Raymond Holmes was born and raised in Toronto and lives in Brampton, Ontario.
Following careers in Industry he started writing on retirement in spite of being seriously challenged by English grammar. Heeding the traditional sage advice of ‘write what you know,’ Raymond started penning memoir pieces until realizing that detailing the events of his pedestrian life might draw little interest from the literary community.
A foray into playwriting met with some success. His plays Boris and Herman, The Pooman and The Lonely Vigil Of Emily Baxter were performed at the South Simcoe Theatre in Cookstown, Ontario each earning a modest honorarium. The last play listed above went on to even greater success, winning third prize plus a reading in the 2013 Ottawa Little Theatre playwriting contest.
Hopes of financial security and rubbing shoulders with playwrights such as Neil Simon on Broadway were later dashed as no other of his masterworks for the stage were taken up by other theatres. Raymond now entered his short story writing phase assisted by a reference book on English grammar. Pieces were published in The Northern Appeal, a bi-annual Simcoe County literary journal, and Unleashed Ink II, an anthology of short stories and poetry published by the Barrie Writers Club.
This is Raymond’s first book of short stories and he continues to write others.
A collection of Novellas is in the works, but to date he has made no attempt to approach the seven story mountain of novel writing.
He has been happily married to Mary for over thirty years and has maintained a lifetime love of cats, classical music and chocolate, not necessarily in that order.
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