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New from Your Write Path: Your Life, Your Story, Your Legacy
Your Life, Your Story, Your Legacy
Every life holds a story worth keeping, and too many are lost because we didn’t write them down. With Life Writing, I help people turn their memories into a finished book their families can hold, share, and pass down for generations.
After facilitating journaling and writing workshops for the past three years, I’m now offering to help you get your legacy down on paper. If you’d like to include photos, audio of you own narration, and even video, consider reaching out.
As a two-time Emmy Award–winning writer, author of fifteen novels, and a Certified Guided Autobiography Instructor, I’ve spent my career shaping stories. I’m still an author, still a workshop guide, and still here for whatever you’d like to accomplish.
From First Idea to Finished Book
With patience and time, listening carefully to what you want, I’ll guide you through every step:
- Finding your story. Together we explore the memories, people, and turning points that matter most, and uncover the themes that tie your life together.
- Building the outline. We shape those memories into a clear structure, so the project feels manageable instead of overwhelming.
- Writing it down. Write it yourself with my coaching and feedback, or let me help draft it from our conversations, in your voice.
- Editing and polishing. Careful editing makes your story read smoothly while keeping it unmistakably yours.
- Creating the book. I’m able to handle design, cover, and publishing through my own imprint, so you end with a real, professionally printed book, whether you want 10 copies or 50. It’s your story, and your choice.
Whether you want to preserve family history, share hard-won lessons, or simply make sense of the road you’ve traveled, you don’t have to do it alone. Your life is a story, and you’re the storyteller.
Let’s Begin
Contact me through through Your Write Path to talk about your legacy book.
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Coming Soon: LGBTQ+ Biweekly Online Writers Group Starts January 5
A Biweekly Online Writing Group for LGBTQ+ Writers
First and fourth Tuesday of the month. $20/month
Whether you’ve been writing for years or have never shared a word, there’s a seat for you here.
This biweekly online group brings LGBTQ+ writers together to share their work and support one another’s growth. Every form of writing is welcome: fiction, essays, poetry, life writing, or something that doesn’t fit neatly into any category.
Each session gives you time to read your writing aloud and receive thoughtful input from the group. Feedback is always constructive, given with care, and offered in the spirit of helping each writer do their best work. Bring a work in progress, a finished piece, or a few pages you’re not sure about yet.
This is a safe, non-judgmental space where every voice is respected and every writer is encouraged. Come to find your voice, move a project forward, or simply be among people who understand that our stories matter.
All experience levels welcome. Your stories belong here.
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Gift Certificates for Your Write Path – $40 Any Workshop
Every life is a story, and each of us is the storyteller.
Give someone you care about time, space, and community. This $40 gift certificate can be used toward any Your Write Path workshop, including fiction writing, character creation, self-publishing, journaling and more, in person or online over Zoom.
Your Write Path workshops are warm, welcoming, and built for writers at every level. It’s a meaningful gift for birthdays, holidays, retirements, or anyone who has ever said, “I’ve always wanted to write.” From the essentials of writing fiction, to character creation and self-publishing, to life writing and journaling, these workshops are for anyone with a desire to explore and express themselves through writing.
You’ll receive a downloadable PDF of the certificate with purchase. When redeeming, specify which workshop it’s for. Purchaser will receive confirmation from Mark at Your Write Path.
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The Twist 340: America’s Cornell Crisis, and a Review of Ann Cleeves’ Newest Matthew Venn Mystery
Join Mark and Rick for a retooled Twist as we talk about Cornell and America’s peak assault culture, catch up with happenings and news, and hear a review of Ann Cleeves’ newest, ‘The Dying Light.’
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Savvy Senior:
Planning a Simple, Affordable Funeral
Dear Savvy Senior,
I’d like to make my end-of-life arrangements, but I want to keep things simple and affordable. What are my options?
–86-Year-Old
Dear 86,
Smart thinking! Planning ahead can save your loved ones a lot of stress, and money. With a traditional burial averaging around $10,000 and a full-service cremation near $6,500, it’s easy to see why many seniors are looking for simpler, lower-cost ways to say goodbye.
The good news is, there are plenty of options that are dignified, straightforward, and much easier on your wallet. Here’s a look at some choices, depending on the kind of farewell you want.
Direct cremation
If cremation appeals to you, a direct cremation is the simplest – and usually the least expensive – option. It includes picking up the body, completing the required paperwork, the cremation itself, and returning the ashes to your family. There’s no embalming, formal viewing, or casket; a simple cardboard box called an “alternative container” is used to hold the remains.
