Ask the Author: Mark Cain
Answered Questions (16)
Mark Cain
Glad you liked that. I had mixed feelings about ending the series, but it was time.
Thank you for traveling with me through the Circles.
Thank you for traveling with me through the Circles.
Mark Cain
Derek, Thanks for writing.
I have done occasional signings, but since most of my readers opt for the ebook or the audiobook, a bookstore event doesn’t work well to connect me with fans of the series.
Depending on the location, I will travel for a book club that is reading one or more of my books. I’ll make some comments, answer questions, and sign books at that time.
PM me your location. If I’m going to be in you area, perhaps we can arrange a get-together.
Finally, I’m considering having a bookplate made for the CIRCLES IN HELL series, which I could sign and mail to people, as a sort of virtual signing. Let me know if you think that’s a good idea.
Mark
I have done occasional signings, but since most of my readers opt for the ebook or the audiobook, a bookstore event doesn’t work well to connect me with fans of the series.
Depending on the location, I will travel for a book club that is reading one or more of my books. I’ll make some comments, answer questions, and sign books at that time.
PM me your location. If I’m going to be in you area, perhaps we can arrange a get-together.
Finally, I’m considering having a bookplate made for the CIRCLES IN HELL series, which I could sign and mail to people, as a sort of virtual signing. Let me know if you think that’s a good idea.
Mark
Mark Cain
Nathan, Thanks for asking, and I’m glad you enjoy the CIRCLES IN HELL series. I’ve started work on book six and hope to have it out in the fall, perhaps earlier. Follow me on Goodreads, if you don’t already. When I’m ready to release, I’ll post a blog entry letting everyone know.
Mark
Mark
Mark Cain
Hi Josh. The audiobook is being recorded right now. My hope is to also release it on January 16, the same day as the Kindle edition. Due to the fact that a Kindle or paperback version must be in print before the audiobook can come out, doing a near-simultaneous release is a bit of a challenge. If I can’t pull it off for the 16th, the audio release will be within a day or two of that date.
Michael Gilboe will be doing the narration, as he has done for all the books in the series.
Michael Gilboe will be doing the narration, as he has done for all the books in the series.
Mark Cain
Thanks for asking. I'm certainly making an attempt! I'm working on the first revision of book Five as we speak. It is a continuation of Steve's story, rather than the autobiography of Beelzebub that for now sits unfinished, though I may go back to Beezy's tale after the current book is done.
I'M NO ANGEL: THE RETURN OF STEVE MINION has been one of my more challenging writing projects, mainly because there was a certain finality to the story arc of the first four books. Yet what readers really wanted was a continuation of Steve's story. What would he do next? I'm trying to answer the question for you, but a good deal of work is required yet. If I can get I'M NO ANGEL to a point where I'm satisfied with it, look for the book to come out sometime in the next few months, and certainly no later than year's end.
I'M NO ANGEL: THE RETURN OF STEVE MINION has been one of my more challenging writing projects, mainly because there was a certain finality to the story arc of the first four books. Yet what readers really wanted was a continuation of Steve's story. What would he do next? I'm trying to answer the question for you, but a good deal of work is required yet. If I can get I'M NO ANGEL to a point where I'm satisfied with it, look for the book to come out sometime in the next few months, and certainly no later than year's end.
Mark Cain
Right now, there are only two, since I'm deep into a writing project of my own and tend not to read excessively when I'm in writing mode.
I'm currently reading Clark Hiaasen's Bad Monkey. Next up will be Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Then I'll check out Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series and finally perhaps Goody and Grant's Clovenhoof series.
I'm currently reading Clark Hiaasen's Bad Monkey. Next up will be Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Then I'll check out Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series and finally perhaps Goody and Grant's Clovenhoof series.
Mark Cain
Chris,
Thanks for your note. If I continue the series, Charon at least would continue to show up; he's a close personal friend of Steve's. And BOOH is everyone's favorite character. CIRCLES IN HELL couldn't exist without him. Unthinkable!
Most of the non Judeo-Christian characters have come from old religions that were displaced by Christianity, Norse and Greco-Roman mythologies being primary. Working in Asian religions would be challenging, as I've set them up to be a part of a different afterlife "reality." I'm not saying it would be impossible to do it, but such a shift would take the books in very different directions.
For now, book five is unfinished. I am having creative differences with Beelzebub.
Meanwhile, keep your eyes out in the weeks ahead for my release of the Kindle version of BOOMER AT MIDLIFE, a modern age satire.
