This one started with the image of a man made out of newspaper talking to a newspaper boy. Initially it was going to be fairly lighthearted but it didn’t really turn out that way in the end.

Despite the fact that I’m not running at the moment (that starts back up tomorrow morning), this week has been surprisingly busy – mostly with work. I did manage to scrape together a couple of writing sessions to finish off a new story – CAvE – and add just under two thousand words to The Ghost Smuggler. I’m now reaching the point where I’m doing more and more actual writing rather than just reworking content from the earlier drafts. I’ll still be bringing some stuff over but from here on it’s mostly new content hanging on the bones of the early draft.

That means I need to be a lot more disciplined about sitting down and writing. My goal is to get the first draft of the rewrite complete by the end of August so that I can be ready to pitch it at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in October. That’s the goal anyway.

It’s a long weekend here in Canada so I’m hoping to use that extra time to get my teeth back into writing and get some momentum. Unfortunately, I can hear Under the Dome calling to me.

[The article Out Now - Origami Man by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 18th, 2013]

That issue is currently on sale for $1.99 but I’m not sure how much longer that will last so grab it now while you can.

[The article Out Now - Happin3ss101.com by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 12th, 2013]

In the case of last weekend’s Vancouver Marathon we hit the first two but didn’t make our goal time of sub 4:30 or our targeted pace of 4:15. I wasn’t too disappointed though, it was the hottest Vancouver Marathon in the 42 years it’s been held.

I was woefully under trained for last year’s race (our time was just under 5:30) and I knew I’d done a better job this year but I still wasn’t convinced I’d been as disciplined as I should have (which reminds me I need to put together some graphs of my overall training distance so that I can get a feel for that). On paper, given our 10km and half marathon race pace and the various aerobic and lactate threshold tests I’ve done, I should be capable of a sub four hour marathon. In reality, that seems like a pretty tall order but I was confident I would be able to beat my Victoria Marathon time and we decided to aim for a 4:15 pace and see how it went.

As the race approached, the weather got better and better and it became very clear that we would get to run in beautiful but warm weather. The Vancouver Marathon starts relatively late, 8am, which means that (in our case at least), we’re finishing the last few kilometers in the midday sun. The key to running in the heat is to train in the heat so that your body can learn to cool you more efficiently. Unfortunately, like a lot of the world, the weather in Vancouver has been fairly cool so far this year so apart from a handful of warm runs a few weeks ago I wasn’t used to running in the heat.

Victoria had been a warmer race than I’d expected and I’d done a terrible job with my fueling during the race so I was determined not to make the same mistake again. On the Saturday, I was very careful to drink plenty of water and added a bottle of Gatorade to my normal pre-race fueling strategy. The Vancouver Marathon has a generous number of aid stations with water every mile so we decided to structure the race around those stations rather than our normal run for ten minutes, walk for one, approach. A lot of the aid stations also have Gatorade and, although the concentration can be a bit hit and miss, I was able to use that to get some carbs during the race, and eat less of the Honey Stingers (basically gummy candy) which can be a bit tough to stomach during a race, particularly a hot one. That strategy worked well, we still carried water with us which was useful during the latter stages of the race where the placement of the aid stations isn’t quite as convenient but generally the aid stations were all we needed.

As for the race itself, it went reasonably well. We hit the halfway mark at 2:09 and were close to our 4:15 pace up until until somewhere around 25km but at that point the heat started to have an impact. Kilometers 25-29 run through Kitsilano and although it’s a really nice part of the city and we regularly run that far during training, it’s my least favourite part of both the marathon and the Scotiabank Half Marathon. No idea why – the last 10km hurts much more so it’s not just that.

Our pace gradually dropped off from that point on, although nowhere near as much as it did last year. We wear pace bands which give us our goal times for each kilometer and I could see the 4:15 time slipping away with 4:30 pace close behind.

As usual the last 10km or so is the hardest. The marathon route runs around the Stanley Park seawall. It’s a great part of the city and we run it quite a lot as an ‘easy’ run because it’s flat and the views are fantastic. Put it at the end of a marathon though and it’s torture.  That last 10km feels more like 20km. We ran past the 5km marker and then ran for what felt like half an hour before hitting the 4km point. I swear, I’m going to email the organisers and get them to check their measurements.

