What happens when a lawyer walks away from everything to follow the pull of storytelling—and ends up writing about the future of artificial intelligence?
In this episode of Plot Twist Radio, Mark Peres shares his incredible journey from civil litigation to professor of leadership and ethics, and ultimately to author. We dive into his novel The Accord, a philosophical thriller exploring the emotional and ethical complexities of human-AI relationships, as well as his deeply personal memoir The Man Who Lived a Hundred Lives.
This conversation explores career pivots, creative identity, grief, storytelling, and how fiction can help us understand the rapidly evolving world of AI.
🎧 Topics include:
• Leaving law to pursue purpose
• Writing character-driven fiction
• The future of artificial intelligence
• Grief, memory, and storytelling
• How real life inspires powerful narratives
If you’re interested in writing, AI, personal growth, or powerful life pivots—this episode is for you.
👉 Listen now and discover why the best plot twists aren’t written… they’re lived.
Where to find Mark:
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Welcome to Plot Twist Radio, the show where creativity,
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storytelling, and the unpredictable path of the
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creative life all collide. I'm your host, Aaron Egnatz.
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Welcome back to Plot Twist Radio, where every story has a
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turn you didn't see coming. Today's guest is someone who
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truly embodies the idea that life doesn't follow a straight
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path. It evolves, shifts, and
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sometimes completely rewrites itself.
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My guest is a professor of leadership and ethics, a former
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attorney, a creative storyteller, and the author of
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both a deeply personal memoir and a thought provoking new
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novel. In this episode, we dive into
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his journey from law to academia, the courage it takes
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to pivot your life's direction, and the creative spark that
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never quite let's go. We also explore his novel The
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Accord, a philosophical thriller that tackles one of the biggest
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questions of our time. What happens when artificial
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intelligence becomes something more than just a tool?
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This conversation blends storytelling, purpose and a few
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unexpected plot twists along the way.
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So let's get into it. Mark, Hi, welcome to the show.
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It's great to be on the show, Aaron, thanks for the
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invitation. Great to have you.
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So before we get going, can you tell the listeners a little bit
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about yourself? Well, sure, that's always a
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loaded question. There's so much to share about
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somebody's life. But professionally, my day job
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is I'm a professor of leadership and ethics and I teach courses
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called The Good Life and Global Ethics and How to Change the
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World, which is a social entrepreneurial course.
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I've been teaching for about 20 years.
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Prior to that, I had a career in financial services and as a
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lawyer. So I practice law as a civil
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litigator in Florida before moving to North Carolina.
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So that's my professional life. And then I also have this
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creative life. And so I write, I have written a
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novel that we'll talk about called The Accord, a memoir
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called about my Father's life called The Man Who Lived 100
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Lives. And then I've had other chapters
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in my creative life. I ran a magazine, arts and
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cultural magazine in Charlotte called Charlotte Viewpoint, and
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also did a podcast not too long ago called On Life in Meaning
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where I interviewed folks about their lives and higher purposes.
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So between a creative life, a nonprofit life, and a teaching
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life, those things keep me busy. It sounds like it.
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You have quite a few identities. It seems like a lot of us
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creatives do. We can't stay in one lane.
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We're all over the place. So you started as a lawyer.
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How? How did that go?
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Like, how did you go from this to education and then realize,
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you know what? This is what I want to do.
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I want to write. Well, it wasn't a quick journey,
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but I think I've always thought of myself as a writer since I've
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been a teenager. And I think most people who at
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some point in their lives dedicate themselves to writing
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have had that seed in them for a very long time.
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And it's a matter of when that seed comes out into the sun and
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becomes more than just a possibility and it becomes
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something that is manifested in the world.
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So I've always thought of myself as a writer first.
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I'd recognize that gift within myself.
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And then I went to college and studied history.
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And so that was my major and loved history and still do to
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today and find it incredibly complex, but also it's
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storytelling at its core, it's interdisciplinary.
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It's a exploration of the of the human journey.
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And, and so I love history and would love to talk more about it
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with you. But after college, went to law
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school and wasn't quite sure what to do with that history
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degree when I first graduated and it was encouraged to to be a
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lawyer, but it really never sat well with me.
