I was an eighties kid, and anyone born in that era will tell you the arts were frowned upon. Caving to peer pressure, I took what I thought was the safe route, graduating from university with a degree in mathematics and spending three decades in a job that sucked the life out of me.
I knew that wasn’t it. There had to be more to life.
At the back of my mind, just like that of the protagonist in the story, Chasing The Dragon, was a nagging voice that refused to be silenced: my old English teacher from high school. “You should pursue this. You have real potential.” Sick of numbing myself with liquor (and the creative beast that was trying to escape), in addition to being told off by my wife for not doing anything remotely interesting, I finally had a crack at writing some stories.
I was 45 at this stage.
The first stories were, of course, awful in every way. Rejection after rejection came. But after days of locking myself in a room, bleeding away the bile, I began to find my voice. Until one day, I produced a piece of work I was pretty proud of, a flash fiction story called ‘Hugh’s Friend.’ It was a great story with one hell of a sucker punch.
The rest is history. I got paid 75 dollars for that story, but it might as well have been gold bullion. I was hooked. And as the quality of my work improved, I further climbed the pay grade to semi-pro and pro-rate amounts.
One hundred stories later, I turned my hand to novellas. Nana was my debut and is still my best seller by some margin. Fifteen novellas after that, I then turned my hand to writing a novel. Chasing The Dragon is my debut.
I’ve made many mistakes throughout this journey, but spending time on shorter fiction and sharpening the toolkit was not one of them. Writing a novel also didn’t seem like such a mountain to climb after having all these credits behind me.
To date, I’ve written 185 short stories, most of which have been published in journals and anthologies, some made into full theatrical audio productions. I’ve also written 15 novellas and two and a half novels. All have been published or are scheduled to be.
Mark Towse
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Crime, Fantasy, Romance, Comedy
Publisher: Eerie River Publishing
Date of Publication: 23rd March 2024
ISBN: 1998112268
ASIN: B0CR6PNZLQ
Number of pages: 234
Word Count: 68,650
Cover Artist: Tom Brown
Tagline: The town needed a hero… it got Reformo.
Book Description:
A town on its knees, dread's bony fingers wrapping around its throat and squeezing, death rattles soon to follow.
Drugs, filth, and a lack of human decency are starving it of hope.
Introducing Simon Dooley, our trauma-driven wannabe superhero, the relentless voice of his dead mother pleading with him to "end the chaos." Dressed in a leotard and armed only with a dozen dog poop bags, Simon's plight will find him falling in love and going head to head with the seediest characters walking the streets.
The town needed a hero... it got Reformo.
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Book Trailer: https://shorturl.at/fiSY1
Mark Towse is an English horror writer living in Australia. He would sell his soul to the devil or anyone buying if it meant he could write full-time. Alas, he left it very late to begin this journey, penning his first story since primary school at the ripe old age of forty-five. Since then, he's been published in over two hundred journals and anthologies, had his work made into full theatrical productions for shows such as The No Sleep Podcast and Tales to Terrify, and has penned fourteen novellas, including Nana, Gone to the Dogs, 3:33, and Crows. Chasing The Dragon is his debut novel.
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