I live in Washington, DC with my wife, Carrie, but I was born and brought up in Reading, England. My favourite place in the world is in the Cotswolds, just down the road from Oxford (where most of Full of Beans is set).

I went to college in Canterbury where I studied biochemistry and got a PhD. I have worked in biopharmaceuticals for the last 35 years or so.

I’m currently working in gene therapy, helping to develop a much-needed cure for Rett Syndrome.

I worked in Nottingham and Cambridge before moving back to Reading (so it can’t be all bad, right?). Then I came to America in 2009. It does seem like a drastic move just to get out of Reading again. I lived in North Carolina for 7 years before moving to the DC area.

Growing up in Reading gave me a fascination with trains and planes, being as how there wasn’t much else there to interest a kid. I loved hanging around at the west end of Platform 5, and when Concorde would fly over. And there was a Model Shop. I loved the Model Shop. And Eames’ model train shop.

My dad gave me lifelong passions for astronomy, physics, chess, cooking, and model-making. And I love model trains. Over the years, in my spare time, I’ve also been a watercolor artist and a music producer. I love electronic dance music.

Full of Beans is my first published novel and it is dedicated to Carrie and her coffee machine, which would constantly instruct us to “Fill Beans,” whether the hopper was full or empty. Without either of them this book might never have been written. It took over two years to write, on the weekends and holidays, and I learned a lot about writing.

AI wrote exactly bugger all of the book and it can just sod off when it comes to the writing. I did ask ChatGPT how many R’s there are in ‘strawberry.’ There are two, apparently. AI isn’t up to it yet. I heard they are bringing back Clippy... ‘I see you’re writing a novel. Do you need help with that?’ I did need help, but instead I have relied on some actually talented hooman-beans for that.

The book was an editor’s nightmare to work on. We chose British English spellings (like ‘colour’) and phrases (such as ‘bugger off’) to go with most of the settings and characters. However, we also chose to go with the Chicago Manual of Style for other stuff like punctuation, rather than the Oxford Guide to Style. Sorry Oxford. Please check the CMOS before levelling criticism at the editing; it was a heroic effort. Thanks Kevin and Avery.

Feel free, however, to debate the choice to liberally use the Oxford comma. And to jolly-well split some infinitives. And start sentences with conjunctions.

If strict British grammar is your passion, rather than a fun read, then hard cheese. It isn’t meant to be bloody Shakespeare. I’m sure there’ll be a new Booker Prize nominee along any minute now.

The artwork was accomplished with help from artlist.io, using its Comic Noir algorithm and many, many attempts, amalgamations, and many hours of editing images to get what I wanted. The book cover was a team effort with Joe and Michelle. 

I’d like to thank David Duhr, Tom Andes, and Alex Myers at Write-by-Night for all their help and advice during multiple rewrites − they certainly helped the book to take shape.

I owe huge thanks to Sara Stratton and her awesome team at Redwood Publishing and to Joe Marich at Marich Media for all their expertise and advice, and for getting the book out into the wild.

Thanks also to friends and family who volunteered as beta-readers − encouraging me, reading early drafts and telling me it was worth pursuing − especially Rachel, Jodi, and Adora.

But mostly I have to thank my wonderful wife, whose belief in me got me started and kept me going, and whose sometimes−brutally−honest opinion made me work hard to keep improving the manuscript.

And a special thanks to Phil for allowing me to make a novel out of his extraordinary life!

If you like the book then please leave a Kindle/Amazon review and get on Social Media! If you don’t, then I’m sorry about that and your secret is safe with me. I hate that you wasted your time, but that’s just the way the cookie gets snatched off the coffee table and eaten by the dog.

So, for the foreseeable future, my wife will once again have to get used to seeing the top of my head over the screen of my MacBook as I spend all my spare time over the next twelve months writing the next book in the Back-In-Time Mystery series! 

Mark

If you loved the book, tell everyone

If you didn’t, tell no one

TM