Interview with Author Mark Daniel Taylor

It was refreshing to discuss "A Call from Cobra" during our reading period because it produced a lot of different reactions from the editors. We laughed, we felt the underlying darkness of the work, and eventually, its weird light of hope. We appreciate a piece that approaches sensitive topics with novelty, and Mark Daniel Taylor's story definitely does that. We were also happy to chat a little with the author in the interview below!

What makes you keep writing, even when it's hard?

Shame and guilt, mostly. I love writing, it’s one of the few things that makes me feel like all the cylinders of my brain are whirling. I try and get up early before work and write or else I write on the weekends whenever I can, but whenever I miss a day or I convince myself I’ve earned a morning off, I’ll just spend that time feeling bad that I’m not writing. So even if I know it’s going to be a bad writing day and I’ll only be able to squeeze out a word or two, I know I’ll feel ten times worse if I do nothing. 

What other creative activities do you like to do?

It sounds bad, but there really is nothing else. When I was a teenager, I used to want to make films, but even then, I spent most of my time writing fiction or tapping out bad poetry. 

Do you consider yourself an organized or chaotic writer? 

I used to be really chaotic. It’s funny, actually, when I first started taking my writing seriously, I could write all night. And it used to come really easily back then. The only problem was the writing wasn’t very good. I’d convince myself it was stream-of-consciousness or that I could pull off long sentences without much in the way of punctuation, but whenever I look back on my stuff from then it’s no wonder why I couldn’t get anything published. Now I’m much more regimental about my writing. Early morning, big cup of black coffee, and as few distractions as possible. 

Advice on creating that you’ve learned by trial and error?

The simplest advice any writer can give you is this: you learn by doing. Your goal should be to develop your instincts because that’s what you’re going to be relying on when you’re in the nuts and bolts writing. There’s no shortcut to developing this, you have to write and write and write. Read things that make your heart feel light and then think about how the writer has done that. Anyone can come up with a good idea for a story, but when you’re in the muck of trying to make scenes work and characters feel real, you need to know on a near sub-conscious level what works and what doesn’t. 

What is one unbelievable thing that happened to you that you can't prove to anyone else?

When I’m in a good mood or things are working out well for me, I often feel like I know something is about to happen before it does. It’s like half-déjà vu and half one-ness with the universe. I can’t give you an example because it seems to happen on an instinctual level, but it’s like seeing a car crash in slow motion, except for something good. I’ve known just by the notification sound on my phone when good news has come in, or when to answer an unrecognized number because I know it’s someone I’ve been waiting to hear from. 

Of course, the complete opposite is true when I’m depressed. Then everyone is out to get me, no one likes me, and the universe won’t let anything positive happen to me no matter what.

Describe your workspace.

When the flat is empty, I have a desk in the corner of my room where I work. When I was really annoying and pretentious, I used to write notes and ideas onto the desk itself, and those are still there, but nowadays I keep a notebook next to me instead. I keep pictures on the wall, too, of authors who mean a lot to me (okay, maybe I’m still a bit pretentious) or family and friends, which is good when you need to imagine people looking down and judging you for not working. Otherwise, I’ve found that going outside and working in a coffee shop is a great way of getting away from distractions. I have Twitter and Instagram blocked on my laptop, but getting out of the house also means I won’t fall for the temptations of TV or just walking around the room trying to find reasons not to write. 

What’s the weirdest sound you can make?

My Donald Trump impression is very bad and makes me sound like a clown that’s just had their foot trampled on.

Does your day job affect your writing topic or approach?

I have a great setup at the moment. I work for an arts charity called SET here in London, who make use of buildings while they’re in between ownership and turn them into super affordable studio space for local and underrepresented artists. Maybe because the charity is chiefly staffed by artists, writers, and musicians, we don’t start the workday until ten, and this gives me enough time to write in the morning. I’ve worked for places where I’ve had to start at seven or eight and that was hell because it meant I wouldn’t have time to write in the morning and I’d be too tired to write in the evening. I’d go for days and days without getting a chance to write, and then I’d get depressed and anxious, and I’d put too much pressure on days where I could write and the stuff I’d produce would be rushed or forced, and then I’d get more depressed and more anxious, and I’d put even more pressure on those productive days, etc., etc.

What's your favorite obscure novel or short story (a work you never hear anyone else talking about)?

Did you ever read Wetlands by Charlotte Roche? I don’t know how obscure it is, but I remember it felt like I’d been given illegal contraband when I was introduced to it. It was the first novel I read that made me want to physically gag—it was great. The book is about a woman who is resting in a hospital bed after rupturing an anal fissure and sort of runs through her sexually promiscuous but deeply unhygienic backstory. At one point she starts walking around with an avocado seed inside of her with the hopes that it will take root. I worked in a Wetherspoons at the time, and I lent it to a couple of the other bartenders, and by the end of the week everyone was sharing stories of the effect the book had had on them. I always think about it whenever people talk about the threat of computer games or TikTok or whatever on young people’s attention span. You put the right novel in the right hands, and it will still have a visceral impact on them.  

In your opinion, who is an underrated author that more people should read?

I occasionally write book reviews for The Masters Review, and it’s a wonderful way to discover exciting writers who deserve to be talked about more. I reviewed Diego Gerard Morrison’s The Myth of Pterygium the other year, which is about the poet son of a Mexico City gun runner. Just a really smart, really well written novel, but Goodreads told me it was the least logged book out of everything I read that year, which felt criminal. His new book is just about to come out in paperback, too, so now’s a good time to get on that.

