Meet Mr. Wizard Sir: An interview with Rand Phares

I think I've mentioned that I have an inquiring mind and when I am able, I like to indulge my sense of curiosity. Since I have been a member of Gather, I have met many interesting people; some with whom I have exchanged e-mails and ideas. Others, I've had the opportunity to interview.

Today I have the privilege of interviewing a person who deserves recognition for the hard work he has performed on behalf of the contestants in The First Chapters Romance Contest, Rand Phares. We all know him as FCR Scores and Comment Statistics by Rand P.

This is the site that we, as contestants, visited religiously several times a day (depending upon our level of obsession). In fact, many writers checked in for their Rand fix before checking their e-mail. Waited on pins and needles for his updates. It was because of him we knew where we stood in the contest at a glance. We were ecstatic or in despair as watched our entries move up and down the charts. He patiently explained the hows and whys for us to understand what we were looking at. His work was invaluable to us for promotion and to kick our butts so we got out and commented on other's entries. This took work, caring, and dedication to maintain. He will be doing this for the Mystery Contest as well.

I know he is a man of mystery to me and many of you. I jokingly call him Mr. Wizard, sir. This is partly out of respect for him, and partly, because having worked with computers, the bane and blessing of my existence, I had an idea just how much work is involved in setting up a program. I am doing one at work now and I am not a programmer. For all that I have named my computers, they are tools. I simply want to push the buttons and they do what they are supposed to do. I don't want to have to think about it, tweak it, or know their innards. Just work, darn it!  I am impressed with what he did for us and justifiably so.

May I introduce to you, Mr. Wizard sir: Rand Phares.

Would you tell us a bit about you? I noticed under your name you have NC and
KS, making a wild guess, is this North Carolina and Kansas?

Yes. My home is in North Carolina, but I work in Kansas as a software manager
in the Health Care industry. It's an odd situation, but hopefully it won't be
this way for too much longer.

What made you think of doing a ranking of the authors in the contest?

When the Romance entries were announced and listed in the same article, minus
the ratings, votes, and comment counts, it struck me that it was going to be
tough for entrants and readers to keep track of how everyone was doing as the
first round progressed. I knew people weren't going to be able to visit every
article every day; it would simply take too long. So I wrote a program to grab
data from all the chapter web pages and present it in one place. Showing
ranking was a natural extension of that work. Since the '10' votes were the
only ones that counted, but Gather hadn't eliminated the '1' through '9' votes
(as they should have), I knew it would be confusing for people to really know
where they ranked, since the ratings were meaningless. So I added my own
'scoring' math based on ratings and votes, and that let me rank everything. In
the end, it proved pretty accurate.

My understanding is you also did sort of a private dry run with something
similar in the first contest, is that correct?

Yes, I did. I kept track of all the FC1 entries, to get a sense of what types
of chapters were getting good ratings, and which weren't. It was a lot of work
to visit each chapter and grab the numbers by hand, and it didn't occur to me
then to do it programmatically. I was very interested in how the chapters were
doing, because I was putting the final touches on my own entry, and planning to
submit it near the end. The only data I published from this effort was a chart
showing that early entries hadn't made a good showing among the winners, and
that over half the entries were published during the final two weeks.

I have to tell you, what you did with this ranking program was impressive. Not
only did it feed our obsessive need to know, but also it helped with promotion.
It must have taken an enormous amount of time to set it up and maintain it.

Creating the program was pretty simple. I think I had the first version up and
running the night the entrants were announced. After that, it took 10 minutes
to run it and paste the results into the article every time I updated.

Are you a computer programmer or statistician, which in my mind, corresponds to
genius, lol. (Remember this is the lady that numbers (aliens) whisper in my
ears incomprehensible things in foreign languages)

I've been programming for a long time, and have degrees in Engineering and
Math, so numbers come pretty easy. (Still waiting for someplace to apply
Riemannian geometry, though.)

I'll keep that in mind if I need topologist to give me an equation to globally change the topology of my cup and a donut, lol! You'll be the first one I'll think of if I hear of a ‘think tank' in need of someone to work equations in four dimensions or on the theory of relativity. (I apologize in advance to all the mathematicians for the over simplification) Hey, I have no problems with the definitions; it's just when numbers and letters are used in the same equations that my eyes glaze over.

So how long did it take to put the scoring chart together?

Maybe a day.

Did you write some kind of program that pulls the information directly from the
entries so you didn't have to visit each entry at each update period?

Absolutely. One of the things I wanted to do was to stop people from having to
visit each chapter to read the numbers. I certainly wasn't going to use that
method myself to solve the problem, thus the program.