I hit “the wall” at about 38km and it was a real struggle to keep going at anything approaching a reasonable speed. I kept checking our pace to make sure we would set a new personal best but even that was looking difficult. As we passed the last medical station I gazed longingly at the runner sitting in the chair getting his leg massaged and caught the faint whiff of menthol – maybe I could stop, just for a few seconds.

The one highlight was the point we started catching a supply cart carrying boxes of Lay’s potato chips. We followed along behind it for a kilometer or so, gradually getting closer and closer until it pulled off the route. It wasn’t the potato chips that were so tempting though, there was some space on the back of the cart – just enough for us sit down for a while.

The final stages of the route were different this year. In 2012, the finish was around a couple of corners, sort of a u-turn, which meant that as you couldn’t see the finish line until literally the last few seconds of the race. That finish line is a big motivator for tired runners so this year they changed the route slightly and you could see the finish line for the last kilometer or so. It’s an uphill finish which some might see as cruel and unusual punishment but still, at least you know how much longer you’ve got to suffer.

Sure enough, despite struggling for the last half hour of the race, when we hit the final stretch and could see the finish and hear the crowds the pain melted away and I was able to push up the last 800 meters or so to the finish where Running Room founder, John Stanton, gave me my medal. Now all I need to do is find a way to get that momentum to start 10km earlier.

Despite the heat, I was in reasonable shape after the race. Tired and sore, but not in danger of passing out, despite the heat.

After a ten or fifteen minute rest we picked up our bags and then caught a taxi home to spend the rest of the day lying on the bed reading – me, Stephen King’s Under the Dome, Ann, a book on marathon training.

My original plan was to go back into work on Monday but by then I was feeling pretty ill. Apparently I hadn’t drunk enough water post race and was pretty dehydrated. Thankfully, a couple of days lying on the sofa, reading and catching up on Hannibal, Defiance and Utopia was enough to get me back on my feet..

Now we’re spending a couple of weeks recovering before we pick the training back up for the Scotiabank Half Marathon in June. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone mad.

[The article 4:37:54 by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 12th, 2013]

Sword of the Ronin is the second book of the Ronin trilogy (the first being Heart of the Ronin) and I’d originally planned to read the first and second novels back to back. Obviously, that wasn’t practical – Travis needed the proofreading done by the beginning of May and I don’t read quite that quickly so I jumped right in with the second book. I wasn’t sure whether that would be an issue but Travis drip feeds information from the first book so I never felt lost.

Sword of the Ronin mixes historical elements with fantasy into a fast paced adventure and I really enjoyed reading it. There’s plenty of action and some really effective writing – particular the part where our hero, Ken’ishi, ends up in…okay, no I won’t spoil it. Things get quite graphic in places so bear that in mind, but those scenes worked well for me; particularly that bit where Ken’ishi ends up in…okay, okay, no spoilers.

It was odd, reading a book I wasn’t familiar with as ‘work’ rather than pure enjoyment but it was fun – I’m a sucker for stories set in feudal Japan – and I was able to spot some typos and point out some things that seemed confusing or inconsistent, at least to me so hopefully I’ve helped make the book a little bit better.

Travis recently sent out sample of the limited edition and it looks fantastic, I’m looking forward to seeing the final product. I also need to go back and read Heart of the Ronin.

We’ve also been making our final preparations for our third marathon, tomorrow’s Vancouver Marathon. Basically, that means a handful of runs at “race pace” to get a feel for what that’s like, and lost of sitting around. I also use this final week as an excuse to eat things I really shouldn’t be eating (Twix being the vice of choice this week) but that’s not really recommended. We’re aiming to beat our Victoria Marathon time which was 4:41 but it feels like I haven’t been training as diligently as I should have been so that may be optimistic, especially as it’s going to be pretty warm tomorrow.