What is your least favorite word? 

I might just be a British prude but my spine curls whenever I hear the word "panties."

What's your editing process? Do you have a first or beta reader, or a workshop group? 

I used to be a member of the Collier Street Fiction Group, but left after the pandemic, mainly because I was getting sick of the video calls that were the only way to make the meetings work. But I made a lot of writer friends through that group, and still share work and get feedback from many of them. I think it’s important to have readers whose tastes you can trust but who will also tell you what you need to hear. 

I used to share work with family and friends, but I try to avoid that nowadays. I think because I’ve tied so much of my ego up with my work, I tend to find if a friend doesn’t like my work, then they don’t like me. But I don’t get that feeling with other writers. 

Do you have a favorite book on writing or creating that's been a helpful resource?

There’s a great book called Tintin and The Secret of Literature by Tom McCarthy. It's a bit of a joke, really, where McCarthy tries to answer the question of whether or not something like Tintin could be considered great literature. He talks about the political context in which Hergé was writing, and obviously his struggles with artistic integrity as an artist who continued to work under Nazi occupation, and whether or not you can apply the philosophical interpretations of someone like Derrida to a comic strip. It’s all tongue-in-cheek, but he likewise makes an argument that the best story in Herge's collection is The Castafiore Emerald, because rather than Tintin globetrotting or travelling to space, it’s a story fueled purely by character and character interaction alone (the titular jewel is nothing more than a vague MacGuffin, an excuse for Tintin and friends to be in the same place). And so, the question of whether or not Tintin is high art becomes immaterial to the fact that good characters are more than enough to make a piece of work feel relevant. 

Where do you go when you need to work out a writing block? 

It’s a tired answer, but the reality is you just need to go for a walk or else do something where you aren’t staring at a blank page. The answer will come to you, you've just got to give it space. I don’t know how many times I’ve come up with an answer to a problem just as my head hit my pillow. 

What are your long-term writing goals? 

Like most writers, I think, my ultimate dream is simply to make enough money writing that I can spend less time at day job and more time writing. In reality, I’d love to reach a point where I could write and teach, or else write and work with other writers in some capacity. 

What is your favorite banned book?

I recently reread The Catcher in the Rye after not picking it up since I was a teenager and I forgot how great it is. Exactly what it feels like to be a boy caught awkwardly between childhood and adulthood. Every now and then you come across people saying that they couldn’t get into a book because the lead character is unlikeable, but I think my tastes lean the other way. I can’t stand a likeable lead character. Give me a moody, sarcastic, angry, confused, unpleasant, ridiculous, pretentious little shit like Holden Caulfield, and I’ll be happy. 

Pigs or chickens?

I read a thing not too long ago about pigs and how intelligent and emotional they are. Like, if a farmer walks up to a cow with a knife in their hands, they’ll carry on chewing the clod of grass in their mouths, but a pig will freak out. And if you take one pig away from a group, then the group will get sad and morose. Just very big-brained and big-hearted creatures. I’ve been trying to cut out pork for this very reason. Team Pigs over here.    

Do you believe in free will? Why or why not?

I think the problem is that we are bombarded with so much crap day to day that it’s nearly impossible to untangle it all. I know for a fact that I’ve made decisions because of adverts or because I saw other people doing it on Instagram. I can argue that it was my own will to want to buy a burger for lunch—that my body is deficient in that specific combination of beef, onions, and cheese—but the reality is, I bought it because I saw an ad for it around about the time my stomach was grumbling. I don’t think that means we don’t have free will (we plainly do!) but to suggest we don’t make decisions because of outside forces would be equally ludicrous. Another thing that always surprises me—and which I am only ever able to decipher after the fact—is how easily your brain chemistry can change how you feel. It’s like I forget that a large part of my mood and personality is defined by how much serotonin is knocking about inside of me at any given time. 

Do I think the universe is pre-calculated or are there things that were simply bound to happen? Again, that all depends on my mental state at the time. When I’m depressed, then the universe is an uncaring black hole where morality and justice are figments of a naïve dream. When I’m happy and things are working out—yeah, that’s because these destinies are written in the stars. 

Although I sometimes think that’s still my depression talking. I can’t even take credit for the good things that happen to me. 

If you were a cryptid, what would your name be and what strange habits would people whisper about?

The Para Noid, a strange, oddly dressed creature that sits in the corner of rooms and assumes everyone is talking about him. Will apologize for absolutely everything, even things that weren’t his fault. 

Unpopular opinion, go: 

I don’t like any of his other movies, and on the whole believe he is a terrible filmmaker, but I thought Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon movies were good. They’re not well written or well made, but I think in a world where we have too many Star Wars spin-offs, it’s nice to have a science fiction/fantasy story that is based on an original premise and does stupid things like have star ship engines built in the same the shape as the Jenova cryogenic chamber from Final Fantasy VII.

Mark Daniel Taylor is a writer from Plymouth, UK. He is an alumnus of the 2020 New Orleans Writers' Residency and was a finalist in the 2023 Killer Nashville Claymore Award and the Adventures in Fiction New Voices Competition. He now lives in London, where he is working on his debut novel, Infinity Land.