Mark Browning
Novelist; Journalist; Photographer; Songwriter
Toss a prayer to the open skies
Like a magic arrow piercing concrete lies
Into the heart of history's long lonesome cries.
Now I'm standing here so revitalized.... from the song Walking into Town
About
Mark Browning has written three novels and published nature articles in BBC Wildife, Outdoor California, Arizona Wildlife and other magazines and newspapers. His wildlife research has been featured in numerous publications and filmed in a segment of the PBS series America's Heartland. He has presented speaking engagements on a variety of subjects in Spain, Mexico, and throughout the United States. He travels widely and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
From An Altar Beyond
the Horizon of Time
While researching lizards in the Sonoran Desert, biologist Mathew Stokes is bitten by a rattlesnake and is soon on the verge of death. His life is saved by an alien researcher with one caveat: that he travels with him to a planet which presents a cosmic mystery he believes Mathew can help solve. Highly reluctant at first, Mathew takes the interstellar journey and discovers a mirror planet of Earth whose society worships nature and is dedicated to the arts and sciences. Mystified as to his true purpose in Jarvis's mission, but enthralled with the new planet, Mathew falls in love with an alluring shamaness, Malene, and decides to remain on Masara. When Mathew discovers that a large military force from across the sea is preparing to annihilate Masara, he warns the Masarians; in the ensuing battle Malene is apparently killed, and Mathew reluctantly returns to Earth seventy years in the future when Earth’s environment is failing, and civilization is on the verge of collapse. Jarvis’s mystery only deepens when, one day, Mathew receives a letter from none other than Malene, whom Jarvis has now brought to Earth. The message she relays from Jarvis is that she and Mathew are “the threads between two worlds.” Altar was inspired by a number of works, including the environmentalism of James Lovelock’s Gaia, the biology of Catherine Caulfield’s In the Rainforest, and the revolutionary cultural work by Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade. The novel creates a world where our history is reversed, and it poses the question: what if warrior societies on Earth had not destroyed the agrarian societies that worshipped nature? Altar is a book of ultimate hope, and its pacing reads like an adventure novel. I am a biologist who has worked for the Carnegie Museum, National Aviary, and Pittsburgh Zoo. I have published popular articles in BBC Wildlife, Outdoor California, and Arizona Wildlife as well as scientific articles in journals. My wildlife studies have been conducted in California, Pennsylvania, and Ecuador, and have been featured on the BBC series, America’s Heartland. My biological background contributed significantly to the scientific thread that runs throughout this book.
“I generally do not have time to read what is sent to me, but I started reading your book -- and got hooked. You write very vividly and well...I found it fascinating, love your imagination and premise, and am glad my work contributed to it.” Riane Eisler, best selling author of The Chalice and the Blade
Novels
The Peacock Angel
Shortly after the beginning of the Iraq war, something strange is happening in the streets of Baghdad. A bold and sympathetic Arab is performing acts of mercy for people caught in the cruelties of war. He saves a woman from a violent assault and gives money to the parents of wounded children. He never identifies himself and then disappears. When he frees a doomed Canadian hostage from the clutches of a terrorist group while posing as an Arab journalist, he becomes a famed mystery in the Iraqi streets and catches the attention of American intelligence. The “Arab Angel” is, in fact, Michael Descheny, son of famous war journalist, Evan Descheny— reportedly killed in Kurdistan before the Iraq war. Fluent in Arabic and dark from his father’s Navajo blood, Michael dons traditional Arab dress and lives inside Baghdad under cover. But his philanthropy is only a means to realizing his true mission: finding his father, who was not killed in Kurdistan but abducted and taken into Iraq by a rich Saudi for an unknown purpose. Steeped in the ancient history of the Mideast and its cultures, The Peacock Angel tells the story of how Michael must battle within a storm of hatred to preserve what he loves—not only the life of his father, himself, and others, but the core of his feeling for humanity.
Infused with the history of the Mideast, the tradition of Islam, and the political workings of the Iraq War in the U.S.
Poison Ivy
Twelve-year-old Cane Engels has a plan he has worked on for the last year, ever since the day his mom ran off and his dad came home embittered and disillusioned from the Afghanistan war-- to run away from his overbearing dad and broken-down neighborhood on the North Side of Pittsburgh called Spring Garden, a place Cane ruefully says, “Has no springs or gardens.” Placed in a corner in the local bar and looked over by the bartender, Cane spends his time observing the local regulars, a discordant, colorful mix of people who Cane finds captivating. Poison Ivy is steeped in the poignant history of Pittsburgh, one of the most vital towns of the industrial revolution that hosted the rise of the industrial barons, the successive waves of immigrants, the backbreaking work in the steel mills, and the violent rise of the unions. It is the story of how a young boy’s dream of running away becomes a different path altogether through events no one could predict.
Set in the town of the "Three Rivers", Poison Ivy gives nods to Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn while drawing a sharp contrast between the world before and after industrialization.
Magazine Articles and Papers
Here are some sample magazine articles of mine. Click on the photo to access the entire the article.
Black Oystercatcher
Outdoor California
.jpg)
Wandering Spider
BBC Wildlife
The Tortoise and the Monster
Arizona Wildlife
My Story
Born into a military family, I have traveled all my life. Must have gotten into my blood. Never cared much for routine. By the time I was nine, I had seen seven countries. Growing up in South Carolina, I started out in biology at an early age, collecting reptiles for zoos and museums, but then just traveled. I pruned apple trees in New York, farmed wheat in Washington state, painted houses in Key West, drove truck in New York City, conducted wildlife research in California, published articles in magazines, wrote scientific papers, hiked the Amazon and Andes, even trained sea lions for a few years.
You might say I worked my way through the alphabet, but I was more of a writer moonlighting as a zookeeper than the other way around. Eventually, I became one of the founding members of a folk-rock band called Sandoz, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were signed to Relix Records in New York, produced three albums, and played hundreds of gigs. I continue today to write, perform, and record original songs in the folk-rock-poet tradition.
Wherever I went, I took notes on the places, events, and characters that I came across in my travels and these found their way into the writing of three novels and many songs.