It gives me great pleasure to welcome Mark Leichliter onto the website today. Mark's debut crime thriller The Other Side has garnered rave reviews. Christine Carbo, the award-winning and bestselling author of the Glacier Mystery series described it as "... a haunting procedural propelled by a smartly-developed cast of characters and rich descriptions of unforgettable landscapes... and a protagonist you won't forget."
Alex: Tell us a bit about yourself, Mark.
Mark: I was raised in Wyoming, in the United States. Wyoming is the kind of place people are quick to make off-color jokes about, for it is an extremely large western U.S. state with a small human population, the sort of place where sheep and cattle, deer and antelope outnumber humans. My best friend from college at the University of Wyoming—a place of such high altitude that marathon runners from throughout the world come there to train—was home in Washington, D.C. visiting parents when he was pulled over by the police; upon inspecting his driver’s license, the police officer said, “What are you trying to pull, son; everyone knows that Wyoming is a city in Texas.” As a child, whenever our family travelled, upon learning where I was from, other kids would routinely ask if I rode a horse to school. Just for the sake of clarification, I did not.
My parents were enthusiastic about education and were quick to supply my brother and I with books and models, along with a great deal of freedom to explore our inner lives and the natural world—anything to fuel our imaginations and desire to learn. Part of their enthusiasm probably was sparked by their own humble childhoods, the heavy demands as the children of farmers, and their own lack of opportunity to gain access to higher education. As a result, I was a child who possessed an outsized imagination, and quite literally began writing stories nearly as soon as I could string sentences together. Books, writing, and the desire to write have been part of my life for all of my memory. As a child, I had numerous small plastic animals. Among them I had a small number of favorites that I took everywhere with me. My mom cleared one drawer of my dresser and helped me line it with paper. I drew a detailed floorplan on that paper for a multi-bedroom apartment where my favorite animals lived. My earliest stories were about their adventures. I’ve never really stopped telling stories.
I’ve been blessed to be able to earn a livelihood throughout my adult life from words in one fashion or another. I spent more than twenty years teaching writing at the college level. I’ve been lucky enough to organize a writers’ speaking series, run a writers’ conference, coordinate academic programs for writers, and work with writers as a faculty member of writers’ conferences. I’ve done stints with libraries, am the managing editor for a literary magazine, and work as a ghostwriter for thought leaders. And along the way I have continued to write stories, poems, essays, and novels. I have never lost my love affair with words.
Alex: How would you describe your writing, and are there particular themes that you like to explore?
Mark: When writing crime fiction, I blend the literary fiction traits of realistic and robust character development with a plot that is intricate enough but fast-moving to engage readers. Like my other more literary novels, my crime novels have an undercurrent of social themes. The Other Side, for example, which is set in Northwest Montana in the U.S., a place of iconic mountain valleys that has made it particularly desirable for those looking to escape major cities for a different lifestyle, has a sub context of exploring the wealth divide as newly arrived wealthy homeowners place new pressures on a long-term population that traditionally has suffered from average to poor wages. The follow up novel to The Other Side will focus on human trafficking of indigenous women, which is far too tragically common. I have a literary novel forthcoming in 2023 that uses comedy to argue for more random acts of kindness as a means to address the sad divisiveness we currently suffer in the U.S. where conservatives and progressives have lost much of the middle ground that could unite them. These kinds of social concerns, whether a focal point or a quiet treatment in the background, have always been important to me. When I was completing a creative writing thesis in graduate school, I made certain to have a sociologist on my defense committee because I wanted that perspective on the social themes that were central to the stories I was producing. I try to find balance between novels that are highly engaging, whether that is via mystery, comedy, revelation of intertwined storylines, or some other device, and these kinds of human explorations of how we treat one another.
Alex: Tell us a bit about yourself, Mark.
