I've been itching to interview Mark and I've
finally been able to snare him! Mark's latest book,
The Night Porter, is out now (The paperback looks amazing and I can't wait to get stuck in!). As well as that, he's a HUGE supporter of Indie authors and self-publishing. He's also written a slew of books with subjects ranging from witchcraft to football violence to the life of the night porter. Sticking to genres? Not in Mark's world!!
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Hi Mark! How are you?
I’m in terrific form, thank you, Rae.
And how are you?
I'm doing good! Packing my bags ready to go travelling. Tell us a bit about yourself.
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| The gorgeous Mark Barry |
I’m a writer and publisher of
Independent contemporary fiction. I am approaching my fiftieth
birthday (if anyone wants to send me a card and a biscuit), have one
son (who I adore) a close family and some terrific friends. I support
Notts County, enjoy horse racing, rock music, collecting comics and
most of all, reading and collecting books. I also run the Wizard’s
Cauldron dedicated author interview site where you and I first spoke,
oh great Steampunky one.
How did you get into writing? What
inspired you to start? What was the first book you put out?
I’ve always written but it was the
advent of Kindle that inspired me to set up the business. I mean,
WOW. Look at the environment we work in, Rae.
No evil publishers obsessed with sales
and marketing. No vicious, nasty slush pile guardians, (frustrated
writers all); no three year wait for your book to go live and no
pernickety editors telling you what you can and cannot do with YOUR
OWN work.
“Ultra Violence” has to be one
of my favourite books of the year. It’s gritty and real and doesn’t
sugar coat the topics it approaches. Your writing is brilliantly
unapologetic which I think is one of the reasons I’ve really been
enjoying it. What made you say, “Right, I’m going to write a book
about football hooliganism.”?
I have, er, some experience of the
lifestyle that UV portrays. Many other clubs had their own books on
hooliganism – particularly the big ones, the Birminghams, the
Millwalls, the West Hams – but I thought there were enough stories
from my club, Notts County, to justify a short novel. It made the
right decision as it has proved popular.
For the uninitiated, what exactly is
a football firm?
It’s an organised gang of men whose
intention is to fight opposing football supporters at football
matches. They usually have names, like Millwall’s Bushwhackers
or Sheffield United’s Blades Business Crew or Birmingham
City’s Zulu Warriors. The newest phenomenon is the ages of
the men involved. You might think that a sixty three year old being
arrested for fighting on a Saturday afternoon is a bit far-fetched,
but it happened in January in Burnley. Several fifty year olds were
also arrested. I wrote about it in the sequel to UV and this kind of
over aged scrapping is becoming more and more common. It is clearly
extremely addictive and difficult to give up.
We don’t see as much about the
football firms as we used to. At one point, they seemed to be in the
news every weekend. Have they died down? Or do they just not get the
news coverage they used to?
Rae, I must stress, football violence
is a shadow of its former self and you can go to most matches now and
not see an eyebrow raised in anger, thanks to brutal, neo-fascist
policing, draconian prison sentences from a compliant judiciary,
soulless all-seater stadiums, a fly’s eye array of CCTV cameras and
most of all, changing attitudes, as I wrote about in the second last
chapter of UV. We might live in a shitty society, Rae, but it is no
longer a particularly violent one and hooliganism of many kinds has
gone out of fashion. Saying that, you do see it about. I know the
dad of one of the lads in the article below. His son got a three and
a half stretch for his (minor) part in this Saturday afternoon
disagreement between Lincoln City and Luton Town.
You’re quite a sports buff. Do you
have any tips for us for the coming year? Who do we need to look out
for in the Grand National?
Two horses. Tidal Bay and Long
Run. I love my horse and greyhound racing, In the days before
mobile telephones, my ex-wife and friends knew to find me in the
bookies at the end of the road. These two horses are quality animals
and, now the fences are a lot safer than they used to be, classy
animals tend to do well. The latter won the Cheltenham Gold Cup a
couple of years ago.
When it comes to writing, you’re
quite a genre buster and don’t stick to the same topics in every
book. We’ve had witchcraft, football, and now one about modern
publishing. How do people respond to you not staying in one little
niche? Do the readers enjoy not knowing what they’ll get from you
next? Do you recommend that authors explore outside of one genre?
Genre is absolutely critical in Indie,
Rae. This may seem surprising for me to admit, but its been my
experience. Unfortunately, I don’t have a genre so this has
hampered my progress. With the exception of one book, I have been
quite well reviewed by the community and readers have been kind. One
of my books sold a respectable amount, but I do suffer from this
wandering soul tendency. I don’t read genre books and therefore I
don’t write them. I like books which defy characterisation. The
Dice Man, Luke Rhinehart. Night Train and London Fields, Martin Amis.
