Kenneth E. Harrell's Blog: A Writing Journey

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The Last Violinist

A distant colony world stands on the brink of annihilation. One man plays not to survive, but to be remembered.

Daniel Harmon has no delusions. The end is coming. Looming in the sky above New Haven is the anomaly a massive rip in the fabric of space and time, unlike anything humanity has ever encountered. When it arrives, it won’t just consume his world it will erase the entire system from existence.

As the quiet, pastoral world of New Haven braces for extinction, all that remains is time, that bends and distorts, unraveling perception as the anomaly draws near. In the face of the inevitable, Daniel chooses to compose one final piece of music, a requiem for his dying world. But when an unexpected visitor from the past finds him, Daniel realizes he is no longer playing just for himself.

The Last Violinist is a haunting, meditative science fiction tale of grief, memory, and the enduring power of art at the end of all things.

“The Last Violinist” will be released Jan 11, 2026

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Preview Samples Of All My Work

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Link: https://kennetheharrell.substack.com/...

Hello Goodreads readers, this preview offers a glimpse into all of my work. From my novel “Awakening” a gripping, epic science fiction novel that explores what it means to be human in a world transformed by time, nature, history, and circumstance. To my short story science fiction series “Body Of Work” a science fiction story of human identity, power, resilience, and survival.

If you enjoy what you read, I invite you to continue the journey by purchasing the full book from Amazon or other retailers. If the story resonates with you, your review would mean the world to me. It helps others discover my work and supports my passion for storytelling. Thank you for reading and for being part of this journey.



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The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 2

The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 2
A mostly accurate timeline so far as I can remember...

Once I had another version I was comfortable with, I moved it to book funnel which made distribution easier. Same thing, no one really bothered to read what I had spent months working on. I wanted to know if I could get a person to read say just chapter one. The disheartening answer was no, people will not read even one chapter despite saying they would. According to other writers on Reddit this was quite common. The fact is no one will read your work, family certainly won’t, I mean seriously, they will not read a single page trust me, I tried. After a very long and frustrating journey, I finally stopped sharing it. Some of the people who know me best still to this day haven’t read a single page of my work. I’ve made peace with it; I have learned to accept it, and I don’t even take it personally anymore. Experiences like this are all too common for writers, I know this now and I’ve learned to just let it go.



Let It Go and Focus
The Years 2018 to 2019.
The year unfolded as a mix of quiet ambition and deliberate focus. I spent my time working, investing, writing, and taking road trips. It was an interesting year, full of personal and professional transformations and fascinating moments of discovery. When I wasn’t working or writing, I leaned into cooking as an unexpected creative outlet. I am pretty sure my friends were getting tired of seeing all my made up culinary creations inspired by YouTube videos. I experimented with ingredients I already had, refusing to follow recipes. Some dishes turned out wonderfully, others not so much. My seared salmon eggs benedict, for example, remains an elusive dream always close but never quite perfect. Still, it was a satisfying way to see what I could create from the everyday.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
I gave my digital life a much-needed overhaul. My YouTube subscriptions underwent a ruthless purge, leaving behind only content that informed, inspired, or added meaningful value. I realized how draining mainstream media and the endless doom scroll of social feeds had become, so I eliminated them altogether. In their place, I turned to podcasts, lectures, science fiction novels, and documentaries that left me energized and inspired. Books remained a constant source of inspiration. They carried me to other worlds, challenged my perspectives, and enriched my understanding of storytelling. This quieter, more intentional approach to media gave me the clarity and mental space to focus on my work. Stories that had lingered at the edges of my mind finally found form, and my research spanning everything from history to speculative science fed directly into the characters and worlds I was building. Looking back, it wasn’t a year of monumental changes but of meaningful shifts, mentally, spiritually, and politically. By cutting out the noise and leaning into the things that truly sparked my interest, I found myself more grounded, more creative, and more in tune with my writing goals.



