New!
My latest book is See You in the Black. The United States Army Parachute Team – The Golden Knights.
The idea for this book was born in December of 2021 after I had been invited to attend a reunion of the United States Parachute Team. Nothing of any current significance had been written in book form about the team since the early 1990’s. This book took a solid year-and-a-half to research and write, and I consider it a legacy work. I took the project on as a volunteer with the thought that I could pay no finer act of respect to the Golden Knights than recording their history and telling the story of the team’s evolution across the 64 years of their existence. Over the course of bringing the manuscript along, I interviewed many of the team’s members, past and present, and in so doing came to know the finest group of people that I have ever had the pleasure to know.
The United States Army Parachute Team, the Golden Knights, are one of three Department of Defense Aerial Demonstration teams. The others are the United States Air Force Thunderbirds and the United States Navy Blue Angels, both aerobatic flight teams representing their respective branches. The Golden Knights perform highly-skilled aerial demonstrations of precision skydiving at hundreds of events and venues every year both domestically and internationally. The team’s primary mission is to represent the U.S. Army in its recruitment efforts, and to act as roving ambassadors to the nations of the world. Its other functions include participating in parachuting competitions worldwide and performing parachuting research and development. The Golden Knights are at the top of the world’s most decorated and winning competitive skydiving teams in history.
The team has been in existence since 1959. The book follows the team throughout its sixty-four-year history, and opens the door, giving the reader an inside look at its people, its operations, its equipment, its structure and its inner workings from its beginnings up through the current day. Within the book's pages, the reader will find never-before-seen photographs of the team and insights to its phenomenal success.
The book tells the story of how and why the team came to be, the people who comprise it, what it is like to be a Golden Knight, and how to become one. It was written and produced by author and publisher, Mike Marcon, a veteran Commercial Pilot and skydiver who has known the Golden Knights since their early days in 1962 when several of the team’s original members taught him how to skydive. The book contains the full team roster up through 2017.
Here are a few early reviews:
“Take this book to any of the “Golden Knights” performances, and they will gladly autograph it for you. This book would take the place of honor in any library.”
Gregory Vares – Golden Knight – 1981 to 1987
“A work of art! I learned things about the Golden Knights that I never knew!”
Charlie Hall, Jr. – Golden Knight – 1969 to 1974
“ Loved the book! Very informative and learned some things I did not know! It was very inspirational.”
Bryan Shell - Golden Knight - 2000 to 2014
The book is now also available in paperback and for Kindle and available on Amazon by following this link:
Click on the SYIB cover to read sample chapters.
The
The last Summer
Every summer for years, Mike Marcon’s character, Doc, has barnstormed the Midwest in his ancient Jenny biplane - there to sell airplane rides, experience the lives of those he encounters, write about his adventures and live the simple life of a pilot still in love with the earliest days of aviation. But he has grown old enough now that he fears that the summer’s flying that he is about to undertake might be his last. That is, until he crashes in a West Virginia field and meets a young, simple girl who changes his life and makes him young again.
A personal note from Mike about this book:
"Writing this book was truely an act of love, both for the content and subject of the work and just the sheer joy of telling the story. If I live long enough, I will do a sequel for it."
Available in hardcover and paperback!
Click on the cover to read a sample.
“Your stories move beautifully. They have real characters who live, walk around and breathe instead of lying, even eloquently, flat on the page forever. You know pace and how to do it. Your stories are page turners." - Eleanor Friede, Book Editor and Literary Agent, Delacorte Press, Macmillian Publishing, Eleanor Friede Books.
A personal note from Mike about this lady who has since passed:
"EF's notable published titles included Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah and A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach and The Minack Chronicles by Derek Tangye.
