The Girl in the Wilderness is almost here! I’ve just sent the final manuscript to be proofread, and things are getting very real. And I have a cover. Which is good, because you can’t launch a book without a kick ass cover. If you’re on my mailing list you will have seen this (and got a new free story) yesterday, but for those of you who haven’t yet sampled the delights of my newsletter, I present the awesomeness that is the cover of my next book. A huge thank you to Adam at Around the Pages for putting together another fantastic cover. The Girl in the Wilderness is the sequel to The Girl in the City and will be available at the end of the September. If you haven’t read the first book you can get it free by posting a review of one of my other books and then getting in touch with me through the contact page on this site. I’ll send a copy for you to review, free of charge. Sign up for my newsletter and get a year of stories, completely free. CLICK HERE to get started. [Cover Reveal – The Girl in the Wilderness by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 2nd September … Read More
August Writing Update
I’ve realised I haven’t posted any writing updates for a while so I thought I’d avoid working on my latest short story by giving an update instead. The last few months have been reasonably good from a fiction point of view. My writing-every-day streak continues and sits at 1,147 days. I’ve just broken the 150k mark for words written this year (158,173 to be exact) so I’m pretty much on track to break my personal annual word count record (275,872). At this point, I’m pretty confident I can do that. I have several first drafts I want to get written, and they should drive up that word count pretty quickly. It won’t be obvious to anyone looking at my Amazon author page, but this year I’ve been trying to focus on finishing projects and getting them out into the wide world. That said, the last few months have been spent working on several projects. The Girl in the Wilderness This is the sequel to The Girl in the City that I hadn’t planned on writing. And when I did decide to write it I was expecting it to be another novella but a bit bigger than The Girl in the City. It turned out to be a full length novel … Read More
The Girl in the Wilderness Draft Zero
Last night I wrapped up Draft Zero of my next release, a sequel to my science fiction novella set in Michael Bunker’s world of Pennsylvania, The Girl in the City. It’s called The Girl in the Wilderness. What does Draft Zero mean? Well, it’s what I call the very first version of the novel that tells the story from start to finish. There’s usually chapters and paragraphs I know I need to rewrite, foreshadowing I need to add, and almost certainly plot holes you could drive a truck through. But the key points are there and (probably for the first time) I’ve got a good idea of the whole story. There’s still a lot of work to do before the book gets out to you, but it’s a great feeling nevertheless. I hadn’t originally planned on writing a sequel to The Girl in the City and it stands alone very well, but a lot of people have been asking if there will be more stories featuring Leah and I had some strong ideas so I decided to turn the book into a trilogy. The third part – The Girl in the Machine – will follow later this year. I was originally planning on making books two and three novellas that would be roughly 50% … Read More
April Update
I remember a time when I used to post here pretty much every day. Good times. Talking of good times, the last couple of months have been less than stellar – too much sorrow, too much frustration. Hopefully May will be better, I’ve certainly got plans for it to be better. We’ll see how those work out. I did manage to keep up my writing streak though, although after March’s record breaking word count, April’s was a more typical 17,205 words split between a couple of projects. The bulk of my time was spent on the sequel to The Girl in the City – The Girl in the Wilderness. My original plan was the book would be a novella – about 25,000 words. I reached 42,000 words by the end of April with at least 10,000 to go which puts it well into short novel territory. Given that the point of writing this particular book was for a quick break between the full length zombie books I’ve kind of screwed things up. Never mind, it’s a good story. Apart from The Girl in the Wilderness, I put the finishing touches on a new short story and sent it off to the editor. It’s for a fantastic anthology so hopefully he’ll like it. More on that another … Read More
Get The Girl in the City for FREE
For the next few days, my science fiction novella, The Girl in the City, is available free of charge on Amazon Kindle (US UK Canada). This is the first time I’ve made the book available free and the offer ends May 2nd. Next month, I’m going to be “going wide” with The Girl in the City and making it available on Kobo, iTunes and any other ebook platforms I can find. That means I won’t be able to offer the book for free very easily. I’m also considering increasing the price at the same time. That means it’s likely to be at least a year before the book is available as a freebie. So, if you fancy reading an action packed science fiction tale, now is the chance to pick one up for less than the price of most things. Here’s the description… With the oppressive Transport Authority controlling every aspect of their existence, Leah and her father do what they can to carve a good life for themselves. Leah spends her nights scavenging in the rural zone around the City, risking capture by the Wild Ones as she hunts for salvage her father can trade for food and other essentials. But when Leah takes a bag of salvage … Read More
The Girl in the City – An Excerpt
