announcement | Marie Marshall

February 10, 2015

2015 ‘Fearie Tales’ to feature my ‘Voices’

Story reader Helen Logan. Photo (c) Bookseeker Agency

This weekend sees the start of the annual Winter Words Festival at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, the literary festival that kicks of Scotland’s literary year. Each evening two professional actors will be reading out two macabre stories, winners of the annual ‘Fearie Tales’ competition. I’m proud to announce that for yet another year I am amongst the winners! My short story ‘Voices’ will be featured this coming Saturday evening, 14th February! So if you are near Pitlochry in the Scottish Highlands this Saturday evening, drop in… the terror begins at 9.45pm!

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February 5, 2015

‘From My Cold, Undead Hand’ sold out at Waterstones

jpeg I just heard that all copies of From My Cold, Undead Hand have gone from the shelves of the local branch of Waterstones. Don’t worry though, vampire-fiction fans – you can still order a copy at the counter. Just ask an assistant and they’ll get it for you.

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January 31, 2015

My obsession with Veronica

veronica-franco My obsession with Veronica Franco continues – I mean the 16c Venetian courtesan, not the 21c porn star, just in case anyone was in any doubt. Lately I have been adding to my canon of poetry dedicated to or written about her. These poems have been handed to the e-zine Poetry Life & Times for their use, along with the previously-published poems from that collection. In these poems, Veronica and I inhabit a shadowy world between life and death, in Venice and elsewhere, where the Renaissance has cell phones and tablets, Tintoretto flies in and out from Marco Polo Airport, and she and I meet for lunch dates irrespective of her being alive or dead. The first one has just appeared, and – guess what! – its setting is Marco Polo! Read it here.

Ha! I just realised I said Death in Venice up there! Mann oh Mann!

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January 21, 2015

Script-writer wanted!

After some discussion, my agent and I have decided to propose that my story ‘Axe’ (see previous post) be turned into a TV drama. So, my agent is currently scouting round the TV production companies in the UK looking for those with good drama credentials. We’re also on the look-out for a script-writer who can get the Glasgow and Caribbean-British register right, ‘see’ what was ‘playing in my head’ as I wrote it, and be creative with the para-dialogue – by which I mean the dialogue implied by the descriptions and expressions of emotion in the story, rather than the actual conversation I have written.

Is that you? If you think you could do, then get in touch with my agent. Go to bookseekeragency.com/contact and take it from there.

December 5, 2014

‘KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE’ – first draft complete!

Shev Today’s big news is that I have finished writing KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE, the sequel to From My Cold, Undead Hand. So now I plan a period of leisure – no more novel-writing until well into Spring 2015.

But wait! Leisure? I have to read through and revise KWIREBOY vs VAMPIRE, maybe making tweaks here and there. I have to find my trusted ‘beta reader’ and persuade her to read it. A busy writer herself, she may not be able to; but if she can, then I will be reading her new novel by way of exchange. I ought to try to find a second beta reader as well.

Then I have to attend to writing a macabre short story for Scotland’s Winter Words Festival – I have something in mind, but getting it from mind to paper is another matter.

Can I really leave novel-writing alone, though? I have two or three novels in plan form, some with test sections written, searching for the right ‘voice’. There’s my steampunk story of a young mountebank mentalist in Victorian London, a trail of bizarre murders, revenge, and detection – with a possible cameo appearance of Anna Lund! (Who? Read From My Cold, Undead Hand!). There’s my cynical wizard, working for the Chthonic Intelligence Agency. There’s a boy who finds he can work miracles. There’s a fictionalised life of Branwell Brontë. You see, if I wanted to immerse myself in novel-writing right now, I could.
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If you would be interested in reading a short review I wrote recently about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, you can find it here. on Angelique Jamail’s blog.
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My last piece of news today is that I have just received the latest issue of Rubies in the Darkness, the magazine of ‘Traditional Romantic Lyrical and Spiritually Inspired Poetry and New Renaissance Writing’. On page 38 of this issue is a poem of mine from 2008. At that time I had restricted my poetry, by and large, to a formal style, in an effort to give my work discipline and technical power. It wasn’t just an exercise, however, as I greatly enjoyed using form, even in a light-hearted way, as in the poem below. It is called ‘We woke up to snow’:

snow

Rubies in the Darkness is available from The Red Lantern Retreat, 41 Grantham Road, Manor Park, London E12 5LZ.

