 At Who are you? My name’s Mark West and I write horror fiction, generally shorts and novellas, but also a couple of novels. For the past two or three years, I’ve been working on some thriller novels. Your signature style: Generally third person and, more often than not, focusing on familial relationships (especially fathers and sons). The work is occasionally gruesome, sometimes bleak but, hopefully, always told at a good pace. Toot your own horn: I suffered for a few years with a terrible writers block after my sister passed away and Gary McMahon pulled me out of it, asking me to write a novelette for him. The anthology it appeared in was nominated for a BFS award, which was lovely and then my story, “The Mill”, was published separately. Out of everything I’ve done, it’s the most personal to me and it’s the one I get the most feedback for. I’m still proud of it. I also wrote a little novella called “Drive” that I thought wouldn’t go anywhere (it wasn’t even slightly supernatural) but did well for itself and ended up being nominated for a BFS award too. Books read: I read a lot and try to cover most genres, as well as re-reading at least half a dozen Three Investigator books a year (a series I have loved since my childhood - if you check out my blog, you’ll find a lot about them on there). As I write this, my three favourites of the year so far are “Into The River” by Mark Brandi, “Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin and I’m about halfway through “The Possession” by Michael Rutger and loving it. Movies watched: As we go through the lockdown, I’ve been recording loads of stuff from various channels and getting the chance to re-watch films I haven’t seen in years (decades, in some cases). This afternoon, for example, I introduced Alison to the delights of “Hellraiser 2” - up to the point where Ken Cranham and fake-Julia are doing their bandaging thing, it’s very, very good. Then it all goes to hell (literally) and even I was embarrassed by the end of it. Games and/or music played: I’m not a big game-player, though I do enjoy the old-school board games every now and again. Music-wise, Alison & I really got into The Killers last year and I’ve loved catching up on them and their albums (and listening to full gigs on YouTube as I’m writing). Words written: At the moment I’m about halfway through the third thriller novel, which is about something terrible happening at the seaside. It has two timelines - 15 years ago and the present day - and I decided to start on the present and it’s made life very difficult for me. Procrastination and stresses have meant it’s taken longer than I’d expected and I actively hate it most of the time but I’m cracking on. Future stuff: Get this seaside novel finished, tidied up and into the rounds of agents and publishers and then start work on the next! Brain worms: I have a TBR pile that would stock a library and I have another list of books I’d love to re-read. So why is that, sometimes (as happened with “The Possession”), I get a book from Amazon and it arrives the day I finish another novel and so I start it straight away. And in doing so, I’m kind of admitting that there’s now a book on the TBR pile that will never get read. That’s depressing. In other news, I googled “brain worms” to find out what it meant. I have to say, I’d really not advise you doing the same thing. mark west Mark West was born in Kettering, Northants in 1969 and grew up in nearby Rothwell, which serves as the basis for his fictional town of Gaffney. He's married to Alison and they have a son called Matthew (who's more often than not referred to as Dude). Editing "The Loved One", December 1992 Mark grew up reading The Three Investigators, discovered horror in the early 80s with Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot and has been an enthusiastic fan of the genre ever since. He began writing stories (about Detective West, when he wasn’t trying to expand the Star Wars universe) in junior school and never really stopped. He wrote his first novel (a thriller he's since called 'a brave failure') in 1991 and followed it with two contemporary dramas - The Loved One in 1992 and Alice in 1994, the latter of which was rejected by several major publishers. Mark wrote a collection (grandly named Strange Tales) of short horror stories from 1987 to 1989 and began writing in the genre again in 1998, when he discovered the small press. Since then, he's had over ninety short stories published, two collections (the aptly titled Strange Tales in 2003 from Rainfall Books and Things We Leave Behind in 2017, from Dark Minds Press), two novels (In The Rain With The Dead from Pendragon Press in 2005 and Conjure from Rainfall Books in 2009), a novelette (The Mill, originally in the We Fade To Grey anthology from Pendragon Press, 2008), a chapbook (What Gets Left Behind from Spectral Press, 2012), four novellas (Drive from Pendragon Press in 2014, which was nominated for a British Fantasy Award - it was republished by Gritfiction in 2018, The Lost Film, also from Pendragon Press, in 2015, The Factory, from Hersham Horror Books in 2016 and Polly, from Stormblade Productions in 2017) and has more novellas forthcoming. Both of the novels and The Mill have been reprinted in digital and print editions by Greyhart Press, whilst PenMan Press released a 'special edition' (digital and print) of Strange Tales in 2013 and a 'special edition' digital-only version of What Gets Left Behind in 2015. Mr Stix by Mark West When Sam Murphy's seven-year-old daughter Janey starts to suffer night terrors, he does his best to assure her that Mr Stix - a voice from the shadows who says "mean things" to her - can't hurt her. Sam later finds the grotesque Mr Stix in the family bathroom and then his terrified wife tells him the story of her own childhood night-time fears.  Comments are closed.
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