End of Year Signed Inventory Reduction Sale!

End of Year Signed Inventory Reduction Sale!

I have a lot of books in my house.

No, I have a shitload of books in my house. Because I do a lot of conventions, and I have a lot of titles. But sometimes, titles get new covers, or get collected into an omnibus, or whatever, and it just doesn’t make sense to keep a lot of these around anymore.

And I need the shelf space.

So here you go – The John/Falstaff End of Year I’ve Got Too Much Shit On My Shelves Sale!

I have a limited number of each of these titles. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

Shipping is Media Mail, US only for $5.

I will ship anywhere in the world, but it’s going to cost an arm and a leg outside the US. Just warning you.

I’ll sign them, I’ll personalize them, I’ll lick the title page, whatever you need (I won’t really lick the title page. That’s kinda nasty).

Here’s what I have –

Hard Day’s Knight – $10 each – 3 in stock

Paint it Black – $10 each – 2 in stock

In the Still of the Knight – $10 – 2 in stock

Calling All Angels – $5 – 1 in stock

Devil Inside – $5 – 1 in stock

Angel Dance – $5 – 1 in stock

Quincy Harker Year One – $15 – 1 in stock (old cover)

Lawless Lands – $12 – 3 in stock (old cover)

Changeling’s Fall – $12 – 1 in stock (old cover)

We Are Not This – $10 – 5 in stock

Get your orders in via email – john@johnhartness.com. I’ll update this page as things sell, and if orders come in while I’m away from the computer, the earliest timestamp on the email wins.

Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

PS – if you want other signed stuff, feel free to put in an order on my Autographed Books page!

Help Selling More Books – To Con or Not to Con? Conclusion (get it? CON-clusion…never mind)

Help Selling More Books – To Con or Not to Con? Conclusion (get it? CON-clusion…never mind)

So I’ve now written something like 6,000 words on the different types of conventions, which ones I find to be the most profitable, and how to pick the conventions to attend. There’s one con that I haven’t really addressed, and it’s the biggest one that I do every year, and it deserves its own post.

Yup, Dragon Con.

Dragon Con is the largest convention in the Southeast every year, and one of the largest in the country. With over 75,000 attendees spread out among five host hotels plus the Americas Mart in downtown Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, it boasts a lot of the fun of almost every kind of convention, all rolled up into one.

I treat it like an industry con, because I go there to network with other writers, editors, and publishers.

It is at its heart a fandom con, because almost everyone who works tirelessly year round to make it happen is a volunteer who came from fandom.

You can treat it like an autograph con and drop hundreds of dollars on meeting your favorite celebrity and getting photo ops with them (although you’ll pay less for the privilege at Dragon than at many cons I’ve seen).

If all you want is for it to be an exhibit hall con, then you can spend literally days just shopping the multiple floors of the dealers room.

Or you can treat it like a buffet, and take a little piece of panels, a minute or two of autograph hunting, a slice of networking, and a dollop of vendor room. I would tell people if they could only do one con in a year, do Dragon. It has the mist varied experiences, and the most awesome people-watching of any con I’ve ever been to.

I treat Dragon as two of the major types of con – industry con and fandom con. I have multiple purposes for going to the convention, but I’m not there to sell print books, and I’m not there to get autographs. To be fair, I’m not anywhere to get autographs. Other than signed books and Magic cards, autographs aren’t my thing, so even when I do pop culture or autograph cons, I don’t plop down a pile of money to get my picture taken with someone famous. If that’s your thing awesome, have a ball and I hope that the experience is everything you want it to be. It just ain’t my thing.

I go to Dragon to be on panels, which gets me in front of potentially new fans, and to work the Writers’ Bar. A bunch of us took over the Westin lobby bar a few years ago and staked a claim to it as the Writers’ Bar, and it’s worked out very well. Since it’s a little further away from the madness that is the three “main” hotels (the Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton are all in a straight line from each other and connected via walkways affectionately referred to as the Habitrails, so those are the most crowded hotels), the Westin bar tends to be a little quieter, and you can usually find a chair. The Westin also houses the Urban Fantasy programming and the Horror programming, which is predominantly where I’m programmed, so it’s really convenient for me, too. I often stay there, as well, although I’ve stayed in three of the five main hotels and they’re all very nice.

