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HARRIS GRAY

~ Telling You Stories

HARRIS GRAY

Category Archives: About Us

Robot Writers

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by harrisgray in About Us, VVIII

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

robots, Trilogy, vampire series, vampires

Steamier than you dreamed it would be

VVIII…steamier than you dreamed?

I love going to bed with the dishwasher running. To know there is work being done while I sleep gives me sweet dreams. Nothing better than a morning faceful of residual heat from the machine’s overnight exertions.

Our editor Adrienne Crezo provides the same robotic service. Earlier this month I was pedaling across the western North Dakota badlands, doing not a lick of work – and meanwhile our book was getting better! Like the dishwasher sluicing off crusty cheese, once wonderful stuff but now an impediment to the enjoyment of the plate, our editor was scrubbing our novel free of overgrown flowery phrases obscuring the story. She is nearly done; soon we will have a clean plate to share with you.

We’re talking about book 3 of the Vampire Vic trilogy. The final installment, despite Jason’s desire to split it into 2 (or 3) à la Twilight. “Book 5 of the Vampire Vic trilogy” has a cool ring to it, but we can get it done in one.

Adrienne our editing appliance is hard at work while we bike and blog. One of these mornings we will open our email to find Vampire Vic’s final chapter, warm, clean and ready to read – which we recommend doing while your Roomba works its robot fingers to the bone.

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The Question of the Road: to Share or to Rule?

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by harrisgray in About Us

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

CANDISC, cycling, truckers

Biking out of Medora Photo courtesy Heather Hargrave

Biking out of Medora, ND
Photo courtesy Heather Hargrave

Last week my wife, our friend and I joined 220 other riders to pedal a few hundred miles around western North Dakota. The annual affair, called CANDISC for Cycle Across North Dakota in Sacagawea Country, is well-run, with full “sag” support for weary riders, pleasingly provisioned rest stops along the route, and hard-working host towns serving hearty dinners, evening entertainment for our tent city, and another big feed in the morning to fuel the day’s riding.

My wife loves this week. Which sounds strange because there will be hilly, windy suffering and unlike me she’s no masochist. But she described the attraction perfectly: All you have to do is bike. You don’t have to plan your day or your meal, or anyone else’s day and meal. Your one and only task for a full week is to ride, 15-20 miles at a crack, from camp to rest stop to rest stop (and possibly to a 3rd and 4th rest stop depending on the length of the day’s route) to camp. There is absolutely nothing else to think about.

Except the trucks.

Going in, the biggest concern is whether you and your bike have trained hard enough – long enough, that’s the real measure, your seat on its seat for enough miles to build up a callused tolerance. You’ll be pedaling an average of 50 miles a day, 4 to 8 hours depending on the wind, for 7 days in a row. Like a bad sunburn on your first day at the vacation beach, a rash on the seat can ruin the week. Even if you have pedaled the preparatory miles so that you’re now sitting leather on leather, you will lube up liberally every morning before you hit that big breakfast and the road.

Now you’re cranking away on the highway and you realize not everyone in North Dakota got the memo: This ride is a showcase for North Dakota’s terrain and towns, and a challenging, healthy way to spend a vacation week. This ride is a good thing! Unfortunately the truckers disagree. And suddenly you’re not so worried about your bum burn…

A sampling from the week: An oncoming trucker hit his horn at each biker he met to draw attention to the bird he was flipping. An angry trucker accosted 2 bikers at a gas station rest stop, demanding we ride on the opposite side of the road (facing oncoming traffic) and promising otherwise to put us in the ditch. My wife watched a speeding double-trailer semi driver buzz me within a couple feet despite the availability of an adjacent wide-open lane.

In general North Dakotans don’t bike on the highways. So our presence wasn’t a cumulative tipping-point for the truckers, just a once-a-year nuisance. And the roads aren’t otherwise full-speed ahead. Nearly as slow and much more common are farmers, in their low-gear grain trucks and monster combines. Truckers are constantly, calmly braking for farmers.

