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The Devil’s Wood Project Nears Completion (Phase One)
I haven’t been this obsessed with writing and creating a project in a very long time. Something took old of me the first time I touched the walking stick that inspired all this. The book is set to release in September, and in tandem I’ve been almost frantically creating an entire world for the Devil’s Wood: book, videos, a separate journal being written after the fact by an anonymous source, and even a game!
Check it all out at TheDevilsWood.com
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Subscriber Freebie: Hell To Pay – A House in the Woods 1 & 2
Prepare to scream. “Hell to Pay: A House in the Woods 1 & 2” are free for subscribers to my site, and “Devil’s Wood” is coming soon. I’ll be giving away 25 free Kindle editions to the new book, so subscribe now if you haven’t yet. Epub and PDF via BookFunnel. -
Welcome to My World
I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember. A surprising number of them have made it into print—fifteen novels so far, which still surprises me a little when I say it out loud. I live in the woods nears Stockton, New Jersey, a small borough on the Delaware River. The kind of place that inspires mysteries, thrillers and horror in the towns and countryside.
My longest-running series is The Kyle Callahan Mysteries—character-driven, funny in places, dark in others, and rooted in lives you might never expect to be troubled by murder. I also write the Marshall James Thrillers series and the Maggie Dahl Mysteries, each with their own voice and world.
More recently I’ve been working in horror and psychological thriller—territory I find endlessly compelling. And my forthcoming (October, 2026) Devil’s Wood is a supernatural thriller set in nearby Lambertville, drawing on modern small town life and ancient horror.
Through Your Write Path, I offer workshops and coaching for writers at every stage—beginners who’ve never shown anyone their work, experienced writers who’ve hit a wall, people who want to tell the story of their own lives. “Every life is a story, and each of us is the storyteller.”
My imprint Vivid Press publishes annotated editions of public domain classics—recent titles include Carmilla, The Willows, and Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Stories matter.
Look around, you’ll find much more here, and thanks for stopping by. – Mark
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True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Phantom Barber of Pascagoula—A Hair-Raising Unsolved Crime
This week’s case comes with an element of dark humor, although nothing’s funny about a stranger breaking into people’s homes. Nobody died in this story. Nobody was even hurt, not at first. What we’ve got instead is something stranger—a criminal whose weapon of choice was a pair of scissors, whose target wasn’t a wallet or a life, but his victim’s hair. And for one summer in 1942, an entire Mississippi town lived in terror of a man who broke into bedrooms in the dead of night for no reason anyone could explain. And there’s more: even after an arrest and a conviction, people still aren’t sure the right man ever paid for it.
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Cover Reveal for Devil’s Wood
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Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Devil’s Wood Journal Entry 2
The Devi’s Wood Journal continues. A retreat for seekers. Seven strangers, sorted into two cabins by an unseen host known only as “Your Guide.” A note on every pillow promising freedom—from stress, from obligation, from the illusions we build for ourselves.
Our narrator arrives last, uncertain why they were chosen, uncertain what “occult” even means beyond the word’s true root: hidden, concealed, not readily seen. What begins as a fireside ghost story from a stranger named Phillip becomes something else entirely by the time the night is over—and it’s only the first of three days that some at the retreat believe may be their last.
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Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Devil’s Wood Journal Begins
A walking stick. A skull. A bullet. A curse.
Buried for in the Pennsylvania woods, something has been waiting. When a young boy uncovers what’s been hidden beneath the leaves, he sets loose a curse that’s about to find its way back into the world — and into the hands of a man who has no idea what he’s just brought home.
Enter the Devil’s Wood.
Two new entries drop every week, exclusively on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast — subscribe so you don’t miss the story as it unfolds.
Discover more of the mythology, characters, and world of Devil’s Wood at TheDevilsWood.com
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True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Belle Gunness, The Black Widow of La Porte
It’s another True Crime Tuesdays on Fearsome Fiction. This episode heads back to the turn of the last century, to a farmhouse at the end of a quiet road in La Porte, Indiana — where a Norwegian immigrant named Belle Gunness placed lonely-hearts ads in the newspaper, invited her suitors to bring their savings and “come prepared to stay forever,” and made sure they never left. This is the story of the Black Widow of La Porte.
