Making My Mark

Due to my computer dying at an inopportune moment I never got to write the mini-essay that all the other contributors to Marked to Die: A Tribute to Mark Samuels wrote about their stories in the anthology. But you don’t get off that easy; I’ve written one here:

Sometimes I hate Mark Samuels.

Not because of his raffish air and cheeky grin which make him look like he should be starring in a Boulting Brothers comedy alongside Ian Carmichael and Terry-thomas. Not because of his vast intellect which allows him to casually drop references to Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Machen, and Robert Anton Wilson into the conversation. And not because of his ability to down alcohol in quantities that would prove fatal to most mortals.

No, I hate him because he keeps stealing my story ideas. And, to add insult to injury, he keeps doing it before I even think of them.

Many’s the time I would turn up at a London pub to meet Mark and mutual friends, my head full of excitement at a new story idea, only to discover that Mark had just finished writing a story based around a  similar concept. He’s beaten me to the punch so many times now that I’ve lost count. Admittedly that’s partly due to my poor mathematical skills, but even so it happened with frustrating regularity.

So how to deal with the fact that ‘The Carnivore of Monsters’ felt like something that Mark might have come up with while suffering from a hangover?

Well, first of all there’s the difference in our writing styles. My stuff is much more character-driven than Mark’s, along with more emphasis on jokes and fast pacing. (This difference in our styles is probably the main reason Mark hasn’t sued me for plagiarism.) Then there's the fact that by this point I was a little more familiar with weird fiction and horror fiction in general so I could filter the idea through enough different influences to disguise the fact that the core concept felt like one of Mark’s ideas. This assuaged any guilt I felt about the story being seen as a cheap knockoff of Mark’s work. Most important of all however was the fact that Mark is far more successful than I am, with such a wealth of literary plaudits that he wouldn’t even notice if some of them came my way instead.

In short: fuck him.

So it was with a clear conscience that I developed ‘The Carnivore of Monsters.’

The concept popped into my head while I wandered down Euston Road. As I passed St Pancras New Church, admiring its architecture, a silly pun occurred to me which became the starting point for the story.

I knew instantly it would be a Mark-ish story but also that it would contain a large dollop of both Michael Marshall Smith and Grant Morrison. There would also be at least a modicum of my own literary stylings in there as well but these things can’t be helped. Hopefully the influence of the other authors would carry me through. Cosmic horror! Spooky relationship drama! Surreal action scenes! Excited by the possibilities suggested by the story I rushed home to start work on an outline.

I had to hurry as Mark was in all likelihood already halfway through writing a similar tale.

As it turned out Jung’s collective unconscious, Plato’s forms, or Alan Moore’s Idea Space (or whatever other name you might give to the hypothetical reality from which people get their ideas) had, on this occasion, an altogether more pleasant surprise in store for me.

Shortly after starting work on the story I received an email from Justin Isis asking me to contribute a story to Marked to Die. The remit was to write something that occupied the same literary territory as Mark’s brand of weird fiction and cosmic horror but then spin it off in strange new directions. This was exactly what I was already doing with my story! And reading the guidelines triggered an idea for a great new set-piece!! I was so happy I started to overuse exclamation marks!!!!

So I carried on with a song in my heart, a Baroque chamber piece in my brain, and a horror movie soundtrack in my large intestine.

Swiftly the story began to cohere: research pointed me towards themes and plot points; a throwaway comment turned into a major character arc which I ad-libbed alongside the arcs I had already mapped out in my outline; late in the day a silly pun gave me the story’s title.

Finally, it was done. Exhausted but happy I laid down my pen and switched off my computer. I had done it, had written a story that no one could accuse me of having ripped off from Mark. It was utterly, unmistakably, unique to me.

And then I found out John Llewellyn Probert’s story for the book featured a hospital scene that was a little too close to comfort to the one in my story …

Still, that little hiccup aside my story pretty much all I’d hoped for. Dark, emotional, funny, fast-moving, and filled with nutty SF concepts. Most importantly of all the story healed wounds in my confidence and self-esteem to the extent that I no longer hate Mark Samuels.

Although I now absolutely detest John Llewellyn Probert.

[My solicitor has advised me that as irony is never recognised when used on the internet I should point out that I don’t really hate John Llewellyn Probert.]

[Even though the bastard did steal the idea for my hospital scene before I thought if it.]