That Thorn Guy is a website which collects various news, information, art, excerpts and quotations that are to do with Mark Lawrence and his books. In addition, I frequently run related competitions and feature interviews with authors, artists and bloggers, who either helped judging these contests or some other way are connected to Mark.

I opened the site on 25 January 2015 and sent the link to Mark as a present, in appreciation of his books which I very much love. The inspiration for such an idea partly came to me as I was reading through the first draft of The Wheel of Osheim, which he kindly asked me to critique toward the end of 2014. Another motivation was that I myself often took a long time in the past to find some of his earlier guest posts, interviews, or a fan art that I remembered someone created. For convenient, easy access I thought it would be nice to see everything together in one place in an organised fashion.

For a name I decided on the one George R. R. Martin called Mark, when at the Jo Fletcher Books’ fourth year anniversary party in 2014 he humorously referred to him as ‘that thorn guy’ in our conversation.

While in the beginning I didn’t have a clear vision about the future of this venture, I eventually ended up staying at the wheel and coming up with ideas on how the site could engage the incredibly supportive readership and at the same time provide them with relevant information. Having attracted over 17,000 visitors with over 35,000 views in 2015 and with figures set to well exceed those in 2016 I hope that what was initially intended as a gift to Mark has in the end become a present to many.

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About Mark

Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled. His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say ‘this isn’t rocket science … oh wait, it actually is’.

Between work and caring for his disabled child, Mark spends his time writing, playing computer games, tending an allotment, brewing beer, and avoiding DIY.

You can find Mark on:

Facebook

Twitter

On his blog

On Goodreads

On Wattpad

On his official website

His Newsletter

Instagram

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About Agnes

When not in a fantasy world, I can be found in London, and when not reading books, I’m balancing them for work.

I have recently been encouraged back to writing, which I enjoyed as a teenager, but due to circumstances decided to give up in my early twenties. I opened a blog in the autumn of 2014 and started practising there under the pen name of ‘Mitriel Faywood’, just so I could prove my little supportive group of friends wrong. Or right. My first fantasy short story, Framing and Entering, has been so far very nicely received and can be read on my blog or on Wattpad. Encouraged by its popularity with readers I’m now working on my first book.

This site, which is dedicated to Mark Lawrence and his works, I created and manage alone, but I’m always open to suggestions and ideas from other readers and fans. I originally planned to stay in the background as much as I could as the admin here, since I wanted the focus on Mark, and not on me, but it started creating all sorts of confusions over the net, which prompted me to adjust this section. Anyhow, I hope you like the page and found what you were looking for. Any feedback is always very much appreciated. – Agnes

.You can find me on my blog, Facebook, Twitter & Wattpad