Crafting Worlds with Mark Morris

Horror author Mark Morris has written and edited around fifty novels, novellas, short story collections and anthologies. His script work includes audio dramas for Doctor Who and a Doctor Who spinoff series, Jago & Litefoot, and the Hammer Chillers series. His most recent work includes a new novel, That Which Stands Outside, and a 30th anniversary short story collection, Warts And All. Mark’s work has won numerous awards, including two British Fantasy Awards, and two New York Festival Radio Awards. Mark talks with me about how he got his start as an author, being welcomed into the horror writing community, the differences between writing his own novels and working on tie-in fiction for franchises like Doctor Who, Spartacus, and Predator, making the switch to writing audio scripts, and more.

You’ll hear us talking about one of the stars of the Jago & Litefoot series, Christopher Benjamin. Christopher Benjamin was beloved among Doctor Who fans for his portrayal of Henry Gordon Jago, and one of the few actors to appear in not only the classic series but the new series as well. His 70-year career spanned stage, radio, television, and film, including shows like The Saint, The Forsyte Saga, and the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries. Christopher Benjamin passed away at the age of 90 on January 10, 2025, and I’d like to dedicate this episode to his memory.

Episode breakdown: 

00:00 Introduction

02:01 Creative childhood and early storytelling.

04:55 Transition from history degree to writing career.

06:45 Determination to succeed.

12:09 Success with first novel, “Toady,” and publicity.

20:29 Encouragement from horror writing community.

31:35 Writing tie-in fiction for Doctor Who and others.

39:22 Challenges of tight deadlines and research.

40:58 Insights into writing and editing processes.

44:17 Novelization of “Wild Blue Yonder” Doctor Who special.

46:25 Transition to writing for audio and challenges.

54:38 Upcoming projects and advice for young writers.

56:48 Emphasis on persistence and not turning down opportunities.

Show Links: Mark Morris

Mark’s website

Facebook

Subscribe!

You can subscribe to Follow Your Curiosity via the handy links at the top of the page for Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, and YouTube. If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to tell your friends!

Transcript: Mark Morris

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Horror author, Mark Morris, has written and edited around 50 novels, novellas, short story collections, and anthologies. His script work includes audio dramas for Doctor Who and a Doctor Who spin off series, Jago and Lightfoot, and the Hammer Chillers series. His most recent work includes a new novel, That Which Stands Outside, and a thirtieth anniversary short story collection, Warts and All. Mark’s work has run numerous awards, including two British fantasy awards and two New York festival radio awards.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:49]:
Mark talks with me about how he got his start as an author, being welcomed into the horror writing community, the differences between writing his own novels and working on tie in fiction for franchises like Doctor Who, Spartacus, and Predator, making the switch to writing audio scripts, and more. You’ll hear us talking about one of the stars of the Jago and Lightfoot series, Christopher Benjamin. Christopher Benjamin was beloved among Doctor Who fans for his portrayal of Henry Gordon Jago, and one of the few actors to appear in not only the classic series, but the new series as well. His seventy year career spanned stage, radio, television, and film, including shows like The Saint, The Foresight Saga, and the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries. Christopher Benjamin passed away at the age of 90 on January 10, 2025, and I’d like to dedicate this episode to his memory. And with that, here’s my conversation with Mark Morris. Mark, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Mark Morris [00:01:51]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:53]:
I start everybody with the same question. Were you a creative kid, or did you discover your creative side later on?

Mark Morris [00:02:01]:
No. I I was always a creative kid, I think. I was, I used to write stories for fun. I used to write when we had, sort of school assignments, when we had to write a story, most people would grudgingly write maybe a couple of pages, and I would literally write reams. I would write sort of, you know, fifteen, twenty page stories in in the school exercise books, to the extent that the the teachers would I and I would always get good marks for them because I just love doing it. And they were probably very derivative, but the teachers always read them out in class because I always used to get great marks, and the teachers would always read read them out, which was the other kids loved that because it meant that we didn’t have to do any work that day. You know? Because they spent the whole the whole lesson just reading my story out, which was great.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:50]:
That’s that’s some, serious validation there.

Mark Morris [00:02:54]:
Yeah. So I

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:55]:
was gonna ask if anybody encouraged you, but I think that might have answered the question. Was there encouragement outside of class?

Mark Morris [00:03:03]:
I don’t know. I think I just kinda came to it myself. I just always loved stories. I mean, my I think my mom and dad were quite big readers themselves. They didn’t kinda push reading onto us or anything, but I just gravitated towards it naturally. And I just always loved stories. And not just reading. I mean, movies, TV, all that kind of stuff as well.

Mark Morris [00:03:24]:
I’ve just always had this love of narratives and love of stories and love of plots and characters. And, you know, it just seems to have been a very a very natural thing, and I just always wanted to, therefore, create my own.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:40]:
Yeah. I get that impulse. Mhmm. Yeah. So when did it start to seem like something that you might do for real?

Mark Morris [00:03:51]:
I think probably I I went into I went to university, at the age of 18, did history, because that was my best subject at school. I was always interested in in kinda history because, again, it’s it gets down to stories, I guess. And, and but I finished I finished my degree thinking, so what do I do now? I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I always kinda had this impression that I would go into university, and at the end of it, I would come away sort of knowing what I wanted to do, but I didn’t. And so I, as a lot of students do, I I signed on for benefits, and I just started looking around for jobs. And I’d kind of taken a break from creative writing because, obviously, I’ve been doing my degree, and I haven’t written anything, any fiction for a long, long time. So I I just, bought a little typewriter and decided to start writing my own stories again. And gradually, that kind of slowly took over, and I decided that I, at some point, I wanted to be a writer.

Mark Morris [00:04:55]:
So, you know, at some point during that period after after university and it took a few it took about three years before I had my first novel accepted for publication. But in that time, I was writing stories. I wrote a little play. I was I was kind of writing stories for competitions and things like that, sending things off, sending things finding out about magazines that were open for submissions, sending things to them, made a couple of small sales. And then it it just kind of escalated from there. And it got to the stage where at the time in The UK, there was a there was, a scheme called the enterprise allowance scheme, which would pay you, because I I I was basically signing on. I was signing on for benefit money, and it would pay you more than the weekly benefit, but it would it was to set you up in business for a year. So it would give you that money for a year.

