Mark Henwick
Author of Bite Back (Urban Fantasy) and Among the Stars (SciFi)
Updated: 1 day 5 hours ago
November 2025 Update
TRANSLATIONS
SPAIN
I know, I know, I said I would never even contemplate a Spanish translation again, after the disaster I had with the first 4 books of Bite Back in 2023.
But then Cinta gives me a call and points out that SF is a very different genre, and is popular in Spain, and the heroine Zara is part Spanish with an obviously Spanish name, and she’ll give me such a good price on translating ‘A Name Among the Stars’, and maybe it’ll provide a boost for Amber as well…
So…
In the spring of 2026, hablando en español, Zarate Mirari Aguirre, daughter, and last of the Founding Family Aguirre, will speak her Name with pride, for it is a Name Among the Stars, and that they can never erase.
Y veremos. And we will see.
For those who haven’t read the Among the Stars books (currently 2, but another 2 coming):
An heiress fleeing for her life. A forbidden and terrifying Artificial Intelligence loose in the galaxy. A telepathic alien race living hidden alongside humanity. A deadly conspiracy silently spreading through human space. The secret sorrow of a whole planet revealed for all to see.
A vow that must be broken. A love that cannot be.
Duty and honor.
A huge and developing story set in the distant future with a sweep that encompasses the whole of humanity, told mainly from the perspective of Zara Aguirre, daughter, and last of the great Founding Family Aguirre, who abandons her home world to save her life.
A review of Among the Stars by
Charles de Lint
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“It’s a delicious mix of the Brontë sisters, murder mystery, sf drama,
space opera, and just general romance and derring-do…
I could sense the joy of storytelling on every page.
This one hit the mark on every point.”
http://mybook.to/Among_the_Stars
And at the same time as I release ANAtS, I will unpublish Revelación (the Bite Back series name in Spain) and re-brand in line with the English and German style, and republish. Amazon mis-categorized book 1 as erotica when it was launched, which just destroyed all the marketing effort. They claim that the problem was ‘fixed’, but it was still possible to get an Amazon list of Urban Fantasy books with book 1 suppressed completely. Makes selling it difficult. Republishing with a different ISBN and Amazon code will finally cure that, I hope.
FRANCE
I have been promised the final editing for ‘L’oeil du Serpent’ (‘Snake Eyes’) in French will be complete in December, and so we’ll be launching in January along with the 3 translated novellas (‘The Biting Cold’, ‘Winter’s Kiss’ and ‘Change of Regime’).
I’ve tentatively agreed for ‘The Harvest of Lies’ to be translated into French as well next summer. It is, after all, set in French Saigon!
GERMANY
I’m wondering if I should get ‘The Harvest of Lies’ translated into German. Thoughts?
All of which will increase the pressure on me to write more and write quickly.
WRITING PROGRESS
I spent a lot of November coughing and sneezing, which was irritating and held me up a bit. I am making progress, but I have clearly bust the predictions I made for publication, and Bite Back book 9 is now categorically and unequivocally ‘late’.
I keep editing and re-editing, feeling that passages are simply not good enough. I am trying various ways to fix this. Keep checking in.
A snippet. Amber and party have been ambushed, but who are the ambushers?
MARKETING
Been in the doldrums a bit this year. Our main marketing channels are Facebook and Amazon. Both of them have apparently turned over their internal algorithms to AI, and now no one knows how to get any traction for any length of time. The support execs can’t tell you because they don’t know why the algorithms are doing what they’re doing.
We’re running an Amazon Countdown now (basically SoH for 99c), which has got the Amazon rating moving, and we’ll follow that with another concerted effort right through into 2026. Traditionally, pre-Christmas isn’t a good time for marketing, but nothing is working ‘traditionally’, so we’re trying different things.
Yes, we’ve had a look at BookBub and BookTok and Instagram.
Our other marketing challenge in the new year is how to advertise those translations.
