Mark has written poetry most of his life and considers the majority of his songs to be poetry set to music. In the early 1990’s he wrote a short poem for his first daughter, Kara, about a frog named Ferdinand, which over a period of time became a complete rhyming children’s story of 44 eight-line verses, called The Tale of Ferdinand Frog.

In 2017, planning to retire from business, Mark had the story illustrated by the hugely talented illustrator, Mike Church, and started to search for a publisher. After many rejections, he received two offers to publish The Tale of Ferdinand Frog and decided to work with the publisher Austin Macauley to get Ferdinand Frog out into the world and the book was published in July 2020. Since writing The Tale of Ferdinand Frog, Mark has written a further five rhyming children’s stories, all featuring Ferdinand Frog in some way plus a host of other woodland creatures. The second book in the series, The Tale of Tommy the Tiny Tadpole, has now been illustrated by the same illustrator - Mike Church and is awaiting publication.

Mark also regularly writes other, shorter poems and is planning to publish a collection of those and selected song lyrics at some point. His completed stories to date are:

The Tale of Ferdinand Frog

The Tale of the Tiny Tadpole

The Tale of Cyril the Squirrel

The Tale of Harry the Hedgehog

The Tale of Osmiroid Owl

The Taleteller of Happiness Glade