Mark Morris is an English author known for his series of horror novels, although he has also written several novels based on the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He used the pseudonym J. M. Morris for his 2001 novel Fiddleback.
Morris began his writing career in 1988 as part of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, which was at that time paying claimants £30 a week to be self-employed. His first novel, Toady, was published in 1989 and several further books followed: Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Mr Bad Face, Longbarrow, Genesis and Nowhere Near an Angel. Before Toady, he had written a novel called The Winter Tree, which was rejected by publishers, but allowed him to gain him some familiarity with them. In addition to his major works, Morris has published, as chapbooks, the novellas The Dogs and The Uglimen. Morris has written a great deal of other short fiction, too, his first published short story being 1988's "Homeward Bound," published in the magazine Dark Dreams and continuing well into the 21st century in the anthology Dark Duets: All-New Tales of Horror and Dark Fantasy. Morris has contributed many book reviews to the genre field, as well as essays. He has also published two volumes of short stories, Close to the Bone and Voyages into Darkness and a novel as "J.M. Morris": Fiddleback. A further collection of short fiction, Separate Skins, was due for release from British small press publisher Tanjen, but the publisher went out of business around that time and the book — introduced by Graham Joyce - remains unpublished. A fan of Doctor Who since being terrified by the show as a child, Morris has so far written several books for the BBC Books Doctor Who ranges. For the Eighth Doctor Adventures he wrote The Bodysnatchers, for the Past Doctor Adventuresthe novelDeep Blue, then Forever Autumn and Ghosts of India as part of the New Series Adventures, with the Torchwood novel Bay of the Dead being released on 29 May 2009. He has also written Doctor Who-related audio plays for Big Finish Productions including False Gods, Plague of the Daleks, House of Blue Fire, Moonflesh and The Necropolis Express for the Jago and Litefoot spin-off series. The novel Nowhere near an Angel was intended to be his second J. M. Morris novel for Macmillan, but they rejected it as they considered 'J. M. Morris' to be a female writer, despite Mark's publicity appearances for the novel. Nowhere Near An Angel was published by PS Publishing, and a further planned J. M. Morris novel, "Cold Harbour" was later reworked as "The Black". He is currently published by the small press publisher PS Publishing. Morris has also worked in the retail sector for the book retailer Borders in Leeds.