Mark Morris [00:05:49]:
Every every week, you would be guaranteed that money. The the intention being that, you know, in your first year of business, you probably don’t make that much money, don’t make that much profit, and that would kind of keep you ahead of above water while you’re establishing yourself. So I decided to go on an enterprise allowance scheme. But I what I wanted to do was I wanted to write my novel and have my novel ready to market before I went on the scheme. I didn’t wanna spend the whole year writing a book and then at the end of it think, okay, what do I do with this novel? So I wrote I wrote a novel, which was called Toady, and, I went on the scheme. And then within six weeks of going on the scheme, I actually managed to sell Toady to publisher. So by the time the the money for that started coming through at the end of, you know, at the end of the year, at the end of the when this the the money from the scheme ran out, I was kinda starting to generate money from from my books, and I’ve just kinda carried on carried on since, really.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:45]:
Wow. That’s Yeah. That’s kind of an amazing feat of timing.

Mark Morris [00:06:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. And and and who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been able to sell that book? You know? I was just kinda lucky, I guess.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:00]:
Yeah. Were were your parents kind of freaked out that you finished school and immediately were like, hi. Please give me money. I have no idea what I’m doing with my life.

Mark Morris [00:07:12]:
Seem to be. They seem okay with things, really. Yeah. I don’t yeah. I mean, looking back in it, I’ve never really spoken to I mean, my sadly, my dad my dad died, on in 1988, which was the year that I sold my first book. Oh. So I never he never saw my success. He died very suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 49, and so he never sort of saw my success.

Mark Morris [00:07:36]:
So I’ve never had chance to obviously speak to him about it. But I’ve never actually sat my mom down and said, so what did you think? You know, for those two or three years when I was just writing and not getting not, you know, having a job and all that kind of thing. I think I was just so single-minded and determined that maybe they just went with that. Yeah. Well Maybe they just thought I would find my way eventually somehow.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:03]:
Well, I can say from the number of people that I’ve spoken to that lack of lack of encouragement still beats discouragement

Mark Morris [00:08:15]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:15]:
By a lot. You know? It’s most helpful to be encouraged.

Mark Morris [00:08:21]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:21]:
But, you know, absent that, not being discouraged is Yeah. Is still a great benefit. It it keeps you from completely losing faith in yourself.

Mark Morris [00:08:33]:
Yeah. There was never any discouragement from my parents. There was the only time I remember any discouragement, but it spurred actually spurred me on, was, as part of, when you was when you were signing on, there was a thing called the restart scheme where people who’ve been on, on benefits for a while, were called in for a restart interview. The idea being that they would somehow see where you’re up to, set you up in work, all that you know, if they could, all that kind of thing. And and I went in for my restart interview, and I thought, right. I will take in everything that I’ve written. So I took in a manuscript, and I took in various stories and, you know, letters from publishers and letters from magazines I’ve received just to show that I was actually doing something, that I wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing. And the guy who did the interview was he was sort of a retired, he’d been in retail all his life.

Mark Morris [00:09:24]:
He was a manager for a retail manager. He’d just retired. And, and he said, so, you know, what what what are you doing? What have you been doing? And I said, well, I I really want to be a writer. And I showed him everything, and he just didn’t even look at it. He kind of almost sneered at it and dismissed it out of hand and said, you’re flogging a dead horse there. Those are I always said, you’re flogging a dead horse. He’s and he said to me, what you he said, you’re a you’re a bright lad, so what you need to do is you need to go into one of the big stores in in town, get a job on the shop floor, and work your way up into management because you’ll be able to do that within a couple of years. And I just sort of said, right.

Mark Morris [00:10:04]:
Thank you very much, and left. And that made me, afterwards, even more determined than ever to prove him wrong and to to, you know, to to do what I wanted to do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:14]:
Don’t you kinda wish you could find him and say, see this pile of books?

Mark Morris [00:10:19]:
Yeah. I mean I mean, at the time, I was probably about 24, and he was about in his sixties. So I doubt he’s around any longer.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:27]:
Probably. Yeah.

Mark Morris [00:10:28]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:29]:
Yeah. Wow. But it’s interesting that that made you more determined because there are so many people who wouldn’t have been.

Mark Morris [00:10:38]:
Yeah. But it was just the way he was so dismissive. Mhmm. Right. I’m gonna show you. You know? And it is it just it was just his attitude that you’ve got no chance that and I thought, well, people do do become writers. They do become actors. They do become successful.

Mark Morris [00:10:56]:
So if they can, why can’t I? You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:10:59]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Mark Morris [00:11:02]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:11:03]:
Exactly. So you got the first book published, and then what?

Mark Morris [00:11:09]:
So I, I had my first book was published by a small, independent hardback publisher called Piatkes Books. At this time, I didn’t have an agent. And Piatkes basically acted as my agent. And this was when it was a it was a horror novel called Toady. So it was it was a big multi character, 250,000 word horror novel, which were, you know, kind of in vogue at the time. And it was at a time when horror was really booming. It was, it was doing really well and, and big, big horror novels were, were kind of the thing to, you know, the thing that everyone was reading, big sort of 500 page junkers. And so the Piakkos then sold the rights to Toady to, Transworld, which was a big paperback publisher.

Mark Morris [00:12:00]:
And luckily, because the book was so big and so long, Transworld felt as though they had to put a lot behind it because, obviously, it’s expensive to produce. So the book came, try the book came out through Piaxis first in hardback, and then it came out through Transworld in paperback. And Transworld threw everything at it, bells and whistles at it. You know, there were posters in bookshops. There were what we called dump bins at the time, which I don’t know if you remember those, but they were they were big kind of displays, book displays, where you’d have sort of 24 copies of the book, in this big sort of cardboard display case. And they were all over bookshops and everything. And and because of that and because of the publicity, I was I did radio interviews and TV interviews and all sorts of things, which for, you know, a 26 year old kid, basically, who’d been living in a little bed set, was mind blowing, but, you know, somehow managed to cope with it. And the and, you know, the first week of release, the book hit number seven on The UK bestseller list, and and it so it kind of really hit the ground running.

