• New

    Workshops Now Scheduled for September! Save the Dates

    June 18, 2024 /

    I have a full slate of workshops schedules for September: Fiction Writing Essentials, Self-Publishing with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), and extended Guided Autobiography Workshops. You don’t need to register now, but save the dates and stay tuned. – Mark

    Guided Autobiography 6 Week Online Workshop
    Starts Wednesday, September 4, 10:00 am eastern
    Register here

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  • New

    At the Flemington Summer Book Fest

    May 29, 2024 /

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    This was my second year at the Flemington Summer Book Festival. Last year was great, and I sold a lot of books. This year, not so much. Maybe it was the heat and humidity. There were a lot fewer authors, and the foot traffic was tragic. But … I’m glad I went.

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  • New

    Another Workshop Testimonial: Guided Autobiography 2-Hour Introductory

    May 28, 2024 /

    “Mark gave us a simple exercise, to pick a room and diagram it using the house we grew up in. Put in the furniture, windows, all the room’s features, and take notice of any feelings, emotions, thoughts that occurred as we did the exercise. I was astonished at the power of my memories and feelings as I thought about the knotty pine “den” where my family watched TV, sometimes ate, spent most of the nighttime hours before going to bed. I relived the distance I always felt between my father and me, the anger of my father toward my mother, my disgust with my sad depressed grandmother, who I felt almost didn’t exist for me. I became that teenage boy in Canton, Mississippi, trying to figure out how I could be so different, how I could know I was “queer”, and wondering if I would even be able to act on those feelings.” – Jim G.

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  • Dreamshaping

    Dreamshaping: The ‘What If?’ List

    May 13, 2024 /

    All things are of the substance of dreams …

    By Mark McNease

    I’ve used a ‘What If?’ list in my fiction writing, especially when I feel stuck in the journey of a story. Where should it go? Where do I want it to go? How can I imagine the next turn in the road for these characters?

    I don’t like to admit that I sometimes find myself unable to tell which direction a story should take, and that includes the story of my life. So when I recently found myself feeling indecisive, even to the point of thinking I couldn’t do much of anything, I wrote a ‘What If?’ list for myself.

    WHAT IF I set aside the novel writing for 90 days or so?

    WHAT IF I truly opened up that creative space and let something else come into it?

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  • New

    Guided Autobiography 2-Hour Introductory Workshop Was a Hit

    May 9, 2024 /

    Thanks to the five participants who came to my first two-hour Guided Autobiography introductory workshop! It was a success. They all found it to be profound in some ways, thought-provoking in others, and well worth their time and attention. And I was delighted to see how effective this kind of journaling and personal exploration is, with me as a facilitator. We have liftoff!

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  • Mark McNease Mysteries Podcast

    Audio Sample: ‘Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella’ Chapters 1 – 4

    May 6, 2024 /

     

    Spring has sprung into action with something brand new. Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella just released, and I’m offering four chapters for your listening pleasure.

    This is not intended as an audiobook and no professional narrators were harmed in the making of this clip.

    Available everywhere! Click here for the LinkTree to select retailers

    About Fatal Mistake

    The year is closer than you think. The world has collapsed under the weight of its own insatiable needs, leaving shattered cities where those who still have anything fight to keep it that way, and those who don’t are a constant threat. It’s a danger that must be contained through a tightly controlled society where everyone is observed and everything is kept in its place.
    Harry Hellerman and his twin brother, Elliot, enter this world three minutes apart. By the time they’re teenagers, they’ve been surrendered to Control to be molded into the perfect assassins. A boy named Harry Hellerman enters, and a man named Harry Hell emerges: a killing machine of the highest order.

    Harry’s life takes a drastic turn when he finds himself teamed with a man named Raul, who becomes his partner in every way. Enter the lethal, dreaded Nectar, queen of the Ruins and slayer of hopes and dreams. Even Harry had them once, but no more. His life soon revolves around one mission only: to take his revenge against Nectar, and die someday with Raul’s name still on his lips. It was all he had left to live for.

    Enter Eastward, and the Ruins, and the Slopes beyond them. Make your way to the river’s edge, misted in darkness, where many have tried to escape but none have ever returned. ‘Fatal Mistake’ begins the journey of a man whose heart had not always been stone. Will it beat again, or will he use it to sink his enemy down, down, down, straight to hell?

    Two-time Emmy winner and Mystery Writers of America-NY board member Mark McNease takes us on a journey unlike anything he’s written before.

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  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Pills for All Our Ills

    April 20, 2024 /

    One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

    Mark McNease

    Too many episodes of heartburn after a meal? It must be GERD! Cholesterol numbers not what they should be? Here’s a statin!

    I don’t know about your doctor—how could I?—but my primary care physician is one of those nice, softspoken, well-meaning doctors with a great office manner who reacts to every ill I present him with by prescribing some new medication. Most recently, it was something for Restless Leg Syndrome, which I dutifully took as prescribed for several weeks while I kept reading about its applications and side effects. Two things stood out: it can increase my risk of deadly melanoma, and it shouldn’t be stopped without first weaning off it for an extended period of time. Hmm, I thought, finger to lips while I processed this information. I’m not interested in making myself more vulnerable to skin cancer than I already am, as a fair-skinned older man of British and Irish descent. And I really don’t want to take something I can’t decide to stop taking without lowering the dose first over a period of weeks. I don’t have the patience for it, and I don’t like anything that can have its hooks that deeply into me.

    Of course I stopped on my own, with just a day of real or imagined discomfort. The bigger issue for me is that my doctor, like too many others, made no attempt to determine if I do, in fact, have Restless Leg Syndrome. This kind of instant diagnosis happens all the time. Too many episodes of heartburn after a meal? It must be GERD! Cholesterol numbers not what they should be? Here’s a statin!

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  • Cathy's Wealth of Health,  LGBTSR

    Cathy’s Wealth of Health: Eyes: A Window to Liver Health  

    April 11, 2024 /

    By Cathy McNease, Dipl CH, RH

    Traditional Chinese Medicine has given us a way to physically view how healthy or unhealthy is our liver via the eyes.  So much information is provided to me as a practitioner by simply observing my patient’s eyes. The tongue is used in Chinese Medicine for diagnosis. The sides of the tongue tell you about liver health…pale = blood deficiency; red = heat; purple = stagnation. If your eyes are still in good condition, but you observe one of these colors on your tongue, start now to remedy the imbalance in your liver and protect your precious sense of vision. One of the beauties of tongue reading is that it empowers us to prevent diseases before they strike.

    Here are some of the most important messages seen in the eyes, followed by some simple remedies:

    Red eyes show heat, inflammation, or irritation.

    Dry eyes show lack of body fluids, deficiency of blood or too much heat.

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