Mark: I was raised in Wyoming, in the United States. Wyoming is the kind of place people are quick to make off-color jokes about, for it is an extremely large western U.S. state with a small human population, the sort of place where sheep and cattle, deer and antelope outnumber humans. My best friend from college at the University of Wyoming—a place of such high altitude that marathon runners from throughout the world come there to train—was home in Washington, D.C. visiting parents when he was pulled over by the police; upon inspecting his driver’s license, the police officer said, “What are you trying to pull, son; everyone knows that Wyoming is a city in Texas.” As a child, whenever our family travelled, upon learning where I was from, other kids would routinely ask if I rode a horse to school. Just for the sake of clarification, I did not.
My parents were enthusiastic about education and were quick to supply my brother and I with books and models, along with a great deal of freedom to explore our inner lives and the natural world—anything to fuel our imaginations and desire to learn. Part of their enthusiasm probably was sparked by their own humble childhoods, the heavy demands as the children of farmers, and their own lack of opportunity to gain access to higher education. As a result, I was a child who possessed an outsized imagination, and quite literally began writing stories nearly as soon as I could string sentences together. Books, writing, and the desire to write have been part of my life for all of my memory. As a child, I had numerous small plastic animals. Among them I had a small number of favorites that I took everywhere with me. My mom cleared one drawer of my dresser and helped me line it with paper. I drew a detailed floorplan on that paper for a multi-bedroom apartment where my favorite animals lived. My earliest stories were about their adventures. I’ve never really stopped telling stories.
I’ve been blessed to be able to earn a livelihood throughout my adult life from words in one fashion or another. I spent more than twenty years teaching writing at the college level. I’ve been lucky enough to organize a writers’ speaking series, run a writers’ conference, coordinate academic programs for writers, and work with writers as a faculty member of writers’ conferences. I’ve done stints with libraries, am the managing editor for a literary magazine, and work as a ghostwriter for thought leaders. And along the way I have continued to write stories, poems, essays, and novels. I have never lost my love affair with words.
Alex: How would you describe your writing, and are there particular themes that you like to explore?
Mark: When writing crime fiction, I blend the literary fiction traits of realistic and robust character development with a plot that is intricate enough but fast-moving to engage readers. Like my other more literary novels, my crime novels have an undercurrent of social themes. The Other Side, for example, which is set in Northwest Montana in the U.S., a place of iconic mountain valleys that has made it particularly desirable for those looking to escape major cities for a different lifestyle, has a sub context of exploring the wealth divide as newly arrived wealthy homeowners place new pressures on a long-term population that traditionally has suffered from average to poor wages. The follow up novel to The Other Side will focus on human trafficking of indigenous women, which is far too tragically common. I have a literary novel forthcoming in 2023 that uses comedy to argue for more random acts of kindness as a means to address the sad divisiveness we currently suffer in the U.S. where conservatives and progressives have lost much of the middle ground that could unite them. These kinds of social concerns, whether a focal point or a quiet treatment in the background, have always been important to me. When I was completing a creative writing thesis in graduate school, I made certain to have a sociologist on my defense committee because I wanted that perspective on the social themes that were central to the stories I was producing. I try to find balance between novels that are highly engaging, whether that is via mystery, comedy, revelation of intertwined storylines, or some other device, and these kinds of human explorations of how we treat one another.
Alex: Are you a writer that plans a detailed synopsis or do you set out with a vague idea and let the story unfold as you write?
Mark: I’m 100% an organic writer. I find great joy in encountering surprise and opening myself to trying to hear the book and its characters as they speak to me. Most of my work starts with a partial scene that I’ve seen in my head, a frozen image that I can’t shake, or a vague idea of something I want to explore, usually some aspect of human nature that puzzles me. I know the writing is working when I’m following rather than leading. The simple truth is that we all write differently, and many writers need a clear path to follow. For me, by getting out of the way, listening carefully to the text, and asking the right questions, I tend to find what feel like trustworthy writing solutions and logical revealing stories.
Alex: Tell us about your latest novel.