In France, although Hachette have closed the deal we had, I don’t have the rights for the rest of Bite Back series. Those could come back by expiration or purchase of the contract, but that’s in the future. The first challenge is how to advertise for book 8 on its own! Theoretically, you should be able to go to Amazon and say ‘promote this to everyone who has read the Bite Back series so far’. Amazon might do that, but again, they might not. The second point is that Hachette’s main market was in bookshops with printed copies, and there’s no way we’ll be able to match their access there.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
URBAN FANTASY THRILLERS
Amber Farrell – Paranormal PI
BITE BACK SERIES
I anticipate 11 or 12 books in total to conclude the series arc of Emergence
Prequel: Raw Deal
1: Sleight of Hand
2: Hidden Trump
3: Wild Card
4: Cool Hand
5: Angel Stakes
5.1 The Biting Cold (associated novella)
5.2 Winter’s Kiss (associated novella)
5.3 Change of Regime (associated novella)
6: Inside Straight
7: Queen of Diamonds
8: Snake Eyes
9: Not yet named
Others from the BITE BACK universe
Characters from these books appear in the main series
BIAN’S TALE
1: The Harvest of Lies
Anticipated 6 books following Bian from her early life in 1890 Vietnam
to the point she becomes Daikon of House Altau, prior to the start of BITE BACK
https://mybook.to/THoL
BITE BACK: OUTSIDERS
1: The Biting Cold
https://mybook.to/TheBitingCold
2: Winter’s Kiss
https://mybook.to/WintersKiss
A short novella series with a PNR flavor introducing the background of House Lloyd
This miniseries fits between books 5 and 6 of the main BITE BACK series
LONG ISLAND ATHANATE
Change of Regime
https://mybook.to/ChangeOfRegime
Stand-alone novella set between books 5 and 6 of the main BITE BACK series
providing some insight into House Altau in New York
When ‘Stand Up’ appears, it will be in this group
SCIENCE FICTION
THE LONG WAY HOME
I anticipate 6 or 7 books in this series
Prequel: No Other Course
1: The Dark Takes Fools
2: Out of the Dark
3: Born in Fire
4: Don’t Stop Now
Their war has just ended.
Their struggle has just begun.
Their colony will die if they fail.
Finally discharged from the military, Janice and Bjorn are the only two survivors of a group recruited from the remote and isolated colony of Calloway. It’s left to them to find a way to get life-saving technology back to their home planet before everyone left in the colony dies.
It’s an impossible task, but no one can convince Jan and Bjorn of that.
Betrayed by the Earth’s government, never more than a step from disaster, they have to battle against corruption, greed… and pirates… on The Long Way Home.
Series link
https://mybook.to/TLWH
AMONG THE STARS
I anticipate 4 or 5 books in this series
1: A Name Among the Stars
2: A Threat Among the Stars
(As detailed in first section)
Categories: Authors
October update
Happy Halloween! <Ominous Sean Penn voice> Winter is coming.
Writing Progress in October
Not a great deal to report.
Writing continues to be slow and usually steady. Certainly no writing sprints at the moment.
One reason is that there’s a lot of information that’s been hanging over the story for the last couple of books, and I don’t want to info-dump, so it has to be worked in amongst the action and reaction cycle of the story without interrupting the flow.
There’s ‘how’ and ‘why’ in the worldbuilding, for instance, but also, during this book, Amber’s going to be asked who are you ultimately loyal to? There are lots of tricks to appear to answer this question without answering it, but it’s such a fundamental part of Amber’s character that I want to be clear in her response while ensuring that the reader senses how much hangs in the balance over her reply.
In the meantime, there are some easier parts, and here’s some banter between Amber and her team regarding a handsome young werewolf…
Other fun writing stuff that needs a lot of polishing includes fights that take place in the spirit world and the physical world at the same time. This is much more difficult than ordinary fights. I did have feedback on Snake Eyes that some readers strongly preferred the physical world fights. A few hated the entire spirit world section where Amber meets the Stone Serpents and overcomes their challenges. That all had to happen, and I’m taking the core of the criticism to mean that I need to depict spirit world conflict better. More urgent. More ‘real’. I can understand there can be an impression that the spirit world is like a sort of dream state and can’t hurt the protagonists. I guess I’m going to have to show that’s not the case.
Translations
The fourth book of ‘Der lange Weg nach Hause’ (The Long Way Home in German) is now on the Amazon servers. The title is ‘Jetzt oder Nie’ (Now or Never).
I’m still waiting for the final, post-edit & beta-read versions of Bite Back 8 in French ‘L’œil du serpent’, but it’s real close.
A friend of mine is looking at translating Sleight of Hand into Farsi! I will be delighted, but, after the painful sting of attempting to market Bite Back in Spanish, I’m not looking at actively pursuing any languages outside of English, German and French.
Print versions
I have also promised to make the Bite Back novellas into paperbacks, and I will get to it. Soon. Ish.
Snake Eyes Print Book Breaking news:
I happened to use my author print copy of Snake Eyes to check on something and found that there is a massive print error. The chapter titled 58 is in fact 54, and so 54 is 55, 55 is 56, etc. down to 58.
There is no problem with the eBook. I have no idea how this has happened, and it has been corrected now.
My apologies to all those who have bought the print book. I am going to talk to Amazon to see how to resolve this.