Mark Morris [00:13:07]:
And so luckily, I mean, that’s kind of kept me going. I mean, I did then have a three book contract with with Transworld. And as with any writer’s life, or a writer that’s that’s in in the you know, in there for a long time, I’ve I’ve been doing this for thirty five plus years now. There’s lots of ups and downs. There’s beeps and drops. You lose publishers. You lose agents. You know? Then you get new publishers and new agents.

Mark Morris [00:13:32]:
You have things along the way. There are times when you think, I can’t do this anymore. I’m just you know? It’s just I’m not selling anything. It’s and then suddenly something will happen. You’ll get offered something or something, you know, something will come up. And so it’s always just kind of kept going. And, obviously, the more stuff you have out there, then the more your name is out there, you know, the bigger your reputation gets, people know who you are, all that kind of thing. And it just slowly kinda keeps rolling and off.

Nancy Norbeck [00:14:03]:
How was it though with that first book when you’re suddenly on TV and on the radio and, you know, I mean, you’re a kid. How overwhelming I mean, it must have seemed beyond surreal.

Mark Morris [00:14:17]:
It was beyond surreal. It but it was also I kind of dreamed of this. You know, I’d been thinking about this, and I’d been thinking, what if it’s a massive success? What if I go on what if I get interviewed on TV? What if this happens? And it was almost like a kind of this self fulfilling prophecy type. I almost felt as though, you know, I’d been dreaming of it, and then it became a reality. And then it happened, and and suddenly I was on this this this kind of gravy train. And, it was really exciting. I mean, I I I look back, and I remember thoroughly enjoying it. I don’t remember thinking that I was frightened at any point or worried or anything like that.

Mark Morris [00:14:56]:
I think there were a couple of times I was on sort of radio shows, and I’d walk in and the other guests would be people off the telly that I recognized or, you know, the writers of a popular BBC sitcom or something like that. And I would feel a little bit overall, I guess, but you just you just you almost adopt a new a different persona. You almost sort of go into performance mode. Mhmm. And afterwards, you can’t quite remember how you did it or what you said or you know, but you seem it seemed to go okay. So, yeah, I I enjoyed it. And, you know, going to the conventions and doing signings and meeting lots of other writers as well, that was brilliant because the horror community in particular in The UK is very supportive. And it doesn’t matter how big the writers are.

Mark Morris [00:15:45]:
I mean, I was, you know, I was taken under the wing of people like Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell, you know, really big name established authors. So it’s been nothing but positive experience in that respect.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:58]:
That’s really interesting too. That that must be that must be almost more more overwhelming and awe inspiring than ending up on the TV.

Mark Morris [00:16:12]:
Yeah. It was because these were all people that I had read and admired, some of them for for years. You know? I bought their books and I’d admired their work. And and, yeah, they were they were just like, legendary figures to me almost. And then suddenly to sort of go along to conventions and meet them and be welcomed by them and, you know, looked upon almost as an equal and to do panels with them and things like that was fantastic. Yeah. And a lot of them have now become just personal friends. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:16:47]:
Is there a piece of advice that they gave you that turned out to be, like, words to really live by?

Mark Morris [00:16:55]:
The only the only things everyone always used to say, and it wasn’t particularly to me, but it was always just to, just in panel situations. So if, you know, you would do a you would do a panel and people would always say there would always be someone from the audience saying, what advice would you give to new writers or would be writers? And the main things are and they’re very simple things. The main thing is write every day if you can. You know, even if you’ve got a full time job, put aside half an hour at the end of the day or the beginning of the day just to do a little bit of writing. Even if you only write a page, a page a day ends up three sixty five pages by the end of the year, which is a novel, You know? So Mhmm. Always try to do a little or even if it’s just a few sentences or or whatever it might be, and do it however however you feel comfortable doing it. So whether you have to be sat at home in a quiet room with a computer, or you just take a notebook with you and jot things down as you as you’re sitting on the train or whatever. So that was the that was the one thing.

Mark Morris [00:17:53]:
And the other thing was just not to let rejections get to you because at the end of the day, you might think, oh, I’ve been rejected by this magazine. But you basically you might have been rejected by a magazine, but you’ve been rejected by one person at that magazine. You’ve been rejected by, you know, one editor. You’ve not been rejected by a huge number of people. And that you know, you never know what what that editor what his, priorities were or her priorities were that day, what kind of mood they were in, you know, what they might have been looking for. They might have just read a story that was similar to yours, all those kinds of things. And so just don’t be swayed by rejections. Don’t think that because you’ve been rejected, what you’ve written is bad.

Mark Morris [00:18:37]:
Just immediately send it somewhere else.

Nancy Norbeck [00:18:40]:
Yeah. There there are so many famous rejection stories. I mean,

Mark Morris [00:18:44]:
I think it

Nancy Norbeck [00:18:45]:
was Stephen King who, like, wallpapered his office with all of his rejections. And so yeah. I think at least the person who rejected you read it and, you know, wrote you back.

Mark Morris [00:18:59]:
If they give you constructive criticism, then that’s great. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:03]:
But the

Mark Morris [00:19:04]:
worst one odds where they just say this isn’t what we’re looking for because it doesn’t give you anything. It doesn’t give you anything of value. But, if they give you some constructive criticism, then, you know, I think any writer worth their salt will will kind of take that on board and look at it and think, okay. Yeah. I’ll maybe look at those aspects or think about them next time or whatever.

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I think people get hung up on rejection and it it isn’t necessarily. It’s it’s hard. I’m not gonna say that, you know, getting a rejection in your email is, like, the best part of your day because it’s not. Yeah. But but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s just it’s

Mark Morris [00:19:44]:
it’s always disappointing, but, you know, we just forget about it and move on. I mean, was it a a a new saying about Stephen King, but also, I think the first Harry Potter book was rejected about 20 times or something. It was just rejected by everybody, wasn’t it? Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. One of the advisers in my MFA program was was rejected something like 78 times, I think, the first time she published something. And so she just had a hard and fast rule that was you are not allowed to complain to me about being rejected until you have been rejected at least 78 times.

Mark Morris [00:20:20]:
Fair enough.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:21]:
Then you can complain. But until then, you’re not allowed. Yeah. Seemed as reasonable to me as anything else.

