{"id":22059,"date":"2025-05-29T16:02:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T22:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-resident-mark-stevens-releases-new-novel-no-lie-lasts-forever\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T22:02:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T22:02:22","slug":"mancos-resident-mark-stevens-releases-new-novel-no-lie-lasts-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-resident-mark-stevens-releases-new-novel-no-lie-lasts-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos resident Mark Stevens releases new novel, \u2018No Lie Lasts Forever\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a serial killer on the loose in Denver, and not only is their body count mounting, they\u2019re using the identity of another serial killer \u2013 the PDQ Killer, who is Harry Kugel.<\/p>\n

Kugel\u2019s been out of the killing business for 15 years and finds himself in the strange position of having to expose the real killer in order to keep the police off his (old) trail. He enlists the help of Flynn Martin, a TV journalist looking for redemption.<\/p>\n

\"Mark
Mark Stevens<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

So begins \u201cNo Lie Lasts Forever,\u201d the latest novel by Mancos author Mark Stevens.<\/p>\n

Stevens will be in Durango on Tuesday at Maria\u2019s Bookshop to discuss the book, which will be published on Sunday.<\/p>\n

An award-winning author, Stevens is a journalist by trade \u2013 it was journalism that led him from the East Coast to reporting jobs first in Boston, then Los Angeles, and then at the Rocky Mountain News in 1980. He and his wife lived in Denver for about 35 years, raising their family there. They moved to Mancos six years ago, he said.<\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

WHAT: <\/strong>Mark Stevens, \u201cNo Lie Lasts Forever,\u201d author event.<\/p>\n

WHEN: <\/strong>6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n

WHERE: <\/strong>Maria\u2019s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave.<\/p>\n

MORE INFORMATION: <\/strong>Visit https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/25spez83<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For Stevens, one of the challenges of writing \u201cNo Lie Lasts Forever\u201d was getting it published in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first drafted it in 2001. This book has been working in the background, living in the background of all my other projects for 24 years,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely crazy to me. I\u2019d go for months and months without even thinking about it, because it was one of those early projects. I loved the idea of it, and I think finally, my ability to tell a story caught up with how I needed to approach it, to really execute it well, because it\u2019s probably been through 40 drafts. It\u2019s not a complicated book, but there\u2019s a lot going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another challenge was trying to put himself in the shoes of a killer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest challenge was trying to get inside the head of a serial killer who has decided to reform himself, and has stopped,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cIt\u2019s been 15 years since he was active. He\u2019s hiding in plain sight as a regular member of society, and he\u2019s just going about his business.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the structure of mystery stories that drew him to writing in the style, Stevens said, adding that it\u2019s different from other genres that may lean more toward character-driven stories or even stories without a definitive ending: He\u2019s all about the closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing I liked about mysteries was there was a clean beginning, middle and end to a book,\u201d he said. \u201cIn reading sort of traditional literary fiction, it was just character-driven, and there wasn\u2019t as much structure. Sometimes, you couldn\u2019t even figure out why a book was ending where it was \u2013 it was just kind of a beginning, a middle and another middle, there was just no feeling of closure. But when a friend handed me my first crime fiction novel, I thought I can see how this works, because you\u2019ve got to wrap it up. You\u2019ve got to deliver the goods; you\u2019ve got to have justice served.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans of \u201cNo Lie Lasts Forever,\u201d will have reason to rejoice: Stevens said what started out as a standalone book is actually the first of a trilogy \u2013 in fact, the sequel to this book should be out next year, he said. He\u2019s also working on other projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also have a book set in the world of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll that my agent is trying to sell right now. So a couple of projects out there that I hope see the light of day eventually,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cAnd then I\u2019ve actually got a novel in progress, about a small town reporter in Cortez. \u2026 He doesn\u2019t know his paper is going to be closing soon, but he\u2019s got one last big story to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

katie@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

happens when a killer becomes a sleuth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1060,28,1443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-headlines","tag-literature"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22059"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}