Mark LaFever

Mark LaFever

Screenwriter, Author, Illustrator and Researcher

Herndon, Virginia

Member Since:
August 2014
Last online:
> 2 weeks ago
Invites sent:
2

About Mark

Born in Rochester, New York, I attended elementary school there and in the Chicago suburbs, later moving to Raleigh, North Carolina for high school - the whole time loving comic books, history, STAR WARS and James Bond movies (in no particular order).

Looking back, I'm realizing that high school was a blur of being introduced to a chaotic (in the best sense of the word) slew of creative works that got me appreciating and thinking about narrative in a deeper, more layered way.

Joseph Conrad's novella, "Heart of Darkness", and its cinematic adaptation, APOCALYPSE NOW, along with Friedrich Nietzsche's romantic existentialism, made me ponder what man might be capable of when he's "kicked himself loose from the Earth."

The travails of Number Six in the 1960s British spy series, THE PRISONER, dovetailed with Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy to reinforce a strong identification with individualism.

TAXI DRIVER and Frank Miller's 1986 "The Dark Knight Returns" Batman graphic novel put a darker, yet vividly enjoyable spin on how remoteness and individualism can easily contort themselves into alienation. TAXI DRIVER in particular started me down a road of appreciating gritty, urban 1970s movies that I'm still on today.

And throughout this time, the spy novels of John LeCarré repeatedly demonstrated the kind of narrative greatness that can result from someone's spending half a working life in one interesting career (in LeCarré's case, intelligence work) - then leaving that career, and letting it inform a second career...in fiction writing, TV and movies.

After an undergraduate and graduate education in International Studies - including the fall semester of my junior year, where I was lucky enough to witness the reunification of Germany - I wrote ad copy for three years, then spent 17 more as a Top Secret-cleared member of the United States intelligence community.

Now I'm hoping to follow a career track similar to LeCarré's - by transitioning to fiction and screenwriting. I'm learning a lot (fairly quickly, it feels like), and I'm eager to discuss collaboration on a wide range of projects.

Please feel free to check me out on LinkedIn as well, at .

Unique traits: Top Secret-level security clearance, German translation capability

Badges

Loglines

  • Siren

    Siren Sci-fi Horror Comedy Summer, 1969.  On an island off the Massachusetts coast, a drunken, womanizing and married United States senator picks the wrong woman to love and leave – a mermaid with the power of hypnotic song.

  • COMRADE TEX

    COMRADE TEX Historical Thriller Late November, 1963.  With the world still in shock after President Kennedy’s assassination, the KGB is in a panic.  Could one of their assets have had something to do with the fatal shots fired in Dallas?  Moscow Centre assigns its best undercover U.S. operative to find out – and to cover any incriminating tracks – before Washington hardliners can fix blame on the Soviets.

  • Eddie the Earthling

    Eddie the Earthling Action Adventure Comedy Crime Drama Sci-fi Thriller It’s gangster versus aliens when extraterrestrials abduct rising young Mafioso Eddie Segretti.

  • Operation Brighteyes

    Operation Brighteyes Action Adventure Comedy Drama Film-noir Historical Horror Other Sci-fi Thriller War As World War Two draws to a close, a chance drink from the wrong bottle transforms Archie Ziff - a hapless sailor and wanna-be movie star - into an almost-invisible spy for British Intelligence.

  • Lotusburg

    Lotusburg Historical Mystery Thriller Colonial Williamsburg.  It's a tourist attraction, a living museum, and a shrine to the early history of both Virginia and the United States of America.  But without a secret 1920s land deal, it might never have come to exist.  What if someone had opposed that deal - enough to kill?

  • Taxmen

    Taxmen Action Crime Drama An ex-Marine whose mother's in danger of losing the family farm to the IRS reconnects with an ex-con childhood friend - and together, they hit upon a sceme of robbing underground Islamic banks.  "Knock knock, y'all.  It's tax time."

  • Bucket Boy

    Bucket Boy Thriller Dave Grigas, an amateur photographer who wants to be the next Andy Warhol, has an unusual day job: printing Top Secret spy satellite photos at Eastman Kodak for the CIA.  After innocently entering a photography contest, Grigas is tricked, then forced, into spying for the KGB – and must figure out a way to free himself from Soviet control before he’s found out.

  • The Easter Egg War

    The Easter Egg War Thriller A down-on-his luck comic book creator and a fangirl with a talent for artistic mimicry come up with a scam to convince comics fandom that Jeff Krantz, an eccentric artist long thought to have disappeared, has returned to penciling.  But when the new Krantz-style artwork goes public, the two scammers are suddenly threatened by a mysterious figure – who fears his decades-old crime has been discovered.

  • Sister K

    Sister K Historical Thriller Orphaned and groomed as a nun, a devout but headstrong Polish teen is forced to take shelter from the outbreak of World War Two with a band of Jewish forest partisans. At war’s end, she discovers to her horror that a network of corrupt Catholic priests are helping Nazi war criminals escape justice – and she decides to restore purity to her beloved Church...by any means necessary.

  • The Rubble King

    The Rubble King Film-noir Historical Thriller Amid the bombed-out ruins of 1947 Berlin, a serial killer is on the loose and targeting children.  In the ungoverned chaos of a world of rubble, it’s up to American correspondent Georgette Avery – and her reluctant ally, a former German Kriminalpolizei detective – to stop the killings.    

  • Piecework Heroes

    Piecework Heroes Crime Drama Film-noir Historical Thriller War Summer, 1938. After the surprise smash debut of Superman in Action Comics #1, a competing publisher assigns struggling comic book artist Harry Rosen to create a Superman knockoff. Harry accepts – but amid 1930s New York’s mix of labor violence, organized crime, and foreign espionage, he discovers that earning a legit living in the funny-book business is more complicated than he expected...and more dangerous.

  • 40 Love

    40 Love Comedy In this half-hour sitcom, a socially awkward librarian moves from Canada to New York City to care for her sharp-tongued, aristocratic aunt. When a co-worker persuades her she’s being bullied by her aunt, she agrees to take Assertiveness Training classes – from a temperamental retired tennis champ. 

Awards

  • Semifinalist/Quarterfinalist, Creative World Awards
    (2013)

  • Raleigh, North Carolina Addy Award
    (1993)

Education

Share This Profile

register for stage 32 Register / Log In