Learn How This Writer Is Marketing His Latest Spy Thriller

Mark Sable is one of the best comic book writers I know. I totally fell in love with his work when I read Fearless, a story about a superhero who experiences anxiety and needs to take anti-fear drugs to keep it at rest. As a person who doesn’t read comics, I was blown away with the story and art. Now, Mark is onto bigger and better things this year and I was so thrilled to be able to catch up with him.

BelkisNYC: Unthinkable is a spy thriller taking place after the events of 9/11. Basically, the government hired a group of writers to come up with worse case terrorists scenarios so they can find solutions to prevent such cases. Apparently, someone liked one of the writer’s terrorist plan so much that they are actually using it. Pretty wicked thinking. What inspired you to write such a story?

MSable: Well, the government Think Tank that I’m writing about – it was real. I read about it shortly after someone leaked it to the press from The Pentagon. I was actually shocked that no one else thought of doing a fictional spin on it, especially since it was a group of writers. Maybe they were sworn to secrecy.

BelkisNYC: Unthinkable is being released in May. I see you have done a little marketing push on it. My favorite is the UNTHINKABLE ARG (altered reality game). How did the idea of having an accompanying online game to the book come to play?

MSable: First, let me just explain to your readers what an ARG, or at least the UNTHINKABLE ARG entails, since it’s not something I was familiar with until recently.

An ARG is an “interactive narrative” that uses the real world as a platform, to tell a story that is affected by the participants’ ideas or actions.

Players (who I hope will become readers) were “recruited” by The Wolfpack (a fictional Private Military Contractor in the vein of Blackwater) by e-mail to track and eventually hunt down supporting characters from the comics. Each week they’d get a mission, and they’d have to scour real and fictitious websites for information.
I have to give credit to the marketing and editorial staff at BOOM! Studios for the idea of the ARG itself. Specifically Chip Mosher, Dafna Pleban and Ian Brill (who also helped with the execution). An ARG was a perfect fit because, much like the story of UNTHINKABLE itself, an ARG mixes fictional and real-world people, places and events.

BelkisNYC: What steps did you have to take for this game to become a reality?

MSable: Oh, wow, a lot. I’d say I worked on the ARG almost as much as I worked on the book itself. I wanted it to be an extension of the book itself. I wanted the players to feel like their actions had consequences for the characters in the book.

Working on a very limited budget, I had to make those characters appear to be real people who existed in the real world before the game existed. I created blogs for them, backdating entries to just after 9/11. I gave them e-mail and Twitter accounts, LinkedIn resumes, Amazon Wish Lists etc.

For those of your readers who are interested, here are the links to the three characters the ARG focused on:

ISOMER, A nuclear physicist: http://isomergrenade.livejournal.com/

THE PROPHET, A right-wing, Christian fundamentalist author: http://bringontheendtimes.wordpress.com/

And PEAK OIL, the target of the hunt: a left-wing, radical Peak Oil economist: http://peakoilishere.blogspot.com/

I then created stories for these characters – what had happened in their lives between 9/11 and the events of the book. Finally, I plotted the missions out, what would happen once the players started tracking them.

I’d like think we did a good job of making them seem as real. So much so that it scared me how easy it is to fake identities and conspiracies. I fear that one day I’m going to read someone thinking my fictional conspiracy theories are real on Wikipedia.

BelkisNYC: Did you encounter any obstacles while trying to get this game up and running? If so, what were they?

MSable: I think the two biggest obstacles were lack of a budget and lack of knowledge on my part about ARGs and the internet. I imagined that we’d be creating all these web sites, and have video…really ambitious stuff which we just couldn’t afford. At the end of the day, The Wolfpack website (Having no money made us even more creative though, and it was amazing how much we was able to accomplish using free resources available to everyone.

As far as my lack of technical knowledge, I’m not a Luddite by any means, but I can’t program in html or anything. But once I got over my fear and embraced Blogger, Twitter etc. – it opened up an entirely new world for me that I hope to continue to using, not just for Unthinkable, or just for ARGs, but for marketing in general.

BelkisNYC: What skills does one need to possess in order to pull off creating a new online game?

MSable: Obviously, I think having money and technical know how would be great, but I think I did pretty well without either. Aside from my writing skills, I think it came down to time, to really investing time in making a world that people wanted to explore.

That and…I’m not sure if this is a skill, but an appreciation that your players are more than likely smarter than you. They will think of answers to questions you haven’t even asked. And you have to be able to react quickly.