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November 4, 2014

A good review at BestChickLit.com

NewChickHeader

BestChickLit.com is a review site mainly dedicated to reviewing literature by and for women readers. It also has a thriving ‘Young Adult’ section, where it has featured my previous YA novel The Everywhen Angels, and has now featured From My Cold, Undead Hand. Reviewer Nikki Mason called it ‘a great adventure book’, and appreciated the fact that the vampires are ‘unequivocally the bad guys’. Drop in at the site and check out the review. Many thanks, Nikki.

By the way, this is what BestChickLit.com has to say about Nikki:

Nikki

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October 22, 2014

I am interviewed by Janni Styles

Janni Styles is a Canadian writer and blogger, whose new collection of short stories, One Part Good, was published recently. She did me the courtesy and favour recently of interviewing me, asking me some rather interesting questions about From My Cold, Undead Hand, and about myself and my writing in general. You can read the interview here. In fact, please do…

October 15, 2014

‘From My Cold, Undead Hand’ now available at Amazon!

Yes! I’ve just been up-dating the page on this site for From My Cold, Undead Hand to take account of the availability of the novel worldwide in more formats. You can still get it in ePub format direct from the publisher from their site, and with it some extra text and an audio file. But now it’s additionally available from Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. So, if you’re choosy about your format you are now spoilt for choice! I will give you more news about its availability via bookshops as and when I have it. Why not follow me on Twitter @MairibheagM and keep up with my news in brief!

A big thank-you from me to P’kaboo, my publisher, for all their effort and support, and also to my trusty agent.

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September 14, 2014

Publication tomorrow!

“… The fog is still yellow and thick. I can see maybe twenty yards either way. The house across the street is a vague oblong, the parallel lines of the sidewalk fade into the general gloom. There’s a thickening, a kind of shift in the fog, like it’s swirling, like it’s trying to contain more than it actually can. And there’s a smell in the air I don’t like. Downhill there are man-size shapes forming in the fog, figures walking towards us – three, maybe four. I look back uphill – figures there too, and a couple across the road. The house door creaks, and there’s another figure standing in the doorway. Maybe a dozen of these figures are slowly closing in on us. I grip the broken chair leg as E.J. moves round me and we stand back-to-back…”

Just how excited can an author get about nearing publication? Do all the big ‘names’ feel as cool as they look? Do they think “Well, there goes another one”, and wait for the offers of interviews from the Times Literary Supplement and the BBC to roll in? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I am excited about getting novel No.3 published as I was about getting No.1 out there. I have only twenty-four hours to wait – tomorrow is the big day!

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September 9, 2014

Just how many kinds of vampire are there?

promo09a

Big ones, little ones, new ones, centuries-old ones, perhaps ones that have had extensive orthodontic work, and perhaps even ones who have a secret that is kept until the sequel. Yes, there will be a sequel to From My Cold, Undead Hand! More about that later – much, much later – but right now all eyes are on the 15^th of September, which is publication date! That’s when you’ll be able to get your teeth into it…

The book will first be available in e-book format direct from P’kaboo Publishers. Shortly after that it will be available via Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats. However, if you want some bonus extras, in the form of extracts in text and audio of the ‘diary’ of one of the characters, then the e-book direct from the publishers is the way to go. You can even pre-order to make sure!

As you can imagine, I am very excited about having my third novel published. It is, in a way, also a ‘first’, being the first one I have written as a commission from a publisher, my first venture into the genre of teen-vampire fiction, and the first of a planned trilogy. If you would like to know about it, click here to find my answers to questions about it when I was interviewed recently.

If you have any questions about it yourself, please contact me and let me know.

Tag: announcement