Christopher R. Howard is an American novelist. He was a finalist for the 2008 National Magazine Award for fiction for his short story "How to Make Millions in the Oil Market" (McSweeneys).[1] Howard's novella Darkstar, about a homeless Irish teenager who’s haunted by a diabolical voice and seeks to reunite with a soulmate he hasn’t seen since boyhood, as a cosmic event threatens to extinguish life on Earth, was selected by Amazon.com as one of the launch titles in its Kindle Singles program.[2] His first book, Tea of Ulaanbaatar, about a Peace Corps mission to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and a powerful "blood tea" known as tsus, was be published in May 2011 by Seven Stories Press.[3][4]