By Mark Stevens Who am I to judge? No, really? I’ve judged the Colorado Gold contest for many years. I take on five or six entries each time around. That’s not many pieces to rate. Some judges handle dozens—and more. Five or six entries take time—twenty pages of each novel and a three or four-page…
Author: Mark Stevens
Mark Stevens is the author of the The Fireballer (Lake Union, 2023) and The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl. Trapline won The Colorado Book Award for Best Mystery. Stevens has also published short stories in Denver Noir (Akashic Books, 2022), Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Tribune, among others. Stevens is longtime member of Mystery Writers of America. In 2023, Stevens was named Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers for the second time. He lives in southwest Colorado.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: A Review
Review by Mark Stevens Resistance is invisible, internal, implacable, impersonal, infallible and insidious. Resistance, as Steven Pressfield points out in The War of Art, never sleeps. “Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five,” writes Pressfield. “In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist…
What’s Your Reason for Writing?
Are you doing your own thing? Listening to your own voice? Or are you a back-up, following someone else’s vision and script?
Getting the Details Right
By Mark Stevens If I had to pick a favorite prose stylist, it might be John Updike. (I don’t have to pick, do I?) Some think his stuff is over-written. I happen to think he was a poet whether he was writing fiction or criticism. Or poetry. In fact, Updike published eight volumes of poetry…
Those Little Bells
By Mark Stevens (This blog is a note to self. Thanks for letting me share.) I recently read a New Yorker profile of the writer Lydia Davis and I felt as if I’d entered a very calm, clear space. It’s a long piece, by Dana Goodyear, but it’s behind a paywall at the New Yorker…