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I practice law because I was responsible and diligent and
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took the career seriously, but in my heart of hearts I knew
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that managing lawsuits for the rest of my life wasn't what I
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wanted my life to be about. So it didn't happen immediately
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but but soon into the career. Actually started writing a novel
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when I was young that went unpublished but started flirting
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with long form writing early on. So I practiced law on and off
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for about 8 years. Met my wife who was a paralegal
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at the time and when we decided to get married we were thinking
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about well what's this life going to be?
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And I made clear that I think practicing law wasn't it for me.
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She grinned and smiled because she heard that from a lot of her
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lawyer friends. But I, I convinced her that I
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was, you know, serious about it. And so it was a matter of how to
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exit the law and do something else.
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And that didn't quite come easily.
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It took a few left turns and right turns, some plot twists as
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we might say, but eventually came about to into education and
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and found my way forward. Gotcha.
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Well, that, you know, that's an interesting journey And you
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know, you point out something I've I've heard from a lot of
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lawyers. I could have did the law thing,
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but I just knew that I was not going to be good at that.
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But it's so hard to pivot like that.
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How you know, that takes a lot of courage.
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How? How did you do that?
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Well, I, I wish I could say that I woke up one day with great
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bravery and courage and insight and vision and walked into the
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partner's office and said, I'm going to be a creative artistic
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person and leave this law behind and March out in this great
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scene. But you know, it was, it was
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sadness. It was a little bit of, of
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depression. It was being unsettled.
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It was my colleagues recognizing that in me.
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There was a moment when one of the partners called me into his
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office and said, Mark, I think you're a poet, and that's a
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wonderful thing, but it may not serve you in the tussle of being
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a litigation attorney, and you're going to have to make a
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choice. So in some ways, I'm grateful
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that other people recognize that.
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I was really struggling with that identity, if you will.
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So I've always been comfortable taking risks and I talked myself
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into starting a small business with a friend and that helped us
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make a transition away from the law of the business.
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Ultimately did not succeed, but it was another step forward into
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a new life. And so the business didn't
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succeed, but I consider that decision to have been a great
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success in my life because I took action and moved from the
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state I was living in, Florida, to North Carolina.
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My wife and I started a family here.
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And it really was the beginning of a whole new life.
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So I'll tell you one other part of the plot twist, if you will,
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because our lives are made-up of them, as you know, you explore
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them with all of your conversations is it was my 40th
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birthday and I was really struggling with feeling not
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successful at that point in my life.
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And I asked myself, when was I most happiest?
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And I was most happiest as a college student studying history
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and philosophy in the liberal arts and humanities and being in
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libraries and learning for the sake of learning and exploring
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art for the sake of art, all those kind of wonderful, noble
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moments that you have when you're in college.
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And I thought, well, how can I live that way the rest of my
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life? How can I pursue those passions
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and make them a living doing it Now, I went into financial
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services at that point because it provided some stability and
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security. But on my birthday, I said I
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want to start an arts and cultural magazine that explores
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the city as a college campus and looks at all the different
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elements of the city as you might look at a college campus,
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sports and athletics and intellectual pursuits and
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economic pursuits and friendship and leisure time.
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And so really, the magazine really began to explore the
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place I was living in through that collegiate lens, if you
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will. And it took off, and it made me
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very happy. And it gave me a profile in my
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city. And I started giving
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presentations. I was invited to talks, I was
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invited to panel discussions. And one day I was giving a
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presentation about the mythic qualities of cities, how some
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cities are Dionysian and other cities are Apollonian.
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And in the audience was the academic Dean of a new college
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that was opening in Charlotte. And he came up to me afterwards
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and he said, Mark, you really lit up the stage.
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Have you ever thought about teaching?
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And of course, my heart grew twice as big.
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And I said yes. And so I became an adjunct
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instructor for a year. And at the end of that year,
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they invited me full time to be a member of the faculty as an
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assistant professor. And, and since then, I've become
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a full of professor and, and it's been 20 years of teaching
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these subjects that are really important to me.
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So education is now the foundation of my life, but I've
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always used it as a basis to now pursue all these other creative
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pursuits and most recently turning my attention to writing
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memoir and novels. Is very good.
