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134 Mark Edwards | Psychological Thriller Author
450 Plays2 years ago
Best-selling psychological thriller author, Mark Edwards is on this episode talking about his process, his publishing adventures and some of the challenges of being a career author.
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Transcript
The Polarizing Nature of Writing Styles
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:02
Speaker
I love it.
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Speaker
Because the writing is sort of everything, right?
00:00:04
Speaker
You can fix plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:00:11
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Mark Edwards and His Success
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:17
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Today I'm joined by a best-selling psychological thriller author who has sold over 4 million copies of his books across the world and
00:00:26
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His latest novel, Keep Her Secret, came out in May this year, and I'm very excited to welcome Mark Edwards to the podcast.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hi, Mark.
00:00:33
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Hello, thank you for having me on.
00:00:35
Speaker
Thanks so much for being here.
00:00:37
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Let's
Elevator Pitch for 'Keep Her Secret'
00:00:37
Speaker
start off with, for anyone who's listening and is unfamiliar with your work and the sort of stories that you tell, why don't you give us a little elevator pitch of your latest novel, Keep Her Secret?
00:00:48
Speaker
Keep a secret.
00:00:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:49
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So it's a psychological thriller, or you could call it a domestic noir.
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It's set in the UK.
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And it's about a couple who have recently got back together having had a relationship with Noreau at college 20 years ago.
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And very soon into their relationship, they go on a trip to Iceland together and they're climbing up this mountain or they're hiking up this mountain and
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And they get to the top and she's trying to take the perfect photo and goes too close to the edge and slips and falls over the edge of this cliff.
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And her backpack hooks on a jagged piece of rock and saves her.
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But while she's dangling from the cliff waiting to be rescued and thinking she's going to die, she blurts out that she has a secret.
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She then reveals that secret to her new boyfriend, my main character,
00:01:49
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And he has to decide what he's going to do.
00:01:52
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Is he going to help her protect the secret or is he going to expose her?
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And then after he's made his decision, somebody turns up who's overheard the whole thing with the intention of blackmailing them.
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And they have to take drastic action to keep her secret, as it says in the title.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yes, indeed.
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And then it gets very dark and there's lots of twists and turns and characters making terrible mistakes and bad decisions and getting themselves deeper and deeper into this mess that they have to try to get themselves out of.
00:02:36
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everything you would want from a psychological thriller.
Exploring Writing Styles in Thrillers
00:02:38
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You've written 16 solo books.
00:02:43
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That's very much kind of, you stay within these.
00:02:46
Speaker
I'd not heard domestic noir before, but I really liked that.
00:02:49
Speaker
And that's kind of very much your style and your kind of genre.
00:02:52
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They're all along these lines.
00:02:54
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Yeah, I mean, I would say that I kind of have two or three different styles of book, but within that area.
00:03:02
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So some of them are more domestic.
00:03:04
Speaker
So there's books like The Magpies, which is about neighbours from hell, Here to Stay, which is about terrible in-laws.
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Then you've got ones that are a little bit more horror.
00:03:16
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So there's a book called Follow Your Home, which is about a couple who see something terrifying in the woods in Romania.
00:03:25
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And there's one called The Retreat, which...
00:03:28
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is set also in some woods but in wales this time um and then there's there's some that are a little bit more action thriller kind of so no place to run and the house guest which is both set in america have more people kind of running around with guns and cults and and casts of thousands
00:03:49
Speaker
But they're all psychological thrillers and yeah, they all have a domestic element to them and they usually have a relationship at their heart as well.
00:04:00
Speaker
So it's not romance, it's not all romantic suspense, that's another genre, but there's always a relationship at the heart of these books.
00:04:11
Speaker
And Magpies was the first book you put, was that back in 2013?
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, so that was the first solo book.
00:04:17
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So I'd already had two, no, sorry, four novels published that I'd co-written with Louise Voss by that point.
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Speaker
And then we went on to write two more.
00:04:30
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It sounds quite weird saying my first solo book.
00:04:32
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It makes me sound like George Michael or Harry Styles or some of these left the band.
