Every Apocalypse Weird novel is set in a different part of the world. Nick Cole’s The Red King takes place in Southern California, Hoodoopocalypse is set in New Orleans while Immunity throws New Mexico into the mix. When it came to picking a place to destroy with my particular apocalypse, London was the obvious choice, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I know London pretty well, at least the central touristy bits. My wife and I used to spend weekends there regularly, watching plays and the odd movie. We even spent our honeymoon there (and ended up at a horror film festival on our first night but that’s a story for a different day). That knowledge of the layout of London made it easy to envisage a demonic creature wreaking havoc there. Especially when you add in the second reason – London is old. Really old. And it’s built on top of things. Not just the London Underground (where some of the story takes place), but other, darker, more sinister things. Everything from underground rivers to cemeteries to errm… restaurants. I’ll be posting more about the hidden depths beneath London and how they influenced the story but suffice to say, there’s plenty of inspiration in London’s history. And when I started … Read More
5 Things I Learned Last Week
I guess this should have been Star Wars themed but I’m feeling too crappy to be that organised. “Stan” has created some fantastic VHS covers for modern films and TV shows (the original French post is here). The Doubleclicks are coming to Vancouver Cairo is the world’s largest open air chair museum Andy Baio has been experimenting on his son using videogames Three of the Apocalypse Weird novels are on sale for 99c this week – Immunity by E. E. Georgi, Reversal by Jennifer Ellis and Chris Pourteau’s The Serenity Strain. (I’ve linked to the Kindle versions but they’re on all platforms). Get a FREE copy of my short story, Only Friends by subscribing to my newsletter. [5 Things I Learned Last Week by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 4th May 2015]
Building the Apocalypse – 27 April 2015
It’s a super special double Apocalypse Weird update this week thanks to my Internet free vacation in Boston last week. First up, 13th-19th April. Bonus points for spotting the unexpected trip to watch the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs (205 words in 7 minutes), the day we flew to Boston (2,396 words in 178 minutes) and the day my wife spent resting up ready for the race (2,202 days also in 178 minutes). And here’s the graph for last week. More bonus points for guessing which day we flew back from Boston (2,865 words in 194 minutes). Over the two weeks, I wrote 14,005 words, just over 10,000 of which were written on the trip. I’m very happy with that. Total word count at the end of Sunday was 57,703. There’s some outline notes and a few bits and pieces in there that will deleted before the first draft is complete but it looks like the book will end up within the 55-75,000 word count goal I’ve been given. That’s a good thing. I’m just hitting the finale of the book. Stories (good ones at least), are made up of peaks of action and troughs of (relative) down time. The closer you get … Read More
Building the Apocalypse – 13 April 2015
Sunday marked the 652nd day of my unbroken writing streak. Meaning, I’d written some sort of fiction every day for 652 days in a row (and counting). During that time, I’ve written a total of 485,205 words. 150,728 words of that was either revisions (94,334), Rewrites (35,293) or outlines (21,101). The remaining 333,513 words were first draft writing. A fair amount of that will have been deleted but I’ve still got a significant chunk of completed material. The daily and weekly charts are getting a bit too big to be useful now, but here’s the monthly breakdown (bearing in mind the first and last months are not full months). My best full month was 33,637 words while the worst was 14,784. My best week was earlier this year when I hit 12,997 words. My worst weekly total was a feeble 1,608 words although low weeks tend to happen when I’m revising so that’s a bit misleading. These are the projects I’ve worked on during that time (in chronological order). The Ghost Smuggler (Novel Rewrite) 12 Things you Need to Know About Merfolk (Short Story) Finished Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet (Novel) The Princess (Short Story) Finished* The Mirror (Short Story) Finished* Lifeboat (Short Story) Finished* The Bone Boy … Read More
Building the Apocalypse – 6 April 2015
Another week of working on my Apocalypse Weird novel, working title Siren’s Call. And a very successful week it was too. That’s a total of 6,370 words bringing my overall total at the end of the week to 36,654. One of the things that’s a little bit different about this book, compared to the ones I’ve been writing recently is that it’s very clearly set in England. In London to be exact. One of the unexpected issues I’ve run into with my writing over the last few years is what language to write in. I don’t mean English, French, Chinese or whatever, I write in English, but the question is exactly which flavour (or flavor) of English to use. I grew up in England, writing and speaking British English but about ten years ago I moved to Canada. Canadian English is, for the most part, British English but a lot of the television we watch and the books I read are from the US and use American English. The company I work for is international so emails and documents can be in American or British English, and I work with people from all around the world, all of them using their native variation of English. And it’s not just the spelling … Read More
Building the Apocalypse – 30 March 2015
