About Mark Wm Smith
Author
Mark’s Story
On occasion, Mark lived down the street from the last whorehouse in the West, spit dust from the end of a trail drive and stood beside the hardened lawmen facing down anarchist rebels.
He writes to make sense out of uncertainty. Reading mystery and suspense fiction kept him sane during his formative years. Writers in this genre gave order to the chaos of his world. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, Tony Hillerman. Louis L’Amour just to spice it up. They saved him from despair. The strength he found in the characters of Louis L’Amour’s fiction inspired courage to stop running and face down that infamous bully, Bobby Brown, in front of the Sacred Heart Catholic School.
L’Amour and Hillerman set his mind on writing with place as character. Block encouraged focus on characters whose personal troubles deepened conflict. These and hundreds of other great authors pulled him into worlds defined by justice.
Mark earned a Master of Arts in Professional Counseling from Liberty University in 2010. A graduate level understanding of human behavior and psychology facilitates Mark’s development of interesting characters facing impossible circumstances. These scenarios involve internal struggles manifested through external situations– a man who can’t stop sleeping around confronted with a woman who kills men who cheat; a kid who dreams of making his deceased father proud by stealing a prized guitar.
Mark received his undergrad degree in Creative Writing from Otterbein College in 2005, only 25 years after his high school graduation. A desire to tell stories like the ones that helped him survive a rickety adolescence and tottering early adulthood give Mark the means and motivation to grow as storyteller.
Striving for the most compelling tale, the most interesting, yet genuine characters, and the most relevant theme provides Mark the opportunity for creating stories that are both fresh and alive.
Best Sellers
Murder of the Prodigal Father
Connor Pierce came home to bury his estranged father. The the details of Dixon Pierce’s perverted last hours add up to murder. Can Connor survive his father’s philandering legacy?
Murder on the East China Sea
Air Force crew chief Connor Pierce wants to help his lonely assistant get comfortable around women. But when the stripper he lets loose on his romantically challenged friend is brutally murdered. . .
Murder on the Edge of the Orient
Connor Pierce is days away from his last day on the island of Okinawa, known to American soldiers as “the Rock.” Cornered for one final investigation, things turn bad.
Highlights
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Published Books
Happy Readers
Best Sellers
Publications
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
My Writing Blog
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I Tells AI a Story: Scene 7
Note to readers: This article contains content created by LLM ChatGPT. The story portion is the product of my prompt and ChatGPT’s response. The rest of the article is my unadulterated creation, thunk up out of my own brain. Please, contact me with questions related...
I Tells AI a Story: Scene 6
Note to readers: This article contains content created by LLM ChatGPT. The story portion is the product of my prompt and ChatGPT’s response. The rest of the article is my unadulterated creation, thunk up out of my own brain. Please, contact me with questions related...
I Tells AI A Story: Scene 5
Note to readers: This article contains content first created by LLM ChatGPT, and later modified by yours truly. The story portion began as the product of my prompt to ChatGPT and ChatGPT’s response. A rewrite of the story follows the introduction and was completed by...