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	<author id="895478">
  <name><![CDATA[Mark Terence Chapman]]></name>
  <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/895478.Mark_Terence_Chapman]]></link>
  <fans-count type="integer">4</fans-count>
  <followers-count type="integer">4</followers-count>
  <image_url>http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1216502458p5/895478.jpg</image_url>
  <about><![CDATA[I’m married, with two teenage daughters, two dogs, two cats—in fact, two of everything but wives, and only because she won't let me.... I'm a scratch golfer (in my dreams) and a former Mensa member (not because I got stupid, but because I stopped paying my dues).

Even as a child, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up: an astronaut, a baseball player, and a pirate. By my early teens, the goal had changed to architect. Then, by high school the plan was to become a lawyer. 

After two years of law school, I decided that the law wasn't for me after all, and took a job with IBM. That association has lasted for the past 29 years. Although I enjoyed creative writing while in school, I never envisioned making a living as a writer.

Life has a funny way of taking its own path, however. In one of my many jobs within that behemoth of a computer company, I found myself writing hundreds of technical database articles (describing how to do this or how to diagnose and fix that). My work was praised to the point that I eventually compiled that and other information into a series of online books in 1989 (long before PDF), and made it available both internally and externally to customers.

Encouraged by the results, I decided to try my hand at writing a printed book. The result was the OS/2 Power User's Reference: From 2.0 through Warp 3.0, published in December 1995 by McGraw-Hill. Unfortunately, it came out right after Windows 95's debut, which pretty much killed the market for the OS/2 operating system—and OS/2-related books. The book is still listed on Amazon.com, although long out of print. (The last time I checked, it was the #8 best-seller under OS/2 books.)

Undaunted, I decided to try novel writing, but couldn't come up with a worthy project at first. In 2000, I took at stab at the children's picture book market, writing With a Name like Jeremy Hippenzoodle. My next project was a novel. Most writers would have started small, with short stories, and worked their way up. But not me. No, I had to start at the top. It took until 2003 before I decided to finally sit down and just do it. (Sorry, Nike.) From the first day to the last, including significant editing along the way, the first draft of The Tesserene Imperative (TTI) took all of 69 days to write. And it was brilliant, right? Ha! But it had potential. The story was sound, but the writing needed a lot of work. Over the next four years, I periodically went back and polished, expanded, and edited the thing to death, until it finally gleamed like a precious gemstone. (Well, maybe semi-precious.)

In the meantime, I wrote some short stories, humor pieces, and rhyming sci-fi poems, and sold my first piece of fiction, a 100-word story (called a drabble) for the whopping sum of $1. In 2004, I wrote my second novel, The Mars Imperative (TMI). Later that year, I was hired to ghost-write three (out of seven) chapters of a nonfiction book called Exploring IBM Server &amp; Storage Technology, 6th Edition, by the publisher of Maximum Press. The book came out in January 2005.

In 2005 I began work on the third book in the series, tentatively titled Reunion. Halfway through the story, it dawned on me that unless a publisher bought the first two books, there wasn't much point in finishing the third one. So I put it aside and concentrated on editing Tesserene and Mars, as well as writing my second children’s picture book: Marvin the Marvelous Mole Man. I also wrote a four-chapter sci-fi novella.

In early 2006 I had the idea of writing a sci-fi novel about a wisecracking private detective who gets kidnapped by aliens and has to save the human race. That idea turned into Sunrise Destiny. Then in 2007 I wrote a new novel, My Other Car is a Spaceship, an expansion of the unpublished novella I wrote in 2005. It’s the story of a retired air force pilot who's snatched by people on a spaceship and recruited to fight space pirates. Lots of shooting and things blowing up.
]]></about>    <gender>male</gender>  <hometown>Manhattan, NY</hometown>  <born_at>09/02/1955</born_at>    
  
  
  <books>
        <book id="6135629">
  <id>6135629</id>
  <title><![CDATA[The World Outside the Window]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Mark Terence Chapman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/895478.Mark_Terence_Chapman]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Pamela K. Kinney]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1446454]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Woodrow Walker]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560103]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Morgan St. James]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560104]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Robert A. Meacham]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560105]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[B.W. Philpot]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560106]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Jay Osman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560107]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Jim Wilsky]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560108]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Tory Lynn]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560109]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Larry L. Evans]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560110]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Lana M. Ho-Sheing]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560111]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Matthew Alan Pierce]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560112]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Erin Gordon]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560113]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Curtis M. Hendel]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560114]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[D.K. Christi]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560115]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Richard Lord]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560116]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Anthony Waugh]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560117]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[E. Don Harpe]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560118]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Rebecca Buckley]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1560119]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.89</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>9</ratings_count>
  <published>2008</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="1971435">
  <id>1971435</id>
  <title><![CDATA[The Mars Imperative]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Mark Terence Chapman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/895478.Mark_Terence_Chapman]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>4.00</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>4</ratings_count>
  <published>2007</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="6681644">
  <id>6681644</id>
  <title><![CDATA[Sunrise Destiny]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Mark Terence Chapman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/895478.Mark_Terence_Chapman]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>5.00</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>1</ratings_count>
  <published>2009</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="3771847">
  <id>3771847</id>
  <title><![CDATA[Os/2 Power User's Reference: From Os/2 2.0 Through Warp (J. Ranade Workstation Series)]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Mark Terence Chapman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/895478.Mark_Terence_Chapman]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>5.00</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>1</ratings_count>
  <published>1995</published>  
  
</book>
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