Mark: The Other Side, a crime novel, was published in June 2021. The novel opens with the sudden disappearance of a seventeen-year-old girl from a quiet town along the shores of Flathead Lake in Northwest Montana, in the United States. Largely a police procedural in approach, the novel balances revelations from an investigation that provides scant evidence and no clear explanation for her disappearance with portraits of the girl’s family as they try to cope with her absence. The lead detective, Steven Wendell, is something of an outcast in his department, simply because he doesn’t fit the mold of most of his peers—older when he came to police work, a loner without a family, deeply analytical—he’s also relentless in his pursuit of an investigation. It’s largely a novel about what is often hidden in plain sight within any community where crimes other than the one being investigated are unearthed. The physical place of mountains and valleys where weather can change in an instant is practically a character in the novel, as is Flathead Lake itself, which is the epicenter of the novel’s events and that possesses mysteries of its own below its surface.
Alex: What was the first book you read?
Mark: My parents read to me all the time, and I read early, but I also have a terribly poor memory. One of the first books I distinctly recall reading was a children’s abridged version of Tom Sawyer, and I distinctly remember the raw emotion of reading Where the Red Fern Grows. Pretty classic American fare on both counts.
Alex: How much research do you do and what does it usually entail?
Mark: I do a tremendous amount of research for all books. Research has taken me deep into the Vietnamese Refugee crisis when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam at the end of its war there, into forensics, anthropology, water law, any number of mechanical devices and their workings… a vast variety of fact-finding in order to understand processes beyond my expertise so that I might achieve accuracy. I’m curious by nature and love learning new things. But I’m also a stickler for realism. I’m the annoying sort who points out factual flaws in books and movies or elements that defy the laws of nature. That said, I’m certain I make factual errors with regularity despite careful research. I try to develop research that is a mix of reading book length sources on subjects that are critical to what I’m writing, the typical sort of Internet rabbit holes we all fall down, and live outreach to human experts. With The Other Side, for example, I spent a great deal of time interviewing a detective who worked in the same department where I set my fictional version for the law enforcement entity in the book. We talked at length about interview techniques, police procedures, legal realities, and place-specific community policing encounters. By pure dumb luck, I not only found a detective who had led investigations on murders, missing persons, and cold cases, he is active in the film industry as a producer, writer, and consultant, so he understood both the factual needs of fiction and the literary needs of a novel.
Alex: Do you ever base your characters on people you have encountered in real life?
Mark: I certainly do in bits and pieces and observations. I don’t do so whole cloth, and I try to avoid too much exploration of the people to whom I’m closest. But often a fact about a person or a bit of their history fits an element of a character I’m developing. Most often they become amalgams of multiple people alongside some pure fiction. All my characters evolve on their own and become fully fictional beings. But I try to be a keen observer of human behavior and am always listening to people’s stories and to the things they reveal about themselves that seem central to their personalities and values.
Alex: Which was the last book you read that blew you away?
Mark: I’m typically reading all the time and reading multiple books. Among those, I’m regularly reading any number of excellent books. But I put the “blew you away” into a special category. So I’d say that kind of book, the sort that left me restless and wanting more and wanting to study and discover a writer’s toolbox goes back a few years to Anthony Doer’s All the Light You Cannot See. So much has been written on this novel that I can’t meaningfully add to the conversation, but it is such a fine novel at every level—structurally, in its narrative approach, its character development, its lyrical language, its management of history—stunning. I’ve placed my order for his recently released book Cloud Cuckooland and am anxious to read.
Alex: How do you market your books?
Mark: Short answer: any way I can think of. It’s true, and it could be a fulltime job. I try and concentrate on marketing that actually gives something to the reader rather than asks for something from them, things like opportunities to ask questions, talk craft, gain insights about a place or a character or a real-life element that is also a theme in a given book. I’m looking for engagement with readers. I want them to feel a partner in the process, for they are; books without readers are pointless, and the very nature of reading engages every bit as much of the reader’s imagination as the writing has for the writer.
Alex: What are your interests aside from writing? And what do you do to unwind?
