"I became interested in writing when I was 14, a freshman in high school," Christopher reflected in 1992. "I was selling magazines such as the "Saturday Evening Post", "Country Gentleman", and "Liberty", and I would read the stories, particularly the adventure and mystery stories, and think how wonderful it would be to be able to write stories and make a living at it. I also read detective, horror, aviation, and sports stories and decided I would try writing them myself. Determined to sell, I wrote a detective story a week for 40 weeks, finding the time to marry, work, and play baseball and basketball before I sold my first story in 1941, 'The Missing Finger Points', for $50 to "Detective Story" magazine." —published by Fiction House.