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Except for three years in Lancaster, PA, Sullivan was born and raised outside of Boston in the towns of Framingham and Medfield. He was an avid skier and deer hunter as a child. He attended Hamilton College, graduating in 1980 with a BA in English. Two weeks after commencement, he boarded a plane bound for Niger, West Africa. There he worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Agades, an oasis and trading center on the ancient caravan route between Tripoli and Timbuctu. Sullivan rode with nomads deep into the Sahara, immersed himself in their culture and taught their children.

Upon his return to the United States in 1982, he attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, graduating with the highest honors. During that time he met his wife, Betsy, who was also attending the university as a graduate student. Sullivan worked at Reuters, Ltd., as a financial correspondent covering the Chicago Commodities Markets from 1983-1984. He left to become a political reporter in Washington D.C., at a small wire service called States News Service. His role was backup reporter to the D.C. bureaus of the New York Times, Newsday and the New York Daily News. He was also introduced to the field of investigative reporting, breaking a series of stories about a financial scandal that almost toppled the nation's mortgage brokerage business. At this time he was also introduced to the Japanese martial art of Aikido.

In 1986, Sullivan joined the San Diego Tribune as an investigative reporter. Still profoundly influenced by the experience of total cultural immersion he had experienced in West Africa, he began to develop a journalistic style that focused on the cultures of the things he was investigating. Twice in the next five years Sullivan was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, once for a series that examined the lives and culture of children living with addicts, and a second time for a series that drew back the curtain on the culture and practices of corporate funeral home conglomerates. During these five years, he was lucky enough to become the personal student of Kazuo Chiba, one of the world's foremost Aikido masters.

Sullivan began writing fiction in his little spare time and soon had short stories published in various literary journals. In the winter of 1990, he took a leave from his investigative duties at the newspaper and moved to Utah and Wyoming to live among extreme skiers. That experience yielded his first novel, The Fall Line, (Kensington, 1994). Two years prior to the novel's publication, he quit the newspaper and moved to Vermont with his wife and young son.

Mark hanging in Neversink Cave while researching Labyrinth

In the next five years his family grew with the arrival of his son, Bridger. In an old converted barn where we lived, he wrote Hard News, (Kensington, 1995), a mystery that exposes the underbelly of modern newspapers; The Purification Ceremony, (AVON, 1997), a suspense novel set in the world of tracking deer hunters; and Ghost Dance, (AVON, 1999), a mystery set in Vermont.

That same year Sullivan moved to southwest Montana and began researching and writing LABYRINTH. He was recently awarded his fourth degree black belt in Aikido and teaches the art in Bozeman, MT.

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