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?
Mark Marchand, photo by April Newman
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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