Welcome, Mark! Let's start things off with the
obvious question: Why zombies?
I wanted to write a book
that gave the reader a sense of being trapped. Edinburgh, with its narrow,
cobbled streets and threatening buildings, was the perfect setting for this. I’d
been reading a lot of Jonathan Maberry, particularly his excellent Rot &
Ruin series, and I guess that zombies just seemed the logical plot mechanism
with which to seal the city and challenge my main protagonists.
Writing about a dystopian
city filled with the hungry-dead is also a great catalyst to explore the
duality of human nature. I was able to place my characters in a range of
situations and challenges and drag their emotions through a whole spectrum of
extremes as a result. The absolute heart of any story (for me) is the human
responses and development of the people who populate it. I approach every book
with this at the forefront. Why zombies?
‘Cos they let me put my main characters through the wringer.
dEaDINBURGH tells the
story of two teens who were born in a quarantined city and know no other life.
Despite their surroundings, the lack of electricity or any communication with
the outside world, they are both vibrant, determined and above all, they are both
fighters. The city is filled with the
living dead, but these kids don’t just exist, they truly live life in a way
that the former residents of the city never did.
You teach biology at a school in Edinburgh - and
you also own Paddy Daddy's Publishing. I'm impressed! Why did you decide to
start up your own publishing company?
I spend all of
my spare time outside of school with my children who are both under five years
old. When they go to bed, I write and run my wee company. I started the company
with aim of giving representation to those authors whose books
I love but aren’t deemed commercial enough for large publishing house.
PDP puts great storytelling and great stories before
marketability. There’s a growing need to represent a large group of authors who
are writing fantastic books but can’t bring them to market or make them
discoverable to a wider audience, either because they lack the technical skills
or the contacts. This is what the company exists to do.
It is an absolute pleasure to represent these author’s
work and one I never take lightly. Being trusted to produce a project that a
writer has spent months or even years working on is a big responsibility but
it’s also tremendously exciting.
I won’t lie to you, I don’t sleep much but working hard at
something you love so much is very rewarding despite the hard schedule. I’m
very lucky in that I love being a teacher and a writer and a publisher equally.
How many people are lucky enough to find one job they love and get to do it
every day, never mind three?
Describe life in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh is a stunningly
beautiful city to live in. With its crypts, dungeons, cobbles and gothic
buildings and alleys, Edinburgh is also one of the most atmospheric cities in
the world to set a book in. It’s also Scotland’s most cosmopolitan city, with
thousands of tourists visiting or working in the city.
Most of my earlier books,
I’ve deliberately set in the very small Scottish town I grew up in. With
dEaDINBURGH, I’ve used my new home-city. As part of the process I walked the
city, deliberately scanning the locations I’d written about in the book. It
rained the whole day and was one of the coldest days of the year. My friend,
Paul McGuigan is a photographer and took some amazing images for me to use on
our walk, which you can find on the dEaDINBURGH
website. I also used one of Paul’s shots as a cover image.
You've published two books before dEaDINBURGH:
Bobby's Boy and Naebody's Hero. How different are they than the YA Dystopian
genre that you're writing now?
Bobby’s Boy was my first
book and very Scottish in nature, in that the language and violence is fairly
strong, as reflects the area the book is set in. It’s a very gritty book but
ultimately it’s a love-letter to my hometown.
Naebody’s Hero was my
first dip into the YA genre and really developed my skills as a writer as I
used three main characters and had to develop different voices for each of their narratives. The book does well in the UK,
but the US market hates that book. The first time I felt like a good writer was
on completing that book.
I wrote a novella titled
Head Boy last year, which is a very dark story about a schoolboy serial-killer.
I got to indulge my dark side writing Head Boy.
With this background,
dEaDINBURGH has been a big change for me. I loved writing the new book and have
gone straight into the second volume whilst the first is being edited. I have to say that with the exception of
Naebody’s Hero, I wouldn’t recommend my other books to a YA readership.
What inspired dEaDINBURGH? How long did it take you
to write the book?
I’d had the desire to set
a book in Edinburgh for a while but hadn’t really felt that the city was right
for any of my stories to that point. I’d been writing another book, titled The Man Who Sold His Son and had
produced fifteen thousand words, when the idea that would become dEaDINBURGH
began itching my brain. I sat and did an outline for all three books that
evening and twenty-one days later a first draft of book one was complete.
I don’t normally write
that quickly, normally I take around three months per novel but this book just
flowed.
Any advice to writers that are trying to make it in
the dystopian or post-apocalyptic realms?
As I’m new to the genre I
really don’t feel qualified give advice specific to the genre. What I will say
is that I never worry about what genre I’m writing for. I simply go with the
story I have and worry about what type of genre it falls into when I’m more
than half-way through and it has become apparent what kind of tale it is. For
me, if I set out with a particular market in mind, I feel as though I lose any
spontaneity or miss out on interesting diversion in the story by trying to make
it fit in a box.
Thank you so much
for your time, Mark! Best of luck to you!
Thanks Summer. It’s an absolute pleasure.
Mark Wilson is married father of two,
born in Bellshill, Lanarkshire and currently living in Edinburgh with his wife,
their son, Patrick and baby daughter, Cara.
Mark left Bellshill Academy in 1991,
qualification-free. And worked his way through a huge number of jobs including,
window-cleaner, delivery driver, Levi's salesman, microbiologist and cinema
usher.
Mark returned to full time education nine years later, earning his Highers and
a degree in micro-biology before entering teaching.
Mark currently teaches Biology in a
Fife secondary school and is founder of Paddy's Daddy Publishing, a company he
set up to assist Scottish authors. He writes in his spare time, in lieu of
sleep.
As well as his autobiography, Paddy's
Daddy, Mark is the author of three fiction novels. Bobby's Boy, Head Boy and
the bestselling Naebody's Hero. His novels have been well received and feature
Scottish characters. Mark has seven other books in progress. Somebody's Hero
(sequel to Naebody's Hero), Prophets (an irreverent look at the return of Moses
and Jesus), ML4 (a YA time-travel novel), dEaDINBURGH (a YA zombie thriller
trilogy set in a quarantined city) and the thriller, The Man Who Sold His Son.
Mark is also co-founder of Paddy's
Daddy Publishing
You can visit Mark at markwilsonbooks.com or facebook.com/markwilsonbooks
You can also connect with Mark on twitter: @markwilsonbooks
You can visit Mark at markwilsonbooks.com or facebook.com/markwilsonbooks
You can also connect with Mark on twitter: @markwilsonbooks
No comments:
Post a Comment
Get fictional - it's fun! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon!