DAILY CRYPTOGRAM

About Christopher Moore, Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Christopher Moore (born January 1, 1957) is an American writer of comic fantasy. He was born in Toledo, Ohio. He grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, and attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. An only child, Moore learned to amuse himself with his imagination. He loved reading and his father brought him plenty of books from the library every week. He started writing around the age of twelve and realized that this was his talent by the time he was 16, and he began to consider making it his career.Moore's novels typically involve conflicted everyman characters struggling through supernatural or extraordinary circumstances. With the possible exceptions of Fool, The Serpent of Venice, and Sacré Bleu, all his books take place in the same universe and some characters recur from novel to novel. According to his interview in the June 2007 issue of Writer's Digest, the film rights to Moore's first novel, Practical Demonkeeping (1992), were purchased by Disney even before the book had a publisher. In answer to repeated questions from fans over the years, Moore stated that all of his books have been optioned or sold for films, but that as yet "none of them are in any danger of being made into a movie."Moore has named Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, John Steinbeck, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Ian Fleming as key influences on his writing.As of June 2006, Moore has been living in San Francisco, after a few years on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.