CHRIS HOLM

This time last year, I did an event at the Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham, Maine, which GoCat public access television recorded for broadcast. Recently, I stumbled across the video, so I've embedded it below in all its beardy splendor. Enjoy!

Hey, do you like things that are awesome? Then join me Tuesday, April 9, for Portland Stage's third annual Maine Crime Writers Staged Reading , in which their wildly talented actors will be performing work by local scribes Dick Cass, Kate Flora, Gayle Lynds, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and yours truly. Most of the readings will be excerpted from novels. Mine's a short story in its entirety—specifically "Not Forgotten," which first appeared in the 2012 anthology SHOTGUN HONEY PRESENTS: BOTH BARRELS. The event is pay-what-you-can, with a suggested donation of $10 in advance and $15 at the door . It kicks off with a reception at 6:30PM (which, last year, featured free wine, beer, and Flatbread pizza); performances begin at 7:00PM. There will be books for sale if you're interested, and I suspect we writers will hop onstage for a quick chat when the performances are through. Hope to see you there!

Anyone who regularly reads this blog, or follows me on social media, knows that I'm a passionate advocate for commonsense gun control—so I was delighted that Eric Beetner invited me to contribute to the second volume of his Anthony Award nominated UNLOADED series. These anthologies are a who's who of the crime-fic world.  UNLOADED Vol. 2: More Crime Writers Writing Without Guns  features contributions from Sara Paretsky , James Ziskin , Laura McHugh , and the late Bill Crider , to name but a few. It also features a brand new short story called "Con Season" by yours truly. And, oh yeah, it's out today! As with the first volume , every story in UNLOADED Vol. 2 is firearm-free—although guns feature prominently in  E.A. Aymar's  moving essay—and all proceeds go to  States United to Prevent Gun Violence . To be clear, though, the UNLOADED series is neither partisan nor anti-gun. Contributing authors hail from both sides of the political aisle, and many o...

I've been holed up writing of late, but I wanted to resurface briefly to point y'all toward Brad Parks' terrific CrimeReads piece about writing crime fiction in the time of Trump . He talks to agents, editors, and authors, including yours truly, and offers a fascinating snapshot of our chosen genre.

As I write this, our streets are filled with concerned citizens —many of them children—marching in support of commonsense gun control. In light of that, I'd like to talk about the Second Amendment , which reads, in its entirety: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Our forefathers' way with words is well documented, but that, my friends, is a garbage sentence. Perhaps that's why its meaning has long been hotly debated. One school of thought, the individual right theory , claims that "the right of people to keep and bear Arms" confers an individual right to every citizen of the United States. Another school of thought, the collective rights theory , argues that the prefatory clause "A well regulated Militia" suggests the framers intended only to protect the states from the federal government legislating away their collective right to self-defe...