On growing older

So this year, at 37, what do I think of life in general?

It sucks getting old and fat all at the same time. I can’t do anything about the one (except die, and I couldn’t bear to deprive you all of my wit), so I’m trying (again) to reduce the other. Ten pounds in a month may not seem like much, but it’s really quite a lot. I figure now that I’m continuing to try to lose weight it will slow down, but if I can drop five pounds each month, that will put me close to goal weight in a year. And since it took me two years to put this much weight on, if I can lose it in half the time, I’ll be thrilled. I’ve kinda reconciled myself to fighting with my belly for the rest of my life, because I like food and I don’t like to exercise. That combo means that I’m going to be going up and down pretty much for the duration, I need to just limit the swings. So if I can get back down to around 210-220, I’ll be happy bouncing around there. I’d love to see the first number in my weight be a 1 again, just once, but I’m not gonna sweat it.

One thing I’m trying to work on is balance. I’ve spent the last several years (and if we want to be honest about it, my whole life) bouncing between obsessions. Theatre to poker to weight loss to work to writing to poker to cycling to whatever. Well right now I’m trying to do less of a lot of things so that no one thing co-opts all my time. I’m trying to write for at least half an hour a couple times a week. I’m trying to focus on work when I’m at the office, and ignore it when I’m not. Poker has become an enjoyable social activity, rather than something I spend hours every week on. So I’m working towards balance. I’ll let you know if I get there.

I still have hopes that I can turn writing into the career eventually, and getting The Chosen out is the first step. I’m checking the mail every day for my proof copy so I can make it available for purchase, and begin the process of promoting it and trying to sell a few copies. I’m thinking of doing a promotional blog tour for the book, where I pop in on blogs of readers and friends and do a guest post about the book. If you have a blog, and would be willing to let me have a post there to promote my book, drop a comment and let me know. Who knows, I may even put up a post on Pokerstage about it, since that site still gets a little traffic each month.

I’m 37 and not sure of where I’m going with my life. So far it’s been one long string of happy accidents and fortunate outcomes. So since I’ve made it this far without a plan, I see no reason to make one now. Thanks for coming on the ride with me, I’m glad you’re here.

It’s in the mail…

This was in my email box last night, and it was pretty exciting –

Shipped on Mon, 09 Aug 2010  via Mail
All items in your order have been shipped.

In This Shipment
===========================
1 of The Chosen by John G. Hartness (Printed)

This is my proof copy, so hopefully by the weekend I’ll be ready to release it for print and purchase. For a limited time, in a sheer profiteering ploy by yours truly, the book will be $20. After a little while, probably September, the price will drop to $15. These are paperback prices. I’m still waffling on the hardcover price, but most folks don’t buy hardcover anyway, so I’m only moderately concerned.

Here’s the reasoning behind starting off at a higher price – you’re going to pay roughly the same amount out of pocket regardless.

Right now, and through the rest of the summer, Lulu is offering free shipping on any orders over $19.95. So if I price my book at $15, they tack on $4 and change in shipping, and you pay about $20. If I price it at $20, you get free shipping, and you pay about $20. This way you pay the same amount, give or take a buck, and I get the extra cash, which I think we can all agree has no real downside, right?

Now as to the ebook pricing, here’s my reasoning behind the pricing. I want to sell a buttload of books, and I know that isn’t going to happen with hardcopy print-on-demand services. People that don’t know me aren’t going to spend $15-25 on a first novel by someone they’ve never heard of. And there are a lot more people that don’t know me than people that know me. So since a lot more people that don’t know me are buying e-readers nowadays, my best path to reach those people is to market an ebook and price it cheaply.

So why $2.99 and not $1? Because I get more than double the cash at the higher rate. Amazon pays 70% of the purchase price to the author on books over $2.99, while paying only 35% of the purchase price for books under $2.99. I don’t know why, but that math puts me making about $2/book. I’m good with that. I only need to sell 50,000 books at that rate to pay off my mortgage. I don’t really expect to sell 50,000 copies of The Chosen, but what’s the point in making goals if you’re going to make little tiny goals?

