I’ve bugged and bugged and bugged some more for Mark Rogers to send me his unpublished Mexican Noir novellas.
He really should have told me to fuck off.
I had read all his other published books.
And he told me he had six unpublished novellas already written which focused on Mexico, where he lives.
Now don’t hide them, I thought.
I had been reading lots of Charles Burkowski as well.
To understand Mark Rogers is to understand the writers that get him going.
I was going through a binge session of watching videos.
This isn’t going to help me as a writer.
I had also watched The Mule and Breaking Bad, Mark's TV influences.
I wouldn’t have read Women if it wasn’t for another unpublished novel, Uppercut, that he sent me to read.
I said I’ll also catch some typos.
And a partnership was formed.
All I had to do was be vigilant in my read and that gave me at least the chance to keep on bugging him for his other books that weren’t published.
He has over eight short and long books still sitting on his desktop.
To understand what makes the guy tick and how he puts his novels together, it pays to read all of his books.
Once you start reading a Bukowski book, you gotta read them all.
I stopped short of his poetry.
That’s not for me, no matter how fucking good it is.
I’d even drop one of my titles in our email threads and say you must read it.
I think Mark is getting through all my books. He deserves a purple heart just for that.
But I find when I start his books, I know I’m going to finish it a few days later.
I just want him to publish his series set in Mexico.
No one is writing about it, as far as I can see, and it’s really compelling reading.
Not reading his stuff leaves me in a funk.
I’m willing the two-finger typer to pump out one thousand words a day.
He’s now working on his seventh novella and hopefully, I’ll be bugging him to read it in a month or so.
He’s reached a point in his writing career where he knows he’s onto a good thing.
He’s carved out his niche and this little write up is a shout out to the world, check out his stuff. It’s highly original, dark, soul exploring and entertaining. What more could you ask for in a book? Being around seventy thousand words, you know you’ll have at least three nights exploring Mark’s thoughts.
I’m glad I’ve pestered him to fire me off his books. He’s told me I'm the only person after himself to have read these books. And I’m pushing for him to self publish and share these stories to a larger audience who I’m sure are just going to love it.
Mark has kindly given a write up on his books here:
Mark has kindly given a write up on his books here:
My six Mexican noir novels never started out to be a series.
The first one, TJ99, about an unemployed guy in California who drifts south of the border, mirrored my own life, up to being detained for 22 hours in a cell by Homeland Security. Unlike Rafe in the book, I never got involved with cartels and carefully avoid contact with them, although it's impossible to avoid them altogether.
The second novel, Mockingbird was inspired by a Facebook post I saw on my wife's phone, of a dead body found less than a mile from my home, a naked body in the weeds, half-eaten by dogs. Seeing this photo just before going to sleep affected me on a subconscious level and I had a novel sketched out by the morning.
I've traveled twice to Haiti, and when 3,000 Haitian refugees were stranded in Tijuana, unable to enter the U.S., that started to inspire a novel titled Iron Star. From that point on, the ideas for novels kept coming, until I had a standalone series of Mexican noir novels. Even though I consider it a series, there are no recurring characters from book to book.
I've since written Along the Wire, about a guy from Detroit who opens a factory in Baja; Black Velvet, with a fictional character based on a Valium-addicted now deceased friend of mine, who in the book has to navigate the dogfighting pits of Tijuana; and a work in progress title Hold Fast, about brutal and illegal horseracing on the beaches of Baja, that could be described as "Fight Club for horseracing."
I've also written a book-length memoir about my life in Mexico, titled Uppercut.
Since I live in Baja, and since Mexico is such a volatile environment, I anticipate more stories coming, probably as fast as I can write them. If I can't find a publisher willing to fast track the series, I'll probably turn to self-publishing them myself.
