Why I Started Writing:

For me, books were a natural progression from reporting and feature writing. I enjoy words. Alliteration, analogy, allegory, all of out of the ways to string them together is simply fun for me. So why not do what you find as fun? Fishermen fish. Hunters hunt. NASCAR drivers race. Me, I sit, think, try to hear God, and write.

The “natural progression” I speak of is my career. I had been a reporter and newspaper and magazine editor through the first 30 years of my career. When I went on my own to freelance and do public relations, I hade time to write novels that I had dreamed of for years. My first manuscripts were an outgrowth of my journalistic training: A self-help book, Fired? Get Fired Up!; a devotional, Walks with God; and two golf e-books filled with quotes from my interviews with golf icons like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Kathy Whitworth, Patti Berg, Gary Player, Ben Crenshaw, and Pete and Alice Dye.

Then came Midnight Rider for the Morning Star for which I used my reporter’s training in writing a “biographical novel” about the life and times of Francis Asbury, America’s first circuit-riding preacher whose life was filled with life-threatening dangers. It involved a lot of research, mostly buoyed by Asbury’s own journals.

With these “reportorial” books done, it was then a short step up to historical novels based on fact—True North: Tice’s Story about the Underground Railroad and the upcoming The Crossing about the KKK in Maine in the 1920s.

Now I’m three novels into mystery/adventure/thrillers and have a fourth on the way. They all involve a lot of research, and it helps that my wife, Loy, is a research junkie.

Authors Who Have Influenced Me:

George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Brock and Bodie Thoene, Joel Rosenberg, Francine Rivers, Randy Alcorn.

Books I Have Written:

Fired? Get Fired Up! (2002, a self-help e-book available for free on my web site: www.markalanleslie.com)

Walks with God (2004, a devotional e-book available for free on my web site: www.markalanleslie.com)

Putting a Little Spin on It: The Design’s the Thing! (2013, an e-book available through amazon.com)

Putting a Little Spin on It: The Grooming’s the Thing! (2013, an e-book available through amazon.com)

Midnight Rider for the Morning Star: The Life and Times of Francis Asbury (2008, softcover available through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)

True North: Tice’s Story (2015, softcover available through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)

Chasing the Music (2016, softcover available through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)

The Crossing (coming in March 2017, available through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)

The Last Aliyah (coming in 2017, available through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com)

The Three Sixes (coming soon)

What I'm Working On Now:

Jeremiah’s Jar, a mystery/thriller in which my hero and heroine from Chasing the Music and The Three Sixes hunt the property deed to land in nearby Anathoth that Jeremiah bought when Jerusalem was under siege by Nebuchednezzar. Its finding would prove the Jewish people’s historical connection to the land that the United Nations now denies. The dangerous subplot has the United States moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an action bringing threats of violence from Arab terrorists of all sorts.