Raw Deal offer
I have had one person report that the link for a free copy of Raw Deal (the Bite Back prequel) didn’t work. This is from the link in the back of the main novels. I’ve tested and I can’t see what might have caused this. Has anyone else had a problem?
Monthly content or short story release
I raised this last time and got a few vociferous comments that I should be getting those short stories already available onto Amazon rather than free reading on WordPress.
The stories form part of the Among The Stars Science Fiction series, mainly the long-delayed book 3, ‘A Ship Among the Stars’.
Other
I haven’t forgotten any of my ‘orphans’, but I am seriously writing much slower than I did.
Categories: Authors
September Update
Well, summer has definitely gone!
Writing Progress
I spent a few days this month down at a friend’s house in Teignmouth, a small port in Devon. It’s a place that helps me write because just about the only thing you can hear from his living room is the wind and the seagulls. I used the mornings to write and then we went for strenuous walks in the afternoon. There are lots of hills there. In the evening, I wrote some more and then we made ourselves some dinner and set to putting the world to rights with a glass of wine or two.
Progress on the book is good in fits and starts. I can’t seem to maintain a regular schedule of thousands of words a day. I’m too easily distracted.
As I’ve mentioned in previous updates, Amanda Lloyd comes in as a second point of view character in this book. Have a read of the two snippets below and tell me what you think…
Here’s a snippet from Amanda’s PoV:
And here’s one from Amber’s PoV:
Translations
I’m still waiting for the final, post-edit & beta-read versions of Bite Back 8 in French “L’œil du serpent” and The Long Way Home 4 in German “Jetzt oder Nie”.
The previous French translations have all been done by Bragelonne (now part of Hachette), and they did the covers, which we have to match to a reasonable level. Here is a composite of the images:
Print versions
My apologies, it has taken me a year to get book 8 in German released as a paperback. Anyway, it’s there now.
I have also promised to make the novellas into paperbacks, and I will get to it. Soon. Ish.
Monthly content or short story release
For those who read my Science Fiction, you probably already know that I have a couple of short stories that will form part of book 3 of the Among The Stars series.
Whatever I do with them, they will be temporary, because they’d have to be taken down when the full book is released.
In the meantime, would you like to read them as posts on WordPress, or would you like to buy them as very short novellas on Amazon?
Other
I haven’t forgotten any of my ‘orphans’. Here’s a reminder that Bian’s Tale will continue with The Words of the Dead. This was part of an ad campaign I was working on when I shelved it.
Categories: Authors
What fiction am I reading?
Links at the end of sections
Police procedurals
Renée Ballard
I am re-reading the Renée Ballard series by Michael Connelly (clumsily renamed the Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch series after book 1). There were several reasons for this, among them that my work in progress will involve a criminal investigation and also that I was recommended the Ballard TV series on Amazon Prime based on these books.
The story is about a Los Angeles female detective.
I liked the books the first time around, and still do.
I liked the first season of the TV series, which was sitting at #1 on Amazon Prime recently. I hope they go ahead with subsequent seasons.
The star of the TV show is Maggie Q, as the eponymous detective Ballard. She does a fantastic job, and I’m only angry that Jessica didn’t get to play the part!
But (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you) why did they change so much from the book? Book detectives need a quirk as well as all the other character- and world-building structures around them. In the books, get this, Renée is homeless. Connelly manages to make it work. LA traffic is so appalling, Renée lives in her van and after working the night shift (the ‘Late Show’ of the book 1 title) she picks up her faithful dog from the sitter, surfs and paddle boards a bit, and then sleeps in her tent on a quiet beach. In the show, she lives with her grandmother. Yawn.
Minor gripes aside, I recommend both the books and the TV show.
Eve Ronin
Also re-reading. Very much cut from the same cloth as Renée Ballard, although Eve works in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department rather than the LAPD. The LASD has jurisdiction over the parts of LA county outside the main city. The story starts in ‘Lost Hills’ with a jurisdictional dispute!
The quirk in this series is that Eve got her job as a detective by taking advantage of the social media reaction to her unplanned, out-of-uniform takedown of an action movie star who was assaulting his girlfriend. Her early promotion is resented by most of the detectives in the LASD, despite proving herself again and again, and Eve has to continue to engage in the politics of policing just to keep her job.
You think I give my characters a hard time… Eve ends up in hospital on a regular basis. And, like Renée, she doesn’t have an off-switch.
Recommended.
I went back to this series partly because I was re-reading Ballard, to compare and contrast. I enjoyed it just as much, but they are very different in feel. Lee Goldberg has had a lot of success as a TV scriptwriter, and the books are clearly written with TV in mind, so when I heard a rumor there was going to be a TV show, I called Jessica. Nah, too late, they’ve already cast the character.