Thanks to our local Running Room store, we got to see Ultramarathoner Ellie Greenwood on Wednesday. She talked about race prep and motivation and I came out of the talk feeling really pumped up about the race. We’ll see how long that lasts – did I mention it’s going to be warm tomorrow.

Oh, and we went to see the Canucks in the first round of the NHL playoffs but the less said about that the better – heartbreaking.

[The article Proofreading in the Pudding by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 4th, 2013]

A drabble, for those who haven’t come across them before, is a story that is exactly 100 words long – not 101, not 99…100.

From Wikipedia:

The concept is said to have originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the Birmingham University SF Society, taking a term from Monty Python‘s 1971 Big Red Book. In the book, “Drabble” was described as a word game where the first participant to write a novel was the winner. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice.

The Were-Traveler has a whole issue of drabbles, well worth a look.

[The article Out Now - Aftermath by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 3rd, 2013]

This one was a bit of a surprise. The anthology was released as part of EuroCon 2013 in Kiev and I wasn’t sure whether my story, Only Friends, would be included until a couple of days before the anthology was released.

There’s lots of great authors in the collection – here’s the full table of contents:

1. “The Dead Orchards” by Ian R. MacLeod (England)
2. “Transcendent Express” by Jetse de Vries (Netherlands)
3. “Memory Recall” by Regina Catarina (Portugal)
4. “Digits are Cold, Numbers are Warm” by Liviu Radu (Romania)
5. “Repeat Performances” by Car Rafala (Italy)
6. “Bing Bing Larissa” by Cristian Mihail Teodorescu (Romania)
7. “Rebellion” by Diana Pinguicha (Portugal)
8. “The Server and the Dragon” by Hannu Rajaniemi (Finland)
9. “The Royal Library” by Vladimir Arenev (Ukraine)
10. “Only Friends” by Philip Harris (England)
11. “Starsong” by Aliette de Bodard (France)
12. “News from a Dwarf Universe” by Danut Ungureanu (Romania)

You can download the anthology for free from here but only until May 10th. I’m not sure if it will be available after that time so if you want some great fiction from some great authors (and me), grab it now before it’s gone.

[The article Out Now - Only Friends by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on April 22nd, 2013]

The first type are the people who would like-to be a writer. These are the people who’ve got a great idea for a novel and they just know they’ve got the talent. These are the people who can see themselves spending a few minutes at the beginning of each day dashing out a couple of thousand words of their next bestseller and then sitting around, soaking up the sun at their lake house while inspiration strikes and the royalty cheques roll in. These are the people who would love seeing their books on shelves in their local bookstore and giving readings to hundreds of adoring fans and going to exotic launch parties and giving interviews to the New York Times and Oprah.

Of course, they don’t quite have the time to write their book at the moment, but they like the idea of being a writer. Maybe next year.

You haven’t read any books by like-to writers.

Next, you have the people who want-to be a writer. They know there’s work involved and it won’t be easy, but they figure they’ve got some good ideas and enough talent that with a bit of effort they could get there. They’ve probably written some short stories, maybe even got some published. They’ve taken some writing courses, read all the best blogs, listen to three different podcasts and are members of four different writing groups. They tried to do NaNoWriMo last year but only managed 5,631 words before they got stuck (which was better than the year before). They’ve got the first half of their novel written (and the opening chapters for six more) but it’s not quite there yet. It really does take a lot of effort to write a whole novel and real life keeps getting in the way. They’ll get there some day though. Maybe next year.

You haven’t read any books by want-to writers.

Then there are the people who need-to be a writer. These are the people who make sacrifices in order to write. They get up two hours early every day to work on their novel. They quit their job or take a jobs at fast food joints or convince their partners to support them so that they have more time to write. They give up socialising or television or videogames or the internet or movies or sleep or all of those. They write on the bus on the way to work or on their lunch break or stay up late after the kids have gone to bed. They can’t sleep at night because of the ideas bouncing around inside their heads and the notebook on their bedside cabinet is filled with sentences and images and ideas they’ve scrawled in the dark. If they aren’t writing they’re thinking about writing and wishing they were.

