Mark Gray went to an Angels baseball game in Anaheim to interview survivors of Las Vegas’ Route 91 tragedy for Rolling Stone magazine. That outing would transform him from journalist to author.
Mary Jo von Tillow had lost her husband, Kurt, in the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting. Gray survived it himself. She sat near Gray at the baseball game that day. Their initial conversation was brief; they exchanged numbers, but about a year later, she called. She had an idea, and she wanted a writer who truly understood.
“The Las Vegas Massacre Connections: Finding Strength Through Tragedy After America’s Deadliest Mass Shooting,” published last year, follows Mary Jo and the relationships she formed afterward. Gray interviewed her children, friends, and people whose own experiences with loss had brought them into her life.
With Mary Jo, he moved between reporter and fellow survivor. He remembered the sounds of bullets and the fear of being helpless on the ground. Their experiences differed, but that shared understanding made the conversations possible.
“The book was very much a cathartic process for me,” Gray says.
Writing it took nine months. Finding a publisher took about nine more. Gray, an entertainment writer for decades, pulled up his records: He pitched the book 251 times. He estimates about 25 pitches received feedback.
WildBlue Press accepted it while he was meeting friends for dinner in New York. After so many unanswered emails, he wondered whether he had read it correctly. “It was an absolutely incredible feeling,” he says.
A year after publication, Gray measures the book’s impact partly through the people who have contacted him. Some wanted to thank him. Others wanted help telling their own stories. Those conversations have strengthened his connections within the survivor community.
He is now working on a second book, this time fiction, with a more patient understanding of what the process requires. For anyone trying to finish a manuscript of their own, his advice is simple: “Give yourself a lot of grace.”