How good will the TV show be, if it comes off? Impossible to say, but I bet they have trouble with the ambivalent feelings that Eve has about her success, which gives the books depth.
Will they have a TV show, given this is similar to Renée Ballard? I wish I knew how the minds of TV execs worked. Maybe the similarity will encourage them, or maybe it’ll put them off.
I mean, I really don’t know how their minds work. Why do they take quirky characters from books and try and make them more like plain vanilla, audience-will-be-familiar-with-this stereotypes. I get the marketing angle, that there’s already an audience out there for Ballard (65k reviews on Amazon USA) or Ronin (31k reviews), but surely that audience will be irritated that the characters aren’t the ones in the books.
It’s not that there isn’t precedence for creating unusual TV characters rather than taking book characters and damping them down… True Detective comes to mind.
(I’m also watching NCIS Hawaii, which is reasonable, and which the execs stopped after the 3rd season)
Ballard links
USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WLQL7SH
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06WLQL7SH
Eve Ronin links
USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JW53H22/
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JW53H22/
Urban Fantasy
Sam Quinn
This series starts with The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar. It’s written by Seana Kelly.
It’s popular. Sam Quinn doesn’t get to do much bartending (or book selling). She’s a sort of hybrid werewolf/witch. The book trots along with Sam making lots of dumb choices and managing to stay ahead of things by being more powerful than anyone (reader included) realizes or by Deus Ex Machina plot twists.
I wonder if she gets the same sort of negative feedback as I do for her hot sex scenes?
Ninth House
Highly rated, and written by Leigh Bardugo.
I haven’t gotten into it yet, but it is different, which I am enjoying.
Sam Quinn links
USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089973N41/
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089973N41/
Ninth House links
USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVPTTSZ/
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07NVPTTSZ/
Others
The Lot Lands series, starting with The Grey Bastards, by Jonathan French.
Orcs! Nasty fellows. Book 1 is a hugely enjoyable read. I have the second, which has a change of narrating character, and I haven’t fully gotten into it yet.
Categories: Authors
Monthly update for August
Urban Fantasy
Current project: Bite Back 9.
Not a huge amount to say about writing progress, other than August wasn’t the best month for concentrated work.
As mentioned in last month’s update, some of the scenes are being provided from Amanda Lloyd’s point of view. It’s quite fun using a different voice and perception of events to describe what’s happening at Haven.
I’m still debating on the amount of darkness I have in this book. It’s not so much the darkness itself, it’s the arc of the story. In a single book, the traditional arc of the book goes something like this:
- Setup and background.
- The event that precipitates the main story.
- The major setback.
- The point at which it all seems hopeless.
- The fight back and victory.
- Tie it up neatly.
In theory, a series should have a similar arc, but I’d drive many of you away if I spent an entire book on section 4, where everything seems hopeless. Bite Back 9 is in that area. Amber keeps winning, but she’s losing herself in the process.
As mentioned last time, Amber’s focus for much of this book is hunting down Askrynos, the Matlal operative that is highly placed in the government. That’s distracting her from the new Assembly, i.e. the Assembly put together to represent all the paranormal races. It’s a race between that and the official acknowledgement in the human world that the paranormal exists.
Translations.
Snake Eyes is nearly there in French. I’ve no idea how to market it and the novellas (which are ready to go) in France, where Bite Back 1-7 are still being published by the Bragelonne division of Hachette.
Science Fiction
Book 4 in The Long Way Home, Don’t Stop Now to be released as ‘Jetzt oder Nie’ (Now or Never), has been translated, but it still in quality control checking. I don’t have a German-specific Facebook page for Science Fiction, but I will be announcing the release on the German UF page and the SciFi & author pages I run.
Marketing
Facebook is endlessly tweaking its algorithms, and several notable authors have posted that their sales have slowed dramatically, including writers like Jennifer Estep.
I don’t know what they’re doing. I’m spending much less on advertising with Facebook, but my team are coming up with an Amazon campaign, which is probably what we will need in France anyway.
I’ll keep you posted!
Other
I’m learning the piano. I can sort of play melodies with my right hand, and chords with my left, but when it gets to putting them together… lol!
I used to play the guitar at school (very badly), but I wrote a lot of lyrics, to which my friend Colin composed music.
There are a couple of lines in my books, which I’ll be turning into complete songs, but don’t worry, I will not be singing them. I may try and persuade Jessica.
May release them in the newsletter…
Also re-read a couple of police procedural books to get my mind into Amber being a PI again. I’ll review those and others in a separate post.
Categories: Authors
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