They write even when they’re sure their novel sucks, even when their friends and family laugh at the idea of them becoming a professional author, even when someone points out it’s easier to win the lottery than sell a novel. They lay in bed at night listening to the voice of reason telling them they don’t have the talent, that their story is trite and unoriginal, that they’ll never make it. Then they get up early the next morning and write the next chapter, the next paragraph, the next sentence because they know that to become a writer they need to finish what they started, no matter what the voices say. They know it’s hard to write novels and even harder to earn a living at it, that they’ll probably need a “real” job to avoid living below the poverty line but they don’t care.

Need-to writers spend time analysing their own stories and other people’s, trying to work out what’s good, what’s bad – they put the time in to understand and learn their craft. They spend hours reading, editing, rereading and revising their stories. When they’re finished they send them out, even if they’re sure they aren’t good enough for Clarkesworld or Cemetery Dance or The New Yorker. And every time they get a rejection they pick their battered ego up off the floor, push past the soul destroying disappointment and send that story out again. If that rejection has some personal encouragement on it they cling to it like a lifeboat in shark infested waters – one little sign that they’re on the right track, that they’re not wasting their life on an impossible dream.

And when they get an acceptance the world seems a little brighter, a little more welcoming. When they get up to write the next day they’re a little bit more confident, a little bit more driven. The excitement always fades, but for those few days they can see that maybe, just maybe, they might be good enough to become a real writer.

These are the people that don’t spend their time wishing they were writers, they simply write – because they need-to.

These are the people whose books you’ve read.

Sure, there are some people who manage to fart out 100,000 words over spring break and make it into the best seller list but most successful authors got there by working hard and making sacrifices and they’re still working hard and making sacrifices – and not because they think it will be make them rich but because it’s what they need to do.

So, which type of writer are you? Like-to, Want-to or Need-to?

[The article Like-To, Want-To, Need-To by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on April 22nd, 2013]

My connection with the running community is modest but it was enough to bring it all a little bit closer to home; to make it all a little bit more real. I watched a recording of the elite race on Tuesday evening and it was impossible to reconcile the happy, cheering crowds lining Boylston Street as the leaders completed the race with the carnage that we saw a couple of hours later.

As the human stories behind the tragedy become known it’s clear that, once again, we’ve seen both the worst and the best of mankind this week.

[The article Boston  by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on April 18th, 2013]

I was interested in it enough to record it from Movie Central though and it’s been sitting on our PVR for a while. We finally got around to watching it last night and it turns out my ill defined impressions were correct. It wasn’t a bad film but halfway through I stopped caring about anything that was going on.

Thinking about it this morning, I came to the conclusion that the problem was it all felt too familiar. Apart from a different villain, it’s essentially the same story as the Tobey Maguire version. I get that it’s an origin story and so there’s a formula that needs to be followed but even the tone felt similar to the earlier films (or at least to my memory of the earlier films).

Contrast it to the Batman reboot. Again, it was a familiar story but it felt different – fresher and more modern. The Dark Knight trilogy works because it keeps to the spirit of Batman while still bringing new ideas to the table. The Amazing Spider-Man just feels like an unnecessary clone of the earlier film. It helps that Batman is 247% more bad-ass than Spider-Man but still, Batman Begins succeeded where The Amazing Spider-Man failed, at least for me. I see there’s a sequel coming as well, I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to watch that one either.

[The article The Not So Amazing Spider-man  by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset April 14th, 2013]

If you’re not aware of the Chromebook concept, it’s a class of laptop that runs Google’s Chrome operating system instead of Windows or iOS. There are some expensive models but the main draw is that the base models are very cheap – the Samsung costs about $270. The downside is that they only run Google apps so you’ll be using Google’s web based word processor and spreadsheet app rather than Word or Excel. That said, there are plenty of apps out there, including games, so you should be able to find most of what you need.