Mark: I’m as eclectic about interests and hobbies as I am about books and music. In the latter two, I’ll try most anything. I’m just looking for quality rather than genre or approach. As for interests, many involve the nature of where we live, which is among a collection of village-like small towns in a beautiful mountain valley that features the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River in the U.S. So I am an avid but slow trail runner, putting in miles in deep woods; we hike, camp, fish. But we also travel a great deal, as far and as often as finances allow. Our children are spread all over the world, so travel also includes trips to see them and their families. I can regularly be found at my local gym, whether taking exercise classes or playing tennis or basketball, for I try to break up my day at a midway point with physical exercise to help clear my mind and open myself to imaginative exploration. I really believe in the mind/body connection. I try my hand at woodworking, guitar, photography, and other artistic endeavors but mostly make up with enthusiasm what I lack in talent. At the moment, I’m attempting landscapes using multiple layers of stained and painted wood that create a kind of three-dimensional effect.
Alex: Which authors do you particularly admire and why?
Mark: This is honestly one of those lists that could go on forever. It also would likely change on a given day. That said, you’ll see a pattern to the authors I hold in the highest esteem. Among them I would regularly include: Andre Dubus, Tim O’Brien, Jennifer Egan, Claire Vaye Watkins, Tana French, Elizabeth Strout, Michael Ondaatje, Laura McHugh, Laura Lippman, and the aforementioned Anthony Doer. So many others. All these writers I’ve listed are extraordinarily original, provide great depth to their characters, are often somewhat experimental, and always get the balance right between readability and precision of language and image. They transport readers, body and soul, into the fictional realms they ask us to inhabit, and they make us ask demanding questions of ourselves, our fellow humans, and the motivations that drive us.
Alex: Thank you so much, Mark for your thoughtful and considered answers. It's been fascinating listening to you, and a real pleasure to have you sharing your writing journey with us. Your book sounds terrific and intriguing, and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Mark: Thank you, Alex. I'm thrilled and honoured to be included in this wonderful website and your forthcoming book.
Mark: I’m 100% an organic writer. I find great joy in encountering surprise and opening myself to trying to hear the book and its characters as they speak to me. Most of my work starts with a partial scene that I’ve seen in my head, a frozen image that I can’t shake, or a vague idea of something I want to explore, usually some aspect of human nature that puzzles me. I know the writing is working when I’m following rather than leading. The simple truth is that we all write differently, and many writers need a clear path to follow. For me, by getting out of the way, listening carefully to the text, and asking the right questions, I tend to find what feel like trustworthy writing solutions and logical revealing stories.
Alex: Tell us about your latest novel.
Mark: The Other Side, a crime novel, was published in June 2021. The novel opens with the sudden disappearance of a seventeen-year-old girl from a quiet town along the shores of Flathead Lake in Northwest Montana, in the United States. Largely a police procedural in approach, the novel balances revelations from an investigation that provides scant evidence and no clear explanation for her disappearance with portraits of the girl’s family as they try to cope with her absence. The lead detective, Steven Wendell, is something of an outcast in his department, simply because he doesn’t fit the mold of most of his peers—older when he came to police work, a loner without a family, deeply analytical—he’s also relentless in his pursuit of an investigation. It’s largely a novel about what is often hidden in plain sight within any community where crimes other than the one being investigated are unearthed. The physical place of mountains and valleys where weather can change in an instant is practically a character in the novel, as is Flathead Lake itself, which is the epicenter of the novel’s events and that possesses mysteries of its own below its surface.
Alex: What was the first book you read?
Mark: My parents read to me all the time, and I read early, but I also have a terribly poor memory. One of the first books I distinctly recall reading was a children’s abridged version of Tom Sawyer, and I distinctly remember the raw emotion of reading Where the Red Fern Grows. Pretty classic American fare on both counts.
Alex: How much research do you do and what does it usually entail?
Mark: I do a tremendous amount of research for all books. Research has taken me deep into the Vietnamese Refugee crisis when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam at the end of its war there, into forensics, anthropology, water law, any number of mechanical devices and their workings… a vast variety of fact-finding in order to understand processes beyond my expertise so that I might achieve accuracy. I’m curious by nature and love learning new things. But I’m also a stickler for realism. I’m the annoying sort who points out factual flaws in books and movies or elements that defy the laws of nature. That said, I’m certain I make factual errors with regularity despite careful research. I try to develop research that is a mix of reading book length sources on subjects that are critical to what I’m writing, the typical sort of Internet rabbit holes we all fall down, and live outreach to human experts. With The Other Side, for example, I spent a great deal of time interviewing a detective who worked in the same department where I set my fictional version for the law enforcement entity in the book. We talked at length about interview techniques, police procedures, legal realities, and place-specific community policing encounters. By pure dumb luck, I not only found a detective who had led investigations on murders, missing persons, and cold cases, he is active in the film industry as a producer, writer, and consultant, so he understood both the factual needs of fiction and the literary needs of a novel.
