MarkTheHerald.com ✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦ When I was in the final stages of writing MARK! The Herald Angel — when the story was essentially done and I was reading it through for the last time before releasing it to the first readers — I asked myself a question that I think every writer should ask before they let a manuscript go: What do I want the person who finishes this book to feel? Not think. Not know. Feel. Because thinking and knowing are good and important, but the

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 ✦ Every story lives or dies by the reality of its world. Not reality in the sense of factual accuracy — fiction is fiction, and the rules of fiction are different from the rules of journalism — but reality in the sense of internal consistency, specific detail, and the feeling that the world you're reading about existed before you arrived and will continue existing after you leave. The world of MARK! The Herald Angel is called Paradi