For the last of Cohesion Press’ Author Spotlight, we’re staying in Oz and ambling over to Mark Barnes’ place for a wee chat. I know he already has the coffee and snacks ready, which totally wrecks my penchant for breaking into people’s houses and raiding their fridge. Seems I’ll have to look for something else to steal… 

So, if you kind people could keep Mark occupied while I scope out his place, that would be grand. I’ve shoved him on stage, shoved a mic into his hand, so welcome him to do the wordage thing!

Mark is a nerd, an author, a professional, an artist, and an athlete, not always in that order though proud of all of it. He’s travelled widely though still calls Australia home. At present, he runs a freelance organisational change and communications company, as well as being a professional author of off-centre fantasy with elements of grimdark, cosmic horror, and magepunk.

Born to modest, working-class beginnings, he is the eldest of five children. He developed an appetite for sports at a young age, and was a competition-level swimmer and waterpolo player until his late teens, as well as playing soccer and volleyball. Curious and creative by nature, he leaned into his studies, as well as the arts. He wrote his first short story at the age of seven, and was painting and drawing early, adding music to the mix when he went to high school, which was where he found his love for Table Top Roleplaying Games (TTORPGs) enduring to today.

He cut his teeth on Original Dungeons and Dragons (then it’s many iterations), Bushido, Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, Tunnels and Trolls, and Runequest. Each weekend saw him saddle up with his friends at gaming clubs and venies to roll the bones and create stories. Game mastering at local conventions and with friends was where his love of storytelling flourished. For decades, he focussed on creating stories in new worlds for his roleplaying campaigns before redirecting his efforts into writing short form and long form fiction.

On acceptance to Clarion South 2005, where he met some incredible writers and tutors who became new friends, he started taking writing seriously. He had short stories published in the same year as Clarion, and started work on a novel.

In 2010, he was fortunate to be signed up to the John Jarrold Literay Agency, earning a three-book deal with 47 North for The Echoes of Empire series. Echoes of Empire books were a ranked multiple times in the Amazon Top 10 Best Sellers in Fantasy, twice having all three books in the Top 10 at the same time. The Garden of Stones was nominated for the Gemmel Legend Award where it made the Top 20, and was a finalist in the final five for the Morningstar Award for Best Debut of the Year.

He continues his consulting work and is writing both fantasy and LitRPG novels and short stories.

For SNAFU: Level Up, Mark travelled deep into the ‘verse with SEED OF DESPAIR: When is a game not a game? When nobody can escape and nobody knows death is forever.

You can find Mark on Insta, as well as Facebook, and Bluesky, and Twitter/X.

Want to delve deeper into Mark’s work (doooo iiiitttt), book one of his LitRPG novel, The Mad Gods is out, as well as his fantasy-LitRPG The Cold Road. Get ‘em in your eyeballs!