1. Which of your characters is your favorite?
2. Tell me about your travels.
I love to travel and experience different and photogenic locales. Luckily, I have a wife who enjoys much the same thing (although she balks at the more ‘exotic’). I have visited most states in the US and all the Canadian provinces except for Labrador and Newfoundland. I’ve had a fascination with the arctic regions since I was a kid and have also visited the Canadian Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. I have yet to visit Europe but it is on my list.
3. Coffee, tea, or milk?
I drink one triple café latte once a day in the morning. I tried drinking coffee throughout the day earlier in my working career, but I soon discovered how fast I could become strung-out on the stuff.
4. What else can you do besides write?
I enjoy travelling, sports, history, and museums. I also enjoy playing poker in local tournaments and in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. I trek once a year to the Canadian sub-arctic for my cherished fishing trip.
5. Who are you reading right now?
6. Pop culture or academia?
7. What is the toughest scene you ever wrote?
8. Where do you find your inspirations to write?
When I get an idea, I jot it down in a word document along with a couple sentences of description. Currently, I have enough ideas to keep me busy for many years. My sci fi/adventure novel The Yaakmen of Tyrie
was inspired largely by the 1950’s movie ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ (Stewart Granger, Debra Kerr). I loved this movie when I was young and was fascinated with the concept of exploring new and uncharted lands with only rumors and oral traditions to lead the way. My sci fi/horror novelette The Watchers from within Moments, Revealed
was inspired by watching a fly buzz around my fishing partner’s head on a calm day in Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut. I began to wonder what life would be like for an intelligent creature that could exist at incredible speeds relative to our own reality.9. Food you could eat everyday.
10. Are you into sports or other physical activities?
I’m afraid that a massive heart attack at age 45, bypass surgery, defibrillator implant, and diabetes have left its toll on me. But I do enjoy getting on my elliptical five times a week.
11. What kind of music speaks to you?
12. Do you outline your stories or do they just take you along for the ride?
I am a hard-core outliner. Usually I create short (8-15) word abstract 'blurbs' to guide me through the sequence of events and to tie together plot points. I also generally know how each part will be ended and how the entire work will be finalized. I also create bios for my cast of characters. My science fiction/adventure novel The Yaakmen of Tyrie
took twenty years to complete, so I held the ending firmly in my head for almost two decades.13. Celebrity crush.
Katy Perry. I envision discussing world politics, but it usually digresses to to some sort of bubble bath... errr... what was the question again, Heidi?
14. Who are the biggest influences on your work?
15. Do you still watch cartoons?
Mark Paul Jacobs lives in lovely Dauphin, Pennsylvania. He enjoys fishing the Canadian north, internet poker, and annoying his wife. His most notable work so far is the hard science fiction novel: The Yaakmen of Tyrie
, but he is also quite proud of his chilling novelette with the provocative title: The Watchers from within Moments Revealed. Please enjoy his works and don’t be afraid to tell him what you think on his Facebook page or by email. And lastly, please take the time to leave him a review (authors live for these!). You can do this on SMASHWORDS.com or any other site where his books are available.You can also find Mark online here:
Thank you for picking six, Mark!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE how you answered the celebrity crush question!! So many authors are afraid of that one, but you handled it with vigor. That's my kind of man!
;) Heidi