Essay – Page 2 – Author Shlomi Harif

Leonard Cohen: Yahrzeit

shlomi on September 21, 2018

Photo courtesy University of Toronto. Click to see full article.

Leonard Cohen’s music and lyrics have been my life’s soundtrack. Not the theme, just as background, mind you. I sang it out loud in an empty room while waiting in hospital after one of my father’s aneurysms. It was playing on loop in my head after he died, sitting shiva in New York City.

And it was a friend, a mentor even, as I wrote the first two novels (so far) of a series starring a religious homicide detective. “Who by fire,” indeed.

Motivations

shlomi on September 11, 2018

I’m juggling too many books that aren’t finished. “Last Run” needs a 40% diet, and I’ve been plowing away at edits. “Zepps” has a hit list of dozens of changes (see my previous post: Knotted!) I’m wandering around, like a Shakespearean actor in a Dr. Seuss play, shouting “what’s my motivation” in the various voice of my characters.

Oh, and I’m sending, via agent mine, the first salvo of agent queries to editors. So I’m writing up tip sheets in additional to customized queries, to make life faster for her.

That’s not to say I’m done with the final flourishes on the novel I’m pitching (“A Day at the Zoo.”) Aside from my awesome writers group, Chris Brown (author of Kansastan and ArmadilloCon #40 had a few suggestions.

A Progress Tool

shlomi on August 12, 2018

Recently I posted a graphic showing words per day. (I’ve used it before: you can see posts here and here.) It’s part of my musings about writing velocity and general “feeling like an author.” I’ll tee up a few posts on that in the future, but for now I wanted to provide a Google Sheet, called Writing Progress, open for anyone can copy, then modify on their own account as they see fit. Once you’ve got it you can try exporting it to Excel (see pix at end of post.) The Microsoft version needed tweaking, especially on the timeline sheet, with might not be worth fixing vs. recreating, provided you have basic pivot table skills.

The goal for the sheet is twofold. First, to share something folks have asked about, because that’s what some authors do.

Second, it does for free, and with little grief, that thing that I paid Aeon Timeline $ome $illy $um of $50 to have and then to puzzle over. It integrates with Scrivener, which I (very reluctantly, see here, here, and here) use, but has been too much trouble to set up and keep linked. And if you don’t use Scrivener, I don’t see much reason in buying Aeon.

So head out to the Writing Progress sheet and see it for yourself. (No login required to check it out, but I’m guessing you need Google Drive to copy it.)

Screen Shots of Writing Progress Sheets

Novel Progress page

Timeline Entry Page

Screen shot of Excel Export

Progress page as an excel export

Being Able {mumble} to {mumble} {mumble} and et cetera

shlomi on June 4, 2018

Grumping from home today, ill after some travel. I’d applied for a healthcare.gov health insurance policy after the end of my last consulting gig. I’ve been very pleased with the coverage until now, and the cost. While insurance companies do their best to obfuscate the actual cost to an insured person, and folks conflate catastrophic with normal health care, I’ve found it to be, not reasonable, but comparable to, say, similar COBRA-offered plans. (The COBRA cost reflects the actual cost of insurance, instead of the portion that, as an employee, I would pay when employed.)
This time I applied, then was told that although I qualified they needed to see my COBRA eligibility document, along with dates. Okay, got that. Sent ’em. Then I got a voicemail (see below). Mellifluous and unperturbed, the caller might have been threatening me with defenestration, or that my HOA dues for the house I don’t have were paid in advance. No idea. Hopefully I won’t get my dog forcibly flossed because I didn’t respond to the message.

This is a trend.in phone communications. Yesterday, trying to find my phone and being told that I couldn’t log into my Sprint account unless I typed in a code sent to said missing phone, I called support. While I’m sure he thought he was speaking English, and thought he was hearing, it wasn’t at all clear to me that Eliza couldn’t make better answers to my questions. After requesting (after 30 minutes) a supervisor, he then continued, unabated and without a break for feedback, to tell me things. Probably to him important things. I hung up after he ignored my attempts to break into the monologue to say I couldn’t understand him.

