Heya. Mark Bourne here.

Now alive and well in Seattle, which I just love.

I'm a writer and creative director by trade; an astronomy buff by both avocation and erstwhile vocation; now and then paid the rent, back in the day, as an actor and stage director; and have been a seriously good teacher. The best were the occasions when I've been able to combine all of the above. This site serves largely as an extension of my business card and an addendum to my résumé. As such it has served me well and profitably.

So feel welcome to look around, find out a bit about me, or even read a story. I enjoy hearing from total strangers who've found their way here, so don't be shy about dropping me a note.

Goals to enjoy before I die: trekking all up and down and across and around Great Britain. Seeing the night sky from the Southern Hemisphere. Having my books on the shelves between Sherwood Anderson and Michael Chabon. Perfecting a great pizza recipe.

Professionally and academically I've been lucky enough to be rewarded for my passions. I'm a science buff with a particular affinity for astronomy (I've been known to teach it and write about it as well as spend long, cold nights outdoors looking up through expensive tubing). I enjoy both researching and explaining, so some of my favorite career choices involve stints as a science and humanities writer (I especially enjoy seeing my work go public in a big way with museums and videos). I love theater (earned an M.A. in it and have been known to create some of it from time to time) and film journalism. My fondness for the Sherlock Holmes literature led directly to my being hired to write Holmesian mysteries for a computer game. Plus, well, just about anything else that wings my way. Now and then I sell fiction to pro markets, and am getting into that First Novel thing.

Here's a casual profile on me in the local press.

I have also...

...worked in cooperation with Ray Bradbury to bring two of his plays to life; written and seen produced scripts under the aegis of Paramount Pictures; performed with sketch and improvisational comedy groups before large and rowdy audiences; taught English lit, writing, and drama to high school students, and astronomy to little kids and adults; directed a senior class play and a semi-professional theater company; been a TV science correspondent; served as the Special Guest Buckaroo on the Ranger Bob children's TV show; and assistant-directed an outdoor Shakespeare Festival. Am both a "dog person" and a "cat person." Will probably never tire of watching Casablanca. And in the Star Wars universe an inhabited alien star system has been named after me.

Turn ons: New York City, London, damn good coffee, Tom Stoppard, Harper's, P.G. Wodehouse, This American Life, Fresh Air, Miles Davis, Penn & Teller, Billy Wilder, The Beatles (collectively and singly), Coltrane's "In a Sentimental Mood" and "My Favorite Things," Miles Davis' "So What," Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Eudora Welty, Studs Terkel, the combination of chocolate and orange, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hayden Planetarium, Improv Everywhere, Boing Boing, Bogie, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, T.C. Boyle, Michael Chabon, Jacques Tati, Hayao Miyazaki's films, Chuck Jones & Tex Avery & Bob Clampett, Bowmore Darkest Islay, Doonesbury, best-years Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Philip Glass, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Stephen Sondheim, René Magritte, the original King Kong, Stephen Jay Gould, Timothy Ferris, T.S. Eliot, Ray Harryhausen, Robertson Davies, Carl Sagan, John Steinbeck, the Alice books, William Faulkner, Guinness Stout.

Eddie Valiant: "What do you see in that guy?"
Jessica Rabbit: "He makes me laugh." — Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Funny: the Marx Brothers, Blackadder, xkcd, The Daily Show, Stephen Fry, Tom Tomorrow, Julia Sweeney, Tom the Dancing Bug, Blazing Saddles, Roy Blount Jr., the old National Lampoon Radio Hour, The Simpsons, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python, Firesign Theatre, Pogo, Calvin & Hobbes, The Onion.

Reached the Pacific Northwest by way of the shores of Lake Ontario by way of the Midwest by way of the Ozarks south, so how I ended up without a discernable accent of some sort is something of a mystery. Was once assigned to teach English at Bushwick High School in Brooklyn. I declined, but still have the certificate as a memento. (The school went on to become a rather notorious "failed" institution. Hiring me would not have changed that.)

A little while back, stately Bourne manor relocated from Portland to Seattle, specifically West Seattle, just a short walk to the local hub of activity, the Junction, and a boot-scoot to Alki Beach. We're at a crest of the peninsula, so with water on three sides of us, plus the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges jagging the eastern and western horizons, the views can be quite nice. Hello, Seattle.

Flickr set:





Of course, out of the many people I have met in my life and travels — acquaintances whose lives intersected with mine briefly but meaningfully, friends and others coupling with mine for longer (some still ongoing) periods — not a one has had a greater beneficial impact on my heart and head than my wife, Elizabeth Lawhead Bourne. She's one of the best. She's taught me a lot — how to weed a garden, how to cook with the expensive kitchenware, that rosemary from the yard is better than the store-bought kind, what to do when it's cold and snowy out but you want to hit the outdoor hot tubs anyway (you hit the hot tubs and watch the snow melt against an invisible dome over your head).

Having been an artsy edge-chick in Boston, Manhattan, and Toronto, Elizabeth has become a veritable Wise Woman of the Tribe among our friends, who recognize that she is dangerously intelligent, experienced, perceptive, and an astute judge of character. She has repeatedly demonstrated that she is a woman who embodies the Oz-ish virtues of brains, heart, and courage, and I try to learn from her example. As my Southern Gentleman father would say, she's a good'n.

We met when we worked together on Star Trek: Orion Rendezvous. I was the writer and creative director, she was the hired-gun computer graphics artist. Remarkably well-read and diverse, she has too many enthusiasms to ever be boring or bored. At the moment she's addicted of the novels of Patrick O'Brian, Robertson Davies, and, natch, Jane Austen. In the nonfiction realm, she's currently riding a fascination for Hellenistic Alexandria, its famous Library and medical practices. Elizabeth is a long-time subscriber to Archaeology magazine, and in a nearby alternate reality she's Indiana Jones's chief competition.

A computer graphics artist since before it was cool, she illustrated the Arkham House Press collection of stories by Mary Rosenblum, Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities. Look for it and play "Name That Author" with the ills. She co-owned her own computer graphics business for 12 years, then was enticed away to become an exec (ultimately CEO) at a dotcom. She graduated from that to a cushy exec position in a firm that blissfully has nothing to do with either dots or coms, thus removing her from daily Dilbert scenarios while providing her with an office overlooking the Seattle cityscape. We're not complaining a bit.