Hello! I’m Mark Taylor, a fiction writer based in Manchester in the UK. My stories ‘Dan and the Dead Boy’ and ‘The Double’ have appeared in The Fiction Desk. My story ‘All Seasons Sweet’ was longlisted for the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize.
At the moment, I’m experimenting with writing a tiny story every day. I’m also interested in the ways literature and technology influence each other.
On this site you’ll find info about fiction I publish here and elsewhere, any thoughts I cobble together about the books I read, and very occasional other thoughts.
You can email me at hello@markiswrit.ing – put “bees” somewhere in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not spam. I like bees, and people rarely try to sell them to me.
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Daily stories
The paddling pool arrived just as the weather broke. I carried the rain-spattered box inside. We’ll want it again soon, I thought. Since I cannot leave a parcel unopened, I took it through to the kitchen and took a knife to the packing tape, but my hand slipped and made a long, clean incision through the plastic inside. I let it drop to the ground, and carefully put the knife back in the drawer. Then I went out into the garden, and lay below the storm.
Behind the portrait was a hidden panel, and behind the hidden panel was a safe, and inside the safe was a key. She wasn’t sure what the key was for, but she didn’t have anything worth keeping in the safe, so she thought this would at least make a good joke one day.
At the bank there was a safety deposit box that nobody ever visited. When the fees stopped coming and they drilled the lock, all they found was a slip of paper with a number on it.
The first shelf he put up sloped down to the left, just a little. The second sloped down to the right, rather a lot. He could have rolled a marble down them with some satisfaction. It didn’t much matter. The cat wouldn’t let him put anything on them anyway.
There were three happy birthdays in my condolences card from work. The first was funny. The second stung. The third reminded me that it was, in spite of everything, my birthday.
When we kicked the mud off our boots it made the hallways smell like the old school changing room after football. Takes you back don’t it, one of us said, like there had been no better days since then. I remembered the ways I didn’t cry then, so didn’t cry now.
Recent posts
Bookshops and Bookshelves
Does it happen this way for you? In a bookshop or a library, your eyes and fingers dance over the spines like you are blackberrying, and you are quickly laden with rich fruit. At home, surrounded by all these books you picked, it is as though they have already grown fur. There is nothing to read.
Objects you find in library books: A brief guide
Mark can write a little story, as a treat
I have been writing a tiny story every day for the last six months. I’m not really sure why I started. I think I just thought it would be fun. It was not an attempt to be more disciplined or productive or consistent, which is probably why I’ve been able to keep it up.
Not long after I started, my wife asked me if it ever felt like a burden, having to do it every day. It doesn’t, because I don’t have to do it every day. I get to do it every day. I’ve given myself permission to spend a few minutes of each day on this, whatever else is going on. This is perhaps a healthier attitude to creative practice than any of my past attempts to be more disciplined, productive, or consistent.
Wounding Ruthlessness
Use of Weapons (Iain M. Banks )
There is a small, unimportant detail in Use of Weapons that caught me more than perhaps it ought to have. In hope of extracting a favour from a university, the Culture tracks down a set of wax tablets on which the legendary lost works of a great poet are inscribed. They are held in the wall cavity of a monastery, and are almost completely intact, except for three or four that have been damaged by a fire lit by a passing shepherd.