2020 The Year of The Pandemic.

Just two weeks to flatten the curve and save humanity. Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way. I spent my time that year caring for my elderly mother, helping my wife and my friends while I tried not to get sick. I lost eight co-workers to the virus. Days blurred together, and at some point I stopped caring about time all together. One week seamlessly melted into the next. My days were filled with work my nights consumed with writing sometimes until 5am. By 8am, I was back up and working. It was a relentless cycle, not helped at all by the media’s constant fear machine.



2020 Was a Challenging Year
Endless arguments over vaccines, masks, and social distancing. The needless tribal lines drawn between the “Vaxed” and “Un-Vaxed.” New terms sprouted up like weeds between the cracks in our society, and it all felt like some endless, dystopian, science fiction nightmare from which we couldn’t escape. So, what else is a writer to do but write about it? I was on Medium back then, it was about four in the morning, this is what I wrote:

"Sunrise to sunset we wait, watch and wonder. Repeating the same routines every day and every night. We hope that there is a normal to go back to. We pray there is a future to look forward to. Only time will tell. For now, this is how we live. In rooms, basements, and garages. In front of cameras, on screens and behind masks. Standing in circles, perched on squares six feet apart. None of us knows what the future holds and yet we hold on to one another as we hold out hope. The calendar days pass almost without notice. We cherish simple moments more valuable to us now than ever before. Alone and together under a blue sky or beneath the stars, in backyards, on balconies and rooftops. We each have our place, the one space that still feels normal. In those moments we realize what is truly valuable to us, our families, friends, and communities. One day we will take a breath without fear and embrace loved ones without apprehension. We may be distant we may stand apart, but we are not alone. For now, though, this is how we live. Sunrise to sunset waiting."

One day I went to bed on a Friday night around 11 p.m. and slept through most of the following Saturday. When I finally woke up early Sunday morning, it was around 5am I felt energized. I spent hours writing, made solid progress, and looked forward to enjoying the rest of the weekend. That night, I went to bed around 10pm. When I woke up, I thought it was Sunday morning. I put on a podcast and started making breakfast. I was ready for a slow, easy day. Then my wife gave me a strange look and said, “You know today is Monday, right?” I stared at her confused, then at my phone, completely stunned. What the hell had happened to the weekend? A year and a half in, I found myself slipping into depression almost daily. At the time, I was working on a chapter of Awakening set in Antarctica. With so much weighing on my mind, I decided to deviate from the original outline. I transformed the scene I had planned to write into a series of diary entries, capturing the pandemic-induced despair of the science fiction world I was building. If you’d like to read this scene, you’ll find it in my novel, Awakening, Chapter Three: “The Ruins of Antarctica.”



Revisions and More Revisions
The Years 2021 to 2022
Many nights, I’d lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in my thoughts. How long before everything really starts to fall apart? Would I need to start going out armed? What if the world is just gone by the time I finish the book? Am I wasting my time with all this? Is this the end of everything? Should I get more life insurance? Will the virus keep mutating forever? I channeled all of it, all my anxiety and fear into that chapter. I melted it down and poured it into the narrative. After all, what else was I supposed to do with all that weight I was carrying? In the end, it felt cathartic to get it out onto the page, where it belonged.

The Year 2023.
I needed a break, so I started working on other story ideas. I was interested in the social and psychological consequences of advanced technology and how technology impacts individuals and society. Douglas Rushkoff, one of my many intellectual inspirations, once said in reference to Facebook; “we are the product.” It struck me as a dark revelation. Like many things Rushkoff explores, it got me thinking and kept me thinking about the implications of that statement. I was once a very pro technology person because I sincerely believed that technology was a tool that could be used to improve the human condition. I still believe this but with a caveat; watch out below for those pesky unpredictable negative externalities. Rushkoff and his writings gradually killed off the techno utopian in me and made me realize that not all that glitters in the tech space is gold. He taught me that it is not technology that people hate, it is the extractive business models the technology companies use that really annoy the shit out of us. That line haunted me “We are the product.” Out of that came the idea for the Body of Work series A major theme of that work is the commodification of the human form and personal information. You can read more about it here. and if you want to read the series you can find it here The Body of Work Series