00:04:38
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But I always have to say that because, yeah, the first four were me as part of a duo.
Collaborative Writing Process with Louise Voss
00:04:45
Speaker
I'm always curious when I hear about co-writes on books, because I know that there's lots of different ways that that can play out.
00:04:53
Speaker
The one that I'm familiar with, I think I watched an interview with Neil Gaiman talking about how he wrote Good Omens with Terry Pratchett and the way that they did that.
00:05:01
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How did you and Louise, what was the process you guys had for co-writing?
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Well, I mean, it developed and changed.
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But when we started, the first book was a kind of he said, she said book.
00:05:13
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So we would write a chapter.
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I would write from the male character's point of view and her from the female.
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And then we would write a chapter and send it to each other.
00:05:23
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And we kind of went back and forth.
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We did discuss the plot, so we knew what was coming next, but that was quite easy.
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And then all the subsequent books, we had a main character who we would take it in terms to write, and then we would have various other points of view.
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So I would take some of the characters and she would take the others.
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Or there might be particular types of scene that I was better at writing and some that she was better at writing.
00:05:53
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We did stereotypically divide them along male-female lines.
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So I would write more of the kind of action thrillers and she would write the more romantic.
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I would write the action scenes and she would write the more romantic scenes, for example.
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Yeah.
00:06:06
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But yeah, it was chaotic actually.
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Because we're not really plotters, we're both pantsers, we would kind of have a very rough idea of what was going to happen and we might have planned it out like two or three chapters ahead, but we would never know how it was going to end and we would just be trying to figure it all out as we went along.
00:06:27
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Which is, I mean, that's hard enough doing it on your own.
00:06:29
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Yeah.
00:06:29
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But when there's two of you, sometimes it got really messy, but we always got there in the end.
00:06:36
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Amazingly.
00:06:37
Speaker
You and Louise did six books in the end, right?
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
And if my counting is correct, you by yourself have done 16 books.
00:06:46
Speaker
um that's if you include the novellas yeah i think it's 13 novels and three novellas okay i mean i honestly to be honest i i lose count myself i'm actually having to look at my bookshelf and count them because it's hard to keep up yeah um i think above a certain number your brain just kind of like is yeah keep a secret is definitely the 13th though and then there's yeah there's some novellas and some short stories and things
00:07:15
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So having written so many stories, sort of, like you said, there is variation, but within the sort of psychological thriller genre, is there like a sort of growing challenge with each one to make sure that you're not retreading ground that you covered in previous ones?
00:07:32
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Absolutely.
Challenges in Keeping Stories Fresh
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Yeah.
00:07:33
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That's the hardest thing about being a career author is not repeating yourself.
00:07:38
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Yeah.
00:07:39
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Because there are only so many ways that you can have somebody being, I don't know, stalked or, or if somebody has gone missing things that might've happened to them or, um, um,
00:07:56
Speaker
even like the phrasing as well, like the people's reactions to things happening.
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There are only so many ways that you can describe somebody's blood going cold when they realise what's going on.
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And I'm always thinking of really good ideas for whatever I'm working on at the moment.
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I'll come up with a solution.
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And then I'll be like, hang on, I did that six books ago, or I've done that twice before.
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And then you have to try and think of something else.
00:08:27
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So, for example, in the book that I've just finished, which will be Solo Book 14, I've
00:08:34
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there was a big kind of climactic scene which was going to take place in a crypt, a church crypt.
00:08:43
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And then I realized, hang on, I did that in the retreat.
00:08:46
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It's almost exactly the same.
00:08:48
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So I completely removed that whole kind of subplot from the book because it just, it was my regular readers would have thought would have started getting deja vu.
00:08:58
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Yeah.
00:08:59
Speaker
But there are certain motifs and themes.
00:09:01
Speaker
I think there are, first of all, there are themes that all writers return to again and again, even if they don't mean to, because these are the things that we are in our subconscious obsessed with.
