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Mark Heath was born 1960 in New Hampshire, where he lived until he turned 40 and met his girlfriend, Mary, courtesy of an online matchmaking service. Heath attended the University of New Hampshire for a few semesters, long enough to know that high school would be the peak of his academic career. He went to college with the idea of becoming an English teacher, which would free him to write short stories over the summer. But he wanted to be a writer, not a teacher, so he quit school and worked for the next eight years at an assortment of jobs, writing stories at night and every weekend. Heath had always drawn as a kid. He used to trace Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck from an encyclopedia and sell the drawings for a quarter to classmates in elementary school. But in high school, inspired by Asimov, Ellison and Silverberg, he set aside the drawing pen for a typewriter.Heath has worked in restaurants and clothing stores, bookstores and motels, with a several-year stint in a cabinet factory. All these jobs led to his becoming a cartoonist. According to Heath, few things are more inspirational, if one is toying with the idea of freelancing, than working in a cold factory in winter, or suffering a tie in the summer. He sold his first cartoon in the early 1980s to Wildbird Magazine. He sold his second cartoon several years later to Writer's Digest. Since then, his pace has improved.Heath is a freelance cartoonist and an occasional writer of science fiction. His work has appeared in publications including Reader's Digest, First For Women, Women's World, Pirate Writings, Strange Horizons, American Scientist, Asimov's and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has designed animated greeting cards for Amazon.com and print cards for Marcel Schurman Fine Arts, Recycled Paper Greetings and Renaissance Greetings. He is the author of Drawing Cartoons (North Light Books, 1998). One of his favorite hobbies is playing the trumpet.Heath currently lives in Rhode Island. Until he moved to Providence to be with Mary, he lived in small towns with woods at hand, mountains overhead, and plenty of water. The environment in Spot the Frog reflects that experience: the quiet of a pond, the space to stretch out and be yourself.
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