Mark A. Marchand: The Answer From Surveyor 3

THE ANSWER FROM SURVEYOR 3.
Mark A. Marchand
Independently published, September 27, 2021
Paperback, $13.95, ebook, $2.99
ISBN-13: 979-84651262, ASIN: B09H92BXTL

Marchand reports:

My fascination with NASA and the six successful Apollo landings on the Moon sparked a lifelong love of astronomy and space exploration. The landings also taught me an early lesson: the importance of having a concrete objective (JFK's challenge in the early 60s) and allowing no stumbling block, however difficult, to get in the way.

As I wound my way through a long career as a daily newspaper journalist and then as a senior manager in corporate communications at Verizon, I continued to study the Apollo missions. I eventually conceived a story idea related to part of the Apollo 12 mission and another significant event in the 60s: JFK's assassination. I stitched them together in a mystery novel that attempts to answer the question: What if one or more people were present when Lee Harvey Oswald fired those shots, and what did they do with evidence they accidentally collected?

I developed my primary plot over a decade ago and never lost sight of working to bring it to light. I worked on other writing projects since then, including my first book, U.S. Route 1: Rediscovering the New World, but I continued to write draft narratives. The COVID lockdowns removed a lot of distractions and forced me to sit down and complete a 100,000-word draft.

I hired a copy editor at the university where I teach. I felt that whether I self-published the manuscript or found an agent/publisher, I needed a professional, clean manuscript. I chose to self-publish after trying to find agents and small publishers for half a year.

My sister-in-law, a graphic designer in NYC, produced a book cover that I feel speaks well to the plot. I wish I knew more about the process of finding agents or better mining my national network of contacts for agent/publisher leads. That process requires a lot of patience.

My advice to aspiring authors? If you feel the book you’re writing is one you'd buy, explore all opportunities to get it out there.

Contact info:

Mark Marchand, 518-928-8597, markmarchand56@gmail.com, @MaMarchand
Book: http://markmarchand-upstateny.com/

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