Author Archives: Mark Hayes

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About Mark Hayes

Writer A messy, complicated sort of entity. Quantum Pagan. Occasional weregoth Knows where his spoon is, do you? #author #steampunk http://linktr.ee/mark_hayes

The choice illusion

It’s an old trick, a good one, one with many variations, many names, but its all the same trick. A trick that hangs on the same guiding principle, creating the illusion of choice. the illusionist can pull this off with one … Continue reading

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The rules of good writing…

There are a great many rules when it comes to good writing. Many a word count has been written explaining them in infinitesimal detail. Generally, however, the best way to explain the rules is with a little humour. Humour being … Continue reading

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The Impossible Search for the Perfect Sentance…

Occasionally writing becomes the search for the perfect sentence, this can sometimes become an obsession, and like all obsessions, it has a dark side. That may seem a strange thing to say, but you’ll have to go with me here … Continue reading

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1000 A Day Habit…

To be a writer, you have to write… this was a conclusion I came to a few years ago, which still holds true. To borrow some advice from one more qualified to talk about successful writing than I… This then … Continue reading

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Self-Publishing: A Guidebook for the Tourist#6 Proofreading

It may seem obvious, but in case it’s not, or even if it is… 1/ Proofreading your novel. There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, as important as having a good proofreader or three. No matter how many times you … Continue reading

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The Cats of Ulthar: The complete Lovecraft#17

Cats walk between worlds, the real and the mystical, the mortal and the spiritual, the land of the living and the land of the dead… Least ways this is a recurring theme through fiction and the mythologies of the ancient … Continue reading

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The Terrible Old Man: The complete Lovecraft#16

Among other things, I am a bit of an aficionado of the ‘Future Shock’. For those that have never heard of them, they are short one-off stories in the British comic 2000AD, generally written by new up and coming writers, … Continue reading

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Nietzsche’s sister

“God is dead” As a German philosopher of some little note once said, and for many people, that’s probably as much as they know about Nietzsche, the quotes. There is, after all, a lot of them, he is the most … Continue reading

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Self-publishing: A Guidebook for the Tourist#5: ‘Free’ books

The internet is full of ‘Free’ books, you can’t go on writers forums without finding them all over the place. The Facebook groups are full of them, Twitter will throw them at you, readers sites like Goodreads and other book sites overflow with … Continue reading

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Beyond the Walls of Sleep(movie): The Complete Lovecraft #15

In a slight detour from the written word, I am going to look beyond Lovecraft’s stories to someone else’s interpretation of one of them. If you remember back to my review of ‘Beyond the walls of sleep‘ you will remember that a … Continue reading

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