Truckers are under pressure to deliver on-time. Drive the interstate and you know their patience can be lacking. But cyclists hold a special, dark place in their hearts. During our ride numerous truckers were sufficiently lathered to call a ND talk radio station and rant about idiot bikers with no right to the road.

In western ND, on many of our otherwise serene rural roads, cyclists are at risk. Still, most of us accept it, for the opportunity to get up close and personal with the rolling hills and friendly farmsteads offering restorative stops with bananas, pickles, kuchen and coffee. And a fair warning to truckers: in that split-second where my life appeared to be over, my wife resolved to do unmentionable things to the trucker and his family. I fantasized about that, even with my violent death as a prerequisite. At the very least it was comforting to know that truckers aren’t the only bad-asses on the road.

Method Writing Video

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by harrisgray in About Us, Vampire Vic, VV2: Morbius Reborn

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

method writing, real vampires, vampires

You’ve heard of method acting? Full immersion in the role. We fancy ourselves method writers – really helps us with a character’s perspective.

Interview on Party 934

09 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by harrisgray in About Us, Our Books, Vampire Vic, VV2: Morbius Reborn

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Tags

Interview, Vampire Vic

We were fortunate to be interviewed by Luke Soroko on the Internet radio station Party 934. We talked about our writing partnership, the Vampire Vic trilogy, Jason’s terrible, wonderful decision-making when he was younger, Christianity vs. atheism, and research in Romania. All of today’s hot topics.

Take a listen below – our interview begins at approximately the 4-minute mark. We think Luke did a great job exposing just the right amount of Harris Gray; we hope you agree.

https://harrisgray.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/luke_july_31_2015.mp3

New Year’s Resolutions

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by harrisgray in About Us

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Lorraine Hansberry, New Year's Resolutions, Stephen Dobyns, Stephen Hall

Harris Gray ResolutionsSour Grapes, by Gray

Yep, I got a mouthful of them. But 2014 is going to be a new year.  A new me.  

Upon reflection on 2013 and the last 15 years, I have a lot to be thankful for. I recently had my business’s 15th anniversary. Published two books last year with one of my best friends I’ve ever had and will ever have.  My family is healthy and I love them, they in turn love me.  I truly have a lot to be grateful for, to be gracious for, to humbly thank all those who have made this past year, this life worthy of thankfulness.  

Instead, I crave, yearn, desire for more.  I need to have our work looked at, read, consumed at astronomical rates.  To have readers, critics & other writers see us for the geniuses we are. That our work is seen as meaningful, funny, thought provoking and ready to put a serious belly laugh on you.  A laugh so severe, you pull a stomach muscle and need medical attention.  

But time and money get in the way.  We can’t spend nearly as much as we would like on our “craft”.  We are a long way from our writermobile tour that we are set to do at a moment’s notice.  Our wives taking turns driving, as we spins yarns in the back of the RV.  Going from town to town, signing books & giving out half-ass advice & pieces of our hilarity.

The business.  Fifteen years of blood, sweat & tears (wow, that would be a great band name).  Sure, I have the best employees, customers & friends a person could ever ask for.  Again, I am told I need to see the bright side. I try, Lord, I try.  Those are great things, immeasurable things.  I still have mountains of debt.  A 75 hour work week, daily stresses that show on my face, demeanor and general attitude.  If I could have one week of continuous vacation once a year with my family, it would be a damn miracle. My lovely, loving wife, always the optimist. Lets me know that most small businesses only make it two years.  I think those people had the sense to get out when they could.  

Upset with myself for not seeing the bright side.  My wife, family, friends & customers are all supportive and amazing.  People who love me and want to be around me, supporting me.  Then, I get ever more depressed because I don’t appreciate them way I should.  Self-loathing to the nth degree starts again.

Every year, I say to myself and I am told how perseverance, hard work & a great attitude will make 2007 better than ever, then 2008, 2009 and so on. Well, it’s 2014. The guy I write with has so much talent, heart and desire that I want 2014 to be a year for him to remember.  A writing year like no other. Where time is abundant, and the ideas flow.  Where the scotch is old and the storylines are fresh.  On the road, with our wives in tow.

