Mark Murphy Harms's Blog

We crossed the country in a red Chevy Nova. I was an 11-year-old Nebraska native and I'd been thrilled to see mountains for the first time when we went through the Rockies on our way to California. Temperatures rose coming down into the desert and my dad, brother and I puttered along at 55 miles per hour, sweltering in a car without air conditioning. I liked to stick my hand out the window and let it be pushed up and down like an airplane wing. Reaching Arizona, we diverted from our main route t...

On Sept. 26, 1983, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov saved the world. An officer with the Soviet Air Defense Forces, he oversaw a computer-controled network of satellites that monitored the skies for a possible nuclear strike from the United States. On that day the computer system reported five incoming missiles. Petrov double-checked the data: The probability of a nuclear attack was 100%.

The system was new and Petrov didn't entirely trust it. There was no confirmation from ground radar and Petrov t...

I stepped out onto the muddy parking area and donned my blaze-orange hoodie. Another deer hunting season had come. I readied my predatory gear — utility belt, small backpack, rifle — and headed into the wilderness. It was warmish, 36 degrees, for an early November morning in central Minnesota.

After killing my first deer seven years earlier (detailed *here), I succeeded again the next year and, boy, I thought I must be pretty good at this. My luck ran out, however, and the next four years were bu...

 

In 1859, after being sentenced to hang for the ill-fated Harper’s Ferry insurrection (a quixotic adventure aimed at getting the slaves of the South to rise up against their masters), John Brown scribbled a short note and left it in his jail cell. It proved prophetic: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

Yet, on the way to the gallows, as he rode in a wagon sitting on his own coffin, Brown looked out at the Blue Ridge Mo...

Where do ideas come from? What’s the source of creativity? I kind of go along with *Wittgenstein who argued that taste and reason, while important in shaping the end-product, don’t “give birth.” What does give birth? I don’t know -- something weird happening in the flow of ichor through the vast, innumerable catacombs of the brain.

But not knowing doesn’t stop my imagination from coming up with something. So I imagine a cauldron hanging over simmering coals in a dark cave. In the cauldron, a visc...

Finally my new book, Dark Waters: The Voyage of the Bar Jack, is available. Folks can order the paperback *here or the Kindle version *here. I, of course, think it's a ripping good yarn and I hope others do to.

You can get an early reader's impression at * Rocky Scramble's Weekly Reader .

Finding the Ending

(not a spoiler)

After a couple of decades of abortive fiction efforts that seemed to begin well but ultimately go nowhere, I've managed within the last few years to complete two novels. Why were t...

Out for a Sunday morning walk, I headed for nearby Wirth Park and saw a white-bearded man sitting on a lawn chair reading a book. His chair overlooked a copse of oak trees and white pines. A nice spot, I thought, as I passed him, heading for the copse. I wondered what book he was reading, then my mind drifted to other things as it often does.

Fortunately I came out of my reverie to notice that I was walking in the midst of a rafter of wild turkeys. They kept their distance, maybe 25 feet, but oth...

Moonlit Shipwreck by the Sea, Thomas Moran

I have a new book coming out soon: Dark Waters: The Voyage of the Bar Jack.

The plan is to publish mid November if all goes well.

The book is an alternate-history sailing adventure with horror and paranormal elements, much of it inspired by Mayan mythology. The work sprang from a fantasy role-playing game that my brother and I are developing called Dark Trails. The novel is intended to help create a world ripe with possibilities for adventure.

I've been des...

Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine? Ukraine was no threat to him or Russia. The risks of invasion were great and the cost, even for the rosiest scenario, was going to be high. Maybe Putin really believed Russia had legitimate security concerns. Or maybe he believed the nationalistic notion that Ukraine is an inherent part of Russia and never should have become a separate country. 

 

Or maybe he was bored.

 

Putin had gathered all the reins of government in Russia to himself, winning all the power...

Events lately in the realm of politics and culture wars got me thinking about loyalty. It seems much of the trouble we're seeing is, at root, a matter of where people put their loyalties, or, rather, how they order their priority of loyalties.

I like to play board games and I'm an enthusiast of one called Advanced Squad Leader, a game that depicts infantry combat in World War II. It has a binder full of rules and a small but devoted following of mostly military history buffs. I play in tournament...