M.A.Harris

About M.A.Harris

Born in England in the mid years of the socialist experiment I moved to the US with my parents and brothers when my father, a manufacturing automation engineer, moved here to work for one of the big US tech companies of the day, one of those who exist in name only now.  We were in some ways economic refugees since at that time there were three boys (still are) in a country where 1 + child was the norm.

I am a third generation engineer, a mechanical engineer who has worked for the government, myself, a tech start-up, a foreign-owned defense middle weight and most recently a power semiconductor manufacturer.  I am a mechanical engineer who has worked in the electronics/electrical field my whole career, at first in manufacturing/materials and later in packaging development and design, then transitioned to power electronics (as in the drives for EV’s etc, and then electric motors.)  I’ve been in manufacturing, detail design, concept design, product development and research, as working engineer, engineering manager and administrator process manager, in both government and corporate environments (I have lived Dilbert cartoon in real life…and I am nearly the same age as his creator Scott Adams and love Scott’s vlog.)

I usually love my job, (when it’s not driving me nuts) and have had the luck to work with a lot of wonderful and brilliant people on a broad range of programs, developing concepts and proposals for systems from rail guns to wireless remote monitoring systems for hospitalized children.

Reading came late for a child who had some issues with a form of Dyslexia, but when I got the hang of it I went from having a hard time with Dick and Jane to reading Zane Grey, G.Heyer, Heinlein and Clark with the book hidden in my desk during class in less than six months.  As soon as I learnt the wonders of reading and the wonders of the inner mind I wanted to write.

In high school and college Arthur C. Clark was my muse (I still re read Rendezvous with Rama every few years) along with L.L’amour, J.Pournelle and L.Niven as well as authors writing on the history of weapons and warfare such as Ian Hogg and Keegan. Most recently I have been reading a lot of philosophy and following a lot of blogs on politics, economics, current events, technology and space.

 I started writing in junior High School and I was the only guy to take typing  in High School, convinced that it was a skill I would need for computers and writing both things I saw in my future (and because my handwriting was and is awful.)  I have always been interested in computers as tools to do things rather than things in themselves.

For the first decade and more of my career I bought new computers almost yearly and wrote stories on them as well as using them for games and such other things as they could do at the time, though writing and graphics were always my primary interest.   Time passed and all I did was tinker.   About fifteen years ago I decided that I wanted to try and write professionally and took the advice of J.Pournelle and S.King on writing, both advising that in the end its about work and some luck, but mostly its about writing lots of words getting lots of critiques and doing lots of edits.

But timing has never been my best skill and I got to the point of actually trying to sell my work just as the old publishing model began to implode.

 After more than five years of frustration (and having several full length novels that my family (all hard-core readers of lots of genre’s) like and having gotten help with content and grammatical edits I am kicking off into the new world of ePublishing. 

In support of that I started This World and Others, where I have and continue to post on a variety of topics of interest to me.