Tacoma man’s day job pays well, but his fantasy writing recently paid off in big way
In his off hours, Tacoma novelist Erik Lynd writes stories in urban fantasy, horror, science fiction and other fantastical genres.
By day, Erick Lindman is an information technology manager for Starbucks.
Lynd, the pen name Lindman uses, has written novels and the occasional short story.
It was one of those short stories that made him a winner in the Writers of the Future Contest, organizers announced last week.
The big awards in the science fiction and related genres are the Hugo and Nebula.
The 38-year-old Writers of the Future Contest was established by science fiction author and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for aspiring science fiction and fantasy writers to get recognition for their unpublished work. A companion contest, Illustrators of the Future Contest, began five years after the writers contest.
Hubbard, a controversial figure, died in 1986.
Lynd’s winning short story, “The Skin of My Mother,” will be published in an anthology with 12 other winners from around the globe. In October, Lynd gets a week-long visit to Hollywood to receive his award and work with a mentor.
Judges for the contest included Brian Herbert (son of Tacoma native Frank Herbert), Orson Scott Card, Brandon Sanderson and Nnedi Okorafor among others.
“The Skin of My Mother” is a supernatural horror story about a woman trying not to become her mother, a folk witch who helps her community with remedies and charms.
“In the end, she sort of becomes her mother,” Lynd said. “She left home to experience life, found a lot of problems, came back blaming her mother for all her issues and then they ‘work it out’.”
He had his wife, Sherilynn, read it before submitting the story to make sure he wasn’t making any male-perspective mistakes.
Lynd, 47, hopes the award will boost his credibility. But, he’s not ready to quit his tech job anytime soon.
“My day job pays really, really well,” he said.
Lynn said he knew from childhood he’d be a writer but didn’t pursue it in earnest until he was through with college.
He started in horror, but his first attempts at finding a literary agent went as well as a midnight trip through a graveyard.
“They’d come back and say your writing is great but we can’t make any money off of horror,” Lynd said. The Stephen King-fueled heyday of the 1980s and 1990s was over.
Because Lynd didn’t need the money from writing he could afford to stay true to his vision and write what he wanted.
Today, he’s authored nine independently published novels. His most popular series, “The Hand of Perdition”, is in the urban fantasy genre.
“It’s my version of a superhero story with urban fantasy sort of tropes about a college kid who inherits his power to basically be a bounty hunter for hell,” Lynd said.
Tacoma has shown up in his work from time to time, but many of his novels are set in New York City — a place he’s never visited.
“Movies and Google Maps really help,” he said.
For now, Lynd will keep his job at the gigantic coffee purveyor and keep writing when he can. But he hopes the award will give his off-hours career a boost.
“It will help open some doors,” Lynd said. “At least get them to notice and say, okay, I guess I actually should read the story and not just arbitrarily throw it on the slush pile.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