00:09:12
Speaker
And often I don't even realize that I'm writing about this subject or this theme until either when I finish the book or even years later, I think, oh God, that was actually about that thing that happened to me like years ago.
00:09:25
Speaker
It doesn't even really register that I'm doing it.
00:09:29
Speaker
But you'll find yourself returning to those again and again.
00:09:33
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And then there are also things like, for example, I mean, I would say my main character is usually of a type.
00:09:42
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He's usually a kind of very nice, ordinary, mild-mannered character.
00:09:47
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guy who just wants a quiet life and wants a girlfriend or a wife and a and a cat or whatever and wants to live in a nice house and not be bothered by like most people really yeah and then something terrible comes along and or someone terrible comes along and threatens all of that and I said my wife always says to me that my main character is very similar to me um so although I don't write series I think there is a kind of
00:10:18
Speaker
a central sort of um mark edward standing character yeah in most of these books yeah and um and yeah and there are certain things that you know you're going to get in my books that that my readers expect like so for example i mean it sounds stupid but the fact that the main character always has a pet cat and the cat usually um
00:10:43
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comes into some kind of peril, but always survives.
00:10:47
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Always survives.
00:10:48
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So far.
00:10:48
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That's a guarantee.
00:10:49
Speaker
No, well, I mean, that is my guarantee because if I threatened to kill any of my cats, people would stop reading my book.
00:10:58
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That's where you draw the line.
00:10:59
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Yeah.
00:11:01
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Well, it's true that there's a cat in here to stay.
00:11:05
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And I had so many messages from people saying...
00:11:09
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you need to tell me that charlie the cat is going to be okay i'll have to stop reading this book and they genuinely wanted to know they didn't care about the spoilers and i was like don't worry charlie's fine he's fine he survives i'm not i can't guarantee that anybody else survives but the cat the cat will always have a fine yeah
00:11:26
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And if you have a kind of, if the owners of the cat or a dog die during the book, you have to make sure that you describe how they're rehomed as well and how they find a happy ending.
00:11:37
Speaker
Because otherwise people will worry about it.
00:11:39
Speaker
It's so funny.
00:11:41
Speaker
Apparently there's quite a common thing with movies where there are people who just won't watch a movie if the dog dies.
00:11:49
Speaker
No, that's true.
00:11:50
Speaker
And there's a website, I think, called Does the Dog Die?
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
But then I'm a little bit like, I have to admit, I'm a little bit like that.
00:11:57
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I don't, I mean, I don't mind.
00:11:59
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I just don't want to see them being tortured or anything.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:05
Speaker
That's kind of where I like horror.
00:12:07
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I love horror and I watch a lot of horror movies.
00:12:10
Speaker
But if there's scenes of animals suffering in it, I really don't like it.
00:12:16
Speaker
yeah i know yeah um getting back on track uh sorry um you mentioned that you are much more of a pantser than a planner is that still true of your writing to like today well i am attempting to change partly because my well yeah my um
00:12:39
Speaker
I'm on quite a tight schedule these days trying to put out more, like a book every nine months.
Balancing Outlining and Pantsing
00:12:49
Speaker
And previously, I was always a very inefficient writer.
00:12:52
Speaker
I would just write multiple drafts and kind of figure it out as I went along and throw away.
00:12:59
Speaker
probably hundreds of thousands of words within.
00:13:03
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I mean, there's been points where to write a 90,000 word book, I've written 200,000 words just to get there because I've thrown away so many.
00:13:14
Speaker
And I'm trying to be more efficient and not waste so much time going off in wrong directions and having to scrap huge sections of the book.
00:13:25
Speaker
so the last two I have um I have written an outline before I started however I do deviate from that outline quite a lot so I wouldn't I I've yet to get to the point where I could write an outline and then stick to it and know exactly what was going to happen and there's always kind of
00:13:49
Speaker
dark spaces within the outline where I'm not quite sure how this is going to work out, but I know I'll figure it out when I get there.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:58
Speaker
So, um, yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
So I think that at heart instinctively, I am definitely a pants and I prefer working like that.
