Mark Hodder

Mark Hodder is an English writer of flash fiction and author of seven-part series of Burton & Swinburne steampunk novels that opened with The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack, which went on to win the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award.

Mark Hodder was born in the UK. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and Web producer, Mark had worked in all the new and traditional media and was based in London until 2009, when he relocated to Valencia in Spain to de-stress and write novels.

Mark has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history (1850 to 1950, in particular), good food, cutting-edge gadgets, cult TV (ITC forever!), Tom Waits, and a vast assortment of oddities.

"I spent a lot of my life not being a novelist. I wasn't one during my teens when I was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Mike Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, etc. Nor was I in my 20s when I read Dickens, Thackery, H. G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In my 30s, I moved on to modern literary greats before happily drifting back to sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. I still wasn't a novelist. Then along came my 40s and, finally, I thought to myself: "You've wanted to write novels since you were 11; you'll never do it until you sit down and start writing!" So that's what I did." the author says.

Mark Hodder is also the creator and caretaker of the Blakiana: The Sexton Blake Resource website, which he designed to celebrate, record, and revive Sexton Blake, the most written-about fictional detective in English publishing history.

Mark Hodder currently lives in Valencia, where he writes full-time.

Photo credit: FB @mark.hodder.129