Works
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Mark's carefully researched, award-winning screenplay and novel-in-progress, TAMING JUDITH SHAKESPEARE, begins when the playwright, on his deathbed, cuts his youngest daughter out his will and gives his vast wealth to her older sister. Told from the daughter's point of view, the story imagines that Judith has a hidden satchel of his private papers and gets a chance to find out why he disinherited her. The stakes couldn't be higher: her husband has been charged with the murder of Judith's housemaid and friend. What she learns from the pages could prove his innocence and save him from the hangman -- except Judith cannot read....
Next will be a novel about the turn-of-the-20th-century writer and adventurer Jack London, told from the point-of-view of the only woman who understood and tamed Jack, his lover and editor, Charmian Kittredge. Jack's meteoric rise is characteristic of the way he does everything -- at full speed with no regard to life or limb. Perfectly suited to appeal to the public of the time, but not to living a long lifespan, and leaving victims in his sometimes lovable wake....
Mark's first novel, Stevenson's Treasure (Fireship Press, 2014), is set in 1879 when Robert Louis Stevenson embarked on one of the most romantic, ill-advised but wildly successful quests a literary figure has ever made. Young, unknown, and in failing health, he journeyed six-thousand arduous miles from Scotland to California to make Fanny Osbourne his wife, despite the fact that she was already married (unhappily), had children, and was ten years older. And yet, from their first meeting, he knew she was the only woman for him. The yearlong journey changed everything in his life, and planted seeds in his imagination that grew into a worldwide bestseller.. Robert Louis Stevenson's wild journey from Scotland to California to woo an unhappily married American artist, Fanny Osborne. The trip across the ocean and continent almost kills him -- but gives him ideas and a theme for his first international bestseller, Treasure Island.
WATCH A VIDEO RECORDING of Mark giving a talk at the San Francisco library about his research and writing methods for historical fiction by clicking THIS LINK.
HEAR A PODCAST of Mark’s discussion of “Stevenson’s Treasure” in a Capital Public Radio interview with host Beth Ruyak by clicking THIS LINK.