JUNE 2017: Featured Artist
Award-Winning Author:
Mark Sullivan
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Sullivan
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Mark Sullivan grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts and currently lives in southwest Montana. He graduated from Hamilton College with a B.A. in English before working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa. He earned a graduate degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and began a career in investigative journalism. He has worked as a financial correspondent with Reuters, Ltd., a political reporter with States News Service and an investigative reporter with the San Diego Tribune.
He is the author of 18 novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Private series, which he writes with James Patterson. His 1996 novel, The Purification Ceremony, was told in the voice of a woman who is an expert tracker and has made bestseller lists all over the world. The Purification Ceremony was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award for best novel, won the W.H. Smith Award for best “new talent” author, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. His subsequent novels have been optioned for film, translated into dozens of languages, and have graced international bestseller lists. |
Mark talks about his new novel, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, as well as what it was like to write a story in the voice and perspective of a woman.
How did you meet Pino Lella, the hero whose story Beneath a Scarlet Sky is based on, and tell our readers what has stuck with you the most after writing about his experiences with the Nazis?
I heard about Pino Lella on the worst day of my life. At first I didn’t believe the story of a 17-year-old boy who led Jews over the Alps out of Nazi-occupied Italy, became a spy inside the German High Command, and fell into a tragic love. But then I learned Pino was alive and living north of Milan. I went to Italy and spent three weeks listening to him slowly, and sometimes reluctantly, summon up the past. That trip and four more over the following 10 years allowed me to dig deep into what was, at times, a brutal story, but ultimately an inspiring one.
What stuck with me was the moral compass that Pino followed in dire circumstances, its needle wobbling toward what was right and true. I was also changed ultimately by his attitude toward life and, despite everything that had happened to him, his belief in the miracle of every moment and his faith in the promise of a better tomorrow.
Besides Beneath a Scarlet Sky, you have written many other novels, including The Purification Ceremony. Can you tell our readers a bit about what it was like to write a novel in the voice of a woman?
I wish I could say it was a difficult thing, but it really wasn’t. As a writer, I live for those strange, thrilling times when characters literally just start talking in your head, which is what happened when I wrote The Purification Ceremony. I had played with the idea of a male on the trail of a serial killer in a vast snowy wilderness, but I was uninterested. While on a three-hour drive, with my wife and kids sleeping, I said “What if it’s a woman?” I got excited, and within 20 minutes I heard Diana’s voice clearly for the first time. I pulled over and scribbled down the beginning of the novel as if I were taking dictation. Not a word of it ever changed.
How did you meet Pino Lella, the hero whose story Beneath a Scarlet Sky is based on, and tell our readers what has stuck with you the most after writing about his experiences with the Nazis?
I heard about Pino Lella on the worst day of my life. At first I didn’t believe the story of a 17-year-old boy who led Jews over the Alps out of Nazi-occupied Italy, became a spy inside the German High Command, and fell into a tragic love. But then I learned Pino was alive and living north of Milan. I went to Italy and spent three weeks listening to him slowly, and sometimes reluctantly, summon up the past. That trip and four more over the following 10 years allowed me to dig deep into what was, at times, a brutal story, but ultimately an inspiring one.
What stuck with me was the moral compass that Pino followed in dire circumstances, its needle wobbling toward what was right and true. I was also changed ultimately by his attitude toward life and, despite everything that had happened to him, his belief in the miracle of every moment and his faith in the promise of a better tomorrow.
Besides Beneath a Scarlet Sky, you have written many other novels, including The Purification Ceremony. Can you tell our readers a bit about what it was like to write a novel in the voice of a woman?
I wish I could say it was a difficult thing, but it really wasn’t. As a writer, I live for those strange, thrilling times when characters literally just start talking in your head, which is what happened when I wrote The Purification Ceremony. I had played with the idea of a male on the trail of a serial killer in a vast snowy wilderness, but I was uninterested. While on a three-hour drive, with my wife and kids sleeping, I said “What if it’s a woman?” I got excited, and within 20 minutes I heard Diana’s voice clearly for the first time. I pulled over and scribbled down the beginning of the novel as if I were taking dictation. Not a word of it ever changed.