Mark
Thanks for your note. If I continue the series, Charon at least would continue to show up; he's a close personal friend of Steve's. And BOOH is everyone's favorite character. CIRCLES IN HELL couldn't exist without him. Unthinkable!
Most of the non Judeo-Christian characters have come from old religions that were displaced by Christianity, Norse and Greco-Roman mythologies being primary. Working in Asian religions would be challenging, as I've set them up to be a part of a different afterlife "reality." I'm not saying it would be impossible to do it, but such a shift would take the books in very different directions.
For now, book five is unfinished. I am having creative differences with Beelzebub.
Meanwhile, keep your eyes out in the weeks ahead for my release of the Kindle version of BOOMER AT MIDLIFE, a modern age satire.
Mark
Mark Cain
Derek, I'm glad you enjoyed the books. As you know, the four together tell a fairly complete story from Steve's perspective. My original intent was to only write the four, but there are so many people who would like the series to continue that I'm going to make the attempt. If I stay with Steve the entire time, though, I'm afraid I'll run out of ideas. My plan at this moment is to tell the back story to the CIRCLES IN HELL universe through Beezy's perspective in book five but in book six come back to Steve. There should be some interesting opportunities to play with as Steve assumes a new role in Hell. I will not remain exclusively with him, though -- if I keep on chugging on these books -- although he's likely to show up as a character in someone else's story, like, say Uphir's (ugh, well maybe not). There are many other possibilities for narrators, some old, some new.
The main thing is for me to keep the books fresh, fun, funny and entertaining for the readers, and of course for the stories to sell. If I can accomplish those goals, and still have a good time in the process, I'll keep going.
Look for book five sometime in the fall. Hmm. I'd better get it in gear.
Mark
The main thing is for me to keep the books fresh, fun, funny and entertaining for the readers, and of course for the stories to sell. If I can accomplish those goals, and still have a good time in the process, I'll keep going.
Look for book five sometime in the fall. Hmm. I'd better get it in gear.
Mark
Mark Cain
Hi, Michael. I'm glad you enjoyed the series. I crafted the four books to be a complete story arc, but there seems to be demand for more CIRCLES IN HELL books, so I'm contemplating turning this into an open-ended series, with different narrators, like Discworld. I'm at work on book five, BEELZEBUB: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. It will be some months before that comes out. The Beezy book will be the ultimate backstory - 14 billion years in the making. Then I intend to hop back to 2055. Steve and all your favorites will be in subsequent volumes. Sometimes he might tell the story, but I'll give others the chance too, maybe even little Uphir. Who knows? As long as I don't get run over by a bus or run out of ideas or enthusiasm, the series could keep going. But it has to stay fresh. I don't want to wear out my welcome!
Look for book five in, I suspect, the fall sometime. Mark
Look for book five in, I suspect, the fall sometime. Mark
Mark Cain
Kate, I'm glad you're enjoying the series. I was raised in a fundamentalist household, but by the time I went to college, I'd become an agnostic. Still, my early years in a Bible-centric church, not to mention my undergraduate and graduate work in English, which included studying the Bible as literature, Medieval literature, and Italian Renaissance art, gave me a good grounding in religion, especially from the Catholic perspective. I also spent fifteen years of my first career in Catholic higher education, so I feel very steeped in their view of religion. I've read Dante (I think that shows), etc.
Starting with that background, I constructed a Hell loosely based on Catholic beliefs, both canonical and apocryphal. Devils and demons were pretty easy to come up with. BOOH just popped into my head, because I thought the acronym for his name was so funny. Populating Hell with a bunch of characters out of Greek mythology comes from Charon's appearance in Dante's Inferno. I thought, if Charon can be there, why not Sisyphus or Prometheus or whoever I wanted to use to help the plot along? If I didn't know something, I'd probably have a book around the house to fill in details. And there's always the Internet. Demonology is a popular topic out there. Easy to get ideas.
Beyond that, I have a fairly wacky imagination. :) I'll often pull ridiculous ideas out of thin air, like having Orson as Steve's assistant or Florence as his girlfriend. Once you throw one famous historical figure into the book, it's an easy stretch to throw in some more.
But I think it all works because 1) this is a relateable Hell, using just enough fire and brimstone to conform to conventional thoughts but then making the Underworld not unlike our own, with all the accompanying frustrations, only magnified; 2) the books have a protagonist who you can root for, and who has a personal stake in the outcome; and 3) the characters, from Steve to Orson to Beezy to Satan to little Uphir, etc., are distinct. They speak in their own voices, have their own mannerisms. They are not carbon copies of each other.
