Titles – Author Shlomi Harif

ArmadilloCon 2026

shlomi on September 16, 2026

Dara Kountz, spouse, and Shlomi Harif — and books!

The latest ArmadilloCon in Austin was a blast. The QuickSilver Quills Collective was there in force, as were many, many books and wares for sale in the Dealer Room.

I collaborated with Elizabeth Moon on the upcoming novel, Horngard, due out October 6th. She was here as well, with T-shirts in lieu of books, as they’re not done printing them yet! We were on a panel on co-writing, and much laughter was had. As was advice equally appropriate to critique groups in general: Be gentle with feedback, create a safe place to give and receive feedback, leave egos outside, and remember to laugh. I can’t wait to work with Elizabeth again.

I’ve got three manuscripts in play at the moment: Last Run, a post-apoc SF story, Zepps, a SF thriller, and Induction, a spicy SF thriller. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes out of this. My WIP is a hard SF.

Zepps was interesting to do edits: one member of our collective is a rocket somethingorother (I want to say scientist, but he keeps swatting me down on that. Victor). Cue me spending some quality time with Claude to work out the science of airships and CO₂ processing, to ensure that what I write can theoretically be possible in 2151–provided Claude doesn’t kill us all before then.

More anon…

Adding Short Stories and Audio Books!

shlomi on January 21, 2026

Maggie Weber strikes again! Consent is now joined by Shloshim, Shut Eye, and Joy on Audible. next short story in my collection is now out. Listen to it here!

Blood of Leeches is a new ebook, currently enjoying (for the split second) a #1 rating:

I’m currently soliciting for an audiobook producer (aka a narrator) for the story.

March Update

shlomi on March 24, 2025

A mundane, pedestrian title, to be sure. My day job has dibs on my time, and slipping in time for fresh writing has been tough. Okay, that’s a cop out—I’ve had a couple of months of dithering with a novel that started as a single POV YA novella with a little magic thrown into reality into a four POV novel, complete with attendant character arcs, crises, and antagonists. The (somewhat) misleading tag line, as of now, is: Jewish widower with two kids meets a Jewish fairy.

Yes, I know there are no Jewish fairies. (Nor non-Jewish ones, but that’s another story.)

The research is difficult (it takes place in 1979), and, except for the famed Golem of Prague, there’s no specific mythology as exist in other religions or regions of the world. I’ve got a deadline on June 1 to complete the first draft and get it to alpha readers, so my Shmuley Myers murder mystery series is on hiatus until this is out.

Publishing & Reality… and Magic

shlomi on July 4, 2022

My series, under a nom-de-plum, is finally back in process, after a bout of reality-induced depression and anxiety courtesy of religious fundamentalists in all branches of government. Oh, and nazis. They’re feeling empowered more and more. “This can only end in tears” — ancient parental saying. This was compounded by my having a discussion with a publicist who refused to work with me on the series because the owner is pro-life. (And apparently Jewish practices are anti-life, but I’ll let that one lie.)

So I’m close on the release date of the next book in that series, but having said it would be in “the fall of 2022,” that’s not a small bullseye target.

To restart my engine I returned to a novel I’d completed in first draft, shown to a couple of folks, and knew I needed to make many changes. It’s a YA fantasy novel, with a large world-building component (points a finger at Marshall Maresca’s thoughts and work on that topic).Getting magic right is tricky. Don’t know if I nailed it, but I’ll be reaching out to a few readers in the next couple of weeks.

Publicity for the Indie Author

shlomi on April 30, 2022

The second book in my murder/mystery series is done except for incorporating my editor’s edits, and getting a cover finalized.I didn’t do any advertising; I wanted to see how the process worked until publishing. The answer was well and also that, without marketing, there’s just a stealth book out there.

So I’m on the search for someone or a firm to get the new book’s name and author recognition going. Talked with a possible publicist from the Jewish community, and have a contact in the Israeli publishing scene to see if I can get a Hebrew-language version of the books out there.

On more this-author’s-site-related side, I’m going back to the novel I’d like my agent to push. She needs a few things like a synopsis, summary, tag line(s), back cover blurb, and other all-related-but-different collateral. Also, another last reader to make sure nothing’s slipped past me.

I’ve got a few short stories in play, including one that’s already available for purchase: Shloshim. Yes, click that link, buy that story (I mean, it’s only $0.99!). That one might appear in Israel as a reprint, but we’ll see.

That’s all for now. I’m sure any publicist I hire will insist on my getting into a regular publishing schedule, both for this and my nom de plum’s sites. Stay tuned!

Manuscripts vs. Entropy

shlomi on August 1, 2021

I’m prepping a manuscript (Last Run) for shopping, after a HUGE number of great changes suggested by the White Gold Wielders writers group here in Austin. Having one’s novel read and commented on in group format is a blessing I would hope for all my novels.

I fired up Scrivener, started making changes, moved from my laptop to my desktop, and Uncle Murphy struck. The result: A few dozen “recovered” files, blank scenes where once text resided. What’s been updated? What’s had changes? Between a Word copy used for the group discussion, a text comparison tool, and a lot of careful scrutiny of the recovered files, I was able to bring the manuscript back to wholeness, with only one scene flagged as “deleted right before the crash–” and therefore not an issue.

Save. Save again. Save yet more. One of the first things a writer learns is “keep a backup.” I have Dropbox, exports to Word, saved zip files of scrivener folder structures for major edits. And still, Murphy manages to get a word in edgewise. Or at least cost me three hours of quality time repairing, because things went splat at exactly the wrong time.

WIP

shlomi on August 24, 2019

Back from hiatus, and starting, edits on my second Shmuley Myers book. It builds on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Austin police homicide detective in a world (soon to be real, apparently) where every non-birth pregnancy becomes a murder investigation, contraception is illegal, church and state prance together in an evil waltz.

Shmuley needs to balance his roles as a pious Jew, a loving husband, his job as a civil servant, and…

Quick Post-Prandial on Manuscript Maintenance

shlomi on November 24, 2018

I did some time-and-motion monitoring in terms of getting changes to a manuscript fit from Scrivener to Word and cleaned and ready for The Agent to use.

Fine-cleaning two scenes (~2.5k words). That means reading them aloud, copying the pieces to a word file, then reading that to ensure it’s clean: 75 minutes.

Compiling from Scrivener to Word and cleaning up the resulting mess, adding a TOC, etc.: 75 minutes.

2.5 hours for each revision change, assuming a total copy of manuscript from Scrivener to final.

Lesson learned: Get the frickin’ manuscript done and fully cleaned ONCE before moving it into Word. Agh. Double agh.

POVs and Trunking

shlomi on November 10, 2018

I’ve been wrestling with getting my next novel started before getting a full-time, paying gig. And score is trunk novels: 5, Shlomi manuscripts: 0. It kept coming across lifeless, a narration of facts and events that even extensive external and internal dialog didn’t help. I’m a pantser, so I wasn’t worried about “where the book was going.” But the main character motivations, their plate tectonics… that I was winging.

So I went back and did what I’ve done in the past: write a preface. Only every time I wrote something, it was in the Q&A style of an interview. engaging, casual dialog, casual narrator… first person. I’ve done almost that with 3rd person limited. And 1st person with a fourth wall intact. I’ve stuck to a single person’s POV as well.

Meh. Who needs walls. If John Scalzi can do it, if William Goldman can do it with The Princess Bride, then I, unpublished unjeered at, can make a go of it.