Yes, I’ve already missed my self-imposed goal of posting these on Mondays but The Walking Dead Season Finale trumped writing the blog yesterday. It’s worked out for the best anyway, you’re getting something more than a few word count metrics. I’m going to talk a little bit about the writing tool I use for my fiction – Scrivener. For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, Scrivener is a custom word processor designed for writers of all types. There’s a couple of big differences between Scrivener and something like Microsoft Word. First up, it organises your project into folders, sub-folders and files, like you would on a hard drive. At the most basic level, you might have something like a manuscript folder with one sub-folder for each chapter beneath that and then one text file for each scene in each chapter. Something like this: That nested structure makes it very easy to jump around. Rather than having to remember page numbers or scroll endlessly through a single 300 page document, you can just jump to the right chapter or scene. You can also move pieces around very quickly, something that can be very handy if your book has multiple plot threads. Scrivener also provides … Read More
Joining the Apocalypse
Last Monday was a day of highs and lows. It started off with one of the quickest rejections I’ve ever received – just under twelve hours. But it ended with news from Nick Cole that the Apocalypse Weird team had accepted my pitch for a novel set in London. Or to put it another way, I have a novel coming out! To say I was pleased is an understatement. Apocalypse Weird is an ambitious, exciting concept and the team at Wonderment Media are some of the nicest, smartest people you could hope to work with. But more than that, this is a huge milestone in my writing journey. This summer will mark the 20th anniversary of my first publication – Only Friends, a piece of what we would now call flash fiction that appeared in the award winning magazine, Peeping Tom. I’ve been writing, on and off, for even longer than that – probably 25 years. But over the last four years I’ve really been focusing on my craft and putting in the hours to be the best writer I can. I like to think I’m doing pretty well, I’ve had over 20 short stories published and the reaction to my self-published work, especially The Girl in the City, has been outstanding. Now I get … Read More
Six Things I Learned About the Apocalypse
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a series of interviews with the authors of the first five Apocalypse Weird books. As part of those interviews, I asked each author to tell me something about the Apocalypse Weird project that people might not know. Here’s what I learned. Texocalypse Now (originally Digger) was the original book project that developed into the whole Apocalypse Weird world, and it was originally conceived as a video game. [Courtesy of Michael Bunker] Amazon through their 47North imprint originally passed on what became the Apocalypse Weird project because it was too big of a concept. [Courtesy of Michael Bunker] Tim Grahl came up with name of the parent company, Wonderment, after reading a history of Marvel Comics. We wanted Wonderment to become the Marvel Comics digital publishing. [Courtesy of Nick Cole] The stable of Apocalypse Weird writers is not an exclusive club. We want anyone and everyone to come in and write in this world. Hence, the formation of the Apocalypse Weird: Survivors Facebook group. You can invent your own Apocalypse and Boss, or you can write in someone else’s (there’s a Rules document posted for the group). All fanfic will be published on a site … Read More
Apocalypse Weird Q&A: Jennifer Ellis
This week, I’ve been posting Q&As with the authors of the first five Apocalypse Weird books. So far, I’ve spoken to Michael Bunker, Nick Cole, Chris Pourteau and E. E. Giorgi. Today, we have Jennifer Ellis, author of Reversal. Hi Jennifer, welcome to the site. Tell us a little bit about your Apocalypse Weird book, Reversal. Reversal is set in an isolated research station on Ellesmere Island where Sasha Wood and Soren Anderson wake up one morning to find that not only are they blind, and several of their colleagues are missing, but the poles appear to have reversed and giant methane-venting craters have opened up all over the tundra. They are cut off from the outside world, and the other researchers keep turning up dead, or on snowmobiles with guns. What follows is an action-packed thriller filled with feral polar bears, trips to the Antarctic, the four horsemen of the environmental apocalypse, and many questions regarding Soren’s past and his research on volcanoes. The Arctic is an unusual setting for an Apocalyptic novel. What made you decide to set the book there? Well, I’m from Canada, and I live in a ski town, so I love snow and generally prefer to spend six … Read More
Apocalypse Weird Q&A: E. E. Giorgi
Next up in my series of Q&As with the first wave of Apocalypse Weird authors is E. E. Giorgi, author of Immunity. Hi Elena, welcome to the site. Tell us a little bit about your Apocalypse Weird book, Immunity. My book Immunity takes place in New Mexico and follows the stories of thrash metal lover and computer geek David Ashberg and career-driven scientist Anu Sharma as they fight an unprecedented viral outbreak. I set the story in New Mexico because I love the landscape and it’s quite easy to imagine a post-apocalyptic world out here in the high deserts. What can you tell us about your two main characters, Anu and David? The two are quite different, as David is mellow and good natured, whereas Anu is ambitious and very possessive of her data. Circumstances will force them to come together against a common enemy that’s far more evil than the virus itself. Your background is as a scientist, how did that influence Immunity? As part of my day job I research viruses (HIV in particular), so I wanted to give my unique spin to the Apocalypse Weird world and describe the apocalypse from the point of view of scientists. We work … Read More