As a geek lately in the gig economy I get “opportunities” passed my way. The method varies, but it’s some riff on calling me twice in a row, then sending me an email with the opportunity, then another call an hour later. When I do make the mistake of answering I am assaulted by a melange of syllables and quick breaths that approximate, I presume, English, as spouted in a room full of other call center agents all doing the same thing at full volume.

If someone’s making an attempt to be understood I’ll go through hoops and do my best to understand them. But these are the verbal equivalent of pop-up ads on my phone. They want to get to the end of their spiel and find out if I’m interested in whatever that job they pitched. Usually I have to ask them to slow down and repeat themselves. Usually to little avail.

Nota bene: I block/report as spam companies and phone numbers (usually spoofed) that do this.

Commoditization of the employment process has been happening since at least the seventies. One of my first big-money consulting gigs was getting a networked set of Z-80 computers (well before PCs) talking to one another and using a common database at a talent agency office in downtown Manhattan. That they had their own database was already a huge deal for a ten-person agency. American recruiters can’t compete with foreign boiler rooms and calling based on unintelligent keyword matching. This is a non-lethal analogy to carpet bombing versus targeted strikes. While US-based companies have the edge in terms of personal relationships with companies, the gig economy, with a high demand for cogs in machines instead of people at positions, apparently loves this cheap way of doing business.

Whew. Okay. Back to polishing the query letter, putting out feelers, getting (for the last time, damnit!) A Day at the Zoo printed up for beta readers… And making the initial blocks for the third novel in the Shmuley Myers series ready. And, on the employment front, awaiting the results of a couple of interesting positions.

On Perpetrators and Puzzlement

shlomi on January 10, 2018

We’ve all seen a puzzled neighbor or family member interviewed after some horrific killing or act saying “I don’t get it; he was the nicest guy. Never a problem.”

“Yeah,” I’d snort to myself, “I’d have seen something.”

Nah.

I went to a liberal Orthodox Jewish school (an oxymoron today) back in Riverdale. Or, as everyone else called it, The Bronx.

The school was, for me, heaven. Latest (1970s era) gear, brilliant teachers, 3-day camping trips complete with art and science teacher hookups, bus tours of Washington, D.C. Some of the most amazing and brilliant people I now realize I was friends with.

I loved the place so much tht when I had my bar mitzvah I had yarmulkes made with the school’s logo. That place, and some of the amazing people in it (Mrs. Ratner, the secretary, the Doyle family, custodians and cooks extraordinaire, and a few others), kept me tethered to (relative) sanity.

Yes, yes, this story has a point. Where was I? Oh, right: heavenly idyllic place, blah blah blah. I had had a real nemesis there, a fellow student “J” whom I’d been with since kindergarten. We hated each other with the fire of a thousand suns. For good reasons on both sides.

Rabbi (later known as Cantor) Stanley Rosenfeld was the assistant principal, handling the Judaic end of things. He was determined to “make us shake hands.” And, in the end, I think he succeeded. At least, neither of us buried our hatchets in the other’s skull.

He invited “J” and I to spend Shabbat at his house (Friday evening through Saturday night). It was an apartment in South Yonkers, right near the Riverdale border. He was a member of one of the less glitz, more prayer, synagogues.

I only remember two things about that Shabbat: (1) that we hid his clothing and he chased me and “J” around the house in his underwear to get his stuff so we could go to shul for afternoon services. I think it was the first time “J” and I were partners in mischief. And, (2), when he caught me he kept twisting my wrist to get me to tell him where his clothes were. Twisted it until it broke. To my memory he was horrified and apologetic and as solicitous a vice-principal as an 8th grader might expect.

Oh, and he raped boys. The son-of-a-bitch was a serial pedophile, child rapist, assaulting his way through several Jewish schools in the Northeast until he was put away, paroled, and jailed again for breaking parole with yet another assault. And now, according to the JTA, it turns out that someone, someone I probably knew, was raped by him.

If someone had interviewed me about him I’d be that gormless, clueless guy, not knowing how close I was to the dragon’s fire.

Alternative Histories

shlomi on December 31, 2017

Authors of Alternative History novels (and TV series) often hinge on specific events: what would happen if Hitler won? After all, the Nazis were close on more than one occasion. Or if the creation story of Jesus never coalesced? Or, in one of my works in progress, Jewish Qabala really worked, starting with descendants of Nachmanides, entirely displacing non-Judaic systems and disrupting the search for the New World.