An overlong answer, but I hope it answers your questions. The four CIRCLES IN HELL books present a complete story arc, so you could stop with them and feel satisfied, but there's plenty of room for other tales to be told down in my quirky version of Hell. I'm debating right now if I will continue the series. If you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.
Best,
Mark
Starting with that background, I constructed a Hell loosely based on Catholic beliefs, both canonical and apocryphal. Devils and demons were pretty easy to come up with. BOOH just popped into my head, because I thought the acronym for his name was so funny. Populating Hell with a bunch of characters out of Greek mythology comes from Charon's appearance in Dante's Inferno. I thought, if Charon can be there, why not Sisyphus or Prometheus or whoever I wanted to use to help the plot along? If I didn't know something, I'd probably have a book around the house to fill in details. And there's always the Internet. Demonology is a popular topic out there. Easy to get ideas.
Beyond that, I have a fairly wacky imagination. :) I'll often pull ridiculous ideas out of thin air, like having Orson as Steve's assistant or Florence as his girlfriend. Once you throw one famous historical figure into the book, it's an easy stretch to throw in some more.
But I think it all works because 1) this is a relateable Hell, using just enough fire and brimstone to conform to conventional thoughts but then making the Underworld not unlike our own, with all the accompanying frustrations, only magnified; 2) the books have a protagonist who you can root for, and who has a personal stake in the outcome; and 3) the characters, from Steve to Orson to Beezy to Satan to little Uphir, etc., are distinct. They speak in their own voices, have their own mannerisms. They are not carbon copies of each other.
An overlong answer, but I hope it answers your questions. The four CIRCLES IN HELL books present a complete story arc, so you could stop with them and feel satisfied, but there's plenty of room for other tales to be told down in my quirky version of Hell. I'm debating right now if I will continue the series. If you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.
Best,
Mark
Mark Cain
Alice,
Thanks for asking. It's being recorded now, and it should be released by June 1.
Best,
Mark
Thanks for asking. It's being recorded now, and it should be released by June 1.
Best,
Mark
Mark Cain
I'd have to really talk about the entire CIRCLES IN HELL series, since the ideas for all started with that first book, HELL'S SUPER. I was in Florida, walking on a beach with my wife. At the time, I was working on an epic fantasy. I was also in a really bad mood. I turned to my wife and said, "you know, I'm not feeling particularly epic right now. I'm feeling snarky." So I started with the attitude of my protagonist, decided on Hell as the setting, and then thought what would be Hell to me. That was easy. Like my protagonist, I hate home improvement projects.
All these disparate pieces came together beautifully in a really funny book.
All these disparate pieces came together beautifully in a really funny book.
Mark Cain
Converting my satire tetralogy, CIRCLES IN HELL, into audiobooks. HELL'S SUPER is already out, and A COLD DAY IN HELL will be out in early February. The other two will be out by early spring.
Mark Cain
Just write. Be consistent. Set a time of day when you're going to do it. Set a goal. It could be number of words or amount of time devoted to writing. Your choice, but do it.
Also, in today's crazy publishing market, I'd self-publish, skipping traditional publishers and agents, and focusing initially on the Kindle platform, as that's where you'll make most of your money anyway.
Also, in today's crazy publishing market, I'd self-publish, skipping traditional publishers and agents, and focusing initially on the Kindle platform, as that's where you'll make most of your money anyway.
Mark Cain
I could say the flexibility or the money that continues to flow, even though a book is done, but for me it's the creative process, the actual writing, making something that didn't exist before.
Mark Cain
Actually, I don't get it. First with story ideas: many of them just pop into my head. If an idea doesn't come on it's own, I do a brainstorming exercise, generating as many ideas as I can as quickly as possible. Then I take the one or two that would work best.
In writing mode, I set a word count of minimally 1000, five days a week. I always exceed that. I don't worry if the prose isn't up to snuff. The key is to get the story and its basic structure down on paper. I then do cleanup in the revision stage. My first revision takes almost as long as the first draft.
In writing mode, I set a word count of minimally 1000, five days a week. I always exceed that. I don't worry if the prose isn't up to snuff. The key is to get the story and its basic structure down on paper. I then do cleanup in the revision stage. My first revision takes almost as long as the first draft.
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