Mark Morris [00:20:29]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:31]:
Yeah. So you go off to conventions and you meet all of these people and and are welcomed into this community, which is fabulous. Yeah. And and then what came next?

Mark Morris [00:20:44]:
So I’ve it’s just really been a progression. So I’ve I’ve carried on writing my own stuff. So I write my own, novels. I’ve I’ve slowly, through the publishers that I’ve worked with, got into other franchises. So I’ve always been a big Doctor Who fan. And, through having written two or three, maybe more three or four horror novels, I was then asked if I will be interested in writing a Doctor Who book because I’d mentioned it in interviews and things like that. You know, I’d mentioned that that I was a big fan, and that was the first thing that sparked my imagination, the first thing that scared me, all those things. And then from that, I was asked to do, things like Torchwood and then things like Hellboy and Predator and you know, because peep that people realize that you you can do this.

Mark Morris [00:21:37]:
You can deliver on time. You can deliver to deadlines. You can, you know, work to the briefs, all those kinds of things. So then it it sort of generates. And, also, I I always wanted to be an editor as well because one of the things that I’ve that I was brought up reading with the, I don’t I don’t know if you’re aware of them in The States, but the Pan and Fontana books of ghost and horror stories, which were a real staple for British kids in the sixties, seventies. I think they actually might start in the late fifties. So every year, PAN, they were PAN books, would bring out a collection of horror stories and a collection of ghost stories, and then Fontana, another publisher, would do the same. And so everyone read these when I was a kid.

Mark Morris [00:22:20]:
I remember at school, everyone had books of the Pan and Fontana, ghosts and horror stories, and they would get passed around and everyone would read them. And so I always wanted to do that as well. I always wanted to be an editor, and edit my own, my own series of books, and I’m now doing that as well. So I’ve I had a couple of false starts with it, and now I’ve got a publisher who are keen for that to continue. So it’s become known as the ABC of horror now. The reason being that each, each tie each title is different because nowadays, you can’t do the first so and so book of horror stories, the second. So because public because bookshops don’t like that, they won’t just randomly take, say, the third book of the series. They will want every book.

Mark Morris [00:23:12]:
So, you know, it’s it it the the longer that goes on, the harder that is because public because bookshops wouldn’t want to buy, say, 14 books, you know, numbers one to 14 to have on the shelves. So what we do now is we we still see it as a series, but it’s called the ABC of Horror because the first book that came out, the title was, After Sundown, so it started with a. The second book was called Beyond the Veil. The third book was Close to Midnight. Fourth book, Darkness Beckons, etcetera. So the people who are in the know know that each book has a different letter of the alphabet. So if you’ve got Darkness Beckons, you know that’s book number four, for instance. So it looks to, the casual reader, and also to bookshops as though they’re standalone anthologies, which they are, but they’re also part of a series.

Mark Morris [00:24:01]:
So that’s how we kind of got around that. So we’re now on I’m currently editing, f. So I’m I’m on book six now.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:09]:
Clever.

Mark Morris [00:24:10]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:11]:
So what’s it like editing other people’s stuff for a collection like that?

Mark Morris [00:24:16]:
It’s I really enjoy it. It’s always a little bit nerve wracking because it’s because you’re having to judge it just right. So in each of the, anthologies that we have, each volume has 20 stories. 16 of those stories are commissioned by me, so they’re commissioned from well known writers. And then we have, and then we have a submissions window or the publisher runs submissions window, which is usually around Halloween. And they get hundreds of stories. They usually get round about a thousand or so stories from all all over the world. And, they have a team of readers who narrow that down narrow that down.

Mark Morris [00:24:58]:
And then I usually get sent what they regard as the the the top 20 or 30 stories. And I look through those and, I select four stories, but I don’t necessarily have to select four stories from those 20 or 30. If If I can only find, say, two stories that I like, then I’ll say, can you send me the next batch of 20? You know? And because sometimes what they consider is the best 20, I don’t consider is, you know, the best. So then so so we have 16 from established writers and then four from new writers because I’m always keen to get some new writers in there, people who quite often haven’t been published before, or have only been published in in, you know, small independent markets or whatever. And so it’s nerve wracking in the sense that those 16 authors, if they send me something and this hasn’t happened often because it’s usually I usually go with authors that I know are good and that I can trust, that they’re gonna send me something good. Couple of times, I’ve received, submissions and I thought, that I just don’t like this story. I just don’t think it you know? Luckily, on each occasion that that’s happened, they’ve sent me the story quite early. So it’s not been like a last minute, you know, on the deadline submission.

Mark Morris [00:26:15]:
So it’s been a case of I’ve been able to go back to them and say, I’m really sorry, but it’s not really working for me. Would you mind writing me something else? And and then again, both times they’ve said, yeah. No problem. I’ll do you something else. So yeah. So that’s the nerve that’s the nerve wracking that it’s always you know, you always breathe a sigh of relief when you’ve got your 20 stories and they’re good. You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:36]:
Yeah.

Mark Morris [00:26:37]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:38]:
Yeah. Have have you seen those new writers go on to do other things after you’ve published them?

Mark Morris [00:26:45]:
Some of them have. Yeah. There was a writer was it last year? I think it was last year. It was it was funnily enough, it was there was a writer who, called Ally Wilkes who had a novel out. And, she had a novel come out from Titan. And I read the novel, it was her first novel, and thought, this is great. I love this. I really love this novel.

Mark Morris [00:27:10]:
And, and so I sort of marked her name down and thought, right, you know, for next year’s anthology, I’m gonna get in touch with her and see if she’ll write me a story. So in the meantime, I got I got I was looking I was getting the, we had the open submissions window and I chose my four stories. I always choose them blind because, because, you know, we don’t want to be swayed by by names. It might be it might be somebody that you’ve heard of that might might be a friend on Facebook or something who’s not published before or something like that. So so I always I always judge them blind. And I got this one story that, actually ended up being one of my favorite stories in the anthology. And so this is this is great story from this unknown writer. And so I got in touch with the publisher and said, right.

