Local author Mark Suszko is building an entire universe—one starship, one misfit crew, and one hard choice at a time.
Suszko recently joined Community Voices to talk about his two science fiction releases, Boring Alice and Lair, both available locally at Prairie Archives and regional libraries. He’ll also be signing books at Prairie Archives on April 25, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Boring Alice is a fast-paced space opera about a ragtag crew scraping by on the unfashionable edge of the galaxy aboard a battered ship called the Borealis. Their captain isn’t exactly heroic, their mortgage is older than the ship, and when a mysterious passenger books them for a mercy mission into a war zone, “boring” quickly becomes anything but. Written as a one-hour “Kindle short read,” it’s the first in a planned trilogy, with an audiobook version on the way.
Suszko's first novel, Lair, takes a deeper, more emotional turn. The story follows a 16-year-old separated from his multi-generational starship family and left in the care of a retired alien space pirate plotting revenge. At its heart, the novel wrestles with forgiveness, accountability, and whether we live in a “cage or a lair”—a mindset shaped by how we face our circumstances.
Suszko, a lifelong sci-fi fan inspired by tabletop role-playing games, began writing Lair while sitting through chemotherapy sessions with his brother, to whom the book is dedicated.
For Suszko, it’s not about profit—it’s about getting stories into readers’ hands and onto library shelves where he once stood as a kid, dreaming of distant galaxies.
Transcript pending.