The Year 2024.
On a camping trip with my wife, I had been plagued by a strange anxiety, I could not sleep, I spent hours looking at the stars reading and rereading chapters in the book while recording notes on my phone to make changes once I got back home. I knew there was nothing more I could do; I had to publish, but in my mind, I also had to make it perfect. I went over the book constantly; I rewrote scenes; I trimmed dialogue and redrafted entire sections to the tune of some fifty-nine different drafts. There came a point where I was taking notes on things to change and improve only to discover that I had already made that change and that improvement. I was getting close to publishing.



I Needed to Publish
There was only one problem holding me back: fear. The idea of putting my work out there for all to see was daunting, but I knew I had to do it. I stepped away from Awakening for a while and focused on Body Of Work. When I came back to work on Awakening, I felt refreshed and ready to go back into that world. Then, in June of 2024, I was ready, or at least I thought I was. I redrafted the entire book again just for good measure; I checked and rechecked the manuscript over and over again. By July I was ready, the cover art was done, the epub file as close to perfection as I could get. I sat at the console for a long time and finally said to myself, well here it goes. I published on August 13, 2024.

If you missed it see: "The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 1" https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

My New novel Awakening is on sale now.
eBook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD2J5BVR
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Kenn...

Author Links:
Web: https://books2read.com/KennethEHarrell
Substack: https://substack.com/@kennetheharrell ​​​​​​​
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/kennethehar... ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Reedsy: https://reedsy.com/discovery/user/kha... ​​​​​​​
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kenne...

The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 1

The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 1
A mostly accurate timeline…

The Years 2018 to 2024.
It all began with an idea that had been quietly stirring in my mind for nearly a decade. I envisioned a story about a lost human super-civilization, seen through the lens of a man from our distant future. The ruins left behind by humanity beg a single, haunting question: What happened to the world? That question was my starting point, and it too formed an image in my mind of a lone man gazing across a ruined apocalyptic landscape, reclaimed entirely by nature.



Early Visions
I went to San Francisco to meet up with my good friend Rad at Yerba Buena Gardens, to catch up on life and the projects we were each working on. Rad and I go way back to the late nineties. These days, he’s a full-time dad, a full stack programmer, a startup owner, and a dedicated woodworker. Both of us are seasoned pros in the tech world, but with passions beyond the industry. For him, it’s woodworking and coaching; for me, it’s motorcycles and writing. Together, we maintained an investment club on his Discord. I told him that getting laid off had made me step back and reevaluate what really mattered in my life. I told him about the plot early on, shared a few of the story elements I was playing with. He was intrigued and encouraged me to write it. We ended up talking for hours, the way people did before screens and algorithms dominated our lives. That’s how we usually connect rarely, but deeply, with long stretches in between.



Meeting up in SF
I was working a relatively shitty dead end contract in San Francisco, with no hope of going full time. The place was miserable, scarred by some internal nuclear fallout that had left everyone wounded long before I ever arrived. Even routine tasks, like working in a co-location outside “our side” of the building, was treated like betrayals. The pre-merger crew barely tolerated the newcomers, clinging to old corporate tribes. It was a classic toxic workplace saga, not worth more than a mention here.

Back in 2018, Awakening was all I could think about. It didn’t matter where I was, at lunch, stuck in traffic, when an idea struck, I’d save it on my phone. Speech-to-text became my go-to tool, letting me capture thoughts on the fly. Later, I’d transfer them over to my working whiteboard to flesh out the ideas.