I love doing panels at Dragon, because you’re playing with pros, and to a good crowd. The panels are usually stacked with people that are more famous than me (especially since I’m not famous at all), and are experienced panelists. The moderators are almost always excellent, and at their worst, they’re still pretty good. That makes for a good panel. And getting to sit beside some of my writing heroes has made for some incredible experiences for me as a writer. I’ve been on panels with Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, Mercedes Lackey, and Jonathan Maberry, some of my favorite writers. It doesn’t get much better than that for me. And when I’m on a panel with people that everyone knows, it gives me an opportunity to convert some of their fans into my fans.

I make sure to bring postcards and bookmarks to panels, so that people can have something to remember me by when they get home. I often run out with one or two panels left in the weekend, and that’s the mark of a good Dragon Con for me. I’ve also made some great friends who first met me and read my books because they saw me on panels. And brought me booze. To the panel. Yes, that is a good way to endear yourself to this writer. Bribe me with alcohol. 🙂

But I’m also there working. This past year at Dragon I got career advice on TV adaptations, had a meeting with  major NY editor, talked about a couple of joint projects with several authors, and recruited several people to write novella series for me at Falstaff. The Mason Dixon Monster Hunter series grew out of a conversation that Eric Asher and I had after a panel, and it’s been a good project for both of us. So I spend a lot of time in the bar, not just because I like to drink (which I do), but because that’s where work gets done. I’ll nurse a beer for hours while I talk to new writers about what’s going on in their lives, reconnect with old friends that I only get to see once or twice a year, and chat with folks about the general state of the industry. In that sense, I treat Dragon like as much of an industry con as any other, even though it’s not designed that way. But when you get that many writers, publishers, and editors in one place, deals are gonna go down.

So if you can handle 75,000+ people in one downtown area over four days, you owe it to yourself to try Dragon at least once. If crowds give you trouble, you should probably stay home. There’s no harm in that, either. Taking care of yourself is one of the most important things to learn about the convention life.

So I hope this little series has been useful, and that some of these tips on picking a convention will help you decide on where your budget needs to go. I generally advise a good mix of the trade show/comic cons with the fandom cons, with maybe one industry con and Dragon Con thrown in there. If you want to do the pop culture cons and autograph cons, go for it, but understand that those are not the place to develop your true fans, no matter how many paperbacks you sling in a weekend.

And that’s what it’s all about – developing your True Fans.

I’ll be back next week to talk about something other than cons for a while, despite the fact that I’ll be at Atomacon this weekend. So if you’re in Charleston, come see me!

Angel in the Dust – Chapter 5

Another chapter in the serial. No, I have no real idea where this whole thing is going. You’re all just along for the ride with me. 

Chapter 6

I reckon it was a few minutes before noon when I followed Graves out to the courtyard of the inn, or bar, or whatever you want to call it. It was hot enough to melt the leather right off your shoes, and the dry desert heat made the concrete shimmer. “What are we gonna do?” I asked.

“We ain’t gonna do nothing. I am gonna talk to the Sheriff, and maybe kill him. Or maybe he’ll kill me. Or maybe, just maybe, we can come to some kind of understanding that doesn’t leave one of us lying in a pool of blood and brains.”

“But you doubt it.”

“But I doubt it.” Graves was dressed as much like a man going to meet his bride as a man going to meet his Maker. He shaved when he got up that morning, something he only did on Sundays most weeks. I still didn’t need to shave even that often. He wore a clean pair of pants, with leather chaps and his good riding boots, not the low-heeled things he usually wore when we were in town. His shirt was black, and not the worn-out faded black that clothes get when they spend years in the sun. No, this was a deep, midnight black of dark water at low tide, or a patch of starless sky. He even took special effort to brush the worst of the dirt off his hat, and ran a damp rag along the felt to clean it up as best he could.

Around his neck hung his Bullet. On a black leather cord, his Bullet lay outside his shirt, painted jet black just like his shirt and his boots. I’d never seen Graves wear his Bullet in plain view like that. Most of the time he kept it tucked inside his clothes, touching his flesh. I asked him why one time, and he said “Death come to us all, Wayland. It might as well be warm when it gets here.” Ever since that day, I wore my Bullet next to my skin, too.

We don’t wear badges. Badges are for Sheriffs and Deputies. Badges are for laws. We ain’t about the law. We’re about justice, which sometimes rides alongside the law, but it ain’t never the same thing. But every Brother, somewhere on his person, will have a black-painted Bullet to remind him of who he is, what he has sworn to uphold, and what will someday end him. Graves knew his day was going to end with a bullet, he just wasn’t sure who was going to catch it.

