silly and chatted about writing for an hour. Lovely.

A further pleasant surprise was waiting for me when I arrived home. I had an email from old pal and editor extraordinaire, Steve Jones, saying he'd like to buy a story of mine, What Nature Abhors (which originally appeared in Night Visions 12), for Best New Horror 18. As I've only appeared in BNH once before, in volume 12, I was well-chuffed. As far as I'm concerned, BNH is the annual benchmark for genre excellence, and it's a privilege to be included.

And as if all that wasn't enough, on Saturday I received - again, out of the blue, having only delivered the novel a few weeks before - the excellent cover for my forthcoming Doctor Who book, Forever Autumn. If all goes well, and I've followed my webmeister Ariel's instructions properly, you should be able to see the cover here:



Lovely, isn't it?

It's one of those strange in-between times at the moment, where I've finished and delivered one book and am gearing myself up for the next.
The book I finished was my Doctor Who book, Forever Autumn, which I delivered about 2 weeks ago. Since then I've been planning my Hellboy book (have to do this reasonably thoroughly as the deadline is tight and the word limit is fairly strict, so I can't afford to go off on wild creative tangents), jotting fairly extensive notes for a novella, which is deadlined for November, fiddling about with a short story, and looking at an unsold novel I finished about 2 years ago, with a view to doing some fairly extensive re-writes for a publisher who may be interested in it.
Put like that, it seems as if I've been busy, but plotting books and making notes and doing research never feels like 'proper' work to me. I feel as if I'm tinkering, mucking around, and although I know this is all part of the process (part of my process anyway), I'm still constantly aware of that little voice in the back of my head telling me that I ought to be sitting down and doing some proper writing.
However, after a week or so of trying to untangle the knots and smooth out the creases, I have now (thank god) finally managed to thrash out the plot of Hellboy: The All-Seeing Eye. And this weekend I actually managed to sit down and write the first 2,000 words of it! You'd think I'd be happy with that, wouldn't you, but bloody hell, it was hard work! That's the trouble with taking a break from 'proper' writing. You come back to find that your creative muscles have gone a bit rusty, a bit flabby. It usually takes me about a week to get back into the flow again, during which time I stomp about in my study a lot, wondering why I can't do the simplest of things without a struggle - like get a character up a flight of stairs, for instance, or construct the most straight-forward of conversations.
Anyway, enough of the creative angst. After all, as my non-writing friends are always telling me when I try to explain how this feels: Stop being a pretentious twat. After all, it's not as though you work for a living.
Here, then, is the good news:
My Doctor Who book has been extremely well-received by range editor, Justin Richards, who had only a few minor editorial suggestions to make about it - in fact, I dealt with his concerns and sent the manuscript back to him within 3 days.
On April 28th I attended, and took part in, the 2nd Alt.Fiction Festival in Derby, which was a tremendous success. Fantastic organisation (kudos to Alex Davis & the gang), a brilliant turn-out and a lively, enthusiastic and moreover positive atmosphere, which really made me feel that after too many years in the doldrums the horror genre is (cautiously and slowly) on the up again. Certainly the message from editors and publishers seemed to be that horror was no longer persona non grata in their eyes. In fact, several of them admitted that they were actively looking for supernatural fiction, which is great news. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next year or so.
(Whilst at Alt.Fiction, incidentally, someone asked me what it was like to be a character in a Graham Joyce novel. As I had no idea what he was talking about, he had to explain that the two "hottest guys in school" in Graham's teen novel, Do the Creepy Thing, were called Mark Morris and Conrad Williams. Naturally I bought a copy of the book and read it immediately, and I have to say that (regardless of the whole name-thing) it's a terrific book. Afterwards I happened to mention to another writing pal of mine, Sarah Pinborough, that Graham had named the best-looking guy in school in Do the Creepy Thing after me. Her response? "Graham always did have a good imagination." Hmph.)
I've got a new agent. Hurrah! A few weeks ago I joined the John Jarrold Literary Agency, and am delighted with how things are going so far. John is an enthusiastic & knowledgeable champion of the genre, and has welcomed me to the agency with open arms. I'm already very excited with his plans for my work, and am really looking forward to what I hope will be a long and fruitful partnership. Plus he does a fantastic Dave Allen impression! What more could you ask for from an agent?
Just before I go, let me mention that I'll be appearing at the Lincoln Book Festival this coming Tuesday (15th), where I'll be appearing on a panel with the aforementioned Graham Joyce and Simon Clark. If you fancy coming along, it's at the Lincoln Drill Hall, and the festival box office number is 01522 873894.
Cheers for now.