So why is it going to be more expensive on iTunes than on Amazon? The path to market is different. To get a book listed in the iTunes store, they recommend using a third-party aggregator; someone that has a contract with Apple to provide them with digital content. Those people provide a service, and they charge accordingly. So to pay the aggregator, and make sure iTunes gets their cut, and still leave me making my $2/book, that adds a buck to the price. But frankly, you can get the Amazon Kindle app for the iPad and buy your book at the cheaper price, and the app is free. So eventually iTunes will wise up, or not, since the same thing applies to albums and they still charge more for albums on iTunes than on Amazon, so more power to them making as much as they can.

So there’s the pricing strategy for The Chosen – if you buy a print copy this summer, you’ll pay a higher cover price but get free shipping. If you buy a print copy this fall, you’ll pay a lower cover price but pay the difference in shipping and I don’t get the money :(. So watch this space for updates, hopefully this weekend we’ll see a launch announcement!

Return of the Grievous River

Last night marked the return to action of the degenerates of the Falstaff home game, albeit not in the Casa de Falstaff. We were at a secret underground bunker (Skoon’s man-cave) rather than my den because Suzy’s been laid up after foot surgery a couple weeks ago. She’s had issues with plantar fasciaitis (sp?) for several years now and had a procedure done where they send shock waves into her heel to break up nodules that have grown into the tendon. She’s healing up nicely and I expect she’ll be able to return to regular housecleaning and lawnmowing duties soon.

But the game coincided with some travel on the part of our merry band of goofballs. Special K is headed off to the desert to do his part making computers safe for democracy again (keep your head down and your butt dry, pal!) and A-List blogger Bobby Bracelet has now relocated to Charlotte, so it was a sendoff game for the K, and a welcome game for the Bracelet, and I’m pretty sure they were both happy with their results on the night.

I built a big stack early by catching cards and playing relatively tight, but the cards I was catching got me into a ton of hands, and the tiny bit of fold equity I had developed vanished before too long. I’ve played so fast and loose in this game for so many years, pretty much all I have to do is look at  flop with chips in my hand and I’ll hear “call” from at least a couple of spots. And I don’t mind that. Most nights. When I’m not getting snapped off.

WARNING – BAD BEAT STORY – if you don’t like them, don’t read. But you’re not getting $1.

So I pick up Aces (for the second time on the night – first time I got the blinds) on the button. I raise from .50 to $4. SB calls, BB pops it to $8. Folds around to me, and I shove (not that impressive, since I only have about $30 more in front of me). SB calls, BB thinks for a while, puts me on the Hammer, calls. I turn over Aces, SB turns over AK, BB shows 88. Flop comes down something like 3-J-9. Turn 7. And you know what the river was right? Since I did put in the disclaimer that it was a bad beat story, it can only be the 10-ball coming from on high to piss me off and send me reaching into my pocket for a 3rd buy-in.

I had pissed away all my profits earlier by catching a set on the river against one of the more aggressive and bluff-happy players at the table, only to find out that he’d turned a bigger set. I hate it when you think you’ve rivered somebody only to find out you were drawing dead on the turn. And I blew the rest of my first buy in playing bad. So after having my aces cracked for my stack I sat out a couple hands, thought it over and remembered something that I read on somebody’s blog a long time ago – my job is to get my money in ahead. That’s all I can do. So I reached in for another buy-in, and reloaded. This was gonna be my last buy-in, since I have long since run out of real bankroll paying for real-world events and now can only grab a little cash when it’s time for a home game.

So then I went on a run, and then I got chirping chips, and then I started to play hands blinds in Omaha, and I got stupid lucky and ended up ahead for the night. But since there was a bad beat story, I figure it’s only right that I relate a couple of winning hands as well. I’d been flopping big hands all night and underplaying them and getting run down because of it all night. Flop two pair, play it too slow and lose to a bigger two pair or flush – that kind of thing. So I decided that the next time I hit a flop hard, I was gonna bet the shit out of it. So I call a preflop raise in late position with 55. Button calls behind me, and three of us see a flop of J-5-x. Original raiser (same guy that turned a set of kings to my rivered set of fives earlier) bet out about a pot-sized bet, and I shoved all in over the top for $106 more. Button thought for a minute and called all in for less. Original raiser thought for a little while and folded. Uncle Phil was the button and turned over his cracked aces, and my set held up. At that point I was about even on the night.

A little while later I called a preflop raise with 87s, and the flop came down 8-J-x. T led out with a bet, and I called, hoping to catch something. Jim the Knife came along as well, and I hit another 8 on the turn. T led again, I called, and Jim stuck around. River was the case 8, and this time I pulled the trigger and raised when T led. Jim thought and thought but finally threw away 99. T thought for a minute and called with her Jack, and I showed my quads to drag a very healthy pot.