00:14:10
Speaker
Um, um,
00:14:11
Speaker
But in order to try to become more productive, I guess, I'm trying to plot it out.
00:14:21
Speaker
But I find it hard because I find it really hard to work out exactly what's going to happen when I'm not seeing it through the character's eyes, when I'm not actually in their head and working out the story.
00:14:33
Speaker
Because when I'm writing the scenes,
00:14:39
Speaker
that's when the ideas come to me and i kind of and when i'm writing conversations and dialogue and so on that's when it when i when the ideas kind of really really flow yeah that's interesting do you that so a book every nine months that's your that's your target that's what you're aiming for is are you contracted to that or is that something you've set yourself that's my current contract but i could volunteer for that i'm regretting it immediately
00:15:08
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, to be honest, I could very comfortably write a book a year without having to really break too much of a sweat, I would say, and take the school summer holidays off and also probably fit in a novella or something in that time as well.
00:15:31
Speaker
I think that especially with digital, because the majority of my books of my sales are digital, I think that readers tend to be much more fickle with eBooks and,
00:15:47
Speaker
I think there are certain authors like brand authors who you'll go and buy at the airport before you go on holiday or you'll buy buying shops where you might just think, okay, this is this year's Lisa Jewel book or this is this year's Mark Billingham book or whatever it is.
00:16:05
Speaker
With eBooks, I think that to keep people interested,
00:16:09
Speaker
especially when you write standalones like me, rather than a series, you've got to keep the books coming fast because that's what, because otherwise people just kind of forget about you and move on to the next shining bright debut.
00:16:26
Speaker
And that's the kind of harsh reality of,
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:29
Speaker
There's so many coming out every day.
00:16:31
Speaker
I know, I know.
00:16:33
Speaker
I mean, I am very lucky that I have a really loyal, hardcore fan base that I've built up over the years.
00:16:41
Speaker
So I know that each book that there's going to be, well, tens of thousands of people who will just go and buy that book automatically.
00:16:50
Speaker
But if you want to reach the kind of bigger audience,
00:16:57
Speaker
the faster you can get them out.
00:17:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, I don't know whether that's completely true.
00:17:02
Speaker
If you were putting one out every month, I'm sure people would soon get sick of the sight of your books.
00:17:09
Speaker
But yeah, so every nine months, that's what I'm trying to do.
00:17:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:13
Speaker
And speaking of, you know, how one way that authors will retain their brand audience is that they will do a series.
00:17:20
Speaker
Have you ever thought about doing a recurring character, like keeping it all in sort of one bigger story?
Preference for Standalone Novels
00:17:26
Speaker
Well, I mean, I did.
00:17:29
Speaker
Louise and I both started a couple of series.
00:17:35
Speaker
We started a detective series and we also had a series with a virologist because our first hit was a book called Catch Your Death, which was about a deadly virus.
00:17:48
Speaker
This was back in 2008.
00:17:51
Speaker
12 that came out so I think post SARS but a long time before COVID yeah although I was one of those kind of armchair virologists having written this book but I just felt like we got diminishing returns with the series and I know that you have to really commit to it and if you and you might have to write six or seven before the series really takes off
00:18:20
Speaker
But I feel like with a standalone, there's always the chance that you're going to find brand new readers with every book.
00:18:30
Speaker
Because I know that if a series, for me, if a series has been running for a while and I see books seven or eight or nine come out,
00:18:39
Speaker
I think, oh God, do I have to go back to book one to get into that series or can I kind of jump in here?
00:18:48
Speaker
I mean, for me, that's the issue with series.
00:18:51
Speaker
But also because I just like being able to create new characters and explore new things and have different settings with every book.
00:19:01
Speaker
I like the fact that I can just, I think setting's really, really important.
00:19:06
Speaker
And I like the fact that,
00:19:08
Speaker
each of my books, I could set this one in New York, I could set this one in the Lake District, and then the next one can be in
00:19:16
Speaker
I don't know, London or Hastings or Birmingham or wherever I can, I can move around, move around the world, not just, not just the country.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
I mean, that's a great way of just kind of differentiating as like a baseline because there's, you do travel around a lot throughout your books.
