Mark Edward Hall

My name is Mark Edward Hall. I was born in Brunswick, Maine in 1948. We moved a lot when I was young and eventually ended up in the small town of Bowdoinham where I attended eighth grade and then went on to Brunswick High School. We moved to Bowdoinham from the small town of Durham where I attended school with, yes, you guessed it, (he was a year ahead of me, in my sister’s class) the one and only master of the macabre, Stephen King. Strange about Durham, Maine. Maybe something ancient and dreadful leached into the soil there because I believe Chris Chesley, another old school friend from Durham, is also a teller of weird tales.

I grew up in a musical family. My father would let me play along while he and his music buddies played at weekend gigs and gatherings. I learned to play guitar by watching their fingers. The Beatles and the Stones happened and I fell in love with rock and roll and joined my first band as a singer and guitar player at the age of fifteen. At sixteen I formed a family band with my brother Gary on bass and my cousin John on rhythm.

My love for fiction and especially my love of anything to do with the macabre always burned in me, however. My grandmother, who lived with us during my formative years, was a psychic, a medium and a great story teller. I sat mesmerized for hours on end while she told tales – most of which she professed were true – of the supernatural.

I began reading at a young age and became a voracious consumer of anything that went bump in the night. I read Weird Tales and Dracula and I am Legend, I watched The Twilight Zone and went to see all the Poe-pictures. You get the drift. I loved the stuff. But reading and movies haven’t been my only excursions into the unknown. I’ve lived in several haunted houses, have had a multitude of psychic experiences that I won’t mention here, and believe that as a child I was kidnapped by aliens. (There’s a time-debt thing that I just can’t seem to get past.)

Anyway, like my grandmother, I suppose it was inevitable that I became a storyteller. As a child I made them up by the dozens and told them to anyone who would listen. Mostly the scary, off-the-wall stuff, of course.

I decided to become a novelist at the tender age of eighteen. After several false starts the United States Government decided they wanted me, along with about a million other guys. I served in the army during the Viet Nam War. I married during that stint and notions of becoming a writer were put on hold. After the army I continued with my music career, playing in many bands as well as working as a soloist. During the next twenty years I worked at a variety of jobs but always played music professionally. In that time I wrote and performed my own songs and was the owner of a recording studio.

But I never gave up the dream. After settling in Richmond, Maine with my wife Sheila I began to seriously consider my life and where I wanted to go with the rest of it. I’m a talented guy, I’ll admit it. I’ve done lots of things and I will always continue to do lots of things. It’s in my nature. But the one thing that burned in me, that had always burned in me, was the desire to tell stories. So, I started from scratch at about the age of forty and began writing novels. Part time, of course. I soon discovered that it was my true calling. I’d just succumbed to it a little later than most, that’s all.

I have written five novels plus about 50 short stories and several novellas. Wasps, my first  published  story, appeared in Raven’s Tale Magazine in 1995. I have included it in my new collection, Servants of Darkness.

My latest novel is a thriller entitled Apocalypse Island. It is an independently published book and I’m happy and proud to say so. I believe the future is now.

Right now there are many exciting things happening with my writing career. I will keep you posted as I know more.

Mark