Eleanor was the consummate literary representative. And she was publishing royalty. She was also a pilot. And she loved the sky the way I do. She understood sky people who write, people like me. One of my major regrets is that she wasn't here to read The Last Summer. My short time with her as a my mentor could have been better spent had I appreciated her more as a friend, rather than just seen her as a ticket to literary success. Nevertheless, my time with her was precious; I am not represented by a literary agent at the present, mainly because I don't think there is anyone out there who could live up to her talents and her understanding of what being a published author goes through or does. And I sincerely doubt anyone out there today knows their way around the houses of big boy publishing the way she did. If the right agent ever comes along, and convinces me otherwise, I may change my view."
The Flight of Charles Sebastian Crow
If you are a skydiver, ever made a jump, or simply aspire to make a skydive, this is the fable written for you.
Charles Sebastian Crow knew that there was much more to flight than simply flying to subsist. He set out to prove it, and in the process , forever changed the way his flock practiced flight.
“Reading Mike’s work, on more than one occasion, I was reminded of the writings of Richard Bach. Mike has a rare gift and I look forward to more books from him.” - Patrick B. Moore
Click cover to read a sample.
Midway Field
All of life is an illusion that we create. We choose our lives for the lessons a life teaches. We choose our roles in life for the adventures we experience. We create our lives and design them for specific reasons, and we understand at a basic level that we live many lives simultaneously in differing realities and existences. And we draw our talents and abilities from others of whom we are already a part. An aging pilot crashes on a mountainside, and he awakens to rediscover these truths. Midway Field is a fictional story, yes. But the possibilities are intriguing in this novella. It will cause you to ask questions. It will cause you to question everything.
Click the cover to read a sample.
A personal note from Mike about this book:
"I was inspired to write this tale because of my love for Richard Bach's book, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. If you couple Bach's words and philosophies with mine, I am pretty sure that you may have a very solid chance of discovering the true nature of your own reality. At the very least, you will understand the true nature of my reality."
“Mike's writing is at first simple story telling but that quickly leads to intrigue and a sense of a lot more going on in his words. This is one flight we will all board sometime and may just touchdown at Midway Field. Try this one and I bet you're gonna like it.” - Amazon Customer
“Whether we have a sense of certainty about the afterlife or not, most of us ponder what exactly happens in the moments after the light goes out of our eyes. This book is, in part, about those moments, but it is also much more. It explores our purpose here, in this lifetime, and our control of it, and it does so in a beautiful, swooping story about a pilot whose time has been a grand adventure.” - J. Bryan
Now available in hardcover!
Purchase on Amazon
The Outlaws
What happens when a group of aging pilots and skydivers decide that they are too old to live by the rules anymore, and they gather together to jump and fly as they did as youngsters? Now available in hardcover.
Click the cover to read a sample.
A personal note from Mike about this book:
"I wrote this book for one reason: And that is that I know that every skydiver who ever lived has harbored a secret desire to do what the characters in this book do. Then, while writing it, I discovered a few real skydivers who are actually living and doing today what I was writing about. Thier real names and locations will die with me."
“Mike has hit it out of the park again! “The Outlaws” is the stuff of a skydiver’s dream.” – Amazon Customer
Now available in hardcover!
Red Beans & Ripcords
That's me sitting on the wing of my airplane at Southern Parachute Center at Hammond, Louisiana, in the mid-1960s. I got my start as a jump instructor and jump pilot there, and my experiences at SPC would set the tone for much of the rest of my life as a skydiver and pilot. The stories in this book are some of my best, and I know you will enjoy reading about what skydiving was like in those days.
“Marcon captures the wild state of the sport in the Sixties and paints a very accurate picture of the sport’s camaraderie. I hope he writes more! This guy knows the sport. But more importantly he tells a rip roaring good story. He really captured the wild and woolly roots of the sport.” – Amazon Customer
Purchase on Amazon here.
Click the cover to read a sample.
The Tears of an Aviator
The trouble with fatherhood is that it doesn't come with a flight manual. If only sons knew that. But when fathers and sons are aviators, the bond is flight. In his newest novella, Mike Marcon tells the heartfelt story of a father and son finding closeness in the sky during the father's last days.
"Great story about a father and son on that resolved their issues before it was too late." – Amazon Customer