00:19:33
Speaker
So just, yeah, we were talking about how it's hard to like make sure that every book is different.
00:19:36
Speaker
It's like the starting point is that you, they're almost all set or at some point go to different places that you haven't gone in other books.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:19:45
Speaker
And I do have a universe, a Mark Edwards universe.
00:19:49
Speaker
So I have recurring characters.
00:19:54
Speaker
So for example, the serial killer from the Magpies, Lucy Newton, she makes cameos in lots of other books.
00:20:03
Speaker
And then I wrote, and then I also wrote two sequels to, to the Magpies as well.
00:20:10
Speaker
And yeah,
00:20:11
Speaker
She's actually going to pop up in the book that I'm going to start writing, well, this month.
00:20:20
Speaker
And then I have, for example, in The Retreat, there's a horror author who has a huge bestseller called Sweet Meat.
00:20:31
Speaker
Sweet Meat in my universe then gets made into a Netflix movie
00:20:38
Speaker
this is wish fulfillment and one of the female characters from a different book stars in that netflix adaptation and then somebody else is watching it in one of the other books and someone's reading it and so you have all these little kind of um i mean i borrowed that from stephen king i mean when i grew up reading stephen king he always had these little callbacks and he's i mean i don't even think they were called easter eggs back in those days um
00:21:02
Speaker
But you'd get that little kind of, you'd get a little shiver of recognition when you saw a character pop up in one book, maybe just a mention, who had been a major character in a previous book.
00:21:15
Speaker
And I love doing that.
00:21:17
Speaker
And I think people...
00:21:18
Speaker
I think readers really love it as well.
00:21:20
Speaker
So, so yeah, there is, there is a universe.
00:21:23
Speaker
It's always fun knowing that it's all of these things exist together so that you're reading one and you think, oh, that other thing also happens like in this reality.
00:21:32
Speaker
And that's interesting.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
And fun for you, I imagine as well, tying all those things in.
00:21:37
Speaker
It is, it is, it is good fun.
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:40
Speaker
I think that, I don't think there's any
00:21:43
Speaker
I don't know any in Keeper's Secret though.
00:21:47
Speaker
Sometimes they just don't fit.
00:21:51
Speaker
But then I've brought back a detective from one of my older books who has quite a major role in
00:22:00
Speaker
the book that's coming out in February, which is called the darkest water.
00:22:03
Speaker
Um, that's the one that I've just finished.
00:22:08
Speaker
Uh, I've just finished editing it, um, last week.
00:22:11
Speaker
In fact, congratulations.
00:22:13
Speaker
Thanks.
00:22:15
Speaker
I've got a very short break before I'll start to the next one.
00:22:19
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:22:20
Speaker
Well, it sounds like you need to take every moment of those breaks because a nine-month schedule is quite a lot.
00:22:27
Speaker
I know.
00:22:28
Speaker
As we move towards the twilight of this episode, I'd love to ask, as someone who has been writing and sustaining themselves in the publishing industry for a long time now, what advice would you give to aspiring authors looking to get their work picked up by either agents or publishers?
Advice for Aspiring Writers
00:22:45
Speaker
Well, the thing that I usually say to people is, and because this is based on experience from my own times as an aspiring author back when I was in my 20s, is be very clear about what kind of writer you are or that you want to be and where you fit.
00:23:06
Speaker
I think that people sometimes have this idea that they're going to be utterly unique or that they're kind of blending together
00:23:14
Speaker
various different genres and they might not even be genres that they particularly love.
00:23:18
Speaker
Like I met a guy the other day, he said he'd written a fantasy novel.
00:23:21
Speaker
And then I said, and I said, well, which not, which fancy authors would you compare yourself to?
00:23:28
Speaker
And he said, well, I don't really read fantasy.
00:23:29
Speaker
And I was like, well, that just seems crazy that why would you want to write a fantasy novel?