The Samsung Chromebook is one of two available in Canada (the other being the Acer C7). As laptops go its fairly low spec but it does come with an SSD drive. Essentially SSD drives work just like a memory card that you’d put in a digital camera which means that they’re small, fast and completely silent. As a result, the Chromebook boots up very quickly and although there’s only 16Gb of onboard storage you get 100GB of Google Drive space (free for the first two years) which lives “in the cloud” and is more than enough to store the sort of files you’ll be working with on a Chromebook. The lack of a hard drive means the E5250 is very thin and very light – just over 1kg which is less than the bag I carry my traditional laptop around in.

The reason I have a new Chromebook, despite the fact that I have an iPad, a laptop and a PC, is that our apartment has really big windows.

(Bear with me, you may be able to use some of this to justify your own unnecessary purchases).

Our windows give us a really good view of the water and the south of the city. They also let in a lot of sunlight. When I’m working in my office on a sunny day (yes, Vancouver does have sunny days) I have to wear a cap to keep the sun out of my eyes. During the summer, those south facing windows turn the apartment into a very effective oven and my office into an oven in self clean mode so I’ve been looking for a way to write away from the apartment, or at the very least in the bigger and slightly cooler living room.

Although the iPad is a fantastic device, touch keyboards are really not conducive to long periods of writing and certainly don’t work well for editing. I could buy some sort of keyboard but it’s still not really a great solution – I’d be propping the screen up somehow while balancing the keyboard on my legs. I do already have a laptop but it’s very old and slow, takes several minutes to boot up and the battery is useless so it’s not something I can use away from a power source (say on the beach). And it’s heavy and I’m old.

So, when the Chromebooks arrived in Canada I decided to give one a try. I’ve only been using it for a couple of hours, so obviously these are pretty early impressions but so far I’m very happy with it. It’s a little bit slow on some web pages but I’ll probably be using my iPad or main PC for serious browsing anyway.

Considering I’ll be using it for writing, the keyboard is critical and although there are a few minor differences (no dedicated caps lock key for example) it’s a good size and it seems like I’ll be able to switch between my desktop and the Chromebook without too many muscle memory related typos. The Google integration is nice, I already use Chrome as my browser and Google Drive for storing data I use across machines so it will fit nicely into my day-to-day life. Boot up speed is very impressive (less than five seconds) and with a 6+ hour battery life it should be okay to take on trips or to coffee shops, or more likely, the library.

If I had to find something to criticise at this point (and this is the Internet after all) it would be the hinge. It’s not embedded into the case so when the machine closed it has a ridge running across it which rather spoils the sleek, super thin look. It’s not a big hinge though and it’s a purely an aesthetic “issue”.

I’ll probably post some more thoughts on the Samsung E5250 in a few weeks, once I’ve been using it for a longer, but in the meantime, if you’re in the market for a cheap laptop for writing and other lightweight work and can live without your Windows/Mac apps, check out the Chromebooks.

[The article The Emperor's New Toy by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset April 11th, 2013]

And by that I mean this one:

Not this one:

Let’s get something straight right from the start. There are no plot surprises in this film. This is the type of horror film that The Cabin in the Woods skewered so beautifully. There was some attempt at a credible explanation for why our protagonists don’t run from the cabin (which given the amount of rain in this film is located somewhere near Vancouver) at the first sign of trouble but beyond that you get all the requisite plot holes and dumb decisions you would expect.

But that’s not why people watch Evil Dead and the remake has updated the story without losing the flavour of the original. Which makes it a very gory film. Very. Despite being labelled on the Cineplex website as a “thriller” this is not a watered down PG-13 teen-horror. This is a full on, in your face, R-rated, blood soaked horror film -  apparently two full 50,000 gallon tankers worth of blood in fact.

All the requisite Evil Dead imagery is there – the evil book, amorous undergrowth, the trapdoor, gruesome decapitations, a shotgun, the chainsaw of course and lots and lots of blood. I rewatched The Evil Dead at Christmas a while ago and I’d forgotten how much blood there is in the original. Clearly the writers of the new version have not. They do steer clear of the original dialog though – we’ll have no “dead by dawn” or “boomsticks” here, thank you very much.

So, nothing that’s going to stretch your brain cells but definitely an Evil Dead movie.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of the series stay right until the end – after all of the credits have finished – even the weird logos.