Working Whiteboard of Ideas
I started working on the rough draft on March 23, 2018. I knew grounding the reader with a clear sense of time and place was crucial to bringing Awakening to life. My boss we’ll call him “Sam” was a big science fiction fan, so I shared one of my earliest drafts with him. When he returned it, his feedback blew me away. The notes were more detailed and insightful than anything I’d gotten before, even from the editor I’d hired on Reedsy.com for $1,800. I took all of Sam’s notes and addressed each of his points one by one. It changed the story but surprisingly made it better.

So much so that I started sharing it with anyone I could, friends, colleagues, family, anyone that was willing. All I wanted was honest feedback. My closest friends read it, others said they did, but I knew they had not. I could see who was accessing the cloud folder and who was not. I have to admit it was upsetting, I looked around on Reddit to see if anyone else was experiencing what I was.



People said they were interested, but even after a year of leaving the share folder up they never touched it, not even once. Then one day I was talking to one of my close colleagues, I told him I was working on a science fiction novel he told me that both he and his wife enjoyed science fiction so I shared an early draft in the hopes of getting some feedback that I could use to improve the story. To my surprise, I did get some feedback, but it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. After some time, my colleagues’ wife sent me a response for the sake of privacy we will call her “Ina.” here is what she wrote;

“I am just not sure how to approach this. My feedback would not be appropriate in this case because I am just not a big fan of this type of writing. Neo-baroque: heavily ornamented and structurally overloaded. These things are fun to write, but you have to have an appreciative audience who find it equally fun to read. Once again, it’s just me. If a sentence takes an entire paragraph, it’s almost always structurally overloaded. Details are heavy. Vocabulary is heavy. I understand this is all intentional, I just won’t be able to appreciate it.”

In my mind this was a somewhat polite way of saying; “I think your writing is shit.” Needless to say, I spent about five months rewriting everything from scratch…

The Making Of the Novel “Awakening” Part 2: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

My New novel Awakening is on sale now.
eBook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD2J5BVR
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Kenn...

Author Links:
Web: https://books2read.com/KennethEHarrell
Substack: https://substack.com/@kennetheharrell ​​​​​​​
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/kennethehar... ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Reedsy: https://reedsy.com/discovery/user/kha... ​​​​​​​
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kenne...

The Age of Publishing Gatekeepers is Dead.

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Subscribe to my Substack

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Using AI as a Reality Simulator

Side Notes...Thoughts on modern technology and the future of things...
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Body of Work: City of Dreams



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Smashwords 2024 End of Year Sale!

Now is your best chance to find my book, "Awakening", available for a promotional price at @Smashwords as part of their 2024 End of Year Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... through January 1! #SmashwordsEoYSale #Smashwords



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Securing the Future with Kenneth E. Harrell | The KMO Show

Securing the Future with Kenneth E. Harrell | The KMO Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTed7...

It was truly an honor to be a guest on the KMO Show. I encourage everyone to check out their channel like, subscribe, and support the incredible work they’re doing!

KMO speaks with science fiction author (https://amzn.to/49rvJm0) and cybersecurity professional Kenneth E. Harrell (https://substack.com/@kennetheharrell) about artificial intelligence, the writing process, and technological change. They explore how AI tools can enhance rather than replace human creativity, with Harrell describing his use of custom GPTs and AI assistants to improve his writing while maintaining his unique voice. The conversation delves into the challenges of emerging AI technologies, including potential security threats and the limitations of current solutions like voice synthesis. They also discuss their favorite science fiction works and influences, from Frank Herbert's Dune to contemporary authors, while examining how science fiction helps us understand accelerating technological and social change. The wide-ranging discussion touches on themes of spirituality, techno-utopianism, and the human relationship with advancing technology.


My New novel Awakening is on sale now in
eBook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD2J5BVR
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Kenn...

Web: https://books2read.com/KennethEHarrell
Substack: https://substack.com/@kennetheharrell ​​​​​​​

Goodreads: Kenneth E. Harrell

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