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
If you're not a big fan of that genre and you're not really aware of the market and you're not, you're not, um,
00:23:44
Speaker
You don't know whether you're, I mean, I don't, I don't even really know any fancy authors to, to kind of, to, to name, but,
00:23:53
Speaker
But for me, I feel like I'm very, very aware of the psychological thriller market and who the big authors are and what the big books are and what themes have been written about and what's already been done.
00:24:07
Speaker
And I think that having a good knowledge of all of that really, really helps.
00:24:12
Speaker
So when you inquire to an agent, you can say, I would sit on a shelf between...
00:24:20
Speaker
I don't know, Gillian Flynn, sorry, it's Gillian Flynn, isn't it?
00:24:23
Speaker
Gillian Flynn and Gillian McAllister.
00:24:27
Speaker
I sit between those two authors.
00:24:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:30
Speaker
And then an agent will have a very clear idea of who you are.
00:24:35
Speaker
So, yeah, and also be able to pitch your books as quickly as possible, kind of nail down your elevator pitch.
00:24:46
Speaker
And if you can describe your book in a sentence, and if not one sentence, two sentences, and the further you go from that one sentence, the harder it's going to get.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
That will really help you as well.
00:25:01
Speaker
So if you can say this book is Jaws set on a plane or something, then... I mean, I'd love to see how that works.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:25:14
Speaker
I just think... Well, I think that there was a book that Don Winslow described as like... Oh, it was The Chain by Adrian McKinty and his blurb was Jaws for Parents.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
i.e.
00:25:27
Speaker
it's something terrifying is going to happen to your kids yeah yeah and that was that was the pitch and that was and that's great although he does use that jaws for x line for lots of different books i've noticed yeah yeah i was watching a tv show actually recently called based on a true story and i was watching it and i thought wow i wonder if the pitch for this was they went to the studio and said oh this is only murders in the building meets you and
00:25:54
Speaker
And I was like, that's literally what this show is.
00:25:56
Speaker
They just ticked two really popular things and put them together.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
And that does work because I'm always trying to think of ideas like that.
00:26:05
Speaker
A high concept idea where it's X and the X might come from the structure and then the Y is the theme of the story or the type of story it is.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:18
Speaker
It doesn't have to be like a direct like mashing of two things, right?
00:26:21
Speaker
It can be like, oh, this thing from this, but this thing from that.
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, it could be the historical period times the, I don't know.
00:26:29
Speaker
I mean, I could make something up now.
00:26:31
Speaker
It could be something set in Victorian times, but with a, oh my God, I don't know, like a kidnapping or something.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:43
Speaker
And then you would say it's,
00:26:46
Speaker
insert name of something very famous in the Victorian period meets something very famous with a kidnapping in it.
00:26:52
Speaker
The one I've seen recently is the very popular one is it's something meets Bridgerton.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:59
Speaker
Because Bridgerton was obviously very in the zeitgeist.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so lots of people are pitching, oh, it's this in Bridgerton.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:06
Speaker
Which, you know, it's like Love Island in Bridgerton.
00:27:08
Speaker
Like, there you go.
00:27:09
Speaker
yeah perfect perfect sold it's gone to auction yeah exactly of millionaires that was easy yeah so yeah i think having the big ideas being able to describe them briefly and then also being able to um
00:27:27
Speaker
to know who you are and be able to describe yourself because like it or not, this, if you're interested in being a commercially successful writer and you want to sell books and you want book deals and you want to see your books on the shelves and you're not just kind of writing it for fun or for,
00:27:43
Speaker
friends and family to see, then you've got to have some commercial sense and you've got to be prepared to kind of see yourself and your books as commodities that you're going to try and sell.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's always good.
00:28:00
Speaker
And lots of the agents that I've had on the podcast have said, just as a piece of advice that some people often don't look into is just do look into the market and be aware of where you think you might fit in the market.
00:28:11
Speaker
Very simple.
00:28:12
Speaker
Exactly, yeah.
00:28:13
Speaker
And also be aware of what, which agent, who different agents represent and what kind of books they like.