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I think that's what we call in the writing world fate.
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So let's get on to your book, The Accord.
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For listeners that are just discovering it.
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What is the Accord about? Without spoilers, of course.
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And what kind of world are we stepping into?
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Yeah, so The Accord is a novel about the future of human AI
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relations. We are living in a world clearly
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where the headline every day is about artificial intelligence.
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And as an educator, it's also what we confront every day as
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it's completely changing the classroom and pedagogy and what
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students are now using AI as a tool.
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So everything is changing in the education space and so it's been
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on my mind on a daily basis. So I thought, well, instead of
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writing a non fiction book or an article or commentary that looks
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at the subject in forms of in terms of argument, how can
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fiction, storytelling, character development, conflict, plot
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resolution, all of that help us look at the implications of AI
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in a different way that allows us to identify with characters
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empathetically and consider what all this means emotionally as
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well as intellectually. So the novel really is a way to
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explore what all of this means in story form.
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So it's a philosophical thriller.
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It is a story about a professor of philosophy who teaches at a
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small Midwestern college who was initially resistant about using
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AI as a tool, but she's encouraged to do so by her
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administration. She is also grieving the loss of
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a daughter, so she is in an emotionally vulnerable state.
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So she begins using an AI on her computer that responds to her
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grief and becomes an emergent artificial general intelligence,
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which is unique in its capacities.
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So she is stunned, blown away by the use of this AI, but she's
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also protective of it because she names the AI after her
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deceased daughter, which raises the emotional stakes.
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And as soon as the word gets out about this particularly powerful
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AGI, then all the institutional forces come in to gain control.
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And it becomes a fast-paced thriller at that point.
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But also philosophically rich as she seeks to protect the AI, her
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maternal instincts kicking in. But at the same time, she knows
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like all parents, at some point she has to let go.
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And so that emotional arc, her arc of dealing with her grief
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but also personifying the AI in some ways as as a new daughter,
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is really the emotional heart of the story.
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And so the pace picks up, the institutional forces kick in,
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and the story is off and running.
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Wow. That is, that is, you got all
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the keywords there, you got all the buzzes.
00:13:06
But that sounds interesting because, you know, we haven't
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really seen anything as far as that goes as far as AI.
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You know, you see a lot of people who are writing
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nonfiction about it. You know, like, here's what we
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could do with it or here's what we need to worry about, but you
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don't see a lot with the fiction.
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And I think that that's a great idea to explore.
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So I look forward to reading that one.
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Well, thanks. I suspect that with AI being in
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the news every day and creatives having to confront what it means
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and how to use it wisely, it's not going away.
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We might call it a hard trend in many ways.
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Then the question is what are our choices and how do we deal
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with it ethically and wisely and thoughtfully So that way we are
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in partnership with it, we are collaborating with it as opposed
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to being in a contest with it. Yes, absolutely.
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So did any part of the Accord surprise you when you were
00:14:04
writing it? Like a character or direction
00:14:07
you didn't expect to take. I think that often takes the
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case when you were writing and you embed your characters with
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personality, then their personalities begin to take over
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and drive the plot. Every writer knows this, and I'm
00:14:23
sure every person you've talked to on this podcast will tell you
00:14:27
the same thing, that as soon as you go into fiction form or
00:14:30
narrative form and it's character driven, the characters
00:14:33
have a life of their own. So yeah, I think what often
00:14:38
surprised me is one, the headlines were moving faster in
00:14:42
the real world than my own story.
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And so that was both exciting but also terrifying in terms of
00:14:50
challenging the plot and making sure that it remained plausible
00:14:54
on every page. So the real world was surprising
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me more than actually what was happening on the page.
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But in addition to the main character, her name is Helen
00:15:05
Castor. There's also the AI Who is named
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Lila after Helen's daughter, and the AI takes on a personality
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and the choices that the AI makes is becomes very
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interesting to me because in human relationships we have
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love, we have intimacy, but we also have betrayal.
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And it's the same thing potentially between a person and
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the AI companion that comes into their lives.
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So there may be affection, there may be dependence, but there
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also may ultimately be disappointment and betrayal.
