Season 2 | Episode 14 • Mark Parsons

For the last several episodes, we’ve been doing a highlight series on the podcast, interviewing our speakers for the 805 Writers Conference. Today Kathleen highlights award-winning author Mark H. Parsons. He’s a multi-talented major house-signed non-fiction and YA writer and musician.

Kathleen and Mark discuss his latest YA work, The 9:09 Project, releasing in November from Delacorte/Random House. The story follows a young man dealing with grief. He starts taking photographs every day at 9:09. Inspiring him to use this project to put his grief to work for him. They touch briefly on the process Mark takes while developing his stories, but more so on the why of them. Writing YA allows an author to explore significant subject matters and how to deal with life-altering moments. Join the discussion and get inspired by yet another one of our very talented conference speakers.

Adanna and Mark dive into the writing process—what Adanna calls inopportune moments that spark creativity and overcome writer’s block. They go over writing styles and how no matter your method, you can pull from all different places to be successful. It’s possible the most essential bit of their 20ish-minute conversation is the process for querying larger publishing houses. Listen to both segments together. Having the main episode and the after-hours released together is a rare treat. We’re very excited to have Mark as one of our speakers this year at the 805 Writers Conference.