If you’ve read my novel And Introducing Dexter Gaines, you’ve probably guessed I have an obsession with ocean liners, with my favorite ship, the SS United States, having a star turn as the maiden voyage setting for a rather significant plot point. This fascination started when I was around eight-years-old thanks to a chance viewing…

If you prefer to listen, click above. Morbid Child by Mark B. Perry I grew up in a neighborhood built on the grounds of a former pecan orchard. Our street was flat and straight and had started its life as a gravel driveway that led to the modest farm house guarded by chain link at…

(Edited on October 19, 2025 to correct information about designers Neutra and Frankl.) Gather round with the beverage of your choice. I have a story to tell. A story about family. A home. Legacy. Tradition. And transition. My friends know, and those who’ve been to my home can attest, there are two inanimate objects I love…

In the last decade of the previous century, I had an overall deal with 20th Century Fox studios. One of the projects I developed was a pilot for an hour dramedy about a typical suburban family in Atlanta, the Kirbys, whose parents were divorcing, all told from the point of view of their snarky 13…

Katherine LaNasa’s recent and much-deserved Emmy win for HBO’s The Pitt took me back to July, 2008 when I worked with her on Ghost Whisperer, and from there I spiraled down Memory Lane to April, 2000 and the origins of the character I wrote for her. The episode was called “Save Our Souls” and was filmed almost…

For me, the most important element of historical fiction is verisimilitude. To focus on the “believe” in “make believe.” Visuals have always been a vital component of my writing, and I often create Photoshop images to give vibrant life to whatever world I’m writing about, whether “look books” and “pitch decks” for television, or photos…

by Mark B. Perry “Divinely impossible.” “Glamorous and unpredictable.” These are just a few of the printable words used to describe a legendary beauty who packed London’s West End theaters with adoring fans in the 1920s, scandalized Hollywood in the 1930s, became the queen of radio and television in the ’50s, and even played a…

I’m honored to be featured in LitHub.com, writing about how screenwriting helped prepare me for fiction. Click the image to read the full article.

A recent profile in The New Yorker of White Lotus creator Mike White neglected to mention his very first TV creation, a short-lived 2001 Fox show called Pasadena. I took the oversight personally because I happened to have been Mike’s showrunner on that series. It was one of the more educational, entertaining, and bizarre gigs…

My mother tells a story I don’t remember about someone once asking six-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Without blinking, I replied, “Jimmy Stewart.” Even at that early age, I was already under the thrall of the movies and TV shows beaming into our den through the rabbit ears of…