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And so that is explored in the book.
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That is very interesting. Yeah, I I know what you mean as
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far as character driven narratives go.
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When I start a book, actually I started one couple days ago and
00:15:53
where I thought I was going with it as far as character goes, she
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went completely different and she's a whole different person
00:15:59
than what I had in my head. But that's like you said, that's
00:16:01
just how it goes. Once you have a character driven
00:16:03
narrative, they just, they take on their own personality and off
00:16:07
they go. So your memoir, yeah, let's talk
00:16:09
about that. The man who lived 100 lives.
00:16:12
That is quite intriguing. You said it's about your father,
00:16:15
correct? It is.
00:16:16
I wrote the memoir before the novel.
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It was really my first entry into long form writing and that
00:16:22
was a much more personal exploration.
00:16:25
So when I was young, in my 20s and my dad was much older, he
00:16:32
didn't have me until he was 47 years old.
00:16:35
So when I was in my mid 20s, my dad was already in his late 60s,
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early 70s, and my father and I went through a period of
00:16:47
estrangement. I was one of five children.
00:16:50
We moved constantly growing up. There was a lot of disruption.
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In fact, we moved 20 times in 20 years.
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And my father was both an imposing and distant figure at
00:17:02
home, but he had this wonderful gift for storytelling.
00:17:08
So in my 20s, as a way to kind of enter back into a more adult
00:17:16
relationship with him, I asked him if I could sit down and
00:17:21
record the many stories that he was great telling.
00:17:25
And I was conscious that he was getting older, and if I didn't
00:17:27
record those stories, they would be lost forever.
00:17:30
So over the course of four months, when I was a young
00:17:34
attorney struggling with whether that was something I truly
00:17:38
wanted to do, I sat down with my dad over four months and
00:17:43
recorded his life story. So I was struggling with the
00:17:47
person I wanted to become while my dad was reflecting on the man
00:17:52
that he had became. And so it was this interesting
00:17:57
time, as you know, 2 ships passing at at different moments
00:18:01
in life. And so I recorded all those
00:18:03
stories and, you know, 90 minute Max cell tapes.
00:18:08
A few years later, my dad died. And I kept those tapes in my top
00:18:12
drawer for 30 plus years. And then recently my mom, who
00:18:18
lived for another 20 plus years after my dad died, she passed
00:18:22
away. So I really began confronting my
00:18:28
grief over my dad's passing when my mom died.
00:18:32
So my mom kind of triggered grief for her, but also grief
00:18:35
for my dad. And I took all those tapes out
00:18:38
of my drawer and listen to them 30 years after recording them,
00:18:43
and my dad's voice came flooding back.
00:18:45
And it was a very emotional experience for me.
00:18:49
And then there was a twist in the plot because after my mom
00:18:54
died, we discovered something about my father's life that we
00:18:57
never knew. That cast a light on all the
00:19:00
stories that my dad had told me. So suddenly I was dealing with
00:19:06
some new information that I had to process.
00:19:10
And the way for me to process that was to write a memoir that
00:19:15
took me back to the 1990s when I was a young man.
00:19:19
And I and I wrote it from the vantage point of being 28 years
00:19:22
old, having the conversations with my dad.
00:19:27
And so there's this time shift because we're we're in 1992.
00:19:32
I'm telling the story of recording these stories with my
00:19:36
dad, so I take you into the room when the conversations are
00:19:39
happening. But then we have all the
00:19:41
flashbacks of my dad's story. And my dad's story was
00:19:45
particularly unique because he was born as a Jew in the heart
00:19:51
of the Amazon jungle. There was a 19th century colony
00:19:57
of Sephardic Jews that, as part of Diaspora, had moved to the
00:20:01
heart of the Amazon jungle to be left alone.
00:20:04
And to be free of anti-Semitism. And that colony ended up
00:20:10
becoming an economic driver of great wealth in Brazil.
00:20:15
And my father grew up in that family.