Mark Morris [00:27:54]:
These are my four stories. And at that point, the publisher always tells me who’s written them. And one of them was by, it was by Ali Wilkes, who I just read the novel by and who I’d planned to get in touch with for the next volume. So I thought, alright. Okay. That was why it’s so good. It’s but she’s, you know, sent him to blind submission. Then had a novel accepted, and then so I’ve I’ve kinda gone, you know, got it.

Mark Morris [00:28:17]:
So yeah. So there there have been times. And it’s always nice because you feel slightly vindicated, then you feel as though, yes, we’ve you know, of all these thousands, we’ve been able to pinpoint the quality.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:27]:
Mhmm. That’s really cool.

Mark Morris [00:28:31]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:34]:
So are you planning to go through all 26 letters of the alphabet then?

Mark Morris [00:28:38]:
I’m hoping to. I mean, it kind of it depends somewhat as well on the publisher. You know, the books, I’ll obviously have to keep doing well, have to keep selling at any point. I I always sign two book contracts. So, after f, I’m gonna have to sign a contract for g and h. And they make it I mean, the publisher at the moment is making good noises. They would seem to want to keep the thing going, so we’ll just see. Then I’m gonna have to come up with with suitable titles for each of them, which, when we get to things like x and you know, it’s gonna be quite tricky, but never mind.

Mark Morris [00:29:11]:
Or I’ll, you know, I’ll deal with that when it happens.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:13]:
You’ll figure something out. Figure

Mark Morris [00:29:16]:
but, yeah, I mean, it it will be nice, but, obviously, to get to zed, it’s gonna be another twenty years.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:21]:
You have time.

Mark Morris [00:29:22]:
I’m 61 now, so I’m gonna be in my eighties when I finish. And then I think after that, I’ll retire and say, right. That’s it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:31]:
There you go. Has doing the editing affected how you see your own writing?

Mark Morris [00:29:38]:
No. I’m I’m always able I think I’m looking in that. I’m always able to separate different disciplines because I’ve I’ve also written audio dramas. I’ve written script I’ve done script work as well and, you know, working in franchises, work writing, movie I’ve written movie novelizations. Are you there? You’re working from the script. So I’ve always I’ve always been able to put them in different boxes, and I never let one kind of bleed over into the other. So I can quite happily edit somebody’s work and then just go straight to my you know, in the morning, say, and then carry on writing my novel in the afternoon, and it doesn’t impact on me at all. I don’t I don’t find that I start writing in somebody else’s style or anything like that.

Mark Morris [00:30:23]:
I’m always very much able to just distance myself from it and compartmentalize it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:29]:
And I wanna talk about the the tie in stuff too because I’m curious, you know, when you’ve when you’ve written your own things Mhmm. And you’re used to having the latitude to kind of just play with it in your own way, How is it when when you’re playing in somebody else’s sandbox?

Mark Morris [00:30:49]:
It it depends on the, obviously, on the franchise itself. With Doctor Who, it’s easy because Doctor Who, I feel, is, like, ingrained in my DNA. As I say, it was a first I I saw my first Doctor Who episode when I was or remember seeing it when I was four, and this was back in the black and white days. Patrick Troughton was the Doctor. And, you know, as a kid, I read all the target doctor who novelizations, and, yeah, I was just lived and breathed the series. So I feel as though when I go to Doctor Who, it’s almost like coming home in a way. It almost feels like everything else, all my other work, my horror stories, you know, all that kind of thing has stemmed from my love of Doctor Who. Because, as I say, Doctor Who was the first thing that scared me.

Mark Morris [00:31:35]:
And from Doctor Who, I moved on to Hammer horror movies and, you know, Stephen King and all those kinds of things. So that’s that’s fine. It’s when you you’re kind of working in franchises that, a, you’re not really that familiar with, and b, where the deadline is really tight. So you have to familiar your familiarize yourself with it very, very quickly. The tricky I think the trickiest one I ever did was I was, I was being published by Titan Books, and they do a lot of time work. And they, were doing a series of novels based on Spartacus, which was the TV series at the time Mhmm. Which I think had three seasons or so. And, they had a writer who was due to write a Spartacus novel, and I think he got he got ill or he had to pull out for some reason.

Mark Morris [00:32:28]:
So they were left high and dry, and he hadn’t sort of told them. I think he kept wanting to to think you know, he kept wanting to write the book, and he kept meaning to write it and just hadn’t been able to. And at the end of the hour, he said, I’m really sorry, but I I I just can’t deliver this book. So they came to me or my through my agent and said, okay, we’ve got this proposal. Would you be interested in writing a Spartacus novel? The only drawback is it’s got to be delivered in four weeks. It’s got 8,000 words that will be delivered in four weeks. And I developed this I always try to develop this thing of, if it sounds interesting to me, I don’t want to turn it down. I don’t want to just go, oh, no.

Mark Morris [00:33:12]:
I don’t think I can do that. I I wanna say yes and then worry about it afterwards. So I said yes. And, I said yes. I said yes, but I’ve never seen the series. So, you know, is that a problem? And they said, okay. We’ll curry we’ll we’ll get a curry. We’ll we’ll give him all the episodes, existing episodes in little DVD cases, and we’ll we’ll get that to you in the morning.

Mark Morris [00:33:39]:
So this was a Friday afternoon, I would ask this. We’ll get that to you by Saturday morning and then, you know, take it from there. So sure enough, this courier turned up with a box full of DVDs, and I literally sat and watched one episode after the other and just made copious notes about all the characters, the kind of the way that the dialogue was structured, because it was it’s kind of strangely structured dialogue, and just everything, everything I could think of. And then, then I had to come up with a story line very quickly, which I did. And then I literally looked at my diary and thought, okay. I’ve got twenty-eight days, but, you know, on this day, I’ve got to be here. On this day, I’m doing this. So that turned out to be something like twenty-two days.

Mark Morris [00:34:29]:
And then I kind of worked out, okay, 80,000 words in twenty-two days, that means I have to write, you know, 3,800 words a day every day without fail. And and it was just it it just becomes a kind of logist this logistical thing where you just jump into it, body and soul, and just go for it. So yeah. So but having done it, I felt as though, wow, I I managed to do that. So I can, I think I can pretty much do turn my hand into anything? So yeah, it is it is awesome. I had to write a predator novel, which would have to be about a military character and it had to plot his course, the course of his, career through and he was assigned to, like, a black ops team where they went and fought predators in the different jungles of the world and, you know, to try and repress this invasion and all this kind of thing. So I not only had to do, plot this guy’s career and he was you know, I’m British, and he and he was an American military man. I kind of just had to do a bunch of research.