Wouldn't you have to visit each entry to compile your figures initially?

No. Kristen's article listing the entries was all I needed. It contained the
article ID, the title, and the author's login name. I just pulled those pieces
of information out of the article, plugged them into my program, and let the
program do the hard work.

Rand, you had almost 300 writers hanging on your every word. Did you feel any
pressure?

No pressure at all. I did let out a maniacal laugh every time I posted, though,
knowing that I held the fate of the world in my hands. Finally, I'd reached my
life-long goal of CONQUERING THE ... No, scratch that. Shouldn't tell my
secrets. (Composes self.) No, no pressure at all.

LOL! Ok, where's Pinky?

Being new to Gather, I know very little about you, aside from the fact you are
a bit of a mystery and a wizard with numbers. I have read some of the story
bits you've written and you are a good writer. I especially like Time Bomb
and I'm intrigued with the opening chapter and would have continued reading,
had there been more to read. Are you working on a manuscript at this time?

I'm glad you liked Time Bomb. That was just a collection of notes when the
Wombat's First Paragraph contest was announced. I thought it would make a good
entry, so I knocked out the first 100 words. People seem to have liked it. Once
the contest was over, I fleshed out the rest of the first chapter, and that's
what's posted now. Someday I'll turn the rest of the notes into the rest of the
book.

I'm currently re-re-re-editing a horror story called The Feast. It was my FC1
entry, but I've changed it quite a bit since then. The original version of this
book has already had an unsuccessful agented run through the NYC publishing
houses, but that was a long time ago, and I resurrected it for FC1. Once the
re-re-re-editing is finished, I'll start the query process. (In its original
run, it was picked up by the first agent I queried, but I'm not expecting that
to happen again.)

I noticed that Time Bomb was Sci-fi, is that your preferred genre?

No. Though I do have a sci-fi trilogy in the works (Outpost), I also have The
Feast, a second horror story (Night House), and a murder mystery (Copycat).
(No, I won't be entering the mystery in the upcoming Gather contest. I was
planning to complete the book and enter, but the contest is hurrying on the
heels of FCR, so there's no time.)

I also read The Cradle, a very eerie, otherworldly piece. That piece is for a
contest, isn't it?

Yes, that's for the Wombats Phantasmorgia contest, which wraps up at Halloween.
Though I have a number of horror short stories in my personal slush pile, I
decided to write something new for the contest that would be a quick read. I
probably spent about 10 hours on it. When it was finished, my wife was the
first reader, but I made sure she read it in the daylight.

I bet she pulled all the shades or blinds in the house that night. That story not only stays with a reader but it haunts you.

The icon you are currently using corresponds with your story. Did you design
that yourself?

Yes. Purely a PhotoShop creation.

In the first round I notice that your icon was a sword in a stone? What's the
story behind that icon?

That's a small piece of a larger picture, a sword stuck in a stone in a foggy,
wet place. Before video games, there were text adventures, and the grandfather
of them all was "Colossal Cave", aka "Adventure". The sword is one of several
digital images I created from scenes in that game. When I needed a Gather icon,
I searched through all my artwork and chose the sword.

When do you find time to write?

Evenings and weekends. I went through a frenzy of writing many years ago (The
Feast came out of that), then took a long break to raise a family and work on
other types of projects. Now that the kids are out of the house, I've turned
again to writing.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

John Sandford, Bernard Cornwell, Patricia Cornwell, Dean Koontz, C.J. Sansome,
Elmore Leanord, Stephen King (his early books), Patrick O'Brian. I just
finished "Dark of the Moon" (Sandford) and "The Good Guy" (Koontz), and have
started "The Name of the Wind" (Rothfuss) and a horror anthology "Alone on the
Darkside" (Pelan).

What are your goals as a writer?

To become published, build a fan base, quit the day job, live where I want, and
support my family through my writing. (Not much, eh?) Day jobs are things you
have to stop doing at some point in your life, but writing is something you can
continue with for as long as you're willing and able.

Very ture.  Will you be doing a score chart for the upcoming Mystery Contest?

Yes, I'm looking forward to it.

Rand, I appreciate you taking the time out of your obviously busy schedule to satisfy my curiosity.

Thanks for the opportunity, Sylvia.

It was my pleasure, sir.

Personally, I think Rand deserves something for such an undertaking. No doubt he earned many points for his contribution (all those obsessed writers), but still I feel that there should be an award for such work and a reward, wouldn't you say?

I hope that you enjoyed learning more about Rand as much as I did.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my appreciation or respect for of the work for this contest. Excellent job, Rand!