Behind the Story

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Every Christmas, somewhere between the first week of December and the final chord of a Christmas Eve service, most of us sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" without thinking too hard about where it came from. We know it's old. We know it's a classic. We know it involves angels, a newborn King, and a melody that manages to feel simultaneously triumphant and tender. What most of us don't know is that the carol we sing today has been

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ The first time I used the phrase "fair dinkum" in a piece of writing, I paused and asked myself if I was really doing this. I'm a guy from the Midwest. Lawrence, Kansas, to be exact. Not exactly the outback. My exposure to Australian slang is limited to exactly what you'd expect: a handful of films, a few conversations, and an inexplicable fondness for a turn of phrase that has absolutely no business being in a Christmas story set

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I have a confession to make. I've been singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" since I was old enough to stand in a church pew and hold a hymnal with both hands. I sang it in children's programs, in Christmas Eve services, in shopping malls when Muzak was still a thing. I've sung it probably hundreds of times over the course of my life. And it took me until my forties to stop at the second word. Herald. Not heavenly. Not happy. Not

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I spent years in the world of animated children's content, and it taught me something that I find myself returning to constantly as I think about the future of MARK! The Herald Angel: the difference between content that families watch once and content that families return to every year for the rest of their lives. That difference is not production quality. It's not budget. It's not even the sophistication of the animation. It's wh

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Mark the Herald Angel does not want to go to Earth. He makes this abundantly clear on the bus ride home from the Eternal Herald, after his editor dismisses his story and hands him an itinerary with a single word on it: Earth. He mutters about it. He slumps in his seat. He crosses his little arms. He is, in every particular, a being who has been asked to do something he did not sign up for and does not want to do. He is, in other w

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ Before MARK! The Herald Angel, I spent years working in animated children's content. Specifically, I was part of the writing and development team for Auto-B-Good — a series that went on to win five Emmy Awards and find its way into the homes and hearts of families across the country. It was, in many ways, the best education in family storytelling I could have received. Not a formal education — though I respect those tremendously —

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ One of the things that makes a character transformation believable — and I've thought about this a great deal in the course of writing MARK! The Herald Angel — is that the character being transformed must be entirely sincere about who they are before it happens. Not performatively resistant. Not waiting to be convinced. Not secretly hoping someone will come along and shake them out of their rut. Just genuinely, completely, absolut

MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ I have been singing the same Christmas carol since I was old enough to stand in a church pew and hold a hymnal with both hands. I have sung it in children's programs and Christmas Eve candlelight services and shopping mall food courts when Muzak was still a cultural institution. I've sung it at the top of my lungs in the car and in the quiet of early December mornings and probably somewhere in between during at least three separat