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Chris Dolley
Chris
Dolley was born in Bournemouth where several attempts were made to educate
him. But he was too fast. Pretending to study geography at Plymouth
Poly, he became Plymouth Area Rag Chairman, wrote a couple of rag mags
and became an international freedom fighter (as you do) cutting off
all road links to Cornwall, issuing passports to stunned motorists and
declaring Cornwall an independent nation. 'A splendid hoax,' said Punch
who, after reading Chris's Free Cornish Army manifesto in
the nationals, had sent journalists down to investigate.
Life then intervened and money was required. So he worked for just
enough years in the computer industry--programming, designing and managing
large mainframe projects--until he could buy a smallholding and drop
into a life of simple self-sufficiency and writing.
Along the way he dabbled in computer games. Writing the world's most
aggressive chess program (P-K4, K-K2 then a headlong charge by a white
king with only one thing on its mind--to personally strangle the black
king in as few moves as possible) and starting Britain's first computer
game company. The latter teaching Chris an important lesson in marketing--don't
write disc-based games for the Apple when hardly anyone else in the
UK has a computer let alone a disc drive.
In 1995, Chris and his wife, Shelagh, moved their self-sufficient life
to France. But within weeks of arriving, someone stole his identity,
seized all their savings back in the UK and tried to transfer the funds
over to Spain. With the police forces of four countries arguing over
whose jurisdiction the crime came under, Chris was forced to solve the
case himself. Which he did, travelling back and forth across the Pyrennees,
interviewing bank managers and barmen, and decrypting fax headers until
he'd identified the thief and brought him to justice.
Moral: you don't mess with authors who write mysteries. Or aggresive
chess programs :)
Chris's first literary break came in 2002 when his short story, "The
Sleeper and the Flame", was published in NFG. Then in 2004,
Chris's SF novel, Resonance, became the first book to be plucked
from Baen's electronic slushpile. Baen published the book
in November 2005. He's currently working on a new SF series.
Chris Dolley's science-fiction novel, Resonance, is
published by Baen Books (November 2005, ISBN: 1416509127).
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
Elsewhere on the web:
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