A brief bio first, then here we go!
Mark S. Nielsen is a freelance writer, teacher, filmmaker, artist, musician, Rennaissance Man and general weirdo from Chicago, IL. He currently resides part-time in Bloomington, IL with his fiancé. He attends, performs at or coordinates peace and justice/education conferences, writers’ workshops, "Moth" style storytelling events, a drum circle, plus any number of music, theater and political events. He’s also a big supporter of the indie music, art, theater, filmmaking and poetry scenes throughout the Midwest. He mentors college students, spirituality groups, and ecumenical/interfaith co-conspirators.
Mark has worked as a documentary film director and executive, a K-8 Mennonite school teacher (theater and P.E.), a college writing teacher, a mall Santa Claus, a pharma industry IT/Marketing Analyst, and a corporate security specialist. If you have any other ideas for what to do next, he IS entertaining suggestions.
He is presently at work on a twisted Christmas pageant script, two novels, one work of nonfiction, two blogs, a business start-up, his curve-ball, and the reduction of the paunch around his midsection.
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My current project: "Murder in Birdland", a true-crime historical novel about musicians, comedians, nightclubs & the Mafia in Kennedy-era NYC, ...plus a *companion nonfiction 6± part podcast series using the same research, (and some original dramatic dialogue/radio-play elements). Here's the draft of my "pitch", at least the beginning of it:
"During the first rumblings of the turbulent Sixties, self-possessed but naive Diane McKittredge –college student by day, would-be journalist, singer and Beat poet by night– embarks on a wild journey from the back alleys of Greenwich Village to the heights of Broadway stages and trendy nightclubs. From hobnobbing with the nation’s intelligentsia and top entertainers in Upper West Side penthouses, to staving off unwanted advances by a Mafia capo in a Little Italy “social club”, Diane learns fast… much faster than she’s learning in any NYU classoom.
Three “forbidden love affairs” lie at the heart of the novel:
-- level-headed middle-class coed Diane and broke, Brooklyn-born jazz hopeful Bill…
--their wealthy friend Arnold Levin and West Side Story dancer Jose de Vega…
the unlikely love triangle of Natalie Wood, --Robert Wagner, and Wood’s one-time real-life lover, Birdland co-owner (and Mafia “front”) Morris Levy.
MURDER IN BIRDLAND is part crime fiction, part historical dramedy about musicians, comedians, writers, dirty business and maniac mafiosi in the early Sixties. It percolates with the bigger-than-life problems of young adult identity, addiction, political wrangling and “making it big” in the Big Apple.
Welcome!