We’re at that time. The Angry White Men have disrupted what’s been a stable, if fluidly changing, political system. This time is, globally, a schwerpunkt, a turning point, for many futures. Futures that three years ago, in the glow of a liberal view of the world, accepting refugee in numbers unmatched since World War II, accepting people for their love, not their gender or orientation, we could not have imagined.

2016 and 2017 was that slow slide to insanity, led by der Amerikanischenführer. Toward a general-run government, toward a kleptocracy. Let’s see what 2018 brings us…

On fidelity in world-building

shlomi on December 29, 2017

It’s hard to create a new world, complete with languages, people, and the minutiae that separates the reality that is our planet and its history. In a recent population analysis of GoT, Lyman Stone drills into deathly detail on how impossible George RR Martin’s world is. Marshall Ryan Maresca has written scads of posts on worldbuilding (here’s just one).

As a writer and a reader, there’s a lot to be said for creating the right atmosphere, especially if there’s a book or five needed to write the whole story.

More than the analysis, than the facts, has to be the telling. Readers need to feel a location that’s real. They need to know that a staircase in the house leads to a door, and that the other side of the door aligns with the layout of the house. Knobs need to work as expected. Trolls should meet the expectation of the described milieu. Physics should be consistent throughout.

My last novel finished was “post-apocalyptic.” And walking through the science, as much as it made my storytelling better, makes, I think, for a more believable story than some Luc Besson movie. (Unless you see them as pure comedy and not sci-fi…)

From the bottom of the writing/critiquing well…

shlomi on December 19, 2017

I’m watching other writers and their blog posts. Some are regular as clockwork—it’s part of their marketing campaign, their name branding, and they’ve got more time (and definitely more discipline) to keep on that track. I’ll need to do it as well—just not yet, please.

Speaking of discipline, I’ve talked with a whole bunch of writers, but more importantly people who say they “can’t write” because they don’t have the time, or can’t concentrate… Or “the usual” to writers who talk to folks on the other side.

I can easily push through 4,500 words in a day, in one sitting, when I’ve got a clear vision for what the coming scenes will bring. (And as a pantser those are visions constantly changing as the characters and situations bend the reality I’d “decreed” for the novel.)

I’ve got little sticktoitiveness when I’m not sure where the scene or characters are going. That’s when I do things like dishes, laundry, shopping—and writing posts on my blog.

That little screen grab is how I keep myself at least heading in the right direction. When I’m writing I’ve got non-spoken music (or, at least, not music with English lyrics) playing. If I’m blasting through, it’s a thirty-minute timer, with the option to just hit the reset and do another. But if I’m flagging a bit, I hit the five or ten minute timer to check the news, facebook, or a little game.

When thirty minutes seems an eternity and my characters seem embedded in tree resin, well on their way to amber, I use the ten-minute timer. Hammering hard is easy when I know there’s a break in a reasonably small number of minutes.

I also use the ten minute timer for when I need to do some online research and want to make sure I don’t get sucked down the rabbit hole of “just another link.”

That’s how I’m at 72,295 words on Angels, my current novel, and how I wrote over 173,000 words on Last Run in six months of steady, non-stressed, work. And why my blogging has been sporadic. And I’m sticking to that story.

Why Charlottesville 2017 is not Berlin 1933

shlomi on August 13, 2017

This is my professional blog. I had non-professional blogs once; Facebook takes care of that need now. I do a lot of tongue-biting when something happens in the world and I’ve got this (rather unbully) pulpit from which to vent. However this is a topic that should appear everywhere, in every possible setting, for discussion and calls to action. As the son of Holocaust survivors it would be morally criminal for me not to respond. This is part of my response.

Yesterday one woman was killed and many others injured in Charlottesville. (Two state troopers also died while watching the march, but that appears to have been a tragic helicopter accident.) It’s the events surrounding it that were, with the exception for Heather Heyer’s murder, equally tragic.

