Mark LaFlamme is a crime reporter and columnist at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine. In his weekly column Street Talk he often vents his frustration with and disdain for editors, comparing them to bats, spiders, extraterrestrial slugs, and other beings too diabolical to describe. The column has been named both Best in Maine and Best in New England.
In 2006, LaFlamme was named Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association. He chain smokes, is utterly loyal to Pabst Blue Ribbon and sleeps until noon every day. He is a Kansas City Royals fan living in Red Sox territory, another mark of his intrepid nature.
Dumb crooks, hard cases and vile editors. Check out LaFlamme's weekly column Street Talk
LaFlamme would rather hang out with street drunks, prostitutes and the mysterious people who live near the river than linger in the newsroom waiting for something to do. He believes that some of the greatest stories are those that never make it to the news page. That’s why he has a column. And questionable social values.
In late 2004, LaFlamme wrote his first novel “Worumbo,” the tale of a young reporter with blossoming psychic abilities and government experiments with mind control at an abandoned Maine mill. A year later, he wrote and published “The Pink Room,” the story of a leading physicist who attempts to use the science of string theory to bring his daughter back from the dead. In 2007, he published "Vegetation," the tale of a man at war with the world of plants. That novel was followed by “Delirium Tremens” and “The Beast,” which remain unpublished. In spite of his chosen career, LaFlamme has no plans to write a crime drama.
LaFlamme takes the week of Halloween off each year and then sulks for months after its over. In previous years, he’s hung out in Salem, ghouled around Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in Baltimore, spent a night in Sleepy Hollow, wrote scripts for the Haunted Forest in Williston, Vermont and hunted vampires in Transylvania. LaFlamme is probably making that last part up.