Born in 1957 in Westport, Connecticut, Lincoln Child was destined to be a writer. His career began in the second grade with the short story "Bumble the Elephant," and progressed through the science fiction novel Second Son of Daedalus in the tenth grade and the unfinished Tolkienesque fantasy The Darkness to the North. Sadly, none of these have been published, and the world would have to wait several years to see his words in print.
While attending Carleton College in Minnesota, he felt drawn to the field of medical journalism, but following a cat dissection in 1977, he decided perhaps that wasn't the right direction to go. He graduated from Carleton in 1979 with Distinction in English Literature, and set forth to find gainful employment where he might indulge his "fascination with words, and their habit of turning up in so many books. He joined St. Martin's Press as an editorial assistant and worked his way up to full editor in 1984. He edited over a hundred books on a variety of diverse topics, but stuck mainly with American and English popular fiction. He also put together several anthologies of ghost and horror stories and even founded St. Martin's mass-market horror division.
In 1985, the hand of fate gave Lincoln a gentle nudge back toward his own interest in writing. When commissioning a book on the American Museum of Natural History, he came across one Museum employee whose articles about the Museum itself seemed more interesting than the others. This man was Douglas Preston, and over the next several months, the pair hammered out both Preston's first nonfiction book Dinosaurs in the Attic and a solid friendship.
Preston and Child also discussed the idea of a murder mystery set in a natural history museum. Lincoln recomended against a murder mystery, as they are both plentiful and difficult to make successful. Instead, he suggested a techno-thriller, set in the museum, and went one step further to say they ought to write it together. Over the next several years, they collaborated on the novel that would eventually become Relic.
Lincoln made another drastic change to his life in 1987. He left St. Martin's to pursue another early love of his, geekdom. He joined MetLife as a systems analyst and technical programmer. He coded away while collaborating with Douglas Preston until 1996, when the production of the major motion picture version of Relic began. He decided he could support his wife and daughter in their New Jersey home with his writing income, and left the insurance company to be a full-time author. His knowledge of the publishing scene and what makes books successful, combined with his intimate familiarity with the horror genre bring a beautiful darkness to his popular writing, and his collaboration (and presumably friendship) with Douglas Preston continue to this day. His eclectic interests (he calls himself a "dilettante by natural inclination") help bring depth and life to his characters. His first solo effort, Utopia is scheduled for release in December of 2002.
Bibliography
With Douglas Preston:
Anthologies Edited:
Sources:
Author information in the Preston/Child novels
http://www.prestonchild.com/