I reckon we stood in that baked concrete courtyard for most of half an hour before a string of six men on horses charged in like their asses was on fire and we had the only trough of water. They were all big men, Hybrids every one of them, with the jeweled eyes, high features, and delicate bones of the Voltarr-Human interbreeding. Every one of them wore a badge. They were all men of the law, and I had a bad feeling they didn’t give a damn about justice. The Deputies made a ring around Graves and me, their horses pawing and stomping and snorting inches away from our faces. Graves stood like a statue, looking at the mouth of the alley. He wasn’t worried about the warmup, he was waiting for the Main Event.

And the Main Event walked down the alley mere moments after the Deputies peeled off from surrounding us and formed up in an orderly rank of six men on the far side of the plaza, The Sheriff, and even before I caught sight of his badge there was no question that’s who this was, walked down the alley slowly, his spurs jingling with every step like a metronome. Ching…Ching…Ching…Ching. He stepped into view, and even for somebody who spent the last three years dealing with some of the worst sons of bitches in the West, he was an intimidating figure. It was apparent even as he stalked through the shadowed alley that he was a full Voltarr. That put him over seven feet tall, with a delicate face almost like a woman’s, only even finer in the details, and an upswept hairless skull under his black Stetson. His long arms swung down almost to his knees, and each of his fingers was longer than my hand. He moved with a lethal grace, like vids I’d seen of tigers, almost gliding with every step.

I’d never seen a full Voltarr before. Most towns have Hybrid Sheriffs, and some just have a Deputy. Some of them are Hybrid, but some are even full Human. Having a trueblood alien as Sheriff said something about the value Carson City held for our occupying lords and masters. His jaw swept down just like his skull swept up, and came almost to a point with his narrow mouth and chin. The dominant feature of his face was the huge pair of emerald-green faceted eyes that were in constant motion, flicking up and down Graves, then over to his men, then at me for half a glance before dismissing me as no threat. Ching…Ching…Ching.

He came to a stop ten yards across the courtyard, his cloak billowing royal blue in the slight breeze. “You were told never to return to Carson City, Brother Simon Graves.” It wasn’t a question, just a pronouncement of fact.

“Yeah, but I figured since the man who said that was dead, it probably didn’t matter none.” My head whipped over to Graves, and I’m sure the look of shock on my face was hilarious. I’d never known this man to provoke anyone, and now he’s bringing up the fact that he killed the Sheriff’s father in front of everyone.

“You were warned about the consequences should you return,” the Sheriff’s voice never wavered, never changed cadence. He just went on with his proclamations like Graves didn’t speak.

“Now you are here, and found guilty of criminal trespass, and unauthorized return from banishment, which is the violation of a direct order from a duly appointed Sheriff. You are a lawbreaker, Brother Graves, and I am here to hand down your sentence. Do you have anything to say for yourself before I pass judgement on you?”

Graves stood up straighter, if that was possible, and looked across the courtyard. “I do not acknowledge your appointment, your authority, the authority of these thugs you brought with you, or the authority of the bug-eyed bastards who dropped you off here. I do not give a good goddamn about your laws, or your rules, or your desires. I am a Brother of the Gun, and I bring succor with my left hand and call down Justice with my right. And I will kill you and every piece of half-alien trash you’ve got if any one of you thinks to clear leather on me.”

Graves was usually the level-headed one. For him to throw down a gauntlet like that, he had some kind of score to settle with this Sheriff. It didn’t matter what kind of grievance he had, through, because his words lit a fire in the Sheriff and his men. They drew as one, and as they reached for their guns, time slowed to molasses. Everything kept moving, but at a crawl, as if my mind sped up and the rest of the world kept right on at its normal pace.

The nearest Deputy’s palm slid into the crook of his gun, the webbing between his thumb and forefinger nestling right behind the hammer on his pistol as his fingers grazed the leather of his holster. Over his shoulder, I saw the man next to him reach across his body for his pistol, slung low across his waist in a fancy-looking cross-draw rig that improved neither speed nor accuracy. Just inside the periphery of my vision, I registered a bunch of faces disappearing from windows and ducking back behind doorjambs as the whores and drunkards took cover.

I drew my Colt and stepped up to Graves’ side. His pistol was already barking, taking the first Deputy to draw in the meat of his thigh. The man went down with a strangled curse, his gun falling to the dirt beside him. Graves put his left hand out on the barrel of my Colt, pushing my arm down until it pointed at the ground. “The rest of your men don’t have to die, Sheriff. You can just haul the stupid one out of here, patch him up, and pretend like we never saw each other.”