The Judicial Response. The First Amendment must be upheld. Except when it generates a danger to the public. US District Judge Conrad was responsible for not only allowing the Nazis to wallow in public, but do so where they did, directly contributed to their feelings of privilege in acting as they did. In this case the Nazis were abetted by an organization that was subverted to this cause: the ACLU. Sometimes one must stand up for the right thing, not the letter of the law. This was one of those times. They’re very proud of their record, however his heinous act appears nowhere in their advertising front page. Anthony Romero, their CEO, and Steven Shapiro, their Legal Director, should pay the consequence for this blind support to the idea, and not the purpose, of the First Amendment. I was a donor. As of today I am no longer contributing to their naive stand.

The Police Response. The police failed in their primary duty. They acted like the fencing in a cage match: protect the bystanders but let whatever happened at the march, stay in the march.

I’m not trying the generalize here: there are photos and stories of law enforcement personnel who did an amazing job in a terrible situation. The African-American officers who stayed on the line, who kept their cool should be models for white officers around the country. They did what many white cops couldn’t do at a simple traffic stop or “quality of life” incident.

My focus is on the city leaders, and Joint Terror Task Force (FBI + state troopers + local law enforcement) that managed the response to the planned event. It was their orders, their strategy, and their actions that allowed this to flare from a meandering of pathetics with flags into a race fiot with all the trimmings. Heads should roll at the top for this.

Religious Leaders. As much as the fascist rabble might want to glom onto it, Christianity is not about fascist, nationalist supremacy. While the idolaters in their megachurches sky grifted, many of the local religious leaders stood as a barrier between the sides. That picture on the right? Those aren’t soldiers, those are Nazis. And the moneyed religious white world was silent. (Yes, a generalization, but an accurate representation, I think.)

The political response. This is the most obvious, most damning, most egregious part of the riot, more, perhaps even, than the actions of the Nazi thugs and fascists emboldened by their snowflake white privilege. Orin Hatch, someone with whom I have little in common, came through in the style of an old-school politician, as did Senator McCain, who‘s folks wrote a short, sharp condemnation as soon as the events occurred.

Der Amerikanischenführer, the cretin with a finger on the button of nuclear immolation, blamed the “many sides” for this. See note on left from one of the organizers of the riot and murder spree. How the Republican Party, which he leads, cannot bestir itself to distance itself from this blot on American history and culture is beyond me.

My ex had to talk me out of painting “Hail to the Thief” in 2000 after the election fiasco. But for all his flaws, and the many mistakes that cost our country too much “blood and treasure,” W understood what the role of a president was supposed to be. Defend and protect The Constitution. This, this person has not an inkling of his required role.

Yesterday was a sad day for America. Yesterday we learned where our leaders stand when faced with a political base gone gangrenous. Apparently, just standing there is the response.

My heart aches for those injured and the Heyer family. My blood boils at the thought of having to deal with Nazis, a generation after my parents barely survived their encounters.

On Short Stories and Novellas

shlomi on July 7, 2017

One of the agents with whom I spoke at the recent Writers’ League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference expressed interest in a set of short stories if I could also stick a novella in there. At least, that’s what I thought he said, but it was loud… Anyway, I’m already shopping “Upline,” a story set in a universe where life begins at conception and the government’s now having to handle the inevitable consequences, intended and otherwise, of that constitutional amendment. I’m shopping but also having workshopped at the next ArmadilloCon.

I started out with a novel that fell apart, then parts reconstituted into another novel which was (rightly) heavily snorted at by folks at the Slugtribe writing group here in Austin. Then the short story pulled a Hera.

Sunday, fresh off the conference and a great chat with an agent about a couple of other book projects, I finished off another story in that universe: “Transfer Point.”

Tuesday, while topping out Last Run, the novella plot dropped. all at once. It’s an embarrassment of riches, it is. Focus, with agents looking for specific material, is more important than ever, and I won’t deny feeling nervous of not keeping it all together. Creativity wars with editorial control meets marketing and… oh… a day jobbe!

I read several author blogs, and there’s a lot of “pro” discussions (some of it pretty damn awesome, like Marshall Ryan Maresca’s site. But I haven’t seen many “struggling” sites. Hopefully I’m not TMIing out of any future seat at the “real authors” table.