Why is there a Marcus?

Marcus Slagel was born in January 1977 in Twin Falls, Idaho.

His love of stories began because his mother is a genius and she did the voices.

Marcus would love to tell you he’s a naturally gifted writer who said his first words in the womb, but the truth is his Mom is a natural teacher. She taught all three of her kids to read and write at very young ages. In Marcus’s case, he was reading by age 4 and writing letters to his grandmother - in full sentences, neat handwriting, proper letter-writing format, and demonstrating clear understanding of punctuation - by 4 and a half.

With God’s help, he hopes to be that good at teaching his own kids.

For Marcus, the academia of school was a playground for his mind. Fish swim, birds fly, Marcus learns fast. This didn’t always work to his advantage, as his later education lacked focus. People had often encouraged Marcus, “You can do anything you put your mind to!”, but nobody told him there simply wouldn’t be time to do everything. It took some time for him to realize on his own. He left his university degree unfinished and accumulated a life of work experience somewhat akin to a hobo-clown’s patchwork jacket; none of it really goes together but there it is.

Marcus began writing for his church in various volunteer capacities, including plays for the Easter and Christmas productions, and hundreds of short skits for Children’s Ministry.

It was at church that Marcus met his future wife, Joanne Chester, who was a Music teacher at the time. They volunteered in their church’s Children’s Worship team for five years, but didn’t begin getting to know one another until they were on the same 2008 Summer Mission. They began dating soon after and married nearly two years later, in October 2010. Together they have written three Christmas musicals and made many, many funny birthday videos and parodies.

Eventually Marcus returned to university, finished his English degree and moved on to a post-graduate diploma in teaching at high school level. His subjects of specialisation were English (of course), Media Studies, and Drama.

Quick note: my American family and friends will be wincing at the above because they think I misspelled “specialisation.” It took me 20 years of living in New Zealand before I discovered that Americans do not speak English. We speak what I call “Americese,” an English derivative, and we think it’s correcterer than English, so we call it ‘English,’ hoping that if we say so enough times then we’ll overwrite the original language.

Oh yes, second note: I created this website with the above dual-linguistic awareness hovering vulture-like over my brain while I worked. Some places may have American spelling because I thought I should try to appeal to an American audience. My wife told me to stop being silly.

Marcus was in his fifth year of teaching when he noticed a fierce dissatisfaction in his career. He loved the kids and loved the classroom, but he was grading essays he would much rather have written. The all-consuming nature of teaching took all of Marcus’s focus, something no other profession had ever done for him, and helped him finally realise: writing was the one thing he never knew he’d always wanted. He left teaching at the end of the 2017 school year, and finished strong. From a professional standpoint, to this day Marcus feels that was his best year of teaching.

Since then, Marcus has been studiously applying himself to learning the business of writing. He and his wife have launched a series of side projects which they also enjoy, chief among them being their family.

Marcus currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife. They had their first child in 2023.