Evil Dead (© 2012 – TriStar Pictures, Inc.)

I got a lot of good feedback from those courses and especially from Jeff VanderMeer’s critique and my writing has definitely improved as a result. What I noticed though, was that at least 50% of that feedback related to writing that I wasn’t happy with. There was something missing or something “off” about that part of the story that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I knew it was weak in some way, I just wasn’t sure why. Or, it was part of the story I didn’t like, I just hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.

Having a third party read the story and point out, not only that the writing was weak, but why was invaluable but it also showed that my instincts weren’t completely out of whack. I just needed to persevere and keep refining the story until it worked.

Which brings me to The Ghost Smuggler.

There’s a point in the novel where our hero gets captured by a bad guy and, being the hero, he needs to escape somehow. I’ve written those scenes several times but I’ve never been happy with them.

In the original draft there was some sitting around in a cell and then the bad guy let them go. He had his own reasons for doing that, but it was still far too convenient. In the first pass of the rewrite the sitting around in the cell ends with an action packed escape through the kitchens. It’s better, has a little bit of foreshadowing and ties nicely into a key event later in the book but I still wasn’t happy with it.

This particular sticking point has been bobbing around my mind ever since I started the rewrite and as I hurtle towards that chapter my trepidation is growing. I know it’s there and my instincts are telling me I need to fix it properly this time I just don’t know how.

At least, I didn’t know how.

This morning, as I stepped out of the shower, it hit me. The problem was not the escape itself – it was the cell. Dumping the group into a locked room for a while was creating a dead spot and the transition between the cell and the escape always felt very clumsy. I’d been using that trip to the cells for a little bit of back story but I’ve integrated that much earlier in this draft and all it does now is slow everything down. I can skip the cell, cut straight to the dramatic escape (still appropriately foreshadowed and still key to a later plot point) and, hopefully, have a much tighter couple of chapters.

Of course, I still need to write that action scene but that’s a different problem.

[The article Trust me, I'm a Writer by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset April 8th, 2013]

Last night’s film was Retreat starring Thandie Newton, Cillian Murphy and Jamie Bell. Ann suggested we record it (I’m not sure why) and I wasn’t really expecting much. As it turned out, it was actually pretty good.

Newton and Murphy play a couple staying in a cottage on a remote island. They find an injured soldier (played by Jamie Bell) who informs them that an airborne virus is sweeping across the country, killing everyone but it’s clear he can’t be trusted. It  has a tiny cast, there’s only one other character, a brief appearance of Jimmy Yuill as the cottage owner who drops them off on the island. I wouldn’t be surprised to find it started life as a play.

There’s a bit of a Dead Calm feel to Retreat and although the couple’s back story feels a bit superfluous overall I enjoyed it.

[The article Retreat (2011) by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on April 7th, 2013]

Ouch.

The run itself was fine and we kept a reasonable pace but as soon as we stopped I felt a bit light headed and even now, a couple of hours later, my body is still complaining. There’s less than six weeks to our next Marathon so this is “not a good thing”(tm).

Progress on The Ghost Smuggler continues apace (I’ve always wanted to be able to say apace)  - mostly because I’m most of the current chapters are brought over from previous drafts.

That said, Ethel the Muse was on fine form at 4am this morning and she’s insisting that I need to weave two characters from early chapters into the final act (actually four characters, but three of them are a related group) and add a sprinkling of technology. No idea how I’m going to do that but it shows that the outline isn’t stopping me from continuing to write like the Simpsons.

Oh, and I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the key characters needs to change dramatically – the current incarnation is a walking, talking cliche.

Now…to the keyboard…(yes, I’m already there but you know what I mean).

I did manage to get a bit of writing done yesterday and added just over 3,500 words to The Ghost Smuggler –  breaking the 10,000 word mark.

So far, our hero has woken up drunk in an alley, suffered from several nightmares, rejected and then accepted a job, met a water daemon and paid a visit to a local gangster. Now he’s heading underground.

