Podcasts and Literature
Mark interviews high school friends he hasn’t talked to in 20 years, and catches up with them.
Mark, along with his friends from itsjustawesome.com take a movie genre and explore what they think is the BEST example, the WORST example, and the UGLIEST example of that genre.
Mark, along with his friends from itsjustawesome.com compare novels to their movie adaptations.
literature - open queries
The Treasure in the Forest - Picture Book
Story:
Written as an origin myth for colors, my story appeals to lovers of books like The Legend of the Bluebonnet and The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, both of which have an emphasis on bold aesthetics and the elements of fable. In a village at the edge of a forest, a young girl named Dara follows a bird into the forest. Along every step of her journey, Dara’s acts of kindness, intelligence and curiosity release a different color into the world, but it isn’t until she faces a fearsome tiger that her eyes are opened to the new world around her.
The premise is based on the real anthropological discovery that almost all cultures give names to colors in a similar order, always starting with red and not naming blue until much later in development of their language. (In fact, The Odyssey and The Iliad don’t contain any mentions of the color blue.
I have attached five pieces of concept art, showing how earlier illustrations will be in black and white, and with each part of Dara’s journey, a new color will be added until the final pictures are fully saturated. The subsequent book dummy includes the full illustrations along with sketches for the remaining pages.
About Me:
I am a professional artist, dealing largely in the intricate ink drawings you see here that draw people in with the hidden words and images I work into the detailing. I am also a novelist who has been a member of a small writing and critique group for nine years, and a member of the DFW Writers' Workshop for three. Thank you for your time,
schoolhouse : Madhouse - upmarket satire
My novel Schoolhouse : Madhouse is the tale of Mr. Greene, a first-year teacher armed with his idealism and work ethic, who blunders into Daledell Delldale Delldale ISD where the laws of logic and reason hold no sway. It is the kind of place where an elderly teacher can lecture from the hospital bed they’ve wheeled into her classroom and have her nurses take over teaching when she finally kicks the bucket. It’s the kind of place where the new English curriculum proudly waters down the classics into 500-word "excerptettes" like R0M30-tron and JU13T-bot, a tale of forbidden robot-love that teenagers can really relate to.
Luckily Mr. Greene finds hope in Lily, his mentor teacher and a veteran of the school, who has decided to ignore the district's asinine policies and initiatives in order to do what’s right for her students. Throughout the insanity of their school year, Mr. Greene and Lily put their new friendship and their very careers on the line in a struggle against the treacherous machinations of the district and the devious mastermind behind all the madness, their own principal. Why take the risk? Because the students deserve it.
Written as the Catch-22 of public school, Schoolhouse : Madhouse is upmarket fiction, clocking in at just under 100,000 words that will appeal to fans of Jasper Fford, Douglas Adams, and Joseph Heller. And a look below the surface of easy humor reveals a cosmic order to the district, founded on the tales of The Brothers Grimm, Aesop, and Hans Christian Andersen. As a teacher of English and Creative Writing in Texas for seven years now, I found myself compelled and especially qualified to tell this story.