Alex: Do you ever base your characters on people you have encountered in real life?
Mark: I certainly do in bits and pieces and observations. I don’t do so whole cloth, and I try to avoid too much exploration of the people to whom I’m closest. But often a fact about a person or a bit of their history fits an element of a character I’m developing. Most often they become amalgams of multiple people alongside some pure fiction. All my characters evolve on their own and become fully fictional beings. But I try to be a keen observer of human behavior and am always listening to people’s stories and to the things they reveal about themselves that seem central to their personalities and values.
Alex: Which was the last book you read that blew you away?
Mark: I’m typically reading all the time and reading multiple books. Among those, I’m regularly reading any number of excellent books. But I put the “blew you away” into a special category. So I’d say that kind of book, the sort that left me restless and wanting more and wanting to study and discover a writer’s toolbox goes back a few years to Anthony Doer’s All the Light You Cannot See. So much has been written on this novel that I can’t meaningfully add to the conversation, but it is such a fine novel at every level—structurally, in its narrative approach, its character development, its lyrical language, its management of history—stunning. I’ve placed my order for his recently released book Cloud Cuckooland and am anxious to read.
Alex: How do you market your books?
Mark: Short answer: any way I can think of. It’s true, and it could be a fulltime job. I try and concentrate on marketing that actually gives something to the reader rather than asks for something from them, things like opportunities to ask questions, talk craft, gain insights about a place or a character or a real-life element that is also a theme in a given book. I’m looking for engagement with readers. I want them to feel a partner in the process, for they are; books without readers are pointless, and the very nature of reading engages every bit as much of the reader’s imagination as the writing has for the writer.
Alex: What are your interests aside from writing? And what do you do to unwind?
Mark: I’m as eclectic about interests and hobbies as I am about books and music. In the latter two, I’ll try most anything. I’m just looking for quality rather than genre or approach. As for interests, many involve the nature of where we live, which is among a collection of village-like small towns in a beautiful mountain valley that features the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River in the U.S. So I am an avid but slow trail runner, putting in miles in deep woods; we hike, camp, fish. But we also travel a great deal, as far and as often as finances allow. Our children are spread all over the world, so travel also includes trips to see them and their families. I can regularly be found at my local gym, whether taking exercise classes or playing tennis or basketball, for I try to break up my day at a midway point with physical exercise to help clear my mind and open myself to imaginative exploration. I really believe in the mind/body connection. I try my hand at woodworking, guitar, photography, and other artistic endeavors but mostly make up with enthusiasm what I lack in talent. At the moment, I’m attempting landscapes using multiple layers of stained and painted wood that create a kind of three-dimensional effect.
Alex: Which authors do you particularly admire and why?
Mark: This is honestly one of those lists that could go on forever. It also would likely change on a given day. That said, you’ll see a pattern to the authors I hold in the highest esteem. Among them I would regularly include: Andre Dubus, Tim O’Brien, Jennifer Egan, Claire Vaye Watkins, Tana French, Elizabeth Strout, Michael Ondaatje, Laura McHugh, Laura Lippman, and the aforementioned Anthony Doer. So many others. All these writers I’ve listed are extraordinarily original, provide great depth to their characters, are often somewhat experimental, and always get the balance right between readability and precision of language and image. They transport readers, body and soul, into the fictional realms they ask us to inhabit, and they make us ask demanding questions of ourselves, our fellow humans, and the motivations that drive us.
Alex: Thank you so much, Mark for your thoughtful and considered answers. It's been fascinating listening to you, and a real pleasure to have you sharing your writing journey with us. Your book sounds terrific and intriguing, and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Mark: Thank you, Alex. I'm thrilled and honoured to be included in this wonderful website and your forthcoming book.
