In 1998 he matriculated at USC on the school's Presidential scholarship, studying with Boyd Hood of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After receiving his music B.A. in 2002, he moved overseas to Oxford and worked, read a lot, wrote a little, and snuck into Oxford University classes.
When he returned to the US in 2003, Mark rented a cozy attic in a cheery home and worked variously as a math tutor, construction worker, office manager, and hotel night watchman.
In 2004 Mark began his M.A. studies in English Literature at Boston College, where he conducted archival research at Harvard and Yale and participated in the Radcliffe Graduate Consortium for Women's Studies. In 2005, he founded New Comm Ave, a literary journal for first-year college writing. He also joined filmmaking forces with Emre Safak, co-founding an independent film company, Olive Barrel Productions.
Mark taught college writing in Southern California for 3 years while spending his free time making artsy fartsy t-shirt art and recording melancholy music.
At the beginning of 2010, he quit teaching and embarked on travels across the U.S., living primarily in Taos, New Orleans, and Brooklyn while writing his first novel, 1337: A Game Novel. In August, he will join the Peace Corps, teaching English language fluency in the Phillipines.