Mark Lord's Praeter Naturam

By The Sword’s Edge published – first part of serialized novel Stonehearted

Mark — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:59:37 +0000

I am currently writing a new novel set in the Hundred Years War called Stonehearted. As the novel is progressing quite well I thought it would be fun to release it in serial format every month or two. There should be four or five parts in total, each ranging from 15,000 to 20,000 words. I will [...]

Black Death pit unearthed by Crossrail project

Mark — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:06:42 +0000

BBC News – Black Death pit unearthed by Crossrail project. Excavations for London’s Crossrail project have unearthed bodies believed to date from the time of the Black Death. A burial ground was known to be in an area outside the City of London, but its exact location remained a mystery. Thirteen bodies have been [...]

Free Preview of Robin Hobb’s Blood of Dragons

Mark — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:22:37 +0000

Tor have posted a free preview of the prologue for Robin Hobb’s new novel Blood of Dragons. Interesting to see that this is the fourth book in the series – usually Hobb does things in threes! Years ago, the magnificent dragon queen Tintaglia forged a bargain with the inhabitants of the treacherous Rain Wilds. In [...]

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare Free to Play – and why not read a story about Chivalry too?

Mark — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:02:32 +0000

There’s a recently released medieval combat action game called Chivalry: Medieval Warfare – the publishers of it are making it free to play for the whole weekend: Chivalry: Medieval Warfare Free to Play this Weekend | VGRevolution. I might well take a look! While they game is installing and loading, why not also take a read [...]

Total War Rome II Announce Rather Cool Looking Wiki

Mark — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:03:05 +0000

I’m looking forward to this more than I did Shogun II – which I didn’t get. Hope they don’t cater to much to the arcade masses on this one – try and keep it real lads! More info hopefully will be on their Wiki! More here: Total War Blog | Check out our Wiki. Incoming search [...]

Burning the Books – Lingwe on the dangers of literary executors

Mark — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:59:04 +0000

Fascinating article on how we may so easily have been left with no Unfinished Tales etc from Tolkien. Go check it out at: Lingwë – Musings of a Fish: Christopher Tolkien, Warren Hamilton Lewis, and Laurence Housman – The blog of Tolkien scholar and philologist Jason Fisher. If you know an author, think twice before [...]

Self Publishing Pros and Cons: Distribution

Mark — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:52:38 +0000

A while ago I did a couple of posts regarding the pros and cons of Self Publishing, with the intention of doing some more posts at some point. Well this is the next one. It’s on distribution and an area that is bugging me quite a lot at the moment and where I think there [...]

My Reading Challenge – Hugo Winning Novels Since 2000

Mark — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:02:23 +0000

Sometimes I read whatever I feel like, while at other times I try to read books based on a certain theme. So for instance a while ago I wanted to investigate how thrillers worked and read a number of thriller novels by authors I hadn’t read before. The idea was to get a good idea [...]

Science Fiction Magazines Increase Contributor Pay Rates

Mark — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:15:27 +0000

For quite a while now the contributor pay rate for a professional Science Fiction and/or Fantasy Magazine has been 5 cents per word. So if you were to write a 5,000 word story you should be making $250. This rate has been pretty much the market standard and fixed as the sign of a professional [...]

Completely Bonkers Comments on Tobias Buckell story A Game of Rats and Dragon

Mark — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:36:24 +0000

I came across this on Twitter yesterday – Tobias Buckell tweeted about it. I recommend checking out the comments to his story A Game of Rats and Dragon in Lightspeed Magazine - they’re funny, sad an infuriating in equal measure. I do wonder who this Chris Fowler guy is and what his beef is - ostensibly the guy is [...]