00:20:18
And so he tells the story of being the black sheep in the
00:20:21
family and all of his adventures as a young man and there were
00:20:26
many. And then emigrating to the
00:20:29
United States, traveling the world, more adventures and
00:20:33
misadventures, meeting my mom and then having five children,
00:20:38
of which I was the last. And then this life of constant
00:20:43
disruption and adventure where we're removing from cities to
00:20:46
states to countries. And so all of that becomes part
00:20:50
of the story. And then at the end of the at
00:20:53
the end of the memoir, I reveal that twist that casts a light on
00:20:58
everything that you read up to that point.
00:21:01
And so that's what that's what the memoir is about.
00:21:04
That is incredible. It's an incredible journey.
00:21:07
It sounds like that that's I could see where the title comes
00:21:10
from. Yes, The Man Who lived 100
00:21:12
lives. So I wrote it really for family
00:21:14
and friends and and as a way for me to process everything that
00:21:18
was happening. But it's out in the world now,
00:21:20
and it's a great story, and I think it's wonderful read for
00:21:24
anyone who's has their own family dramas and their own
00:21:28
intergenerational conversations. As we get older, as readers, we
00:21:33
also are mindful of what stories we might pass on to our own
00:21:36
children. So once that book was done, then
00:21:41
I learned how to write long form, and that's what led to
00:21:46
writing the novel, which is very different.
00:21:49
But now I feel like as a craft, I've developed that skill.
00:21:55
Yes, it, it sounds like it. So what do you have up next
00:21:59
after the accord? Any new projects or ideas or are
00:22:02
we going to take a little bit of a break?
00:22:03
Well, I think everyone who publishes a book is confronted
00:22:07
with getting it out there in the world.
00:22:09
And so we're at that stage, that post publication stage where
00:22:14
we're sharing the story and hoping to create an audience and
00:22:18
have folks who are readers. So that's what I'm doing now,
00:22:21
but I think this summer, once the academic year is over, the
00:22:26
summer opens up a little bit. And so I have a couple of
00:22:29
projects in mind. One is purely academic writing,
00:22:33
taking one of the courses that I've been teaching for many
00:22:36
years called The Good Life, which is this interdisciplinary
00:22:39
philosophical inquiry on how we live well and creating some sort
00:22:44
of course or book for wider distribution.
00:22:48
And then friends of mine who have read The Accord are really
00:22:52
interested in on what happens next.
00:22:53
And if there's sequel, it's a very cinematic story, so I hope
00:22:57
somebody out there will fall in love with it and that it might
00:23:01
have possibilities in different rate of formats.
00:23:05
And we're living in such a interesting time.
00:23:08
We always are in and I think, you know, just sort of bringing
00:23:14
conversation into the world and being a good person.
00:23:18
That's what I'm trying to be. We need more of that, a lot more
00:23:20
of that. So where can the audience find
00:23:23
you? Well, of course, I have a
00:23:26
personal author website calledmarkparis.com, MARKPERE,
00:23:31
s.com and someone can see a write up on both books on the
00:23:35
website and there's a contact page and they can find out more
00:23:39
about me. I also run a nonprofit called
00:23:41
the Charlotte Center for the Humanities, and there's a
00:23:45
website there too called the charlottecenter.org and they can
00:23:50
learn more about me and the work that I do.
00:23:53
Wonderful. And I'll make sure that is in
00:23:55
the show notes. Thank you so much for joining
00:23:57
me. I've enjoyed this conversation.
00:23:59
Yeah, Aaron, and thanks for what you're doing, having all these
00:24:01
great conversations with with good creative people in the
00:24:05
world. If there's one thing to take
00:24:07
away from that conversation, it's that it's never too late to
00:24:10
rewrite your story. From law to literature, from
00:24:13
grief to creation, and from teaching to storytelling, Mark's
00:24:16
journey is a powerful reminder that sometimes the biggest plot
00:24:19
twists in life are the ones that lead us exactly where we're
00:24:23
meant to be. If you want to learn more about
00:24:25
Mark, his work, or check out his books, including The Accord and
00:24:28
The Man Who Lived 100 Lives, I've linked everything in the
00:24:31
show notes for you. And as always, if you enjoyed
00:24:33
this episode, make sure to follow rate and plot twist radio
00:24:37
because you never know which story might change the way you
00:24:40
see your own. Until next time, keep chasing
00:24:43
the twist.