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
My best written book is Hollywood
Shakedown and yet, because it doesn’t have a genre, I cannot sell
it. It is a paradox I cannot break out of. Even I don’t know how to
categorise Shakedown and if I cannot do it, how does a busy reader do
so? Technically, I have never written a more complete book and I
doubt whether I ever will. Seven or eight people who have made it
through its hundred thousand words think it is a fantastic book –
and more of my readers consider it my best than any other - but I do
wish I had added a whodunit to turn it into crime fiction or a
talking goblin to turn it into fantasy. For me, not having a genre
has killed Shakedown and its lack of success has been the saddest
part of my journey into Indie. As a book, it pees all over UV, yet
the latter has sold thousands more because it has a specific,
notarised, unimpeachable, indisputable genre.
What are your views on publishing at
the moment? Do you think, much like the music and film industries,
that they’re still playing catch up with modern technology? Do you
think they there’s any more changes the industry will make in the
coming years?
Unless you are very, very lucky. I
suspect the days of writing for money are over, Rae. Expectations
need to change. Too many writers (and I feel a hypocrite for saying
this, bearing in mind an earlier answer), chase too few readers. Look
at music. Once a goldmine as deep as the Grand Canyon, now a talented
wannabe band will be lucky to make a pie and a pint after a birthday
gig at the local boozer. Shared between four. At one point, bands
made all their money from albums and lost money from tours. Now,
thanks to Napster and download culture, its reversed.
Also, I think that the much anticipated
gatekeeper at Amazon is coming, Rae, and not just for formatting,
spellos etc. They have bought several publishing imprints and are
pumping out their own authors – as my terrific friend Lelani Black
told me – and they will probably feel that the presence of a
rougharse Indie book is more trouble than it is worth.
The kids have it right, Rae. At the
street level, the kids are fantastic, all that YA stuff. They work
together, support each other to the end, run a barter economy,
reciprocally buy each other’s books regardless of quality, blog
tour each other, review each other, act like a tribe, and generally
play the game properly. Many authors my age could learn a lot from
the YA community. I know I could. Some older authors I have bumped
into would rather remove their own teeth with a lump hammer than
retweet another author’s work and that’s a shame. The only way to
sustain this level of quite bizarre economic madness is to create
barter economy groups between authors, but that’s for another
post….
One of my huge gripes is the amount
of different file formats we have for e-readers. This, of course,
isn’t the fault of the publishers and I’m forever thankful to all
the publishers who offer different format downloads. But often I find
that I can’t get a book for my reader (I use a Kobo because, unlike
many other devices, it’s survived the “Rach Warranty Test” and
not broken into a million pieces). Do you think there will come a
time when, like with digital music, there will be a standard file
format which is used across all readers? Is it something that
companies need to look at, especially as many formats are DRM
protected and unable to be converted to be used on other devices?
Rae, do you know what, you’ve stumped
me here. I only ever deal with Amazon and Createspace. I figured B &
N and Smashwords were only really beneficial to American writers, so
I stuck with those. Personally, I think that if there were to be a
standard file format – and you won’t like this, my friend – it
will be a Kindle one. They are a global locust swarm who could
eventually monopolise publishing in a couple of decades. Sorry I
couldn’t give you a better answer – I know how much you love
planes and engineering
If you had to give one tip to an
indie author, what would it be?
Write short books. Noone can be arsed
to read long books, sadly, as my shelves are full of the blighters
and I tend to write them too. A book less than 50k should do it.
Oh, and don’t stop reading. An author
who does not read defeats the whole object of Indie and will not
develop either. In fact, you need to read more and more the more you
write.
Be nice to people on the way up because
you are sure to meet them on the way down.
You’ve just brought out “The
Night Porter”, which I’m really looking forward to reading.
What’s it about? What inspired it?
It’s based in a hotel at the end of
my road which houses four authors who are about to attend a
prestigious
literary awards ceremony. One writes thrillers, another
YA, another romance, and the fourth is a self pubbed contemporary
fiction author. The hyper-professional Night Porter looks after them
all for the duration of their stay. There is a whodunit, commentary
on the world of writing, some nasty observations, ego, bitterness,
laughter, snappy patter, a beautiful hotel, a betting market for the
categories and lots of book chat and plenty of jokes. It’s my most
accessible book – my biggest critic likes it, which is a HUGE
relief – and I enjoyed writing it. It’s inspired by many things,
but mostly people. I like writing about people and I like
conversations. Not dialogue – there is a difference between
dialogue and a conversation – and the book is full of the latter.
I also wanted to write a paperback book
that is so professionally produced, no one would ever know it is
Indie. The back blurb is going on after the notices are returned, but
I think I am on the right lines, Rae,
Pimp yourself! Where can we find you
online?
Thanks so much, Mark! It’s always
awesome to talk to you!
The Night Porter is out now in paperback and on Kindle. Enjoy!
