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Post Marked
Mark Mallon has a lot of friction in his life. He is an abrasive man and an inspired writer. He is profane; he is profound. Mallon isn't the man he could have been. He's not living with loss; he's living as less. How will Mallon thrive? He'll keep you posted. Facebook. Blog. Twitter. He posts. Sex. Souls. Satire. Synchronicity. Mallon writes about them all. Mark Mallon posts velocity waves from a male point of view. Women love Mark Mallon. He talks to them. He writes about them. He sleeps with them. He falls in love with them. He has an easy way with them. But Mallon is not an easy man. Mallon has a lot of women in his life. Brady is an intelligent woman and a passionate attorney. She craves sex, cigarettes, and Mark Mallon. Kaitlyn is a headstrong woman carving a career in medicine. She's clinical everywhere except his bed. Ellen is an intense woman. The line between erotic and neurotic is narrow. Men love Mark Mallon. He talks to them. He writes about them. He drinks with them. He competes with them. He's not always easy with them. Mallon has a lot of friends in his life. Jack is a spirited man with an amusing temperament. John is a dedicated priest and Mallon's conscience. Tom is a lifelong friend who mingles his affection with antagonism. Post Marked is not a work of fiction. Post Marked is not a work of fact. Post Marked is a work of friction. A novel of narratives, essays, and Facebook statuses. Post Marked is unlike anything you've read. Mark R. Trost is unlike any author you’ve read. In the tradition of classical literature, Post Marked is an epic allegorical novel restructured into an innovative form.
825 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 23, 2010
38 people are currently reading
192 people want to read
About the author
Mark R. Trost
3 books6 followers"I write with the entire alphabet, not just the popular letters."
Mark R. Trost was born in El Paso, Texas in 1962. Mr. Trost is an author, a playwright, an actor, an essayist, an editor, a humorist, a communications consultant, a sage, and a smartass.
His career weaves through marketing, political speeches, ghostwriting, and editing.
Beginning in 2007, Trost wrote a literary blog that attracted more than a million hits. His first novel Post Marked was published in 2010. He followed Post Marked with a book of essays Beer, Buddies, Bullshit, Women, Sex, & God in 2011 and Social Status in 2012. He workshopped his first play Unzipped in 2016 and directed and starred in the 2017 production.
Mr. Trost's works now sit on over 100,000 Kindles, Nooks, and bookshelves.
Mark R. Trost was born in El Paso, Texas in 1962. Mr. Trost is an author, a playwright, an actor, an essayist, an editor, a humorist, a communications consultant, a sage, and a smartass.
His career weaves through marketing, political speeches, ghostwriting, and editing.
Beginning in 2007, Trost wrote a literary blog that attracted more than a million hits. His first novel Post Marked was published in 2010. He followed Post Marked with a book of essays Beer, Buddies, Bullshit, Women, Sex, & God in 2011 and Social Status in 2012. He workshopped his first play Unzipped in 2016 and directed and starred in the 2017 production.
Mr. Trost's works now sit on over 100,000 Kindles, Nooks, and bookshelves.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 9, 2012
Like a good sermon, succinct but with impact.
Mark Mallon is a complicated guy, a former seminarian turned unemployed blogger, who revels in sex and wrestles with diabetes. Mallon’s devotion to the precepts of Roman Catholicism make him judgmental. To be fair, he is self-aware, and thus recognizes his own foibles which are blogged in a viscerally exposed writing style he calls ‘unzipped.’ When combined with his genuine honesty, Mallon’s analysis of others is brutally blunt. Thus, his friends sense that they can never live up to his expectations.
Post Marked by Mark Trost lacks a recognizable plot arc and at times feels repetitive until the reader realizes it is a mantra, like a rosary that must be completed to fully realize its benefit. Additionally, Trost weaves Mallon’s life through first and third person narratives, and the aforementioned blog entries. The format stands as a metaphor for the book as if Trost is saying, “I am not like other writer’s... deal with it, but don’t bitch to me about it.”
The writing is Post Marked’s strongest, most enjoyable feature. Each chapter is like a well crafted sermon, succinct but with impact. They develop Mallon’s character through intimate interactions in the bedroom, on the bar stool, and on web entries where he plays the role of both penitent and confessor. Another facet central to Mallon’s life is his diabetes, but like his friends the reader may come away nonplussed by this fact.
Though Post Marked is not traditional, and is delivered through a non-traditional platform and publisher, Mallon’s journey does reach an eventual conclusion that leads the reader to hope for more books by Mark Trost.
Mark Mallon is a complicated guy, a former seminarian turned unemployed blogger, who revels in sex and wrestles with diabetes. Mallon’s devotion to the precepts of Roman Catholicism make him judgmental. To be fair, he is self-aware, and thus recognizes his own foibles which are blogged in a viscerally exposed writing style he calls ‘unzipped.’ When combined with his genuine honesty, Mallon’s analysis of others is brutally blunt. Thus, his friends sense that they can never live up to his expectations.
Post Marked by Mark Trost lacks a recognizable plot arc and at times feels repetitive until the reader realizes it is a mantra, like a rosary that must be completed to fully realize its benefit. Additionally, Trost weaves Mallon’s life through first and third person narratives, and the aforementioned blog entries. The format stands as a metaphor for the book as if Trost is saying, “I am not like other writer’s... deal with it, but don’t bitch to me about it.”