Mark Morris [00:35:36]:
And again, it was very, very tight deadlines. I had to just do a bunch of research about how the American military works, all the different levels of it, you know, all those kinds of things, and then just wing it to some extent and try and fudge bits of it because you’re not quite sure and you know? Yeah. Wow. It’s a challenge, but it’s fun. It’s usually

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:59]:
fun. Does anybody get back to you with, you know, with, like, with that book and say, yeah. We have to kinda tweak this book because the military doesn’t really work like that, or or was it okay?

Mark Morris [00:36:10]:
Really? I mean, there is a kind of artistic license to some extent because it it it dealt with these kind of black ops teams that didn’t actually exist. So you could sort of make bits about them and just base them to some extent in reality. And as long as it sounded relatively convincing, and as long as, you know, you were you were you you were making the dialogue sound relatively convincing. And you just have to entrench yourself in, you know, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, all those kind of things. I’m kinda get that. How do these guys talk to each other all the time just to sort of get it entrenched in your in your mind? But you have to obviously do it very quickly. So now I mean, the the the Predator book, that that particular one actually got really good reviews. And and even from the predator like, diehard Predator fans as well, because that, again, is the worry that you feel as though I’m playing with toys that I’m not really that familiar with, and there are a lot of people who are incredibly familiar with this.

Mark Morris [00:37:11]:
You know? You can imagine something like Doctor Who. If you didn’t know the series and you’re writing a Doctor Who book, there is there is sixty years’ worth of, you know, TV, new, books, audios, all sorts of stuff out there. So you’ve got to get it right or or not get it wrong, really.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:31]:
Yeah. Because somebody is gonna know.

Mark Morris [00:37:34]:
Somebody’s gonna jump on something. Yeah. Actually, you can’t say that because this completely contradicts something that somebody said in that. Yeah. So Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:45]:
Yeah. Some somebody’s gonna know, and they’re gonna call you on it. Yeah. Never let you live it down.

Mark Morris [00:37:51]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:52]:
Yeah. Wow.

Mark Morris [00:37:54]:
You have to let that flow over you. And luckily, I’ve not had too much of that. It’s it’s been okay. It’s been pretty much okay.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:02]:
It’s interesting though that that you’re kind of kind of viewing it sort of in an improv kind of way. Like, yes. And, you know, and and jump in. I mean, as soon as you said that they sent you the the DVDs for this series that you’d never seen, I thought, and you have twenty eight days. How much time did you spend just watching DVDs? I mean, good grief. You know? But, I mean, you pulled it off. That’s the amazing thing to me is that that still it it it almost because I was I was thinking when you were talking about the calculations. I was like, this is like a national novel writing month, but want more.

Mark Morris [00:38:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:42]:
Because that’s what everybody kinda does with that. You know, you sit down, you’re like, okay. So this is how many words a day, 50,000 words for the month, and all of that. But but with DVDs and prior commitments and and all of that, and an actual real publisher deadline.

Mark Morris [00:38:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s a challenge, but I sort of enjoy it now. I I I think I’m quite good at working under pressure as well. And I’m quite I’m pretty I said, I don’t know how, but I I’ve instinctively become good at hitting word counts. In fact, I did there was I did a novelization of, there’s a movie called Noah. I don’t know if you saw it.

Mark Morris [00:39:22]:
Mhmm. And it was, it was a kind of a fantasy version of the Bible story. And it was a big epicy thing with Emma Watson and I don’t remember who was in it now, but it was, I did the novelization of that. And with these things as well, the scripts are kind of ever changing. You know, you’ll be writing it and then you’ll suddenly get given sent a new draft of the script and you have to incorporate things like that. But I remember that was an 80,000 word book. And I was writing it and thinking, oh, I’m getting really close to 80,000 words as I’m finishing it. And literally, completely by accent, finished it dead on 80,000 words.

Mark Morris [00:40:02]:
I was it was literally the manuscript was 80,000 words dead on.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:07]:
Wow.

Mark Morris [00:40:08]:
And I thought I thought, wow. I’ve managed to hit 80,000 words. Of course, then you send it in, and they made little tweaks to the script, and it comes back to you and you have to change things. So it ended up not being 8,000 words. But but yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:22]:
Well and speaking of of writing to a script, I know, you know, you wrote one of the novelizations for the three Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials. And Yeah. God bless you. You got to write the one for “Wild Blue Yonder,” which is a wild and bizarre story. And I know, you know, the the three of you who did them were really almost writing them under duress. I mean, you had very specific restrictions that you were under that were not really typical of the tie in writing experience as I recall.

Mark Morris [00:40:58]:
Yeah. That’s happened a few times with doctor who, though. You’re all you always have to sign NDAs. Obviously, with that one, it was it was very tight because, I I mean, I I went down to, I went to Cardiff to see the episode on I think it was sometime it was right at the beginning of the year. It was something like January. We’d literally come back from a Christmas break. And I then, the next day, jumped in the car to Cardiff, drove to Cardiff, stayed overnight, went to Bad Wolf Studios, saw the episodes, you know, and then the the episodes weren’t then shown until November. So I had to keep it under wraps for almost a year.

Mark Morris [00:41:37]:
And I was meanwhile, you know, I was writing, writing this book. I mean, the thing with that one, though, is that was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had because I grew up reading the Target novelizations. You know? The first one I bought was The Auton Invasion when I was 11, and I still have it. And I still have my full collection here. And it was just a dream. I always said to my wife, my two ambitions were, a, to write a doctor who novelization, a Target novelization with the Target logo on the spine, and b, to have something of mine made into a TV or a movie or something like that, a TV episode or a movie. So I’ve I’ve now fulfilled one of those final two ambitions, writing the Doctor Who novelization. And it was an absolute joy.