“Why would I do that, Brother Graves?” The Sheriff asked, his high-pitched voice and heavily accented speech making him sound even more alien than he looked. The voice just didn’t fit the body, which fit with what I’d alway heard about the Voltarr, that they talked like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Because you’re a ratfucking alien coward like your chickenshit father, maybe?” Graves said, the smile creeping across his face telling me that he never wanted to avoid violence at all, that he wanted to kill these men — all of them, and nothing I could say would change that.

The Sheriff didn’t respond to the latest insult, just drew his own pistol and fired. Graves was on the move before the alien cleared leather, putting bullets in two more Deputies before they even knew the fight was underway. I knew how it was going to unfold, Graves and I had practiced this kind of scenario before, when he was teaching me. He went right, aiming for easier center body shots instead of the more definite kills of a head shot. I went left, taking the side with the downed Deputy, and fired six times in half as many seconds. Two Deputies went down, but the third kept his head, and almost took mine because of it. He led me as I sprinted left, and put a round right in the center of my chest.

I tumbled up onto a porch and collapsed behind a water barrel, prodding at my chest with wondering fingers. I found a bruise, but no blood. The strange vest Graves made me put on before we left the bar had done its job. I was still alive, but from the shooting still going on around me, that wouldn’t last long if I didn’t do something, and fast. I took a second to reload, then got up on one knee and rested my Colt on the top of the barrel. My ribs felt like Hell’s own fire was burning in my chest, but I was alive.

The scene that greeted me was a grim and bloody one. Five of the six Deputies were dead, and the last one, the first man Graves shot, was on his knees with his empty hands high above his head. Graves stood over him, his Colt leveled at the blubbering man’s head. The Sheriff stood unmoved in the center of the courtyard, unfazed by the carnage scattered around him.

“These six deaths are on you, Sheriff. These deaths are the legacy your father left you. This blood is the payment for his sins and yours, and it isn’t near enough to wash this town clean.”

“I have done nothing, Brother Graves. I am the duly appointed Sheriff of Carson City, just like my father before me.”

“Yeah,” Graves spat. “You are just like your father before you. I could see that from the girl’s face when I rode into this courtyard.”

The Sheriff knitted his non-existent brow. “What girl? The Hybrid child? She is not of my get.”

“No, she wouldn’t be. But she is yours, nonetheless. Just like all the others I’ve heard tell of, all through NorCal and even into the cities of Advent. The Sheriff and his Hybrids, for sale or rent. You can do whatever you want with ‘em, because they ain’t human, and they ain’t Voltarr, so nobody cares, do they?” Graves almost spat the words, and a fury I’d never seen contorted his face.

“She is mine, that is correct. I bought her fair and square from her father. I paid him a good horse and two mules for her.” The Sheriff’s voice didn’t even change as he talked about buying that little girl just like he’d buy a saddle. I felt my finger tighten on the trigger against my will as I thought of the girl that took my horse to the stable. She was young, far too young to lay with a man, much less be treated the way Graves was talking. Hybrid or no, she was still a person.

“Well, maybe her papa will come back and haul your corpse to be buried on his fine new horse,” Graves said. “Until then, every complicit son of a bitch is going to die, then I’m going to put you down like the dog you are.”

“Please, mister, I didn’t—“ The man on the ground didn’t even get a chance to get started groveling before Graves put a bullet in his head. He swung his Colt up to the Sheriff, but another shot rang out before he got the gun up. Graves looked confused, then looked down at his belly, where a darker stain grew on his black shirt.

My gaze flicked back to the Sheriff, but his hands were empty. Then I glanced up, and a man stood up on the roof of a nearby building, rifle in his hand. “I got him, Sheriff!” the man called out.

Graves dropped to his knees, his Colt falling to the dirt beside him. My vision went red and I charged out from behind the barrel, murder on my mind and a pistol in my hand.

Help Selling More Books – To Con or Not to Con? Conclusion (get it? CON-clusion…never mind)

Help Selling More Books – To Con or Not to Con? Part 5 – Autograph Cons

This will be the last of my deep-dive posts on the different types of conventions, and next week I’ll do a wrap-up overview kind of post and maybe go over everything I’ve booked for 2018. Spoiler – we’ve over 20 and it’s not even December 2017! And at some point Dragon Con will get its own post because it’s almost every type of con all rolled into one.

