For me, this is a holiday of giving (among other things) and I wanted to take the chance to thank you for the support you've given me.
Happy holidays to everyone who can read this, and I hope you have a wonderful 2023.
Harry
2022-12-25 20:31:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember, the True Meaning of Christmas is paying your employees a decent wage.
2022-12-23 19:07:59 +0000 UTC View PostThe Flood Circle reached one thousand copies sold (counting Amazon sales only) as of yesterday, 11/29. The Iron Gate hit this same milestone on in early November, so copies of TFC have moved a little faster.
I’m sure that’s because of the cumula...
2022-12-01 01:14:14 +0000 UTC View PostIn case anyone out there needs to hear this: I don’t have a Venmo account. Please don’t send money to me through that service. That’s not me.
I got an email on Saturday congratulating me on opening an account, and I assumed it was phishing and sent it to Spam. Then the emails kept coming, and a quick check showed they were from the actual company.
Fun fact! In their original e...
2022-11-17 23:19:52 +0000 UTC View PostFor years, I’ve been picking up the odd indie game here and there, trying to find (among other things) one that seems like it could be a great mystery game. I haven’t really found a promising option.
Generally, they fall into two categories. The first is exemplified by a teen detective game called Bubblegumshoe, by Emily Care Boss (among others) and published by Evil Hat Games. Bubble...
2022-11-15 21:22:17 +0000 UTC View PostTwo days ago, sales for The Iron Gate at Amazon crossed the 1000 copies mark. That’s print and ebook combined and it’s just the one vendor.
An ordinary sales run for traditionally published midlist sf/f can be between 2K and 5K, so that puts me on pace to be pretty average. That isn’t a bad goal for me at this stage of my non-career. It also assumes that sales will keep chu...
2022-11-03 20:23:50 +0000 UTC View PostYou can pick up a copy at this link
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BroJlLakQHxUIUo6skTHgcvcMtM08CqG?usp=sharing
I hope you enjoy it.
Harry
2022-11-01 04:41:59 +0000 UTC View PostI have already described the origin of The Flood Circle in my post about The Iron Gate. Kickstarter. Backers. Fulfillment. Novel. A few people have expressed surprise that I am releasing another book so soon afte...
2022-10-31 19:56:29 +0000 UTC View PostFriday was the release date of my newest novel, The Iron Gate. It was my return to the Twenty Palaces series, the books that landed me a publisher and a fanbase, and it’s the first new novel in that series since 2011.
And I have really borked the release.
Did you preorder a copy of the book? Did that preorder never show up?
That was my fault.
Let me ba...
2022-10-03 21:40:18 +0000 UTC View PostWelp, today has been weird, but it's a genuine happy moment for me to be sending this link to you:
The Iron Gate, a Twenty Palaces novel:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bqREem4t3M6RVOJC8l52FIwIPkhUmHpa/view?usp=sharing
I hope you enjoy it.
Please p...
2022-09-30 04:54:54 +0000 UTC View PostLet me throw that cover art into the mix again:
Now, let me post the back cover copy that turned out to be too long for the actual back cover:
So, let me make something clear:
You,...
2022-09-27 18:24:27 +0000 UTC View PostBe sure to let your email load images.
That's the front cover.
Here's the description of the book:
---
Stormy Bay is a dying town nestled against an eerily placid ocean, and Ray Lilly is trapped in it. He can barely remember his name let alone his mission for the Twe...
2022-09-24 17:12:39 +0000 UTC View PostIn my previous post, I said I was going to start trying to write shorter blog posts, which I would be able to finish in a reasonable length of time and which would then, with luck, actually be posted. That’s preferable to writing long, complex posts about six related topics that need to be reorganized four or five times and therefore never actually get finished.
Also in that previous po...
2022-07-26 19:29:06 +0000 UTC View PostIt has been a week since the second volume of Stranger Things season four has come out, so it’s probably safe to talk about it now. But I won’t. Not yet.
I find myself starting blog posts all the time, and because I seldom write in this space, I find that I often try to make up for the number of posts with the number of words in a post, and that long-ass season would need an awful lot...
2022-07-10 19:41:11 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, so the full trailer for Stranger Things 4 has finally come out. Here it is. (Sorry, no embeds in Patreon, at least in this type of post)
As a followup, the Duffer Brothers did an explainer video, where they talk about the context for many of the c...
2022-04-15 17:16:53 +0000 UTC View PostYeah, this post is full of spoilers for The Batman. The good kind, but still.
It’s probably not the case that Francois Truffaut explicitly said that it was impossible to make an anti-war film, although the sentiment is often attributed to him. He did said that he decided not to make a movie about Algiers because “to show something is to ennoble it”. He also said, in an interview pub...