Depending on where you live and which provider you choose, direct cremation typically costs $700 to $3,500. If you want extra services, ask for an itemized price list so you know exactly what you’re paying for. Funeral homes are required by law to provide this.
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Around the House: Should You Move Now, or Stay Put?
The passing of time makes many things more pressing, and that includes where we want to spend most, if not the rest, of our lives.
It’s almost October – again! Every month seems like it’s come back around faster and faster as the years pass. Holidays, too. Didn’t we just take the Christmas tree down?
The passing of time makes many things more pressing, and that includes where we want to spend most, if not the rest, of our lives. We live in a small house in the woods in rural New Jersey, not far from Lambertville and New Hope (PA), but six miles from a town. We’ve talked for several years about moving to a place where we could walk to a coffee shop, and have next door neighbors, and see people walking into town. More importanntly, it’s a small house on 26 acres of wooded land. It was a one-room house when it was built long ago, and it’s just not good for two aging men. Rickety stairs to the basement where the laundry machine is. One bedroom, with a makeshift guest room in the A-frame attic. Two cats. No writing room for me!
I keep saying now is the time to get serious about moving. I’ll be 68 in October, and I know I’ll have no desire to move when I’m 80. I also want to find a new house while we’re still at an age to really enjoy it. Decorating. Gardening. Make it special. And enjoying it for more than a few years before that whole assisted-living thing becomes a consideration.
And I think the time has come. Hopefully a year from now we’ll either be moved, or in the proccess of moving. So what are the things to consider as so many of us find ourselves at this crossroads?
When is the right time?
There’s no magic birthday. But there are signs. The stairs that used to be nothing are now something. The yard that was a pleasure is now a chore list. The house has rooms nobody goes into except to dust them (or not enough rooms at all). Maybe you’ve outgrown the place, or the neighborhood has changed around you, and home doesn’t feel like home anymore.
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From the Book Bin: Douglas Stuart’s Quitely Devastating ‘John of John’
Book Review: John of John by Douglas Stuart
A story about fathers and sons, faith and shame, and the long silences that can pass for peace.
Douglas Stuart’s first two novels lived in the tenements of 1980s Glasgow. His third takes the ferry west, to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides in the late 1990s. It’s a quieter book than Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo, and in many ways a braver one.
Cal Macleod is 22, fresh out of art college in Edinburgh, and broke. Twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, he waits at a phone box for his father to call from Harris and sing the day’s Gaelic psalm, expecting Cal to sing it back. They don’t talk much. John mentions that Cal’s grandmother hasn’t been well; Cal keeps quiet about the men he’s sleeping with.
So Cal goes home to the croft where John raises sheep and weaves tweed. His grandmother, Ella—a Glaswegian who refuses to speak Gaelic and holds on to her profanity-laced English—turns out to be fairly vigorous, and the summons serves another purpose. On the crossing, an elderly passenger asks Cal who he belongs to, and he recites his lineage: “John of John of Ian of Ian the Breabadair.” Breabadair means weaver. On this island, you are who your father was.
The friction arrives on schedule. John is a deacon in a church that still shames backsliders in public and chains up the swings on the Sabbath. Cal has dyed his long hair, wears torn jeans, and has no interest in joining the elect in the front pews. John raises his hand to him. Cal answers a “Men Seeking Men” ad in the newspaper.
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COMING SOON: The Return of LGBTSr
After an extended break, I’ll be brining back LGBTSr better and sharper than ever. I haven’t decided what content you’ll be getting, but it will be great. So stay tuned, be patient, and love life. – Mark -
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
True Crime Tuesday – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: Kouri Richins and the Moscow Mule Murder
Narration provided by WondervoxShe killed her husband with a fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule — then wrote a children’s book about grief. On May 13, 2026, the same day that would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday, a Utah judge sentenced Kouri Richins to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In this episode of True Crime Tuesdays, Mark McNease walks you through one of the most chilling cases in recent memory — a tale of debt, deception, a secret affair, and a calculated murder hiding in plain sight behind the cover of a children’s book. From the first failed attempt on Valentine’s Day to the fatal Moscow Mule, from the internet searches about lethal doses to the jury that deliberated less than three hours — this is a story that is almost too dark to be believed.
True Crime Tuesdays is a Fearsome Fiction feature. New episodes every Tuesday.
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New Your Write Path Promotional Video
