About

The Unbearable Madness

of Being Mark Bruce

Born in Orange, California (and not IN an orange, as is often speculated), Mark Corwin Sixtus Bruce came squaling and complaining into this life on Nov. 18, 1956. He spent his formative years going to Catholic Schools. First St. Alphonsus in East Los Angeles, then St. Raymond’s in Downey, California. This is why so many of his stories feature Catholics, both fervent and confused.

He was elected Vice-President of his third high school, Los Altos in Hacienda Heights, California. But when he graduated from high school in 1974, he had not applied to any colleges due to an unfortunate oversight–he didn’t know how.

So in September 1974 he entered the United States Air Force as an enlisted man, a radio operator, a child of the blue universe. The fact that he enlisted during the Vietnam War didn’t occur to him. Fortunately, Vietnam itself didn’t occur to him–but he has nothing but respect for those guys who were sent. His duty assignment class came two weeks after the last Vietnam assignments.

He served honorably for four years, being stationed overseas in Karamursel Turkey and San Vito, Italy, with brief stops in England. At that brief stop he was able to visit Stonehenge before they put up the wire fence. He touched that ancient stone and was transformed into a druid for a day. He also visited Shakespeare’s grave at Stratford-Upon-Avon, slept in the sweet grass of the little church where the Bard sleeps eternally. Sadly, William S. did not visit Mr. Bruce in his dreams.

After being mustered out in 1978, Mr. Bruce married his first wife, Victoria (“The Sweet One”) and was able to keep that marriage running for seven years. During that time he and his wife attended College of the Redwoods, where Mr. Bruce edited the school paper for a semester, and Humboldt State University, from which Mr. Bruce graduated Magna Cum Laude with the highest grade average of Journalism majors in his class. That garnered him the Bret Harte Award, which he still displays on his wall somewhere. Also at HSU, Mr. Bruce won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of Women Journalists, a pretty neat trick that last one, as Mr. Bruce is not a woman.

He attended UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. In the middle of his second year, the marriage came to an ignominious end. At the end of his third year, Mr. Bruce was a finalist in the McBain Oral Advocay competition. He went toe to toe with Antonin (“Fat Tony”) Scalia and came off looking good. (Scalia of Bruce: “I like you because you’re not a wimp.”)

Mr. Bruce went to work for the Orange County Public Defender for a few years, then switched to a private law firm. He’s gone back and forth between private practice and public defending ever since. At present, he’s a solo practitioner in San Bernardino, California with offices in Victorville and San Bernardino. His practices concentrates on Family law and Criminal law.

As a writer, Mr. Bruce has published poems, essays, stories in publications such as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Rattle, Iodine, and other magazines and anthologies.

His series of comic essays on the lawyer’s life, Sidebar, was a popular feature of the San Fernando Bar Association’s Lawyer’s World. He also published in Orange County Lawyer. YOu can read these essays in the book available online.

His story, “Minerva James and the Goddess of Justice” won the 2018 Black Orchid Novella Award. To date, 10 Minerva stories have been published in mystery magazines and anthologies. The first full Minerva novel, “Minerva James and the Trial of Mars,” which is set during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, is ready to be shopped to publishers.

Mr. Bruce presently lives in Barstow, California with a stuffed Mermaid named Mariah and his writing support dragon, Ferdinand, pictured below.