This last type of event is my least favorite, and the type that I will frequently avoid. These are the Autograph Cons, or as I unpleasantly (and perhaps unfairly) call them, Starfucker Cons. You’ve seen them, they are conventions where all the promo materials center on the vast number of celebrities they have in attendance, and the whole event is geared around you paying money for an autographed photo.

Now, I know that there are photo opps at a lot of the pop culture cons, like Awesome Con. I know there’s a huge Walk of Fame at Dragon Con. But while you can attend these events for no other reason than to get an autograph, there is so much other stuff going on that I feel you can’t shoehorn those cons into this category.

No, the ones I’m talking about have 2-3 photo/autograph rooms, maybe 1-2 panel rooms with 1-2 panels going on at a time, and a big dealer’s room. These cons are lots of fun for fans of a particular franchise, but not a lot of fun for a writer trying to make back their table rental.

Let’s look at the challenges you’re going to face as a writer at one of these cons. First, there’s no author or artist’s alley, like you’ll find at fandom cons or comic cons. So you’re going to spend the same money as the person selling swords, t-shirts, DVDs, or any other stuff in the dealer room. This is a big jump in price. Tables for artists and authors are usually under $100 unless it’s a very big con. Dealer hall tables at even the smaller autograph cons are usually $300 or more. So that line item on the budget is now tripled.

Since this isn’t a fandom con, there aren’t very many panels. Since this is a con about celebrities, Hulk Hogan is way more likely to be on a panel than half a dozen writers talking about world-building. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how this con is built, and that’s what the people buying tickets want to see. But for a writer, it means that unless you wrote a screenplay that got produced and people cared enough about it to make an entire panel at this con for your film, you are not going to have any panel time. So you don’t have that hour in front of a captive audience to show people how charming, witty, and talented you are. So you aren’t building your brand that way, and you don’t have the opportunity to talk about your work on a panel and make people want to come buy your books.

Since you (and any other writers that happen to be there) aren’t the draw for the event, every sale is going to be work. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you get the easy ones. One con in particular in Tennessee is famous for having fans that come up to your table with spreadsheets of their book collection and buying everything you have that they don’t already own. Those are the easy sales. “What have you released since BookCon last year?” “These three books.” “I’ll buy them all.” Doesn’t get any easier than that. That doesn’t happen at an event where people are there to get a photo opp with a movie star.

For one thing, photos with celebrities are expensive. The top stars charge over $100 per person for these photos. There’s a whole convoluted process by which they get paid for their appearance and that money comes out of the pictures sold, etc. etc., so don’t go hating on Luke Skywalker just because he charges a bucket of money for his photo. A lot of that is on the con organizer. Even more of it is on the back of the market, because as long as people will pay the fee, people will charge the fee. When $100 photo ops stop making money, prices will fall. But even autographs cost money at these events. You can absolutely have an autographed photo of your favorite star from your favorite show. For a price. And I don’t begrudge these actors their money. They’re lugging around a bunch of expensive photos that they have to buy, so they should get paid for them. But that doesn’t mean you should set up a book table at a con that focuses on autograph sales.

Let’s look at expenses for these cons. Most folks are going to spend a grand or two on their annual vacation, I assume. Back in the day, when I had a “normal” job, and Suzy and I took vacations instead of her just going to a con with me and us staying a day or two longer than the event, it usually cost us about $2k for our big vacation for the year. It’s gonna be $500-800 for airfare, then $500 or so for a few days in a nice hotel, then theatre tickets, eating out every meal, doing some touristy thing, and souvenirs. By the time you get home, you’ve dropped a couple grand on the trip. So if you’ve got a $2,000 budget for a vacation, and this big con is your vacation, here’s how the money is going to break down –

$600 for airfare (ballpark for two tickets)

$500 for hotel ($125/night, four nights)

$400 for food (two people, four days)

That leaves $500 out of your $2,000 budget.

Tickets – $120-200 for the con. This is without any VIP stuff. The earlier you buy the tickets, the cheaper.

Photos – $200 – that gets you a couple of photo ops, or a bunch of autographed stuff.

You have $100 left over to spend in the dealer room.

Getting your hands on part of that $100 is not going to be easy, especially in the early days of the event. By Sunday, people will know what they have spent and what they have left over, but if they have $100, and anything flashier than your books catches their eye, you’re screwed.

