Mark Flanagan

About Me

I'm a skinny, balding father of three, husband of one. My days are spent chained to a desk, my efforts bent to matters in which I am only vaguely invested. I write to balance the scales.

Any favorite authors? Books?

I once worked on a landscape maintenance team with an African named Nelson. He was ridiculously strong – would carry whole tree stumps, three feet in diameter – and he didn’t speak much English. He evidently read English though, because he carried with him a copy of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy everywhere that we went. I can picture it now, bouncing on the truck's dashboard.

This book was more than dog-eared; it was filled with marginalia, notes, lines, circles, arrows, marks Nelson had made throughout as though he were somehow cracking the code of The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deciphering the text to arrive at the secrets that lay beneath. I love that book, but I don’t think I ever loved it as much as Nelson did.

Tom Robbins, Mark Helprin, Haruki Murakami. I read these guys, and I write in their books too.