00:28:20
Speaker
And so that when you are pitching, you know who to send your stuff to.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:28
Speaker
And I think the other important thing, sorry, this is my very long answer to your short question.
00:28:34
Speaker
is just get out there into the community and make yourself known.
00:28:39
Speaker
So, for example, if you're a crime novelist, go to the crime festivals, go to Harrogate and Crime Fest and meet people, write reviews of books, get yourself known on Instagram or as a blogger, get into that community and make connections because it's fun and it's lovely to meet all of these people.
00:29:04
Speaker
But also when you've written your book and you're looking for somebody who might be to give you some advice or a blurb or something, then you've got contacts.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
A hundred percent getting involved with like the community of, and even if it's not like a specific genre community, just the writing community as a whole, you know, there's lots of critique groups that are a mixture of genres, a mixture of age groups in terms of what the writing is targeted at.
00:29:31
Speaker
That's great advice.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:32
Speaker
Really good.
Desert Island Book Choice
00:29:33
Speaker
And that brings us onto what is always the final question.
00:29:37
Speaker
And that is Mark, if you were stranded on a desert Island with one book, which book would you take?
00:29:44
Speaker
Well, I'm going to say my favorite book of all time, which is The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
00:29:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's a good one.
00:29:51
Speaker
I mean, I've already read it six or seven times.
00:29:56
Speaker
But every time I've read it, I just love it.
00:30:00
Speaker
I find myself sinking straight back into it.
00:30:03
Speaker
I so enjoy spending time with those characters and in that world that she created, I
00:30:09
Speaker
I think I could, I could happily read it over and over and over again.
00:30:13
Speaker
So, and I just think it's the greatest novel that I've ever read by a long, long way.
00:30:20
Speaker
And I know that nothing else will ever come close to it.
00:30:24
Speaker
Um, um,
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, I just adore it.
00:30:27
Speaker
I read it at exactly the right age as well.
00:30:29
Speaker
I was a student.
00:30:31
Speaker
I must have been 21 or 22 when I read it.
00:30:35
Speaker
So I was right at that.
00:30:38
Speaker
I think sometimes people read Secretory when they're in their 40s or 50s.
00:30:42
Speaker
They don't quite get it as much as when you read it when you're young.
00:30:46
Speaker
But yeah, and I read it and I've pressed it on like every single person I'd ever met.
00:30:52
Speaker
Like, you've got to read this book.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's great.
00:30:55
Speaker
And my daughters, I've got two teenage daughters and they've both read it and they absolutely loved it as well, which was a great relief to me.
00:31:02
Speaker
I bet you were nervous.
00:31:04
Speaker
If they didn't like it, you'd be like, no.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, it was also one of the first books that I lent my wife when we first met and she also loved it and it's her favourite book as well.
00:31:14
Speaker
Are you taking a cut of the sales?
00:31:16
Speaker
We were meant to be together because we both love The Secret History so much.
00:31:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:31:23
Speaker
it's definitely one of those books that a lot of people talk about, but it does live up to the hype.
00:31:28
Speaker
It's just brilliant.
00:31:29
Speaker
Brilliant.
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
That's a great, well, great choice.
00:31:32
Speaker
Obviously you're very passionate about it and potentially, I mean, it sounds like you're sponsored by the secret history, but thanks so much, Mark, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your, your writing and what you're kind of working on at the moment and how the whole process goes.
00:31:47
Speaker
It's been really cool chatting with you.
00:31:49
Speaker
Oh, thank you.
00:31:50
Speaker
It's fun.
00:31:51
Speaker
Good fun.
00:31:52
Speaker
And
Connect with Mark Edwards and Podcast Support
00:31:52
Speaker
for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Mark is doing, you can follow him on Twitter at Mr. Edwards or on Instagram and Facebook at Mark Edwards Author.
00:32:03
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss the episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:32:07
Speaker
You can also support the show on Patreon.
00:32:09
Speaker
And for more bookish chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and other tropes.
00:32:13
Speaker
Thanks again to Mark and thanks to everyone listening.
00:32:15
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.