I picked up Aces one more time, for three on the night, and won about a $20 pot with them. So for anyone keeping score, that’s Aces for -$50, and 55 for $200. It’s never been said that I play cards well, but I sometimes play bad cards very well. I felt pretty good about last night’s game after I got off tilt for getting my aces snapped off and getting run down for the fourth or fifth time. My reads were usually pretty good, and that’s due in part to spending a couple hours every night playing on Full Tilt. I’ve been doing a bunch of little SNGs and have double my roll to a whopping $100 there. So I’m actually working on my game for the first time in a long time, and I’m seeing some results. Now let’s see if I can go another session without losing everything.

Exciting news, and a pain in my @$$

Exciting news, and a pain in my @$$

So I got proof copies of The Chosen in yesterday, so that I can send a few to local writers to get cover blurbs, and I was all excited. Yay! Hard copies of the book! Then I looked inside and saw that the margins sucked and the print was so small you couldn’t read the damn thing. Boo! The same thing happened with the proof copy of Red Dirt Review, and I thought I had taken care of that, but obviously not so much. So I spent a couple hours last night fiddling with the formatting, and ordered another proof copy. Hopefully it looks good. But on the up side, at least now my proof copies will have the right cover art, because my designer and I have finalized the cover. Check it out below. I think it’s fun, and captures enough of the spirit of the book to get people interested, and I like the red/yellow contrast. So check it out.

And I have decided to make a hardcover available, so there will now be three release dates for the book. Hardcover first, then paperback about a month after that, then ebook a little later. I’m not sure how long it will take Rob to get the ebook conversion done because I know he’s stacked up right now, so I’m still hoping for September. So hopefully for my birthday (next Friday in case you haven’t marked your calendars yet!) you’ll be able to order hardcovers. Then by Labor Day hopefully paperbacks and ebooks will be ready. I’m not sure how long it will take the ebook to be available in the Kindle store or iTunes, but it’ll be available on Smashwords as soon as the formatting is done. So now check out the cover by Lindsay, and lemme know what you think!

chosen_final_v4_web_wm

Something new

And I don’t just mean two blog posts in the same month, although that might qualify as well.

Last night, after a production meeting for Annie (funny the kind of shows we’ll accept when we have to pay for a new roof, isn’t it?) I headed over to the auditions that my buddy Jimmy was having for his company’s season. Jimmy was auditioning a bunch of stuff throughout the year, and I basically put on my audition form that my schedule was retarded but we’d work something out if he needed me. I like Jimmy as a person, and respect the hell out of him as an artist, so I’ll work for him in bit parts and for no money just to be around the kind of energy he has going.

But after I’d read a couple of things for him, something odd happened – he asked me if I was going to sing. I don’t sing. Well, I do, but I’ve been told (repeatedly) that I don’t do it well. At all. But here was a guy with more parts than actors making it a welcoming experience to audition for his musical. And since it’s Cannibal: the Musical, it might be okay to be a little off-key to go with the off-color. So I went out back of the bar (auditions were in a dive bar on the back patio) with Mimi, the musical director, and sang an audition.

Let’s be clear – I have NO musical training. Like, none. So when she said, let’s sing your range, I barely had any idea what she was talking about. But she was patient, and apparently I matched notes with the keyboard well enough for her to get an idea of what I can (or more likely can’t) do musically, and it was a good experience.

But the new part, or at least the part where I was reminded of what it’s like for most people, was the vulnerability I felt auditioning. I haven’t really auditioned for anything for a couple years, and even then it wasn’t a big deal. I put myself in positions where I’m either one of the best people in the audition pool, or at least one of the best people for the role, or I’m pre-cast without auditioning because I run the company, or I audition on a lark and don’t really care if I don’t get a part. It’s been a long time since I actually felt like a real actor feels when I’ve auditioned. Like I wanted to do well, and had no idea if I was doing well or not. It brought back a lot of those early-actor fears and insecurities and wonders and newness and was overall very, very cool. I still don’t know if my schedule will let me do the show even if they do want me, but after going through that, I kinda really want to do the show now. It feels like it would be really interesting to go back to something so far outside my comfort zone and try to master it.