2022-04-08 23:45:45 +0000 UTC View PostToday is the last day of the 99 cent sale of SPFBO (a contest for self-published fantasy novels) finalists which includes my own novel, The Way Into Chaos.
You can find out more at this page for the...
2022-02-27 17:23:14 +0000 UTC View PostFirst of all, thank you for all the kind words about my sister. I’m grateful for every kindness at a time like this.
Second, I plan to cook up a little treat for my family so we can have a little something while we open gifts on Christmas morning. Since my original copy of the recipe is not holding up all that well, I thought I’d post a(n altered) ver...
2021-12-23 22:26:35 +0000 UTC View PostI’m typing this on a plane as we board a flight to Philly. I’m leaving Seattle because a doctor told a family member that my big sister is likely to die today or tomorrow, and I’m hoping to see her one last time.
Let me tell you what my sister means to me.
One of my earliest memories–not my absolute earliest, but still–was of me trying to convince my parents that my sister...
2021-12-16 15:31:41 +0000 UTC View PostIf you’re a Kickstarter backer for the two new 20P novels, you’ve likely already received the announcement that the zero draft (aka: the vomit draft) of The Flood Circle is done. That means both this new book and The Iron Gate are ready for revisions, and since they sort of tie together, it’ll be good for me to tackle them together. So, Yay for that, and also I wish...
2021-12-05 17:19:55 +0000 UTC View PostFirst of all, I know this is (::checks word count::) Way Too Long. This is very much an Overthinking It-style analysis, and maybe it would be better if I cut it way back, or focused on only one of the characters, or even if I broke this up into a couple of installments, but fuck it. I’ve been itching to write something like this, because so much of the critical focus on Stranger Things is abo...
2021-11-06 18:54:38 +0000 UTC View PostHey, it’s Halloween time, which means I’m watching Halloweenish shows and movies. And I have even more opinions here in part 3, also known as “part last”. (Spoilers for everything)
The Innocents: This from 1961 and stars Deborah Kerr. It’s adapted from the Turn of the Screw, just like Haunting of Bly Manor, but this keeps the original ambiguity about wheth...
2021-10-31 23:44:17 +0000 UTC View PostHey, it’s Halloween time, which means I’m watching Halloweenish shows and movies. And I have even more opinions here in part 2. (Spoilers for everything)
His House: If it weren’t for the next film on this list, this would have been the best Halloween movie we’ve seen this year so...
2021-10-28 21:15:49 +0000 UTC View PostHey, it’s Halloween time, which means I’m watching Halloweenish shows and movies. And I have opinions. (Spoilers for everything)
The Shining (1980): Supposedly one of the greatest horror movies of all time, this really hasn’t held up. Kubricks’ direction is terrific. The long, slow steadicam glide is unsettling here in a way it just isn’t in other films (and I d...
2021-10-18 18:45:27 +0000 UTC View PostSometimes I like to imagine that I could time-travel back to the 1950s and write a science fiction novel about my life here in twenty-first century America.
The more I think about it, the more certain I am that my book would be received as a dystopia. For ex:
• Punishing heat waves and flooding thanks to climate change.
• Massive disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the Russ...
If you're interested in the progress I'm making on those two new Twenty Palaces novels, check out the latest Kickstarter update.
2021-08-01 21:12:06 +0000 UTC View PostSo, we moved recently.
It always sucks to move but this was particularly terrible, because it happened during that massive PNW heatwave from four weeks ago. Here’s a short version of the story.
At the beginning of June, we chose Monday, 6/28 as our move date so we could be into our new place (and out of our old) by July 1. Our old landlord was nice enough to hire a moving company ...
2021-07-26 23:08:35 +0000 UTC View PostI’m one of those people who doesn’t recognize his own stress until it erupts at the wrong moment. I feel fine (I’m fine! Really!) for a whole day or week or whatever, no really, I’m okay. Then suddenly a stressful moment hits and I realize I have no reserves left and something inappropriate escapes me.
For example, this past weekend I was playing in my usual every-other-week table...
2021-04-20 23:07:21 +0000 UTC View PostA few years back, I entered The Way into Chaos into SPFBO, the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off, a reviewer-based competition for self-published novels only. My book made it into the finals but didn’t win, due mainly to readers liking the other entries more. Still, I was hoping that a respectable finish ...
2021-01-14 22:21:54 +0000 UTC View Post“I have thoughts about the new Wonder Woman movie. I should blog about them!”
::one week later::
Let me try to get this all down:
First thing: Patty Jenkins keeps making superhero movies with plots that can’t be resolved with punching and that’s sort of a problem.
In the first movie, Diana (since the words “Wonder Woman” are never spoken in e...
2021-01-02 01:37:27 +0000 UTC View Post