An Interview with the very talented Mark Alders and a Contest!

Please welcome Mark Alders to my blog today!

CONTEST: LEAVE MARK A COMMENT AND YOUR NAME WILL BE ENTERED INTO A DRAWING FOR AN EBOOK OF CALL OF THE HUNTED!

Alisha: Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? Favorite memories?

Mark: My childhood was tough. My mother is wheelchair bound and my father has spent/still spends his life looking after her. Money was never around, so what I did get I cherished. But the one real joy about my childhood was the long, carefree summer days I spent in and around the pool swimming and having fun. Gosh, I was so skinny back then.

Alisha: Tell us about your latest release.

Mark: My main character's name is Kayvan. He is a naïve kind of guy, so innocent and pure. He was actually a joy to write simply because he is in stark contrast to the other main character, the Widdershins. The Widdershins is a man of ancient power, feared by all those that cross him, and hunted, too. It is Kayvan that sees something in him, something no one else has for millennia.

I think the two were like the Ying and Yang, complete opposite, yet unable to function as a whole without each other. I had such fun writing their conversations, let me tell you. I ended up laughing and becoming involved just like I was there witnessing them. Kayvan is the light, the conscious and the humanity of the Widdershins. And of course Kayvan got his heart stolen by him.

Alisha: If you were granted three wishes by a genie, what would they be?

Mark: 1. To find a cure for diabetes so my partner no longer has to suffer with the side-effects of the drugs and what the disease causes in the body.

2. To make sure all the ones I love, my friends and all of my family included, live happy healthy lives.

3. To be a best seller.

Alisha: All wonderful wishes! If you could go anywhere to tomorrow, where would you go?

Mark: I would like to travel around Australia. In 2000 I traveled around Western Australia, the state I live in. It was fantastic as the state is so diverse with so much to see. There are massive fields of wildflowers in the Spring, great natural wonders such as the Pinnacles and a place called Monkey Mia where you can interact with the wild dolphins. And of course there are endless miles of ancient open landscape with a cobalt blue sky above. Stunning and very humbling.

Alisha: Sounds lovely! If you could see anyone tomorrow (dead or alive), who would it be?

Mark: My dearly departed Grandfather without question. My earliest memories are of me sitting on his knee listening to him read when he would retire to his conservatory for the day. He would smoke a pipe and even to this day if I smell tobacco it brings back those wonderful memories.

Alisha: What wonderful memories. I love the smell of pipe tobacco too. If you could choose six people to spend one week on a desert island, who would it be and why?

Mark: Do you know, this is a harder question than I first thought. But naturally I would have to say my partner and a few close friends.

Alisha: What word or phrase tingles in all the right places for you?

Mark: “I’ll make you a cup of tea.” Seriously, nothing tastes better than a cuppa made by someone else. So refreshing.

Alisha: Some of our favorite things are simple gestures aren't they? If you had one day to spoil yourself, what would you do?

Mark: Stay at home. Not use the car. Not once. I would love to wake up, plod around the house, do a bit of writing and go to bed, not once getting into my car. A near on impossibility where I live because you need a car to get anywhere! But it would be nice just to stay at home…for one day.

Alisha: Wow, that's bizarre to me. I've spent days in my home without going outside...lol. If you could change one incident in your life, what would it be and how would you change it?

Mark: I would change nothing. Seriously, I made the best decisions I could at the time with the resources I had at my disposal. Sure, a lot of things haven’t gone to plan. But that’s life, isn’t it? I think it would be boring if we got what we wanted without working for it.

Alisha: That's something to be very proud of too. What’s the sexiest thing a person has ever done for you or said to you or both?

Mark: Said that they loved me even knowing all my failings.

Excerpt of Call of the Hunted

This man, this perfect young thing took the Widdershins’ breath away. His smile was infectious, such plump lips on a fresh innocent face. He was intoxicating. How he would like to devour him, to relish his essence within himself. Admonishing himself, he tried to shake those thoughts from his mind. He could not take a life so pure. He only fed on the foul creatures of this Earth. That was all he deserved.

The Widdershins took what the innocent young man gave him and again it shrivelled until all its nutrients were gone. It tasted foul. Not like living meat at all, for it harboured no power or soul.

“I have been called many things over the centuries. All of them conjured up in the mind images of the foulest creature. I have been the Devil. I have been werewolf. I have even been the famous Dracula. In China, I was the Chiang Shih. In the place you call Europe, I was Incubus.”

The young man didn’t seem to tremble in his presence. Curious. This fine young man must be an equal. He must be the one. The Widdershins felt his loins stir, a happening that hadn’t occurred in recent memory.

The Widdershins didn’t expect such a turn of events because when he called for another soul to be with him, he thought he would have attracted a female, one to propagate with. The thought of being with a man was indeed alluring, but to be with another without the burden of procreation was a thought he had never contemplated. And to be with this particular young man would be a relationship based on parity, he was certain. The Widdershins was impressed, but above all, curious.

But would this man accept him?