Welcome
Writing is a jealous mistress, so I work as a photographer and bookseller to buy my time with her.
I was still walking a winding, uneven backroad to manhood when I got to like traveling the American road, meeting new people and seeing the country at eye level. Even now, when I sip a sunrise cup of coffee in a roadside cafe at the edge of a small town, my boots hunger to taste the dust of a new Main Street. . .
Chris's work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Modern Short Stories, 2AM, Right Here, Fiction Writers Monthly, Northwoods Journal, Info: A World of $ense, Grit, The Iconoclast, Shortstory Substack. . . . Since his teens, his hitchhiking thumb has carried him into adventures across America, and his first book, Mississippi Odyssey, is a journal of his experiences hitchhiking boat rides down the Mississippi River. It received good reviews--Library Journal, Waterways Journal, Catholic Weekly, Alan Caruba's Bookviews--and a testimonial (unsolicited) from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
It was offered as a Featured Alternate by the Family Bookshelf Book Club, and a new edition of this timeless adventure was released as part of the Backinprint.com program sponsored by The Authors Guild.
(Read Chris's essay, "The Writer Who Couldn't Read," in the inspirational book for writers, A Cup of Comfort For Writers.)
My short story "It's Just a Rattlesnake" is available at Short Story Substack.
Announcement!
Mississippi Odyssey is now available in EPUB, Kindle and NOOK formats, as well as trade paperback .
Copyright 2025 Chris Markham
All rights reserved.
Contact: Chris Markham