Name Mark Gerson | Role Author | |
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Books The MoonQuest, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write Awards New Mexico Book Award for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy | ||
Mark david gerson on what makes a good writer
Mark David Gerson is the award-winning author and creator of The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels and films and nine other books.
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The MoonQuest, the first book in the trilogy, has won multiple national and regional awards, as has his book on writing and creativity, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. In 2008, The MoonQuest won a Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award as best visionary fiction and a New Mexico Book Award as best science fiction/fantasy book of the year. More recently, Gerson won a 2014 Canada Book Award for the title. As an unpublished author in 2006, Gerson won a New Mexico Discovery Award for The MoonQuest manuscript. In 2009, Gerson again won an Independent Publisher Book Award, this time a Silver Medal, and a New Mexico Book Award for The Voice of the Muse. His MoonQuest sequels are 'The StarQuest (2013) The SunQuest (2013).
Gerson's other books include Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir, released in 2012, Writer's Block Unblocked: Seven Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow, released in 2013 and From Memory to Memoir: Writing the Stories of Your Life, Organic Screenwriting: Writing for Film, Naturally and Birthing Your Book...Even If You Don't Know What It's About, all published in 2014. His latest book is Sara's Year, set in Halifax and his native Montreal.
The MoonQuest, the first feature film in The Q'ntana Trilogy, produced by Anvil Springs Entertainment from Gerson's screenplay, has been announced for a 2017 release.
A Montreal native, Gerson spent over a decade as a freelance writer, editor and broadcaster. During much of that time he was the Canadian stringer for The Chronicle of Higher Education and Times Higher Education, then known as The Times Higher Education Supplement. While in Canada, he also contributed to the Montreal Star, The Gazette (Montreal), the Ottawa Journal, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, as well as to a variety of magazines and to CBC Radio and Radio Canada International. It was also in Canada that he began writing The MoonQuest, starting it in Toronto and writing most of the first two drafts in Nova Scotia.
Gerson left Canada in 1997 and currently splits his time between Los Angeles and New Mexico.