JOHN B. MAREK

John B. Marek is an Amazon bestselling author, rural advocate, certified outdoor guide, and lapsed songwriter. A North Carolina resident for over three decades, he swapped the Lake Erie coast of his youth for the Blue Ridge Mountains, where his authentic writing explores the raw, absurd, and sometimes macabre intersections of nature and the human heart. Marek is the creator of the North Carolina-set Owen Sinclair mystery series, which currently includes Craven Fork and Hellbender, and will continue with Dark & Deep in November 2026. His nonfiction work ranges from Breakfast at Midway, a bestselling meditation on quality of life, work, and place, to Ben and the Art of Lawnmower Maintenance, a tribute to his "Greatest Generation" father.

A graduate of Bowling Green State University, Marek spent twenty years as a rural economic development director before turning to full-time writing in 2023. That career taught him to read a town—how legend, legacy, and ambition grind against one another—and those mechanics show up in every small community and backcountry holler he puts on the page. Today, he balances a 5,000-word-a-week writing habit with the maintenance of an off-grid mountain camp and volunteer work at a faith-based community garden. He also produces Reveries, a weekly audio essay that examines modern life through a decidedly rural-retro lens. A self-described "lapsed" songwriter, he recently released Uncanny Valley, an AI-assisted concept album that resurrects lyrics he first scribbled into notebooks in the 1970s and '80s. Marek lives in North Carolina with his wife, Janet, and their dogs, Laika and Millie. He can be found online at www.loose-gravel.com.