TheValley by Samuel Marquis ’79
40
Fountain Valley School of Colorado
I wrote my first novel at Fountain Valley. It has to rank as one of the most stunning examples of juvenile incompetence in the annals of the literary world.
I
n 1977, when I tumbled out of my parents’ Jeep onto the Fountain Valley School campus, I had no inkling that “the Valley” (as the Western preparatory school would soon become known to me) and its encompassing geographic area would one day have such a lasting impact on my life. True, I was a wide-eyed teenager with a penchant for troublemaking at the time; but all the same I never would have predicted that the school, its inspiring English teachers, and the surrounding prairie and rugged backdrop of Pikes Peak would serve as the framework for a career as a novelist. In fact, they provided critical fodder for a series of Coloradobased suspense novels—four suspense novels to be exact—each unique except for one recurring feature: all the books have included several of my real-life FVS cohorts as quirky fictionalized characters and/or Colorado Springs
as the featured setting. But it goes deeper than that. You see, I began my career as a writer at Fountain Valley. My first two novels, The Slush Pile Brigade and Blind Thrust (released in 2015), both were No. 1 Denver Post bestselling novels for fiction. In addition, Blind Thrust, an earthquake thriller, was an award-winning finalist in the fiction: thriller/ adventure category of the USA Best Book Awards. It was also named Foreword Reviews’ 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year award finalist (adult fiction: thriller and suspense). All of which means little except this: it might never have happened if not for Fountain Valley. FVS is the place where this rapscallion first developed an insatiable desire to—if not become a professional novelist—write authentic stories that come from the heart.
