Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Christopher Parker Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author

Christopher Parker

Christopher Parker

Christopher Parker Biography

Christopher Parker was born in Takapuna, a seaside suburb in Auckland, New Zealand, where he currently lives with his daughter. Having loved writing stories growing up, it was a walk along Takapuna beach and a chance glimpse at a distant lighthouse that made him want to revisit his childhood passion and try his hand at producing a novel. Nearly 10 years on from that fateful stroll, he is proud to finally share his story.

Christopher Parker's website

This bio was last updated on 09/07/2021. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Christoper Parker discusses his first novel, The Lighthouse, set off the coast of Oregon, why it took him 10 years to write and what he learned in the process.

The Lighthouse took you nearly 10 years to finish. Where did it all begin and how did the timeline of the process progress?

It began somewhat naively. I had the idea for the story I wanted to tell, I calculated how many words I could write per day, and I figured I could be done in three months. The first draft ended up taking three years and it was awful. It was overwritten and full of subplots that went nowhere. I then began reading as widely and voraciously as I could, determined to learn and understand more about the craft, and I started the manuscript again from scratch. The second draft took a further three years, followed by another couple of years of editing and revision. Had I known what was involved at the beginning, I'm not sure I would've begun!

What was your motivation to keep writing all these years?

I believed in the story so much that I had no choice but to see it through to the end. At times I felt very much like a sailor lost at sea — too far from home to quit but no sight of a destination either. I had no choice but to just keep sailing. It did me no good to plot an end date or to try and hurry along the process. My only approach was to do my best every day, keep making progress and moving forward. As long ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Christopher Parker at BookBrowse
The Lighthouse jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.