The Authors Quill W Joe Montaldo Guest Martin Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker is a writer with a lucrative programming habit. As a child he 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 30 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 Analog, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, and select service garages worldwide. His novellaMurder on the Aldrin Express was reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection and in Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4.

In addition, Martin's work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Humanity 2.0, The Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4, Writers of the Future Volume 31, Time Travel Tales, Trajectories, Little Green Men: Attack!, The Glass Parachute, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection.

Martin’s Clarkesworld short story "Today I Am Paul" was nominated for a Nebula award by the Science Fiction Writers of America and received the Small Press Award from the Washington Science Fiction Association. “Today I Am Paul” has also appeared in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection, and The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 8, as well as seven international translations.

Blue Collar Space is the name for Martin's series of near-space, near-future hard science fiction stories. These stories are set on Luna, on Mars, in Jupiter orbit, and everywhere in between. It includes the award-winning stories "Scramble" (second place, Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award, 2012), "Unrefined" (third place, Writers of the Future, 2014), and "Racing to Mars" (first place, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Analytical Laboratory award, 2016), as well as numerous other short stories, novelettes, and novellas. His novella "Murder on the Aldrin Express" was reprinted in Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection.

Find out more at: Shoemaker.Space