Tour De Europa
When I toured across Europe for promotion of a recent published book, I anticipated some sort of confrontation between my own values of what a book launch should be, perhaps a theatrical presentation, and traditional publishing values alongside the usual audiences and critics. In fact, the book tour was a thrilling experience for me, the book sold well, the audiences were enthusiastic and everyone involved worked incredibly hard to present a structured launch in venues of varying sizes – even some of the critics liked it. Chris Henson travelled with me on the entire tour. This book is a record of it. Preview
Versus America
When I undertook my first ever meet and greet tour throughout America during 2016, I asked Chris Henson to accompany me with the idea of eventually producing some sort of picture book with text in a similar vein to his previous book Tour De Europa. In America and back in Europe, he followed me with a notebook jotting down everything of interest he witnessed. In the end I agreed he could write a more detailed account than I first imagined. The book you are holding is the result. Reading the manuscript for the first time, I was, yet again, horrified. Am I really that critical? Do I really have many demands? Do I seem to be always eating? Do I always complain? Am I self-obsessed and so frequently rude? Do I discuss money and snipe about other people quite so much? Apparently yes. Perhaps we will learn as much as anyone else who reads this book about me. Preview
Up Against It
The official tag.
An account of my publicity tour to advertise a book and musical workshop by Chris Henson recorded in words and pictures, as we travelled and promoted.
The unofficial tag.
Up Against It is the book that possibly, finally puts a writer under the microscope following the launch of a book. A creative analysis of promotion, it examines topics such as what it takes for a book to get read, the encouragement it entails and what lays behind the scenes of everything promotional. As well as a keen critical edge, the book along with its predecessors Tour De Europa and Versus America gives dialogue, gossip, scandal and word for word conversations are unearthed and reexamined.
In an attempt to uncover the heart of sales. Up Against It rummages frantically through an impossible film script, a publishing dinner, various book signings, radio interviews, a recording session, a London rehearsal and the launch of a theatre workshop. It is also a partial history, respect and love of friendship.
Published titles cover travel, biography, memoir and fiction – sometimes all between the same dust jacket. As one newspaper reviewer put it, 'Mark’s writing embraces ‘those curious factive fictions that lurk on the border between literature and human topography.’