The writing is Post Marked’s strongest, most enjoyable feature. Each chapter is like a well crafted sermon, succinct but with impact. They develop Mallon’s character through intimate interactions in the bedroom, on the bar stool, and on web entries where he plays the role of both penitent and confessor. Another facet central to Mallon’s life is his diabetes, but like his friends the reader may come away nonplussed by this fact.
Though Post Marked is not traditional, and is delivered through a non-traditional platform and publisher, Mallon’s journey does reach an eventual conclusion that leads the reader to hope for more books by Mark Trost.
June 1, 2014
I decided to read this book for two reasons: 1) at that time it had 12 5-star reviews on Amazon, and 2) it was free. Given it's high ratings and no cost I simply had to read. Sadly, I was nothing but disappointed with this book.
The chapters switch between telling the story of the main character, Mark, and his blog postings. Initially it's hard to get used to this style but you quickly figure out which is which. That being said the blog postings add little to the book, seem to just be random babbling, and try way, way too hard to be insightful. While it shows up throughout the book, the blog postings have so much alliteration it's distracting. For example, "I'm too busy to busy myself in someone else's business." If alliteration were used occasionally it would be fine but when the author has to try that hard to be witty and clever it becomes distracting and trite.
The main story, about Mark, his love life, and his friendships is not at all believable. Wait, I take that back, it's not that it's unbelievable, it's that it's written so poorly that the conversations are flat and don't ring true and the characters aren't developed enough to really care about them.
I was so uninterested in the book that I stopped reading a quarter through. While I usually try to gut it out in hopes the story gets better, I realized I didn't at all care about the characters or the thin line of the story. An editor would have been highly useful for this book as would a writing coach.
The chapters switch between telling the story of the main character, Mark, and his blog postings. Initially it's hard to get used to this style but you quickly figure out which is which. That being said the blog postings add little to the book, seem to just be random babbling, and try way, way too hard to be insightful. While it shows up throughout the book, the blog postings have so much alliteration it's distracting. For example, "I'm too busy to busy myself in someone else's business." If alliteration were used occasionally it would be fine but when the author has to try that hard to be witty and clever it becomes distracting and trite.
The main story, about Mark, his love life, and his friendships is not at all believable. Wait, I take that back, it's not that it's unbelievable, it's that it's written so poorly that the conversations are flat and don't ring true and the characters aren't developed enough to really care about them.
I was so uninterested in the book that I stopped reading a quarter through. While I usually try to gut it out in hopes the story gets better, I realized I didn't at all care about the characters or the thin line of the story. An editor would have been highly useful for this book as would a writing coach.
July 9, 2012
This book is beautiful. And exceptionally original. It has been a very very long time since I last wanted to translate into my own language something as beautiful and thought-provoking as this. The only problem? It is just too long for its style. This is the type of book that you should read only one or two chapters a day, and marvel at its literary merits. But I am just not patient enough. The book discusses a topic that I am hardly familiar with (mid-life crisis), but I was drawn to it, chapter by chapter. The book inspires me to use my blog regularly again, but I know that I am too lazy for that.
January 16, 2012
They say that the best books are written by those who write about what they know best.
I'm not really a fan of fiction; I tend to read non-fiction, but this one was recommended to me, and I had time on my hands, so I went ahead and grabbed a copy. I could hardly put it down.
I get a sense of "real-life" in here; I wouldn't know how to get a multi-themed story to work so well, but I admit, I'm not a fiction writer either. Even with the many themes (can you tell me of a life that has just one or two? We all have many sides), the book is easy to follow. There's an honesty in the book too - there's no real attempt to justify anything - he is what he is and doesn't try to hide it.
So, I really can't tell if this book is fiction or an autobiography made to read like fiction.
The only part about the book I didn't like was the Kindle's progress bar creeping to the right. You know it's a great book when you're nearing the end and are afraid of what will come - the end of the book and the departure of a friend.
I'm not really a fan of fiction; I tend to read non-fiction, but this one was recommended to me, and I had time on my hands, so I went ahead and grabbed a copy. I could hardly put it down.
I get a sense of "real-life" in here; I wouldn't know how to get a multi-themed story to work so well, but I admit, I'm not a fiction writer either. Even with the many themes (can you tell me of a life that has just one or two? We all have many sides), the book is easy to follow. There's an honesty in the book too - there's no real attempt to justify anything - he is what he is and doesn't try to hide it.
So, I really can't tell if this book is fiction or an autobiography made to read like fiction.
The only part about the book I didn't like was the Kindle's progress bar creeping to the right. You know it's a great book when you're nearing the end and are afraid of what will come - the end of the book and the departure of a friend.
August 15, 2012
I didn't like it!It is as if he wrote an outline for the novel, but did not finish it. I did skim through it to see if I might be tempted to give it a good read, but I couldn't find it in myself to waste my valuable time. Good cover though, and I received this as a free promotion on Amazon; however, this did not sway my review.
Want to read
June 28, 2012$0.0
June 25, 2016
very long but his writing style made you think. it was written as if you were reading Mark's blog and/or diary.
September 6, 2012
I found most of the stories rather rambling and pointless. Sorry, not my cup of tea - too artsy?
March 18, 2013
Didn't care for it, very slow moving. The sections that are written in the first person are too sermonish.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews