Martin L. Shoemaker is a Writes of the Future winning writer with a lucrative programming habit. Someday he'll change that to full-time writer; but for now, programming pays the bills.

As a child Martin told stories to imaginary friends and learned to type on his brother’s manual typewriter even though he couldn’t reach the keys. (He types with the keyboard in his lap still today.) He couldn’t imagine any career but writing fiction . . . until his algebra teacher said, “This is a program. You should write one of these.”

Fast forward thirty years of programming, writing, and teaching. He was named an MVP by Microsoft for his work with the developer community. He is an avid role-playing gamemaster, but that didn’t satisfy his storytelling urge. He wrote, but he never submitted until his brother-in-law read a chapter and said, “That’s not a chapter. That’s a story. Send it in.” It won second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest and earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that!

Martin hasn’t stopped writing (or programming) since. His work has appeared in Writers of the Future Volume 31, Analog Science Fiction / Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, and select service garages worldwide. His novella Murder on the Aldrin Express was reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection and in The Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4.

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Regrettably, my schedule does not allow me to take read requests. If you're looking for critiques to improve your writing, I recommend Critters, an online critique circle: http://www.critters.org/c/join.ht