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Professor Mark: Coming Full Circle with a High School Class
I left Indiana three days after graduation high school, leaving for California. It was my creative writing teacher, Mr. Kenton Monjon, who told me he thought I was one of the few students he’d had who he thought could make it as a writer. And here I am!
I just spoke to two senior creative writing classes yesterday, and I have two more to go. It’s great experience for me: bored high school students are a tough crowd. It’s like being a standup comedian in front of an audience that doesn’t laugh. You keep going. You learn to roll with it. These are all skills I’ll need in the coming months as I embark on Your Write Path.com, offering Guided Autobiography courses, journaling and writing workshops, and of course Dreamshaping. It’s all about living our dreams!
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The Twist Podcast #254: Kansas City Crushes It, Fani Fires Back, and a Loopy Leap Year Listicle
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we salute the Kansas City Chiefs, jaw-drop at Fani Willis’s courtroom fireworks, and offer up a loopy leap year listicle.
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All Kyle Callahan Mysteries Free on Kindle for 5 Days!
You thought I was done with the February giveaways? Not quite …
If you picked up the first in the Kyle Callahan Mysteries at our great BookFunnel giveaway, here’s your chance to get the rest free for five days.
Six more books in the series are free on Kindle from February 15 – 19, including ‘Last Room at the Cliff’s Edge,’ featuring Kyle’s best friend Linda Sikorsky, retired New Hope, PA, police detective.
Just visit the series page at Amazon for all the book, and start downloading!
And remember, reviews and ratings are an author’s best friends.
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‘I, Warlock’ Audiobook Is Out! Plus a Multi-Author BookFunnel Promo (February 15 – 29)
Listen to a 3-chapter sample at the Mark McNease Mysteries Podcast
Fasten your headphones! ‘I, Warlock’ the audiobook has arrived.
“He hoped love was eternal … because he was.”
This is my third audiobook with narrator Sean Rhead, and what a pleasure it is! Listen at Audible.
About ‘I, Warlock’ (currently on sale for $1.99, and available on Kindle Unlimited)
I, Warlock tells the story of Julius Tide, born part-vampire, destined to be all warlock. Julius is an almost accidental warlock, born into a family of witches. He meets the beautiful Charlotte one day at a country fair, and proceeds to dedicate his life to marrying her. Keeping his witching ways a secret, he becomes the night to her day, the guilt to her innocence, as he rushes to solve a mystery that has her family in danger and their futures in doubt. Good confronts evil several times over in this epic battle to save or sacrifice the world, set to the backdrop of a love story for the ages.
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The Twist Podcast #253: Skittish SCOTUS, Biden’s Brain Debacle, and Horrible Valentine’s Gifts for that Special Someone
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we consider SCOTUS’s sudden humility in the face of promised MAGA mayhem, Biden’s big bad brain day, and America’s favorite manufactured holiday. Be our Valentine!
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The Twist Podcast #252: Taylor Triumphant, Joltin’ Jodie Foster, and Some Twist Podcast Predictions for 2024
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose we we toast Taylor Swift’s conquest of the world, give mad props to Jodie Foster, and makes some fun Twist Podcast predictions for the coming year.
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On the Map: Cruising the Caribbean on the Anthem of the Seas (Includes Slideshow and Video)
By Mark McNease
Reprinted from LGBTSR.com
On the Map is a feature at LGBTSr offering travel reviews and experiences.
If you know us, you know we love to cruise, and we’ve been doing it for the 17 years we’ve been together. Now that we’re both retired from the 9-5 world (I prefer the word emancipated), we’re cruising even more. We went to Canada last October, with stops in Boston, Portland, Bar Harbor, Halifax and St. John. We’re heading on another cruise in May, but in the meantime … we just did an 11-nighter to the Caribbean, on Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas.
Cruising is one of the most popular ways to travel and relax at the same time. Cruises offer a variety of benefits that make them appealing to people who like just chilling out at sea, and people who love visiting ports and taking excursions. You can get it all on a cruise, and it’s one of the most affordable getaways available. If you didn’t want to spend any extra money for food, you wouldn’t have to. It’s included! We like going to some of the specialty restaurants, and I enjoy eating locally for lunch, but there’s food available on the ship 24/7.
Five ports in five days!
I love sea days, when we have the entire day and night just to relax, do activities on the ship, encounter people we’ve made friends with on the cruise, and … nap! I’m a big napper. If I can’t get an hour’s sleep in the cabin, I’m happy to recline in a chaise on deck or by the pool, and settle in for a good read and a snooze.
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The Twist Podcast #251: Rick’s Big Birthday, Caribbean Cruise Memories, and an Interview with Hollywood Hustle Author Jon Lindstrom
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose for a recap of Mark’s Caribbean cruise, party hat hurrahs for Rick’s big birthday, and Rick’s interview with Hollywood Hustle author Jon Lindstrom.
Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside—traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win’s troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his “movie money” for her safe return. But what they don’t know is…his movie money is long gone.
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Join my ARC Team for Review Copies of Recent and Upcoming Releases!
Now you can join my ARC (advance review copy) team for review copies of recent and upcoming releases. Just SUBSCRIBE HERE. And coming up next: Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella.
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The Twist Podcast #250: Blast Off in 2024, Listeners Chime In on the New Year, and An Interview with Author Lucas Hilderbrand
Listen in as co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose leap into the New Year, hear from listeners about their hopes for 2024, and enjoy an interview with author and professor Lucas Hilderbrand.
Fasten your headphones for a conversation with Professor Lucas Hilderbrand, whose latest book, The Bars Are Ours, offers a meticulously researched, scholarly and always engaging look at the history of gay bars and their place in queer culture over the decades. We talk about his life, his career, and his dedication to a subject that is as significant as ever.
About Lucas Hilderbrand
Lucas Hilderbrand is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright, also published by Duke University Press, and Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic.
Hilderbrand lives in Los Angeles and teaches film and media, visual, and queer studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has written on the pleasures and politics of video bootlegging, the mediations of queer memory, and the ambiguities of experimental documentary.
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Adds to Bio: Board Member of the Mystery Writers of America – New York Chapter (2024)
I’m officially on the Board for the Mystery Writers of America-New York Chapter! I’ll be heading up the mentoring program. Great start to the new year.
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The Twist Podcast #249: 2023 in the Rearview
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose with a look back at an incredible year – the good, the bad and the meh.
Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, and TheTwistPodcast.com.
Copyright 2023 MadeMark Publishing
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It’s Official: ‘Killer Instinct: A Marshall James Thriller’ Set for Release in Spring, 2024
Two chapters in … three bodies to go. Find out what happened after Marshall got the hell out of L.A. for his life in New York City, only to discover that, “Death beat me to town on the red-eye.”
I’m finally writing a 4th installment in my popular Marshall James series. We’re both getting pretty long in the tooth, Marshall and I, and he kept pestering me to tell at least one more story.
On a more practical front, my gay/lgbtq books have done well over the last 12 years, so I’m returning to that fertile and marginally profitable territory. As much as I love my I, Warlock, and the two House in the Woods books, I can’t seem to get much traction with them. Maybe writing them as M.A. McNease had some effect on that, since people who’ve followed me as Mark aren’t all aware of these books. I loved writing them, and the Warlock Wars promised readers three installments. I’m a writer of my word, so I’ll be busy this year. In the meantime, it’s good to hear Marshall’s voice in my ear again, offering his take on life as a happy pessimist.