Bitten by the writing bug
Tragedy and tick illness spawned Mark’s new life as a fantasy author
BAD things can happen in clusters. With the hand fate has dealt, Mark Bodewes could have just curled into a foetal position and allowed illness from a tick bite to consume him.
Instead he’s maintained a bright outlook by launching a career as a writer, penning a fantasy trilogy. His first book, Plate of the Gods, is now selling online.
Eleven years ago he and wife Elizabeth lost their baby son soon after childbirth. Bodewes’ mother died around the same time.
Ten years ago his dream of fronting a heavy metal rock band was ended by a motorbike accident, which left him with injuries including a shattered wrist that required two operations.
Nine years ago the couple’s second daughter was born premature at 26 weeks, and spent the first three months of life in intensive care. “She’s fine now, healthy and growing up,’’ he beams today.
But fate had not finished with him.
Bodewes was made redundant from his work in IT in 2013.
The book had been rattling around in his brain for about 20 years, so he began writing because he needed to maintain his sense of worth. Besides, he’s maintained his sense of humour and the book allowed him to use that side of his creativity.
Fortune swung the other way and he picked up more work in 2014, continuing to write the book while commuting on the train between the Gold Coast and Brisbane.
But then it all fell apart again in August 2015 when a tick bite – “the cherry on top’’, as he puts it – threatened to really knock him out of the game, plunging him into fevers, mood swings, chronic fatigue and a lack of immunity characteristic of lyme disease and making him susceptible even now to any illness his kids bring home from school.
“It came out of nowhere and completely changed my life,’’ he said of the day the tick crawled down his neck and buried its head in the skin near his collar bone.
It was the day Bodewes, Elizabeth and their four children moved into their new home at Merrimac; the day they decided to celebrate with steaks cooked on the barbecue in their new back yard.
Writing the book on the long commute each day had been a form of escape, taking him away from the “madness