CHRIS HOLM

Yesterday, I received word that my short story "The World Behind" has been accepted for publication by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. If you're not familiar with EQMM, it is without qualification the most venerable magazine in the history of crime fiction. Since their founding in 1941, they've featured work from the world's greatest writers, including Rudyard Kipling, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Isaac Asimov, Norman Mailer, Alice Walker, and Stephen King, just to name a few. And, in May of 2007, they'll feature me. UPDATE: "The World Behind" is now set to appear in the June 2007 issue of EQMM.

After a couple of weeks spent writing, polishing, and submitting a short story, I’ve refocused my efforts on finishing my novel, which means there’s little to report. There’s progress aplenty, but I suspect if I were to document it in detail, it’d look a lot like this: Wrote five pages today. Brilliant. Utterly, utterly brilliant. Best pages ever. Read yesterday’s pages. Crap. Utter, utter crap. Worst pages ever. And so on. So rather than boring you with the details of slogging away at my work-in-progress, I’ve decided to regale you with a tale of adventure, intrigue, and aliens. A tale of my loftiest literary achievement to date. A tale of my first-ever award for writing. I was six years old. I remember sitting on the institutional metal chair, my feet swinging free several inches above the floor. I was nervous, and I had reason to be—I wasn’t the kind of kid that got called down to the principal’s office with any regularity. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having been called down ...

Uh... hi. My name is Chris, and I'm a writer, in the sense that I get up in the morning and I write. Two years ago, I began work on a novel. A lot of early mornings and a few hundred pages later, it's nearly done. What does it take to become a working writer? Stick around—maybe we'll both find out.