Edie Harris's Blog

Free from the Archives | “Cabin Fever”

This short story was featured in my May 2014 newsletter, inspired by the annual family vacation the Harris clan takes up to the north woods of Minnesota. I just returned from that same vacation, where I had a most excellent and utterly relaxing time of it. In the spirit of summer vacays everywhere, I’m reposting it for y’all, but have added a few photos from my most recent stint along the shoreline, so you too can experience the quiet magic of the North Woods.

Fun fact: When I was 17, an adol...

A Blood Money Primer

Jumping into the series with CRAZED? Forgotten what happened in books one and two? Confused about who’s who? Here’s a (spoiler-free) primer on the Blood Money series and its first family, the Faradays.

The Faradays (oldest to youngest) and positions held at Faraday Industries:

Casey, Director of Tactical Operations Tobias, Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel Gillian, Director of Research, Development & Innovation Beth, Field Test Weapons Expert Adam, Internet Securities Division

Cu...

Triggered Warning | Standing at the Intersection of Gun Violence, Terrorism, and Creative Expression

I walked out of Bel Canto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago last night.

I’ve read Ann Patchett’s awesome fictional account of the 1996-1997 Lima Crisis. I’ve read it twice. I knew exactly what I was in store for with this original opera version of the 2001 award-winning novel. I knew there would be terror, and hostages, and singing, and politics, and art. Creative expression. Smoke and mirrors.

A letter from Lyric’s general director, Anthony Freud, was placed inside the front cover of the progr...

How to Boss Like a Lady | #GetItTogetherHop

Imma go ahead anddropthe TL;DR right here, right now:

Time is your most precious commodity Work is hard, but writing is harder You areyour best advocate Say “no” sometimes

There. Now you can get back to your daily lives.

Here’s the thing, y’all: My priorities have shifted drastically in the past year, in ways I neither anticipated nor found consistently comfortable. It’s changed how I approach being an author, a businessperson, and a 28-year-old woman living in one of the most amazing citi...

Sensory Overload | Blood Money Inspiration & the Future of the Faradays

Every author has her process: a place to write, a time of day, a certain drink or snack or reward system for getting those daily words in. I have a process, too, but it changes from book-to-book; all those sensory details need to be particular to the characters I’m writing. With stories as plot-heavy and detail-oriented as the Blood Money series, it takes a lot of organization to get in the right “mood” to write my Faradays. Here’s a peek into how I make this family of spies, soldiers, and su...

“Mayday Mayday Mayday!” | Heroines in Distress

One: Happy May Day! Did you find a basket on your front stoop this morning, filled with little goodies, candies and ribbons and stickers? …No, I didn’t, either. [sigh]

Two: We are now officially in the month of RIPPED‘s release, only a couple of short weeks away! With BLAMED, my stomach was in knots, but I feel cool, calm, and collected (sort of) with this second book in theBlood Money series. It’s the story of cold-blooded attorney Tobias Faraday, whom so many of you fell for in BLAMED, and...

Edie’s “Laced” Brownies | a recipe for deliciousness

Have you experienced a good chocolate-induced coma recently? No? Well, in celebration of (a) me being done with edits on RIPPED and (b) RomanceLandia’s awesome day of RITA and Golden Heart nominations, I thought I’d share the brownie recipe I made up and subsequently used to bring a nation to its knees—and by “nation,” I mean my day-job colleagues, who have encouraged me to patent and sell these motherf*ckers.

“Laced” brownies, fresh from the oven…but I’m not saying what they’re laced with....

Mindy Kaling: Not Your Pioneer, But…Who Said She Had To Be?

Okay, so, I read the editorial “Mindy Kaling is not your pioneer” twice–because I wanted to get past my initial emotion-based reaction to a place of (relative) objectivity. Between the author and myself, we are the two halves of Mindy Kaling’s whole: He is Asian-American, and I am a woman. We each view “The Mindy Project” and its creator through the lens of our claimed identities.

In his early paragraphs, Jung essentially argues that Kaling is not a trailblazer because she is not active within...

“Say goodbye, 2014.” “Goodbye, 2014!”

This year, amirite?

Let’s all just take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief that 2014 is over. Thank Christ.

For the past four years, I’ve done a favorite-reads-of-20_ recap on the blog, but I don’t know if I can make it an even five. Where in other years I could define my life through the books I read, 2014 was 365 days of near-constant upheaval, and to recap my year in the best of my TBR pile alone paints an incomplete picture of the year itself. So I’m going to list this bitch, yeah?

Yeah.

1....

How to Series: A Lesson in Time Management and Forward Planning

To the surprise of no one, I overestimated my ability to complete a manuscript in a given amount of time. In that situation, when you have a publisher and editor, you request an extension. When you’re self-publishing and the editor you’ve hired is flexible around your schedule, you (or, in this case, I)…let things slide.

The manuscript I’m referring to is WILD CHASE, the planned second installment that had a hopeful release day of March 2014 (…which has obviously passed us by…) in my historica...