Lincoln Child

Lincoln Child is the New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Room, The Third Gate, Terminal Freeze, Deep Storm, Death Match, and Utopia, as well as co-author Douglas Preston of numerous New York Times bestsellers.

Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, which he still calls his hometown (even though he left the place before he reached his first birthday and now only goes back for weekends).

Lincoln seemed to have acquired an interest in writing as early as second grade when he wrote a short story entitled Bumble the Elephant.

Along with two dozen short stories composed during his youth, he wrote a science-fiction novel in tenth grade called Second Son of Daedalus and a shamelessly Tolkeinesque fantasy in twelfth grade titled The Darkness to the North. Both are exquisitely embarrassing to read today and are kept under lock and key by the author.

Lincoln Child graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, majoring in English. Discovering a fascination for words, and their habit of turning up in so many books, he made his way to New York in the summer of 1979, intent on finding a job in publishing.

He was lucky enough to secure a position as an editorial assistant at St. Martin's Press. Over the next several years, he clawed his way up the editorial hierarchy, moving from assistant editor to associate editor before becoming a full editor in 1984.

While at St. Martin's, he connected with the work of many authors, including that James Herriot and M. M. Kaye. He edited well over a hundred books--with titles as diverse as The Notation of Western Music and Hitler's Rocket Sites--but focused primarily on American and English popular fiction.

Lincoln assembled several collections of ghost and horror stories, beginning with the hardcover collections Dark Company (1984) and Dark Banquet (1985). Later, when he founded the company's mass-market horror division, he edited three more compilations of stories, Tales of the Dark 1–3.

In 1987, Lincoln left trade publishing to work at MetLife. In a rather sudden transition, he went from editing manuscripts, speaking at sales conferences, and winning/dining agents to doing highly technical programming and systems analysis.

Lincoln was a propeller-head from a very early age, and his extensive programming experience dates back to high school when he worked with DEC minis and the now-prehistoric IBM 1620, so antique it had an electric typewriter mounted into its front panel. Away from the world of publishing, Lincoln's budding interests in writing returned.

While at MetLife, Relic came out in 1995, and within a few years, Lincoln left the company to write full-time. Since then, more than 30 of his joint and solo books have become bestsellers, several of which debuted at #1 on the New York Times list.

Lincoln's interests include pre-1950s literature and poetry; post-1950s popular fiction; playing the piano, various MIDI instruments, and the 5-string banjo; English and American history; motorcycles; architecture; classical music, early jazz, blues, and R&B; exotic parrots; esoteric programming languages; mountain hiking; bow ties; Italian suits; fedoras; archaeology; and multiplayer deathmatching.

Lincoln Child lives with his wife and daughter in Morristown, New Jersey.

Photo credit: © Deborah Feingold / lincolnchild.com