Mark McNease

Gather round, girls and boys. Let me tell you a story … Once upon a time there was a world without Facebook. (Children gasp.) Friends, families and complete strangers stayed in touch with one another …

“How is that possible?” the children ask.

“Well, they emailed each other.”

“What’s email?”

“Don’t interrupt me, little ones. Anyway, they had blogs and websites and even email lists, and they called each other on the phone.”

“What’s a phone?”

“… It was a different world, some say a better world, although that’s debatable. But imagine it, girls and boys, a world where human beings communicated, and anyone you called a friend was really a friend.”

“In real life?”

“Yes!”

“What’s real life?” asked one child.

“It may not matter anymore. It’s almost gone. But some of us are trying to preserve the old languages and the old ways. So think about it, children. Imagine it if you can. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And that is my story. If you’re my friend in real life, you can find me lots of other places: Mark McNease. com, Mark McNease on Topic Substack, Your Write Path. com, LGBTSR. com. Bluesky for now. And all three websites have subscriber lists. You can even email me! It’s amazing how much more real communication goes on with my friends who have never been on social media.

Where you will not find me again is on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has decided that it’s okay to call people like me ‘mentally ill,’ and now that Elon Musk is openly using the word ‘retarded,’ we can look forward to that becoming popular again. Won’t that be fun, girls and boys? I can’t wait!

To my friends and family, if our relationships are worth the effort, they’re worth a text or an email or a phone call. The old languages, the old ways. Before they’re gone completely.

I wanted to make a short introductory video for visitors, curious, and drive-bys to see what I look and sound like, and to get an idea of what Your Write Path is all about. – Mark McNease

As subscribers to my Mark McNease On Topic Substack know, I’ve eliminated paid and renewing subscriptions. Everyone gets everything, ’cause that’s the kind of provocateur I am. You can, however, donate and get a lifetime subscription for just $25. It’s a subscription! It’s a donation! It’s a tip jar! You decide.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great way to do it. Or just sign up at MarkMAMcNease.substack.com. We don’t twist arms at the Tree House, we just imply.

Let’s roar into 2025 with heads high, open hearts, and curious minds. – Mark

Read All My eBooks Free!

Santa’s at the door! Merry Christmas, everyone, happy holidays. Enjoy some freebies and deep discounts at the Smashwords Year End Sale!

All of my ebooks – you heard that right, all of them – are available for free download at Smashwords from December 12 – January 1. That includes:

6 Kyle Callahan Mysteries
3 Marshall James Thrillers
2 Maggie Dahl Mysteries

Can you say “up all night?” It will take a lot of those sleepless evenings to get through all these page-turners.

AND there are lots more, from dozens of terrific authors offering their books for free or at deep discounts.

CHECK OUT MINE HERE AND GET READING!

Three workshop intensives in one package: Fiction Writing Essentials, followed by Character Creation, and concluding with Self-Publishing with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing. Each of these is a separate workshop, being offered together for three Mondays in March – and at a savings! Join Mark and the other participants to learn the essentials of writing fiction, how to create characters who will step off your mind onto the page, and how to publish your work yourself as an independent author.

You can see workshop descriptions at YourWritePath.com, address any questions to YourWritePath AT Outlook. com.

WHEN: 3 Mondays in March (3, 10, 17)
TIME: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm eastern
VIA ZOOM
REGISTER HERE ($100)

Really excited to schedule my first workshop with Soupcon, a local artists’ collective in Lambertville, NJ, for February. And it’s at my favorite venue, Bucks on Bridge, where Soupcon has sublet the art space. I’ve done book readings and workshops there prior to this, and it’s so nice to have a space and community to pursue in-person workshops with.

Narration provided by Wondervox.

I finally took the plunge with Ancestry.com. Now that I’m doing workshops on autobiographical and legacy writing, I decided to explore my family tree. I was confused about this for a long time because I’m adopted, but I realized I want to know about the family I grew up with, the people I remember and who shaped me. Seeing my parents and grandparents on this is kind of emotional.

My ‘origin story’ is complicated, with a birth family I’m in contact with and have some relationships with, and my adoptive family. The people I have always referred to as Mom and Dad are the couple who raised me. I was not told about my adoption until I was 17, which erased any memories I may have had from the first two years of my life. All these decades later, as people got into charting their family trees and their ancestry, I felt ambivalent to say the least: which family is my family? I finally decided, for the purpose of a family tree, that it is the family I grew up with, the parents whose lives I shared until their deaths, the grandmothers I remember from childhood. They are my heart, spirit and blood.

So … here we go. This is going to be interesting.

About Family Trees

Uncovering Your Roots: The Joy of Researching Family Trees

Researching family trees can be an exciting and enriching journey that connects us to our past, provides insight into our heritage, and fosters a deeper understanding of who we are. Whether you’re a seasoned genealogist or just starting out, the process of tracing your lineage can bring unexpected discoveries and lasting connections. For someone like me who is adopted and not able  to really consider my birth family as my family tree, other then my parents and siblings, it took a long time to reconcile my feelings about this and realize that my interest in ancestry is not about blood. I am a McNease, the son of Margaret  Witmer and Emmett McNease. That is my starting place. All of these suggestions are optional. I’m not a “family stories” kind of person, and there will be a lot of popular things I choose not to do.