So it’s not that people aren’t spending money, it’s just that they are predisposed to spend it with you. This is a great event for people selling t-shirts that relate to the fandom of the show, or other things like that, it’s just a tough weekend for booksellers. I’m not saying I won’t do them. I’ve done Fandom Fest (probably never again), I’ve done Mad Monster Party (not bad), and I’m looking at doing a Supernatural fan event in 2018 (I have a lot of crossover fans). But I’m saying that when I’m building out my year, this is the last type of event that I put into my schedule, and only if it’s local and I feel like I have a good chance of making a return. Because just like the pop culture and comic cons, I don’t have any chance to interact with fans other than talking to them at my table and slinging paperbacks. It’s a long weekend, and it’s usually an expensive weekend. So I need to feel like I’m going to sell a bunch of shit to justify it.

I much prefer the fandom cons, like Atomacon, where I’ll be next weekend. If you’re anywhere near Charleston, SC, you should come see me!

Shameless plug aside, I hope these are helpful. If you have questions, you can reach me through the contact form on the site, you can find me on Facebook, and I also have a FB group. I’m pretty easy to find.

Until next time, I’ll be in the bar.

Angel in the Dust – Chapter 4

Angel in the Dust – Chapter 4

Another chapter in the ongoing serial. Sorry I missed posting this yesterday, I had a lot of other stuff going on and it slipped my mind. 

 

Chapter 4

It was near to sundown when we rode into Carson City, and Graves looked over at me with a grim look on his face. “Keep your tone civil, boy. The Sheriff in these parts don’t take much to the Brotherhood.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked.

“It means that he don’t like nobody questioning his authority, and that goes double for people he thinks is likely to take the law into their own hands.”

“Ain’t we on the same side as the Sheriffs?” I was naive then, no matter how wise I thought I was.

Graves gave a snort that almost sounded like a wheeze. “Boy, ain’t you paid attention to nothing besides shooting and whoring the whole time we been riding together?”

I didn’t answer that. Mostly because shooting and whoring were my two favorite things, and we both knew it. “So the Sheriff don’t like Brothers. I reckon I don’t care. If there’s a good lawman in town, we most likely won’t have to do nothing anyhow.” Brothers were often called in to act like constables in settlements too small to have a Sheriff or a Deputy of their own. Carson City was the biggest place I’d ever seen, so I felt sure there were probably a dozen Deputies. I couldn’t imagine there would be much for us to do.

“You’re right, Way. If there’s a good lawman, we don’t have anything to worry about.” I didn’t notice it at the time, but he never said what we’d do if the lawnman wasn’t good.

We rode along the main thoroughfare, Graves leading on Louise, me following on Mazy. She was excitable around all the people, and between trying to keep my horse under control and whipping my own head around at the bright lights and the paved streets – real, paved streets! I was about useless at paying attention to anything around me, I was so drunk on the sights and the noise of it all.

After a good quarter hor of riding through town, Graves led us down a narrow side street, just barely wide enough for the horses and a person to walk abreast. He slid down off Louise, and I followed suit, keeping tight to him in the sudden crush of people. I stroked Mazy’s neck, whispering calming nonsense words to her as her eyes rolled.

“She don’t like all these tight spaces,” I murmured to Graves’ back.

“Not much further,” was all he said. But, true to his word, he led us another dozen yards or so, then the alley opened up onto a wide courtyard with a big patch of open sky overhead. Mazy settled right down as soon as she had a clear view of the clouds and open air around her, and I felt my own chest loosen. A dirty-faced child of maybe twelve ran up to Graves and took the reins right out of his hands. I snatched Mazy’s lead back when he reached for mine, and the boy looked up at me, his eyes wide. That’s when I realized it wasn’t a boy at all, but a fine-boned hybrid girl, slight of build with round, deep blue pupilless eyes that marked her as part Voltarr.

“I sorry, sir,” she girl said, and her voice was scratchy, like her hybrid voicebox didn’t work quite right. “I take horses to stable. Louise is old friend here. What is new horse name?”

It took me a second to untwist the stunted syntax, then I just said, “Mazy.”

“I take Louise. I take Mazy. To Stable. To Food. To Water. You go to inn with Gravesman.” I handed over the reins without a word, and she stepped right up to Mazy. Even as a yearling, Mazy dwarfed the half-alien girl, but the child showed no fear. She just bumped her forehead right into Mazy’s long nose and snuffled up against her like she was another horse. Whatever she said to the horse in whatever language she said it, Mazy didn’t pull away, just went quietly away with the child.

I shook my head and started off after Graves, who was almost to the door of what I reckoned to be the inn. It had a sign over the door with a pair of crossed bottles, and from the rudimentary reading lessons Graves had inflicted upon me, I knew that it said “COLD BEER INSIDE.” Those were my favorite words at that particular moment, so I hurried across the courtyard into the tavern.

