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About Me

Hello, and thanks again for visiting my site. I spend my days managing communications for Council for a Strong America, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that's creating a more secure nation by promoting smart investments in youth. I spend my early mornings and evenings listening to the voices in my head and shaping them into stories that are usually about good people in bad situations.

I've been at it for years.

Owing more to the power of belief and motivation than talent or intelligence, I began writing as soon as I was able to hold a pencil. Success came in snippets years later - with English compositions singled out by a certain high school teacher who held me after class and told me to keep at it; followed, eventually, by a novella published in serial form in my college newspaper, and a short story that won first prize in a literary competition.

The hard years came next - about 20 to be exact. They're a bit of a blur now - thanks to the 4 a.m. mornings, which gave me a good three hours to write before heading off to my day job, and the emotionally challenging ups and downs and hairpin turns that eventually led me to an agent and my first book. DOUBLE ABDUCTION was published in hardcover in 2007 by a small publisher that rescued it from an only slightly-larger publisher that declared bankruptcy right after the galleys were printed. It earned good reviews and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

Now, nearly 10 years later, FATAL OPTION has been published by Post Hill Press and Simon & Schuster, thanks to tremendous support from editors and friends and the assurance that it's a story that has to be told. You can read an excerpt at my blog, along with my short stories and brief reviews of other books that I've enjoyed. As always feel free to follow me on Facebook or on Twitter at chrisbeakey@verizon.net.