Interview with Mark Watson

Mark Watson is a British comedian and novelist. His five novels to date – Bullet Points (2004), A Light-Hearted Look At Murder (2007), Eleven (2010), The Knot (2012) and Hotel Alpha (2014) – explore human relationships and communities in contemporary society. His latest novel Hotel Alpha tells the story of an extraordinary hotel in London and two mysterious disappearances that raise questions no one seems willing to answer. External to the novel, readers can also discover more about the hotel and its inhabitants in one hundred extra stories that expand the world of the novel and can be found at http://www.hotelalphastories.com. In conversation here with Dr Katy Shaw, Mark offers some reflections on his writing process, the field of contemporary literature, and the vitality of the novel form in the twenty-first century.