I stepped inside the dim room and blinked, trying to force my eyes to adjust from the bright sun outside. At first glance, it was a typical saloon, the kind every town has a couple of. A wooden bar stretched the length of one wall, with a man behind it moving dust around with a rag that probably held more germs than some hospitals. A pool table sat ignored in a clear space near the back wall, where a pair of doors led to his and hers restrooms. A dozen round tables took up most of the floorspace, with an upright piano abandoned against the wall opposite the bar. I spotted Graves sitting at one of the furthest tables from the door, already set up with a bottle, two glasses, and a vantage point that let him see the entrance and every other table in the place.

I walked over to him and sat down, the hair on the back of my neck prickling as I put my back to the door, but there was no help for it. I took a glass and poured myself a slug of whiskey, then almost spit it out all over his face when I knocked it back. The bitter taste of watered-down tea filled my mouth, instead of the cutting burn of even bad whiskey that I’d hoped for.

“What the hell is this shit?” I asked, leaning forward and dropping my voice so as not to be overheard by the other tables. “If you paid for a bottle of liquor, that barkeep swindled your ass, Graves.”

He gave me that little smirk he always used when he knew something and I didn’t, which happened with annoying frequency back then, and said, “Harrison keeps a special bottle for me behind the bar. He won’t sell that to just anyone, and I hardly ever share. Every man in here knows that, so understand what a privilege I’m showing you by letting you drink from my bottle, boy.”

I paused in mid-splutter, trying to be subtle as I looked around. Not a soul in the place was looking at us, which told me that every man in the bar was paying very particular attention to every single thing we did and said. I nodded to Graves, poured myself another drink, and sat back to sip it. “I appreciate your kindness, Mr….?” I stopped, unsure what to call him in this suddenly strange new world of subterfuge. I’d ridden beside this man for half a dozen years or more at this point, but I’d never seen him be the slightest bit cagey in his dealings with anyone, nor the least bit interested in hiding who he was. But since we rode into Carson City, he had almost been a different person entirely. I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.

“You can call me Graves,” he said. I noticed he didn’t mention the “Brother.” We don’t have badges, and we don’t have a uniform, so a lot of the time if a man doesn’t want you to know he follows The Way, he just won’t tell you. There are a few things that give us away, of course – the stillness most of us have, the way our eyes scan every room when we walk in, the walk of a man who’s always ready to turn on his heel and draw down. But those things are usually only noticed by other Brothers, or people who have been around us for a long time. For some reason, Graves didn’t want it widely known that we were Brothers of the Gun in Carson City, and I was at least smart enough to follow his lead.

We sat, and drank, and Graves watched the door while I got more and more twitchy as time went on. Might have had something to do with all the tea pressing on my bladder, too. I got up and nodded to the back of the room. “I’m going to visit the euphemism. Try not to get too drunk while I’m gone.”

Graves just nodded, and I pushed my chair back from the table with a loud screech. Silence blanketed the room as my boot heels clumped across the floor, then the shrill howl of uncoiled hinges on the bathroom door filled the air. I went inside, locked the door behind me, and took care of business. A faded and tattered poster of an overblown woman falling out of a few triangles of fabric hung over the toilet. I’d never seen anyone dressed like that, but as old as the poster was, I figured it was from Before. She was sexy enough, I figured, if you liked blondes with nothing to hide in the world. I washed my hands and looked at the dingy towel hanging by the sink. I looked from the towel, to my dusty jeans, then back to the towel. Finally I shook my hands through the air a couple of times and ran them under my armpits to dry them off as best I could.

I turned around and unlocked the door, but when I pushed against it to step back out into the bar, it didn’t budge. I pushed harder, and it gave a little before slamming back into the frame, almost catching me on the nose. I reared back and threw a shoulder into the door, and this time when it slammed back, a voice came from the other side. “Keep your shirt on, kid. We got a few words to share with your drinking companion, then we’ll let you out.”

“You’ll let me out of this room now or I’ll start pumping lead through this door,” I growled.

“Do you really think that sounds smart, kid?” The voice replied, a chuckle nestled under his question. “You ain’t got nowhere to take cover in there, and I got a double-barrel scattergun pressed up against the door. You got six bullets, but I got two barrels full of shot that’ll cut you in half before you come close to hitting me. So why don’t you just sit back down in there, spend a few more minutes staring at Farrah’s tits, and as soon as my pal is done conversating with Brother Graves, this door’ll open again.”

