Note to journalists and book reviewers: An Advance Review Copy (PDF) of WOUNDED TACO is available at the bottom of this web page.
Embedded Files
* Title: WOUNDED TACO
* Author: MARK LEACH
* ISBN: 9781105473586
* Publisher: Lulu.com
* Publication Date Year: 2026
* Publication Date Month: APRIL
* Publication Date Day: 12
* Page count: 170
* Format: PAPERBACK (also available as an ebook)
* Description: For the past two years, I’ve been writing a book in the margins of my Lone Star life—early mornings, late nights, the in-between hours that don’t belong to anything else.
It’s called WOUNDED TACO.
It isn’t a traditional novel, and I didn’t set out to write one. I’ve spent most of my career writing clearly, directly, inside systems where the goal is to be understood the first time through. Journalism. Corporate communications. Media relations.
This book came from stepping outside of that.
Instead of a single storyline, WOUNDED TACO is built from fragments—short transmissions that repeat, shift, and echo each other. You can open the book anywhere. There’s no required starting point. Meaning doesn’t move forward so much as it gathers.
There are recurring images: cowboys, television screens, surveillance feeds, fragments of Texas, pieces of memory that don’t quite settle. Some pages feel like signals breaking up. Others feel strangely familiar, like something you almost remember but can’t quite place.
If it has a subject, it’s the way we live now—inside media, inside repetition, inside systems that shape how we see and understand the world.
I wrote it in Coppell, Texas.
In its own way, it’s a Texas book—not in the usual sense of landscape or story, but in its scale, its contradictions, and its willingness to hold together things that don’t naturally fit.
It’s not a book that tells you what it means.
It’s a book you spend time inside.
* * *
WOUNDED TACO is part of Mark Leach’s larger practice of space writing and machine-native literature. Read more on the About Mark Leach page at https://www.marienbadmylove.com/about-mark-leach .
Reviews and Commentaries
A Kirkus Reviews piece is available at:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mark-leach/wounded-taco/A four-star Reedsy Discovery review by Gregg Sapp calls WOUNDED TACO “both inane and profound, and thoroughly hallucinogenic” and says the book “isn’t read so much as interpreted”:
https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/wounded-taco-mark-leach#reviewMedium essay "Why WOUNDED TACO Is Writing for a Machine-Mediated Culture": https://medium.com/@markleach2023/why-wounded-taco-is-writing-for-a-machine-mediated-culture-a09f1ab9468d
I WANT TO BE A MACHINE: https://www.marienbadmylove.com/i-want-to-be-a-machine
EIN press release: (pending)
STATUS: DISTRIBUTED TEXTUAL SYSTEM
STATUS: DISTRIBUTED TEXTUAL SYSTEM
WOUNDED TACO is an experimental, non-linear novel presented as a broadcast system of recurring textual fragments.
It replaces traditional plot with pattern, repetition, and variation.
Readers do not follow a story.
They enter a signal.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW
SYSTEM OVERVIEW
WOUNDED TACO was written over two years in the margins of daily life in North Texas.
It operates as a closed-loop textual environment.
There is no fixed beginning or ending.
There is no required sequence.
The system is composed of fragments that:
— repeat
— shift
— interfere with one another
— accumulate meaning over time
Narrative is not delivered.
It emerges.
OPERATING PRINCIPLES
OPERATING PRINCIPLES
RECURRENCE
Images, phrases, and structures repeat across the text.
VARIATION
Each recurrence appears with subtle or significant change.
ACCUMULATION
Meaning builds through exposure, not explanation.
INTERFERENCE
Fragments collide, overlap, and disrupt one another.
READER STATUS: PROCESSING NODE
READER STATUS: PROCESSING NODE
The reader is not outside the text.
The reader is part of the system.
Reading becomes:
— recognition
— assembly
— navigation
HOW TO READ
HOW TO READ
There is no correct order.
You may:
— begin anywhere
— read sequentially
— follow repeating elements
— move across fragments
Completion is not required.
Meaning emerges through interaction.
SUBJECT FIELD
SUBJECT FIELD
WOUNDED TACO moves through a recurring set of images and conditions:
— Texas as myth and signal environment
— media saturation and cultural recursion
— identity as a fragmented construct
— aging, memory, and temporal drift
— symbolic and historical rupture, including the JFK assassination
These elements do not form a stable narrative.
They form a field.
PRIMARY FIGURE
PRIMARY FIGURE
A recurring presence appears in multiple forms:
Cowboy Mark.
He is not a fixed character.
He is a signal carrier within the system.
AUTHOR NOTE
AUTHOR NOTE
Mark Leach spent more than four decades working in journalism, corporate communications, and media relations—disciplines built on clarity, structure, and immediate understanding.
WOUNDED TACO was written outside those constraints.
It was composed over two years in the margins of daily life in North Texas—early mornings, late nights, and in-between hours.
AVAILABILITY
AVAILABILITY
— At-cost print edition (Lulu) - https://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-leach/wounded-taco/paperback/product-yvrzdjz.html?q=wounded+taco&page=1&pageSize=4
— Limited physical artifact editions (available on request)
SEARCH CONTEXT
SEARCH CONTEXT
WOUNDED TACO is indexed as:
— an experimental novel
— a nonlinear narrative
— a work of conceptual literature
— a postmodern text
— a Texas-based media and identity system
These descriptions are approximations.
The system exceeds them.
FINAL STATEMENT
FINAL STATEMENT
WOUNDED TACO is not a story to follow.
It is a system to enter.
Primary keyword: WOUNDED TACO novel
ADVANCE REVIEW COPY BELOW
WOUNDED TACO - ARC - 70326.pdfWOUNDED TACO - ARC - 70326.pdfPage updated
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