Alice In Sunderland (with apologies to Bryan Talbot)

Just a short missive tonight, basically an introduction to me and what I intend to achieve with this blog. I would call it an action plan, but I had enough of that kind of bollocks at school (which, digression aplogies present at the beginning, is very telling about the sort of thing they made us do in school which they say will prepare us for the outisde world. Now, I cannot and have never been able to do long division. I used to have sleepless nights worrying about when I got a job and they found out I couldn't do long division. As it turns out, the only thing I use that I learned in school is... actually, there's nothing. I use my English in my writing and that's about it really. I suppose I could say I use maths in my job, but that is all simple addition and subtraction, which I had mastered long before I went to secondary school).

So, here I am.

My name is Mark and I am a writer. I've had a few short stories published here and there, mainly in small press fanzines. I've won a couple of short story competitions and one day I'd like to be a published novelist.

My novels are generally mainstream contemporary fiction with a little bit of magic realism (remind me on and later - when I'm sober and not knackered - I'll tell you why I hate that term so much) thrown into the mix. My magnum opus, if you can call it that, is a semi-autobiographical series called 'Songs From My Childhood' which follows a group of friends for a little over a decade, starting when they are 16. Well, I say semi-autobiographical, the earliest novels in the sequence are, but after that, they tend to follow their own paths. My current novel, Telling Tales, is about how we fictionalise our own lives to deal with them and features two independent threads, IDST and The Colour Of Deep Water, the lead characters of which are writing the companion story (so the lead in IDST is writing the story of The Colour Of Deep Water and vice versa). It sounds a lot more complicated and wanky than it actually is.

When not pretending to be a serious author, I work in a newsagents and attempt to have a life, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds.

This blog is intended to be a sounding board for my wacky notions and so forth, a place where I can rant about movies, books, comics and whatever else I feel like (see my first posting concerning Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer for what to expect from that) and also where I can wallow in self-pity regarding my own failures as a human being. Which is slightly more fun than it sounds, given my life has of late taken on the facade of a French farce.

Here, for those of you who might be interested, is a timeline of my life and career:

1981 - Born in Sunderland
1985 - Sees Return To Oz and Labyrinth, prediliction towards fantasy and Jennifer Connelly born.
1994 - Reads 1984. The world will never be the same again.
1995 - Becomes a Doctor Who fan despite the show having been off air for six years. Instant infatuation with Mary Tamm ensues. First serious attempts at short story writing lead to the writing of 'Destroyer Of Worlds' in which a dying man takes over the mantle of Death, 'Riverside Nightmares' the first adventure for Conrad Hart, 'Dormant Demons', the first adventure for Kojo Ratheen and also invents SF future history with a projected series of 30 novels.
1997 - While allegedly studying for his GCSE's, Mark writes a novel. Entitled Cold Heart, it later forms the centrepiece to his 'Songs From My Childhood' sequence. Despite not revising, Mark gains acceptance to 6th Form college and wins the Sid Chaplin award for his short story 'My Poem And The Story Of It'.
1998 - Mark's first relationship ends badly. During the relationship he is working on a film script entitled Other People which is all about being suffocated in a relationship. Irony is born. Mark wins the Sid Chaplin again, this time with his story 'Leaving Day' which is all about going to university. At this point in his life, Mark doesn't think that university is for him.
1999 - Mark writes second novel in the 'Songs' sequence, The Truth About Boys (although at this point it is called Bluebottle Wood) and the divorce of his parents prompts him to write a direct sequel to Cold Heart, The Church Of Hollow Love. Mark starts his Freshman year at Sunderland University and discovers the delights in overindulging on alcohol.
2002 - Mark - three novels wiser - leaves university and ends up in a dead end job in a video store.
2005 - Mark writes what will be the capstone to the 'Songs' sequence, Snowglobe, inspired very much by his first visit to London.
2006 - Mark gets a decent job.
2007 - A work in progress...

Peace out.