What else? What else? Oh yes, the aforementioned snot monkey has put paid to my Marathon training which is making me nervous. I missed the first of our 32km runs this weekend and given that there’s only six weeks to the race, I really need to be tightening up my training, not slacking off. It would have been hopeless though I was interviewing a job candidate today and I thought I was going to drown in the snot monkey’s handiwork.

Tonight, I’m going to be submitting a couple of stories to the excellent Fireside Magazine and then I think I’ll retreat to bed with my Kindle in an attempt to shake off the monkey (and avoid the temptation of the brownies Ann is making this evening).

I’m really happy with how it’s turned out which is a relief; it would suck to hit that milestone with a story I hate.

Of those fifty stories, eighteen have been sold, four have been posted online in forums etc. and six of them are permanently consigned to the trunk. By my reckoning that leaves twenty two that I could still place.

I also wrapped up Dan Simmons’ Drood yesterday.

Drood is a fictionalised account of the last few years of Charles Dickens’ life, told by Dickens’ friend, Wilkie Collins. Simmons’ has cleverly interwoven events from Dickens’ and Collins’ real lives with supernatural elements to create a unique and compelling story.

The book is at its strongest when the mysterious and diabolical Drood (named after Dickens’ last, unfinished, novel) is in the picture but at times it feels more like a dry biography than a novel. The first time I started reading Drood, I got a couple of pages in and then put it aside. Not because I didn’t like what I was reading but because it was obvious this was going to be a good story, told slowly and I wanted something faster paced to read.

Now I’ve finished the book, I feel the same way. It’s a good book, very cleverly written, but you’ll need to be patient and not just because of its length.

Next up is Jeremy C. Shipp’s short story collection – Sheep and Wolves.

Drood by Dan Simmons

[The article The Big Five-Oh by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on March 23rd, 2013]

I’ve been doing the final revisions to The Ordeal (Season One, Episode Thirteen) and was planning on doing one final pass last night before sending out the first submission. When I came to edit the file, it was gone. After much swearing I managed to load a temporary file into Word that gave me an almost up to date revision but I lost a couple of passes of edits. Today I was able to track down a more recent version of the file but I’d already spent an hour re-revising the manuscript. I’ll now have to go through the two docs and make sure I haven’t missed anything critical. Not particularly convenient.

What happened was that, for some reason, when I saved my revisions on Machine A, Google Drive deleted the file on Machine B (presumably ready to update it) but never copied the new file across. I have a weekly back up and technically the file wasn’t ever lost but it still wasn’t an experience I’d recommend.

The convenience of Google Drive is a godsend for anyone trying to keep documents in sync from multiple locations – but don’t assume it’s a substitute for a regular backup strategy and even if you’re running regular backups, think about the worst case scenario and see if you’re comfortable with the amount of work you could lose. In my case, I could still lose a week’s work and that’s not good enough so I’m going to increase the frequency of backups one way or another.

In other news, Ann and I went to see the Pi Theatre production of Terminus by Mark O’Rowe. I would highly recommend you go and see it but I can’t – the production has finished. It was excellent though.

Terminus is a series of three interwoven and interconnected monologues, set in Dublin. The first story involves a teacher trying to rescue an ex-student from a gruesome back street abortion, the second features a girl rescued from a fatal fall by winged demon (made of worms) and the third tells the story of a man who sold his soul for a beautiful singing voice but is too shy to sing, so has turned to serial murder instead. So, dark stuff and lots of sex and violence – this definitely isn’t one for the kids.

The cast for this production, Leanna Brodie, John Emmet Tracy and Pippa Mackie were all excellent and although it might not sound like an enjoyable way to spend a damp Vancouver afternoon, it was.

We’ve seen a couple of Pi Theatre productions now and they were both excellent so check out their site.

[The article Google Driving by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on March 20th, 2013]

Science fiction and fantasy journal, Hogglepot, has accepted Origami Man and it should be up on the site in the middle of May.

That’s the fifth story that I’ve found a home for this year, equaling last year’s total – which is nice.

[The article We Have a Winner - Origami Man by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on March 19th, 2013]

Now I’m off to answer some questions from an editor – which may or may not result in another acceptance – time will tell.