I backed away from the door, not because he sat he had a shotgun, but because he knew Graves was a Brother. Everything we had done since we stepped into this saloon was to keep that one fact hidden, and he just tossed it out there like a bad penny. I closed the lid on the toilet and sat down, drawing my Colt. I might have to stay in the bathroom, but eventually they’d let me out. When they did, I’d make them regret locking me up in the first place.

A couple minutes later, the door swung open a hair, and I could tell the pressure on the other side was gone. I sat for a count of a hundred, giving anyone on the other side plenty of time to get bored or get out of the way, then I stood up and walked out of the bathroom. The bar was empty except for Graves and the bartender, who stood in the same spot he’d held when I went into the crapper, his gaze glued to the surface of the bar like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

I walked back over to the table with Graves and sat down. “You want to explain why I just spent five minutes trapped in a saloon shitter because some asshole wanted to have a conversation with you?” I was something of a hothead back in those days, and I felt mighty aggrieved at being trapped in a toilet against my will. Never mind the fact that it was a clean and perfectly comfortable toilet, I just needed something to be annoyed at about once a week when I was a young man.

“I don’t,” Graves said, his voice devoid of any emotion. After riding with the man for night on a dozen years, I knew full well he’d tell me, but I also knew that few things amused him more than seeing me get hot under the collar over stupid things. Especially when the stupid thing was me. This time I told myself I was just going to wait him out. I’d show him that I hadn’t just learned how to shoot and ride, I’d learned how to allow things to unfold in their own due time. I wouldn’t rush him, not even the least little but.

But that didn’t mean I had to sit there and drink his godawful tea while I waited for him to get his head out of his ass and talk to me. I stood up, walked over to the bar, and said, “How much for a bottle of whiskey?”

“You particular about a brand?”

“I’m particular there weren’t too many rats floating in the barrel.”

“Dollar.”

I slapped a quarter round of gold onto the bar top. The man picked it up, bit into it, looked me up and down, and said “This is a dollar and half worth of gold.”

“Then gimme a half dollar’s change.”

“You could leave a tip.”

“I might. But if you don’t give me my half dollar’s change I won’t have a half dollar to leave for a tip.”

He looked befuddled by my logic for a second, but handed me back a couple of silver quarters, along with a pair of glasses and a quart jar of brown liquor. I unscrewed the top of the jar, took a deep sniff, and smiled. This was not sour tea. I slipped the money into a pocket, carried the glasses and bottle back to the table, and sat down.

I held the jar out to Graves, who shook his head. Whatever was coming that made him want to stay clear-headed, it hadn’t happened yet. I poured two fingers of whiskey into my glass, then screwed the top back on the jar. I sipped my whiskey and looked at Graves.

He looked back at me, unwavering in his silence.

I took another sip, didn’t speak.

Graves said nothing.

We went on like that for a good five minutes or more, long enough for me to drain my drink and think better of having another, before Graves leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and began to speak.

“The Sheriff wants us gone as soon as the sun comes up tomorrow. He says if we’re still in town by noon, he’ll have us both arrested and hang me at sundown.”

“On what charge?” I asked. We hadn’t been in town long enough to break any local laws, and had no warrants outstanding to warrant hanging. There were a few farmers looking for me on account of some dalliances with their daughters, but those were all a week or more by fast horse from Carson City, and none of those fathers had any reason to hunt Graves.

Graves let out a laugh, a dry, reedy thing that sounded like it didn’t get used much. It didn’t to be honest. I’d only heard him laugh half a dozen times in the years we rode together, and they were pretty much always situations just like this – nothing funny at all. “I asked that same question. Sheriff said he had plenty of time between now and noon to come up with something worth hanging me over, and then likened as how he’d probably flog you bloody before he hung me, so I could see you ruined for riding alongside me before I went to see my maker.”

“Good lord, Graves. What the hell did you do to this Sheriff?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.

Graves looked up at me, his grey eyes boring a hole straight through me. “I gunned down his father in the street like the dog he was. Seems the son holds a bit of a grudge for that.”

“What are we going to do?” I could already tell running wasn’t an option. Graves wasn’t a man to retreat, not even if the odds were stacked against him. This time it looked like the whole town was stacked against him, but I knew better than to think that was going to matter.

“Well, come noon I reckon I’m going to walk out into the center of town and shoot the Sheriff right between his damn eyes. Then we’ll see how many Deputies I have to kill to get out of here this time.”