Ask the Author: Mark L. Watson
Answered Questions (3)
Mark L. Watson
Music mainly. There are certain tracks, albums or bands who create an atmosphere with their work. I know when I'm writing what the 'soundtrack' is to the work in my head. I find that if I sit and listen to the music that the feeling of the stories I'm writing will soon return.
Also, reading even a single page of anything by Cormac McCarthy fills me with enough inspiration to start again!
Also, reading even a single page of anything by Cormac McCarthy fills me with enough inspiration to start again!
Mark L. Watson
The new novel is called 'Where Fires Are To Burn'. It follows on from 'Where Men Once Walked', and is largely set a few years later than the first.
It tells the story of a family, surviving against the odds, struggling to get from one day to the next. The son is taken and the story follows his parents as they trek south through a ruined Mexican landscape looking for him.
It's more stripped-down and brutal than the first novel, and deals with some of the difficult issues of survival.
It tells the story of a family, surviving against the odds, struggling to get from one day to the next. The son is taken and the story follows his parents as they trek south through a ruined Mexican landscape looking for him.
It's more stripped-down and brutal than the first novel, and deals with some of the difficult issues of survival.
Mark L. Watson
Inspiration is everywhere. I often find it least in other literature though. I find get it from music, certain tracks, certain bands, and certain scenes in films. The way that a certain song can make you feel can leave me with enough of an impact that it can spawn an entire story, or at least part of it.
Where Fires Are To Burn picks up the world left behind from my first novel. It's decayed and its ruined and its mostly lawless, but the people who are there are the same people. People don't change, they adapt.
I did a lot of research into what would happen when we lose the ability to trade internationally, the effect that would have on all of us. Once our ability to power our lives and out machines goes then we regress hundreds of years. Food becomes a commodity that people will fight for, or kill for. In a largely hot and dry country, where would we get our water from.
The idea of survival interests me. Even in the very depths of despair, we still know how to survive.
Where Fires Are To Burn picks up the world left behind from my first novel. It's decayed and its ruined and its mostly lawless, but the people who are there are the same people. People don't change, they adapt.
I did a lot of research into what would happen when we lose the ability to trade internationally, the effect that would have on all of us. Once our ability to power our lives and out machines goes then we regress hundreds of years. Food becomes a commodity that people will fight for, or kill for. In a largely hot and dry country, where would we get our water from.
The idea of survival interests me. Even in the very depths of despair, we still know how to survive.
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