Meet the Author

Mark McDowell is a tech entrepreneur and investor with a secret passion for literary fiction. His techie career and writing career are unified by his unceasing curiosity about the world and the people around him.

The son of two teachers, Mark grew up in college towns across the southeastern US. He planned to study English or history in college, but became mesmerized by the Apple II computer and found himself studying computer science instead. He attended MIT on an Air Force ROTC scholarship and served four years as an officer at Los Angeles Air Force Base after graduating. He supplemented his meager Air Force income by teaching calculus at night at Chapman University. One semester, he spent his entire teaching stipend on a second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, which he found among the rare book dealers who once populated the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

Mark left the Air Force to pursue a career as an entrepreneur in the wireless industry. At forty he became a venture capital investor, backing startups in the telecom industry. Throughout his decades as a techie, Mark remained an avid fiction reader. When the Covid lockdowns began in 2020, he finally took pen in hand and wrote his first novel, The Incompleteness Theorem. In doing so, he developed a new habit: spending the early morning hours drinking tooth curling black coffee and pecking out stories that examine life, self awareness, coming of age, and leaving of age. He completed his second novel, Campfire Tales, in 2024 under the pseudonym Junior Jackson, Jr.

Mark lives in North Carolina with his wife and two young adult children, dividing his time between Lake Norman and the Blue Ridge Mountains. He might write another novel if cajoled to do so.