Mark Morris [00:42:24]:
I mean, you know, Russell’s scripts are incredibly clear and and vivid, so they’re great to work from. And, and it was just it was just a pleasure to channel my inner Terrance Dicks. Terrance Dicks, who wrote lots of the novelizations. And I just I just had this I just had this this notion that I wanted to write kind of as a homage to him. So not exactly in his style, but but in that kind of, you know, very clean, clear, descriptive, hopefully quite vivid way. The only thing with my with my and this comes back to your early question about fans and what they say, was that because “Wild Blue Yonder” is like the mystery story so there was nothing given away of “Wild Blue Yonder “beforehand. Mhmm. So even when they brought out the early, the early little trailers and things, all the footage was from the first and third stories.

Mark Morris [00:43:24]:
There was nothing from “Wild Blue Yonder.” And they wanted to keep it as a secret and a mystery because it is structured as a mystery anyway. You know, the Doctor and Donna arrive on this big spaceship and they don’t know what’s going on and you don’t know what’s going on. And, you know, beforehand, the the the viewing audience hadn’t seen who the aliens might be, who the enemies might be, what it was. So there was all sorts of rumors about, oh, is it the Master coming back? Or is it this or is it that? Or, you know, what’s happening? And so because of that, I was then told not to embellish the script in any way. So the other two guys, Gary and, that was James. James Goss did “The Giggle.” So the other two guys were told they could they could add things, they could add extra scenes, they could bring in other characters, they could change things around a little bit.

Mark Morris [00:44:17]:
And, and I was told I couldn’t do that. I was told stick very rigidly to the script. And a couple of times I said, okay, the Doctor’s on the edge of the known universe at the moment. Oh, the doctor says he’s far, you know, as far out in the universe as as he’s ever been before. But I remember a story from 1975 called “Planet of Evil,” when the Doctor’s on the edge of the known universe that meets up with the anti matter. I said, so could I maybe just drop in a little reference to that just so that people won’t say, oh, but what about when you went to Zeta Minor in planet you know, this kind of thing. And and I was told no. No.

Mark Morris [00:44:52]:
Just just keep strictly to the script. So, of course, then when the books came out, there were some, like, critical reviews of it, like, on Amazon and things where people were saying, oh, you know, he’s not he he hasn’t bothered to embellish it. We, you know, we don’t know any more about the story than than when it was and so there’s a part of you that wants to put your hand up and say, yeah. But, actually, there is a reason for that. But, you know, you can’t sometimes you can’t you can’t answer that to to those kind of criticisms. You just have to kind of take it on the chin.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:25]:
Yeah. It’s one of those situations where that may be all to the to the good. You know? It’s probably better not to not to get into a conversation about it, but frustrating all the same.

Mark Morris [00:45:37]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:37]:
Yeah.

Mark Morris [00:45:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:40]:
Well and I I wanna make sure that we get a chance to talk about the audio work that you’ve done too.

Mark Morris [00:45:46]:
Okay.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:47]:
Because, you know, you have you have done some, and some of it is is Doctor Who too. And, you know, I I talked to Lisa McMullen, who also writes for Big Finish, a little while ago, and we were talking about the difference between writing for audio and writing for TV. And so I’m curious for you, you know, the difference between writing for for audio and writing for a novel. Obviously, you you have to strip a lot out for the audio because you’re not giving all of the description and all of that. But you still have to give people who are listening a sense of place and and all of that. How how does that work out for you?

Mark Morris [00:46:25]:
It was really tricky when I first started doing it. My fir when I was first asked, by Big Finish, I wanted to be interested in writing, an audio. I I, you know, I said, I I would absolutely love to, but I’ve just, you know, full disclosure, I’ve never ever written a script before. I’ve never written anything. And they said, oh, it’s okay. We’ll kind of we’ll we’ll we’ll just kind of take you through it and, you know, we’ll help you help you along. And I found the first one. The first one I did was only twenty five minutes long.

Mark Morris [00:46:54]:
So it was it was four different stories by four new writers, and they were all standalone stories. And, so it was only a twenty five minute story with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. And I found it really hard to do. There was some some of it went was fine, and it was just, you know, I could hear the characters in my head and I could hear them talking, the dialogue and everything. But when you have to match the characters with action, especially when they’re doing things, I found that really hard at first. I think I’ve got the hang of it a bit more now, and I’ve I’ve created ways of, of doing that, of different methods of doing that, and getting that across. But it is tricky, and it’s I mean, it’s particularly tricky writing audio scripts because, obviously, you don’t have visuals. You know? I always feel it will be easier to write a film script or a TV script because you can rely on the visuals to a great extent.

Mark Morris [00:47:49]:
Whereas, when you’re writing audio, do you know if if there’s a new monster or a new landscape or a new alien or a new ant you you’ve kind of got to get that across in the dialogue, especially what things look like. You know? And do it without without it seeming really wooden and really stodgy slowing down the the the action. So I do remember specifically in the first one that I wrote, there was a scene where, it it’s it’s about Howard Carter, and it’s about the breaking open of a tomb, of an Egyptian tomb, and it’s called “False Gods.” And there’s a scene where the Doctor and Ace are, if I can remember this, it was quite a long time ago. They’re running across a desert and they have some kind of artifact with them and they’re passing it back and forth as they go and there’s something chasing them. And you’ve got to get that all across in audio. And so I remember that being really, really difficult to do. And I played around with that for ages.

Mark Morris [00:48:51]:
And, you know, and you’re trying to make it seem very fast moving and everything as well. So it’s tricky in that also you don’t have that inner thought processes, but it’s also kind of which you do in novels, obviously. But it’s also kind of liberating in that, as you say, it is stripped back. And once you do feel like you get into the hang of it a little bit more, then it feels as though you can get over a lot of information very quickly and, you know, and it’s quite fast moving and it’s quite zingy. And, and, again, it’s just a case of just playing with it a lot, you know, just playing with it a lot. You also have very certain restrictions with Big Finish as well in that they, they can only have, like, six people in the cast or something or, you know, they can have a a limited number. They always have they don’t like really long scenes. So, you know, no scene should be longer than, I can’t remember, three pages or something.