The Girl in the City has been out for a week now, and I’m really pleased with how it’s doing. Feedback and reviews have been very good, and it’s steadily racking up the sales and Kindle Unlimited borrows. Interest in my short stories, Curfew, Saviour and Bottled Lightning has picked up as well which is good to see. During its free run last week, Bottled Lightning hit the #2 spot on one of Amazon’s short science fiction charts and was downloaded over 250 times in a single day – pretty good for a standalone short story. The Girl in the City and the short stories are available from Amazon for 99c/99p – US UK Canada. Here’s the opening of the book to whet your appetite. The Girl in the City LEAH GRABBED THE SALVAGE AND RAN. Metal and plastic clattered and rattled in the cloth bag hanging around her shoulders as she threw herself down the slope, slipping and sliding on the loose earth. The lights of the encampment behind her cast long shadows across the ground but made it just about possible to see where she was going. She heard the Wild Ones shouting as they ran towards the pile of discarded circuit boards, wires, and lumps … Read More
Four Free Books
To celebrate the launch of my science fiction novella, The Girl in the City (available from Amazon for 99c/99p – US UK Canada) I’ve decided to make all three of my Kindle short stories free for the next couple of days. And of course, you can get a free copy of Only Friends by subscribing to my newsletter. Curfew [raw] [/raw] Violent gangs roam the streets of a city in chaos, preying on the innocent and the careless. Friends die. Family die. But there are worse things in the darkness. Worse things beyond the curfew. Download for free from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada Saviour [raw] [/raw] For Yuki, the cave is a sanctuary. It’s somewhere she can shelter from the deadly heat of the sun until winter comes. If she can survive that long. Download for free from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada Bottled Lightning [raw] [/raw] For husband and wife team, Alex and Lisa, the trip across the volcanoes of Mars is a chance to escape the monotony of life at Gale Crater. But now they’ve found something, or someone, and everything is about to change. Download for free from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada Only Friends [raw] [/raw] My short story, Only Friends was originally published in … Read More
Out Now – The Girl in the City
About a year ago, I discovered Michael Bunker’s Amish science fiction series – Pennsylvania. The story really intrigued me, and I blasted through all five books and really enjoyed it. I thought that was the end of it but my muse, Ethel, had other ideas. She started sowing the seeds of a story in the darker recesses of my subconscious. Just a title and an image at first, a scene from the life of a young girl living in the city from Michael’s book. That image, and the story behind it, stuck with me. It grew bigger and more detailed. More scenes materialised and the girl got a name – Leah. With some encouragement from Michael Bunker himself, I eventually gave in and decided to write the story. It quickly took on a life of its own and became a novella, gaining a fantastic Jason Gurley cover and interior art by Ben Adams along the way. Now, finally, The Girl in the City is available from Amazon for the low low price of 99c/99p (US UK Canada). Here’s the description… With the oppressive Transport Authority controlling every aspect of their existence, Leah and her father do what they can to carve a good life for themselves. Leah spends her nights scavenging in the rural zone around … Read More
The Art of The Girl in the City
The Girl in the City really took on a life of its own last year. When I started writing the story, I wasn’t even sure I was going to release it. But as I wrote the first draft, I grew to like Leah and her story more and more. By the time I’d finished I was convinced I had a story that was good enough to publish. I can’t say that about all the stories I write, I’ve got a folder called Abandoned for a reason, but I could see Leah (as it was known then) had a lot of potential. For the first time, I sent an early draft off to some beta readers and got some very positive feedback. That feedback reinforced the feeling that I should release the book. I always use editors for my indie books but I also sent Leah to Joe Nassise for a development edit. I revised the story based on his feedback and then used Red Adept Editing for copy editing and proofreading passes. The end result is a story I’m really proud of. But while all that editing was going on, I had another idea. Michael Bunker commissioned illustrations for Pennsylvania from Ben Adams, a very talented artist that had … Read More
Travel to Pennsylvania for 99c
My novella, The Girl in the City, is set in the world of Michael Bunker’s novel Pennsylvania. You don’t need to have read Pennsylvania to enjoy The Girl in the City but you should. Firstly, it’s Amish Science Fiction which is a genre everyone should experience and secondly, it’s a great book. To make things even easier, Michael has put the Omnibus edition on offer for just 99c/99p so now is the perfect time to pick it up ready for the release of The Girl in the City. You can get Pennsylvania on Amazon (US and UK), Nook (US and UK), Kobo and iBooks but the book will go back to normal price in a few days so now is the time to pick it up. Here’s the description: Young Amishman Jedidiah Troyer is now a traveler. He’s signed up for an emigration program that is colonizing the planet of New Pennsylvania. He just wants to start a farm and homestead on affordable land in a new Amish community. Space pioneering isn’t as easy as it sounds when you’re “plain.” Jedidiah and his new friend Dawn arrive on New Pennsylvania in the middle of a rebel uprising, and TRACE, the resistance group that is rising up against … Read More