About
The Computer Guy Who Wrote a Novel
Dell Holmes spent decades as the tech support specialist, the programmer, the instructor, the administrator. Writing novels was never part of the plan. Then came a promise, a pandemic, and a character named D who refused to be ignored.
Bits, Bytes, and Beginnings
Dell Holmes describes himself, without hesitation, as the computer guy. He spent the better part of his career as a programmer, systems administrator, and technology instructor. Writing was something he did for work, not for pleasure. Training documents, support guides, instructional notes. Clear, correct, and thoroughly uncreative.
It started in the late 1980s with a monthly newsletter he and his wife Pat created for the Friends of the Texas County Public Library. They called it Bits and Bytes. Pat gathered the news from staff and volunteers while Dell put the words on paper at their IBM PCjr, two wine coolers in hand. It was nothing ambitious. It was theirs.
Building The Zara Project
The Zara Project took shape over months of nights, a process equal parts structured and chaotic. Dell treated each chapter like a production problem, breaking it into scenes and then into segments, storyboarding each piece in the dark before committing a single word to the keyboard.
He used AI as an editing partner rather than a ghostwriter, leaning on Microsoft Copilot to catch what his own eyes had stopped seeing. He used it too for encouragement: whenever the inner critic grew loud, a simple prompt asking “what do you think?” produced feedback that was honest, generous, and persistently kind.
Dell chose to publish through Authors Publishing House, a hybrid self-publishing company that provided cover art, editing, formatting, and distribution support. The Zara Project launched on Kindle on March 8, 2026. His sister was refreshing the Amazon page before the official notification arrived.
He used AI as an editing partner rather than a ghostwriter, leaning on Microsoft Copilot to catch what his own eyes had stopped seeing. He used it too for encouragement: whenever the inner critic grew loud, a simple prompt asking “what do you think?” produced feedback that was honest, generous, and persistently kind.
Dell chose to publish through Authors Publishing House, a hybrid self-publishing company that provided cover art, editing, formatting, and distribution support. The Zara Project launched on Kindle on March 8, 2026. His sister was refreshing the Amazon page before the official notification arrived.
