About the Author

Cris Hammond is an artist, writer, cartoonist and entrepreneur, currently living in Paris. His comic strip, Speed Walker, Private Eye, appeared daily in over 150 newspapers across the U.S. His oil and watercolor paintings of ships, the sea, and rural France, have been shown in galleries across the nation. Mr. Hammond has contributed to special effects teams of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, winning Academy Awards for films such as Star Trek III & IV, Innerspace, and The Abyss. In 1994, he took a life-changing detour into the corporate world. Eight years later, he left that world with a new determination, to paraphrase Boz Scaggs, "To get up and make his life shine." So, he sold his house, bought a canal barge in France and set off on a 15 year journey through the canals and rivers of the country. The voyage has taken him and his wife through over 1500 kilometers of inland waterways, and rewarded them with a floating home on the water in the heart of Paris. His first book, "From Here to Paris" is an inspiring and hilarious memoir of that adventure. It's available on Amazon. "Short Pours, The Stan Chronicles" is his second book. It is a collection of fictional short stories, with a lively touch of memoir sprinkled throughout. The inspirational spark for the stories comes largely from the author's life, lessons learned and friendships, old and new. But they are fiction. I swear.