Mark Morris [00:49:50]:
And, you know, so there’s all these different things to think about as well. But, again, it’s just it’s just another discipline, and it’s just another challenge. I enjoy doing stuff like that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:02]:
Well and you you wrote a a story for the Jago and Litefoot series, which for people who are listening and don’t know, Jago and Lightfoot are two characters from one particular Doctor Who story in the seventies that’s set in the late Victorian period. And Jago is a theater owner, and he’s he’s quite flamboyant, especially with his language. And I when I saw that you had written one that I have listened to ages ago, I was so curious because one of his verbal ticks is his love of alliteration. And every time I listen to them, I marvel at how well the people who write them manage to pull that off. So I have to ask how it was for you to write for Jayco.

Mark Morris [00:50:46]:
It was it was fun, but it was it was quite difficult because you just have to think about what he what he would say and then and then rethink how he would say it. So you you you’re constantly looking for alternate words for the you know, alternate words for things. You’re looking for the most flamboyant word, which is often not what writers do. They often try to simplify things more. Whereas with Jago, you’re looking for them for the most elaborate, flamboyant, also funny. You know? He’s gonna sound kind of funny as well. You know? He’s got to sound pompous and bombastic and all those kinds of kinds of thing. So I remember I remember Scout just kind of googling certain words, and and that was it was kind of, in a way, slower writing his dialogue because you’re trying to build it up.

Mark Morris [00:51:38]:
He’s trying to build it up bit by bit. And, and it gets easier as you go. But I funnily enough, I wrote a novel, called The Body Snatchers. When the when the eighth doctor, Paul McGann TV movie came out in 1996, the The BBC took the franchise back from Virgin and, they brought out a whole new range of Eighth Doctor Paul McGann stories, novels. And I wrote one of the early ones, but it was about the third one, I think. And it was called The Body Snatchers. So that was, the Doctor meeting the Zygons in Victorian London, and he meets it with Litefoot. And at that point, I deliberately didn’t bring in Jago because I I was almost a little bit scared of writing Jago and getting it right.

Mark Morris [00:52:27]:
But I came up with this excuse that he was he was, he’d been poor he would’ve been ill, and he was off somewhere on some, coastal retreat or something recovering from from something. And I kind of chickened out of writing him. So, you know, that came back to to kind of bite me a little bit when I was then asked, oh, would you want to actually write for the actor and just write the actual character? At that point, I thought, okay. I’ve I can’t say no to this. I’ve gotta do this. Yeah. So I think I’m I’m mean, I’m pleased with how it turned out, I have to say. And, of course, he’s you know, the way he delivers the lines are fantastic.

Mark Morris [00:53:05]:
And it sounds fine. It sounds as though it is him talking. So, yeah. But it was it was tricky to write. It was tricky.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:15]:
Yeah. I I was gonna say, I think Christopher Benjamin kinda does half the work for you, but but you do still have to come up with the the words, but he’s got that he he’s so so perfect with it. I mean, and they are such a a classic set of characters. I’m so glad that Big Finish gave them a new life.

Mark Morris [00:53:33]:
Yes, though. Litefoot is really easy. He’s he’s really immediate. You sort of see him straight away and can hear him straight away in your head. So that was that was nice and that you could just picture him speaking really easily. So he was easy to write, and then Jago was was tricky.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:49]:
Yeah. I can kind of imagine Jago kind of getting in your head after a while and then not leaving you alone for

Mark Morris [00:53:55]:
a little bit, though. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:58]:
They can start annoying all of your friends coming up with random alliterations when

Mark Morris [00:54:03]:
you shouldn’t. And I do. I mean, “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” is my favorite ever story. So he is one of my favorite characters. So I just wanted to get him right. You know? Just a pressure to get him right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I like I said, I’m I’m so glad when I saw that they had brought them back, I was like, oh, this is gonna be great. Because if ever a duo deserved their own spin off, it’s it’s the two of them, and I’m really glad that they got to do them. Yeah. So yeah. But, yeah. So so what what are you up to next?

Mark Morris [00:54:38]:
I’ve just delivered a new novel. So, that’s with my publisher at the moment. Literally, last week, I sent that in, so I finished the edits on that. So I’m waiting to hit back on that one. I’m currently editing volume six, as I said, of the anthology series. And, I’m starting to get some stories in for that. The the the deadline for that isn’t till January, so I still got plenty of time. But I’ve I’ve got a few stories in, which is nice.

Mark Morris [00:55:05]:
And then I’m working on something that, again, it’s an I’ve signed an NDA, so I’m not allowed to talk about it. But it’s a, what can I say? It’s a kind of tie in, and it’s involved with a computer game. So it’s not a novelization. It’s something that I’ve had to come up with a lot of the material myself.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:24]:
Oh, cool.

Mark Morris [00:55:25]:
So I’ve only had very kind of sketchy bits of material, and I’ve had to kind of concoct the whole scenario and a whole story out of that. So I’m working on that at the moment. Yeah. And that’ll keep me busy for the next few months, I think.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:39]:
Alright. Well, any any advice to aspiring youngsters who might want to do something like what you’ve been doing for the last thirty five years?

Mark Morris [00:55:48]:
Yeah. Right. Just just the usual things. Just write every day. Send your stuff out. Don’t be worried about rejections. And also don’t turn things down, I think, is, you know, don’t sort of say no. Don’t feel as though, you can’t do something.

Mark Morris [00:56:03]:
You know, go out of your comfort zone if you if you want to. Don’t stay, you know, don’t stay safe all the time. Just stick to what you feel as though you can do. Just try and do something new. And if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine. You know, you can stick it in a drawer and forget about it. But I think the more that you do and the more that you do go out of your comfort zone, the more the better you’ll become as a writer. I found through, you know, jumping into things that I’ve actually it’s helped my other types of writing as well.

Mark Morris [00:56:34]:
And and you kind of get over that thing of, I can’t do this because you feel like, oh, I can do this. I can’t. So it’s you know, just go for it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:44]:
Yeah. Stack of DVDs in twenty eight days will show you that you can do it.

Mark Morris [00:56:48]:
Do it. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:50]:
Alright. Well, thank you so much. This is gonna be a great conversation.

Mark Morris [00:56:54]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s been really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:59]:
That’s this week’s episode. Thanks so much to Mark Morris and to you for listening. I hope you’ll leave a review for this episode. There’s a link in your podcast app, and it is super easy and really makes a difference. If you enjoyed our conversation, please do share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:36]:
The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.