Young Adult Author Mark (M.L.) Evans
as he tells us about his venture into writing fiction.
The floor is yours, Mark!
The Higgins Point Series, in a way, goes all the back to the beginning of my fiction writing. In eighth grade, I began the first book-length work of fiction that I would complete, The Mystery of Higgins Point. Its characters were thinly-veiled versions of myself and several classmates. I finished it that summer (1977), then wrote a follow-up “book” in ninth grade.
I got serious about my fiction in my late twenties (the late 1980s-early 1990s) and developed “The Higgins Point Gang” into a group of unique characters. In 1991 I came close to selling the first book (then called The Football Mystery) to a leading Christian publishing house.
I bounced between genres in both Christian and secular fiction and worked on three self-published local history books in between. I am now pursuing the traditional publishing route for my historical romance line, set in 1927.
I could not give up on my teenage detectives without a fight, though, and opted to go indie with them. The first book, Unwelcome Detective, shows fourteen-year-old Angie Keane trying to break into the detective group, led by her older brother, Matt. The big break that almost led to the series being published in 1991 was my decision to go from a third person POV, to a first-person POV with Angie as the narrator. Everything fell into place at that point.
After revising the first two books over the years to include cell phones, then smartphones and Facebook accounts, I decided to go “retro” this year and move the series back to a time I understood better. I set the series in the fall of 1985, a time when no one argued over which bathroom to use and schools were safe places.
Book 2, Underground Terror, will come out this winter and Book 3, Buried Secrets, is undergoing an overhaul as we speak.
Fictitious Higgins Point and Sleetzville, MO are much like Bonne Terre and Desloge, MO, where I grew up and where I returned as an adult, serving as youth director of my old church. I hope readers enjoy seeing Angie grow into a more confident detective and ambassador of Christ as the series progresses.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In the fall of 1985, fourteen-year-old freshman Angie Keane wants to join the “Higgins Point Gang,” a group of teenagers that has been solving mysteries for three years.
When her brother Matt, the group’s founder, refuses to let her in, Angie decides to work on her own. If she solves the potentially deadly sabotage against the school’s football program first, Matt will have to let her join.
ABOUT MARK:
M.L. Evans is the author of the Higgins Point Mysteries series, a YA/MG Christian series. Book 1, Unwelcome Detective, came out in late July. Book 2, Underground Terror, comes out this December. He is also pursuing Christian historical romance writing, with a pair of novels set in 1927, Second Chance and Life of the Party (his current WIP).
A career newspaperman, he has lived in Missouri and Oklahoma all his life, returning to school in his late thirties to get an MA in history.
He spent much of the 1990s serving as a volunteer church youth director. Mark is single and lives with a very spoiled Siamese cat named Ginger Grant.
Website: https://m-l-evans.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkMyWord_81
To order book: https://m-l-evans.com or
THE GIVEAWAY: Mark is giving away TWO copies (paperback or eBook) of Unwelcome Detective. To enter, just leave a comment, name a couple of your favorite Christian writers, and your contact information in the section below. The giveaway will run one week from today, ending on September 27, at Midnight. Central Time.
Note: Mark will be attending the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference in Nashville, TN, through through Sept 24, so his bility to respond to your comments may be limited. Just so you know.