That was one place where Twitter helped me out. The first two missions were relatively easy. The third was pretty damn hard – it involved finding the location of the Peak Oil character. We encoded geo-location coordinates into a jpeg UNTHINKABLE’S artist, Julian Totino Tedesco, created. Now to me…I didn’t know about geo-location, but it became apparent that the most of the hard-core players would.

Using Twitter, I was able to play the role of Peak Oil, taunting my followers with false locations. I’d be like, “Wow, Venezuela is sure nice this time of year…at least that’s what I thought yesterday, when I flew from there to another Iran.” Stuff like that, I’d keep doing over and over. That was probably my favorite part of the game.

BelkisNYC: How long have you been working on this whole project?

MSable: Really since pretty close to 9/11, when I learned of the real Think Tank’s existence. I came up with the concept pretty quickly. Then I went into research mode…I read every book on terror I could find, talking to people in the intelligence and military etc. As I write this, finishing the last couple issues, I’m STILL doing research.

I mean, there’s a big difference if you put J.K. Rowling in this Think Tank as opposed to Tom Clancy or Warren Ellis. Alan Ripley, the protagonist, is in the Tom Clancy vein, but a bit of a wannabe soldier/spy. He’s a writer, not an action-hero when the story starts, and the story about him learning to become the hero he wants to be.

After that…I outlined the story over the past 2-3 years, give or take, constantly revising to keep up with the real world as it changed. With the ARG…that had to be done in a really short period of time – I had to write everything in a couple months, on top of the actual comic writing.

BelkisNYC: Besides the game, how will the world know that UNTHINKABLE exist?

MSable: One I should be asking you, in fact, since you’re the comics pr/marketing guru.

BelkisNYC: Interviewing with me is a start! Plus, I always see you in conventions which is always a good idea to attend simply because it doesn’t always have to be about sales but also about networking (although, I did write about having a great presentation in conventions here). Also, don’t be afraid to attend social events that aren’t related to comics. The whole point is to get the book outside of the comic industry.  I know that BOOM! Studios has helped you with the marketing as well.

MSable: BOOM! Studios has the best marketing team of any publisher I’ve worked with, and they’ve been tremendous in getting the word out. I’ve done interviews with comics sites, tried to reach out to my fan base with my blog (marksable.blogspot.com), message board and twitter (twitter.com/marksable…the easiest place to reach me). I even personally called as many retailers as I could.

To me, that was one of the best things about comics as a fan growing up, how accessible the creators were. You can generally have a genuine conversation with just about anybody in comics, as opposed to trying to get a hold of a Hollywood writer/director or movie star.

But I’m always looking for new ways to reach readers, ESPECIALLY readers outside of comics, so if you’ve got any suggestions I’d love to hear them. It’s not too late!

BelkisNYC: Tell us why people should read UNTHINKABLE.

MSable: As well-researched as it is, at the end of the day I didn’t set out to write a 9/11 conspiracy book (living in NY during 9/11, in fact, I tried to be extra-sensitive in that regard). Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fascinating that so much of what we think is “Unthinkable” could really happen. But at the end of the day, UNTHINKABLE is a smart, edgy but most of all fun spy thriller. It’s cliché to say “if you liked this, then you’ll love that”…but I’d say if you are a fan of Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country graphic novels, the Jason Bourne movies or the new direction of the James Bond films, UNTHINKABLE is aimed at you.

I only mentioned one comic, and two movies…because I think there’s a shortage of espionage thrillers in comics, and just speaking as a fan, I think we need books about more than just superheroes (although I love writing and reading superhero books as much as anyone).

BelkisNYC: Any tips for young writers who are trying to break into the comic book industry?

MSable: I can only suggest the path I chose, which was not a particularly easy or short way of going about it. Which is to try and find and artist, put together a pitch, and get something published. Even if it’s self-published…handing someone a comic is always better than handing them a script. A comic will get looked at, if not read. A script or a pitch will likely just get thrown out.

BelkisNYC: Any last comments or thoughts?

MSable: Just a big thank you, Belkis. Not only do I appreciate you helping me get the word out about Unthinkable, I think you and your site present a much needed service for comic creators. Literally, as I was writing this I took a break to check out your site and got distracted reading about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And I’m realizing, here I am talking about how clever I was with the ARG, and you just taught me something I and all other comic creators should be doing.

The best writers and artists are not necessarily the best at promoting their own material, and we need smart, charismatic people like you to make our voices heard over everyone else’s.

BelkisNYC: Mark, thanks for the kind words. Glad you find my blog useful. As you know, I am always happy to help any way I can.

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