I hope for, will work hard for, a certain amount of success in my business’s 16th year. To work a reasonable week, so that I can see my loving, caring, understanding family. To take my deserving family on an adequate vacation.

I love the works of Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry and Philip Van Doren Stern. But can’t figure out whether I am more like George Bailey or Willy Loman.

Yep, 2014 is going to be a new year.  Walter Younger had it real tough. George Bailey had so much to be thankful for, but Willy Loman had a life insurance policy.

Harris Gray ResolutionsFine Wine, by Harris

Don’t look now, but 2014 is shaping up to be a great year! 2013 was an odd duck to put it nicely, but if nothing else, an essential step toward 2014. Calendars aren’t like high-rise hotels, you can’t skip 13. So 2013 was a step, even if it the tables were turned and we were the ones who got stepped on in order to get here.

You know how (if you’re lucky) you wake up one day and drink a bit of coffee on a long morning flight home and realize how blessed you are to have your partner? I’m reading a novel by Stephen Dobyns, The Burn Palace, and there’s this bookish nerdy kid who follows around the cool kid, hoping they’ll become friends. That’s a recurring theme in novels, an appealing one to me, never mind that I always fancied myself the cool kid. Of course I’m not, I’ve always been that other kid. And just as the storyline always goes, I eventually get the cool kid to like me. Now we’re writing books together.

Yes he’s a little gloomy sometimes – and I like that! I get the biggest kick out of cool dudes’ tales of woe. Probably because they actually have tales to tell, unlike us bookish nerds, and they tell their tales hilariously. Somehow the cool suffering dudes know how to make you laugh. In this particular real-life story of mine, it also turns out they know how to write. That is what you call a blessing. I think last year’s trials and tribulations were necessary to open my eyes wide enough here in 2014 to see it. So thank you, 2013.

(But still, good riddance, 2013, you hurt a lot of people and so I can’t help but think of you as a necessary evil, and I don’t know many people who feel otherwise.)

Back to Stephen Dobyns – have you read this guy? He’s incredible! Such a unique style. I remember reading his novel The Church of Dead Girls back in the 90’s – I was pumped to write like that guy! Exactly like him! Of course I couldn’t, but that desire launched me forward, and I started off writing sorta like him, and then as the pages and days piled up, nothing at all like him, but by then, who cares?!? Stephen Dobyns had unleased the story in me. That is such a beautiful thing, that one writer does for another.

And I’m going to tell him so. This is new in 2014! Connections, connections, you have to make connections! That’s what all the how-to-be-a-(marketable)-writer bloggers tell you. Of course I knew they were right, but oh how it hurt trying, all year long in 2013, trying to connect with people I didn’t know….

…and then in 2014, it finally dawned on me: I should connect with people who I feel connected with! That might actually be fun! Which made me realize, I’ve never told the guy who inspired Java Man, the brilliant science writer Stephen Hall, just what he has meant to us. So I did, and next thing you know he has a copy of Java Man in his hands, and we’re calling him Steve. And regardless what happens from there, the world just feels a little better having corresponded with this gentleman.

And so Stephen Dobyns is also going to receive an e-mail from Harris Gray, telling him how much we admire him, and how a passage in The Burn Palace, about this nerdy bookish kid wanting to be a vampire when he grew up, because “Have you ever seen a nervous vampire?”, how it made us think that he might get a kick out of a story about, yes, a nervous vampire who didn’t have the self-confidence to bite someone. And then maybe he’ll let us send him a copy of Vampire Vic, and who knows, maybe that will lead to a mention to someone else who we’d enjoy being connected with, and so on and so on, in the magical way that connections often work.

Finally, did you know my writing partner loved Lorraine Hansberry? I didn’t. Likewise he didn’t know that a few weeks back I stumbled across Sidney Poitier on a movie classics channel, that I paused for a moment (with finger on the Channel-Up button) to enjoy the master, and ended up spending two hours falling in love with A Raisin in the Sun. Incredible writing feeding stellar performances. Until now, 2014, I had no idea who Lorraine Hansberry was. Thanks to my partner (and Mr. Poitier), that problem has now been rectified. Makes me excited to taste more of those grapes he bottled these past fifteen years.

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