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www.MarkTSullivan.com
Books by
Mark T. Sullivan
Labyrinth
The Serpent's Kiss
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Mark T. Sullivan
 Bio
Fast Facts
Trivia
www.MarkTSullivan.com
Buy the books!
Author Bibliography
2003 Summer Reading List
Interviews
The Serpent's Kiss
 Review & Excerpt
Before focusing his attention on writing mystery/suspense novels, Mark T. Sullivan was a successful and well-respected journalist. As an investigative reporter in San Diego, Sullivan did more than merely gather information for a story and proceed to his next assignment. His style of journalism involved total cultural immersion, learning as much as he could about the lives and cultures of his subjects. For his efforts in the field, Sullivan was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
The research Sullivan conducts for his books goes well beyond surfing the Internet, looking up facts in a reference book or interviewing experts. A self-professed adventure junkie, Sullivan enjoys nature and seeking out new places. Therefore, his novels center on a variety of people with adventurous occupations, such as extreme skiers, deer trackers and cavers. In order to produce the most intriguing and credible stories possible, Sullivan has abandoned the safety and security of his home to participate in these potentially dangerous activities, resulting in such gripping novels as The Fall Line, The Purification Ceremony, and Labyrinth.
His latest novel, The Serpent's Kiss, marks the beginning of a series of books based on a team of San Diego homicide detectives. To celebrate the release of The Serpent's Kiss, AuthorsOnTheWeb has chosen Mark Sullivan as our Author of the Month. Readers can learn more about Sullivan's life and works through fast facts and biographical information, as well as links to his website, bibliography, interviews, and book reviews.
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Fast Facts
- Mark's favorite books focus on anthropology, world history, and nonfiction adventure. His favorite fiction writers include novelist and poet Jim Harrison and suspense/thriller author Dennis Lehane.
- Mark has a somewhat rigid work schedule. He writes 5-6 days a week, usually between 10 AM and 6 PM, which were his hours as a reporter early in his career. He tries to produce 5-7 pages a day.
- The story for Fall Line emerged from Mark's experiences in neo-natal intensive care units as an investigative reporter, watching nurses care for crack addicted babies; his fascination with young people's involvement in extreme sports; and interviews he conducted with convicted money launderers.
- Mark's motivation for writing Hard News originated from his days reporting on police corruption, his frustrations with some of the hypocrisies he observed within the business of daily journalism, and the murder of a young prostitute that occurred during a newspaper war in San Diego in the late '80s and early '90s.
- Mark's research for The Purification Ceremony involved apprenticing under expert deer trackers and spending months traversing remote forests in Maine, Montana and Alberta.
- When Mark was 10 years old, he witnessed a caver crawling out of an impossibly narrow cave, which utterly fascinated him. Years later, he decided to attempt a similar feat by exploring Mammoth Cave, the largest cave in the world --- a potentially dangerous yet effective way of conducting research for Labyrinth.
- One day, Mark was reminiscing about his days as an investigative reporter in San Diego and recalled that homicides are investigated differently there than in any other major metropolitan law enforcement agency. Rather than assigning two detectives to the location of a dead body, San Diego sends out a team of five individuals --- a supervising sergeant and four supporting homicide detectives. This unorthodox approach seems to work, as San Diego often boasts the highest solve rate in the country. So Mark thought it would be interesting to base a series on one such team, thus leading to the birth of The Serpent's Kiss.
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Bio
 Mark T. Sullivan was born and raised outside of Boston in the towns of Framingham and Medfield. As a child, he spent much of his free time skiing and deer hunting. He attended Hamilton College, graduating in 1980 with a BA in English. Two weeks after commencement, he boarded a plane bound for Niger, West Africa. There he worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Agades, an oasis and trading center on the ancient caravan route between Tripoli and Timbuctu. Sullivan rode with nomads deep into the Sahara, immersed himself in their culture and taught their children.
Upon returning to the United States in 1982, Sullivan attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and graduated with the highest honors. During this time he met his future wife, Betsy, who was also attending the university as a graduate student. Sullivan worked at Reuters, Ltd., as a financial correspondent covering the Chicago Commodities Markets from 1983-1984. He left to become a political reporter in Washington D.C. at a small wire service called States News Service. His role was backup reporter to the D.C. bureaus of the New York Times, Newsday and the New York Daily News. It is at this time that he entered the field of investigative reporting, breaking a series of stories about a financial scandal that almost toppled the nation's mortgage brokerage business. He was also introduced to the Japanese martial art of Aikido.
In 1986, Sullivan joined the San Diego Tribune as an investigative reporter. Still profoundly influenced by his experiences of total cultural immersion in West Africa, he began to develop a journalistic style that focused on the cultures of the things he was investigating. Sullivan was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting twice in the next five years, once for a series that examined the lives and culture of children living with addicts, and a second time for a series that drew back the curtain on the culture and practices of corporate funeral home conglomerates. During these five years, he was lucky enough to become the personal student of Kazuo Chiba, one of the world's foremost Aikido masters.
Sullivan began writing fiction in his little spare time and soon had short stories published in various literary journals. In the winter of 1990, he took a leave from his investigative duties at the newspaper and moved to Utah and Wyoming to live among extreme skiers. That experience led to his first novel, The Fall Line (Kensington, 1994), which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Two years prior to the novel's publication, he quit the newspaper and moved to Vermont with his wife and young son.
In the next five years his family grew with the arrival of his son, Bridger. In an old converted barn where we lived, he wrote Hard News, (Kensington, 1995), a mystery that exposes the underbelly of modern newspapers; The Purification Ceremony, (Avon, 1997), a suspense novel set in the world of tracking deer hunters; and Ghost Dance, (Avon, 1999), a mystery set in Vermont. That same year, Sullivan moved to southwest Montana and began researching and writing Labyrinth, which was released in 2002 by Atria Books. His latest novel is The Serpent's Kiss. Also published by Atria, it is the first in a series of books featuring San Diego homicide detective Seamus Moynihan.
Sullivan was recently awarded his fourth degree black belt in Aikido and teaches the art in Bozeman, MT.
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