About
Mark Tullius
Author, former football player and mixed martial arts fighter, brain-injury advocate, founder of Vincere Press and creator of the Try Not to Die interactive series.
I have spent most of my life testing what a body and mind can endure.
I played football at Brown University, boxed, fought mixed martial arts and trained in gyms across the country. For Unlocking the Cage, I visited one hundred gyms and interviewed hundreds of fighters because I wanted to understand why people willingly step into a cage — and what they carry back out.
The answer became more personal than I expected. Years of collisions, punches, training and reckless choices left me trying to understand changes in memory, mood, focus and identity. That search became TBI or CTE: What the Hell Is Wrong with Me?, and it continues through the way I train, recover, write and speak about brain injury.
My fiction has always lived in similar territory. Brightside follows telepaths imprisoned because their minds make other people uncomfortable. My short stories return to damaged families, violence, guilt, altered perception and the stubborn possibility that someone can still choose differently. Try Not to Die made that choice literal by handing it to the reader.
I founded Vincere Press with my wife, Jennifer, because we wanted to publish the stories we believed in without waiting for someone else to grant permission. What began as a way to release my own work has grown into a collaborative publishing company and a home for interactive fiction.
I now live in Falls Church, Virginia, with my family and too many cats. I am still writing, training, rebuilding and trying to understand what comes next.