by john | Aug 21, 2014 | Uncategorized
First, a public service announcement from the kind folks at Grammarly, because grammar is important (no matter how bad I am at it) and plagiarism sucks. I use grammarly’s plagiarism checker because I’m an original SOB, and every other SOB ought be original, too.
Next week is Dragon*Con, also known as “OMFG what are all these people doing in line at this restaurant in Atlanta on a friggin’ weekend!” Here’s my schedule so far –
I get there Thursday night. I’ll probably head down to the Westin Bar to drink.
Friday 10AM – Setting In Urban Fantasy – me, Faith Hunter, D.B. Jackson and a bunch of other awesome folks. Westin Chastain.
Friday 1PM – Reading – I have an hour to read. I have no idea what I’m going to read. Probably part of Fair Play, Part of Black Knight 5 in its RAWEST form, and probably some poetry. Hyatt Roswell
Friday 4PM – Faces of Pulp – me, Bobby Nash, James Tuck and the usually suspects – Westin Augusta 3
Saturday 2:30PM – Bell Bridge Books Spotlight – I’ll talk about why my publisher is awesome! Hyatt Embassy D-F.
Saturday 5:30 PM – Autograph Session – Me, Elizabeth Donald and Stuart Jaffe all signing at the same time. Come say hello! Marriott International Hall South
Saturday 7PM – I want to be like you – Everyday Vampires – I will be hauling ass to get from the bowels of the Marriott to the Westin Chastain room for this, but I’ll be there!
Sunday 4PM – Monster Menagerie – This is my big-ass panel in the big-ass ballroom. I have to remember not to say Fuck on Dragon TV. Westin Augusta Ballroom
Sunday 7PM – Whose Point of View – Hyatt Embassy D-F
Sunday 10PM – Humor in Urban Fantasy – Westin Chastain
That’s all I’m technically scheduled for, and I don’t have a booth this year, so I’m likely to be hanging out more, and attending more panels, and I may find myself added to some of those panels I was planning on just attending, so who knows where you might find me. I know the Westin Bar will be my base camp each evening, and I will have books to sell and sign at the bar and after every panel, so please don’t be shy about coming up to me. Unlike some authors who are afraid they’ll cause a huge friggin stampede, I know I’m a little fish and will sign anything you’ve got as long as it’s not too wet to write on. I totally stole that line from a Hayseed Dixie concert.
Hope to see y’all there!
by john | Jul 3, 2014 | Uncategorized
It’s sad that my posting here has gotten so sporadic that it’s worthy of comment, but honestly, there’s only so much time in the day between writing, social media, binge-watching TrueBlood (no spoilers, fuckers, I’m only on Season 5) and building and re-building my Magic decks.
I said decks. Get your minds out of the gutter.
And while you’re getting your minds out of the gutter, get your asses to Winston-Salem, NC next weekend (July 11-13) for the first ever ConGregate SF & Fantasy con! A group of veteran con runners has gotten together with a bunch of awesome guests (and me, but there’s gotta some filler in the sausage) to put on the Piedmont Triad’s newest con!
Some of you may know that Greensboro’s StellarCon is on hiatus for a while, so hopefully this will fill the void and supplement that show when/if it comes back. I enjoyed the one StellarCon I went to, but it overlapped with Connooga, which had triple the attendance, so I had to pick that one the next year.
So here’s my ConGregate schedule –
Friday
4PM – Signing with AJ Hartley – I always love hanging out with AJ, and he’s got a new audiobook out where Thorin Oakenshield reads his (and James Hewson’s) novelization of Omlet, Prince of Danish. If you don’t get that joke, you don’t hang out with enough Shakespeare nerds in bars. And there are enough Shakespeare nerds at ConGregate to remedy that problem.
8PM – Writing “the Other” – Yes, I am a straight white man on a panel about writing outsiders in society. But I asked to be on the panel, because it is something I write and something I’m interested in, and there are women (!) and people of color (!!) on the panel.
10PM – What are “You” Reading? – this is an audience participation panel, where people bring books to talk about and tell what they’re reading and why. I’m going to bring some books to give away! I don’t know what yet, I just thought of it as I was typing this. I gotta go email some publishers! BRB.
Okay, email sent. So hopefully I’ll have some new books in addition to some gems off my bookshelves for you at ConGregate!
Saturday
10AM –Fuck. I know. That’s pretty damned early. And I’m moderating back-to-back panels. BUT, they’re pretty damned cool panels. In the first one – at 10AM – we will “Build a Big Bad Radioactive Bug” – the panel and audience will create a monster. A badass but beatable monster designed by committee. I know, it’s gonna be an elephant. Or a platypus.
11AM – Part 2 – An entirely new panel will have to come up with ways to “Kill the Big Bad Radioactive Bug” that we built in the first panel. I wish Jason Cordova was gonna be here – this is totally up his kaiju alley.
5PM – Signing with James Maxey. Or James the Lesser as he shall now be know thanks to his incredible fitness regime and weight loss over the last few years. Always fun hanging with James. Come buy my shit.
Sunday
1PM – Fairies and Vampires and Shit – I know that’s not the real title, but that’s what you’re gonna get outta me on Sunday afternoon. At least by this point my hangover will be gone. This should be a fun wrap-up, light and frothy and talking about made-up shit that goes bump in the night.
You may notice I am not doing a reading at this con. I hate reading my prose aloud, honestly, and I hate sitting through readings of other people’s prose. The lone exception is the Tiny Pirate Ninja Theatre that Misty Massey and I created during our readings at Mysticon a couple years ago. If there are toys, and a potential for mayhem, then I suppose it’s alright.
And when is “Alright” going to become a real word? It’s pissing me off. But I digress.
I once heard someone misread Peter David’s column of that name as “Booty Deegress” and have wanted to say it that was ever since, but I’m always afraid no one will understand what I’m saying or they’ll just think I don’t know how to pronounce digress and am stupid. Booty deegress.
So I’m not doing a reading, but I promise to carry books of my poetry with me and if you buy me a drink I’ll read a poem in the bar, in full performance voice. Seriously. I dare you.
Hope to see all y’all at ConGregate!
by john | Jun 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
So since last I posted here I’ve started a new job, worked there three months, got unceremoniously fired from new job, spent a month setting up a new company that will begin operations on July 1 to hopefully provide self-employed income for my family, had a great time at ConCarolinas, shared a booth with Get Some Game at HeroesCon, and written a bunch of shit. I’m still working on In the Still of the Knight, Black Knight Chronicles #5, but we’re moving ahead apace with that one and it should be out by the end of this year. I’m also working on a new Bubba for next month, and the first in a series of novellas featuring a new character for me – Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter.
Quincy Harker is the ridiculously long-lived son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray. You might have heard of them – they had a run-in with a vampire a while back. Well, when Dracula shared blood with Mina Murray, it affected her DNA, casing her child Quincy to be born a little more than human. He’s not a vampire, but he’s not exactly human, either. And he’s a wizard. And a bit of an asshole, honestly. He’s the guy you call when the shit has already hit the fan and been sprayed all over the room, because he’s not afraid to get his boots dirty. The first Quincy Harker novella will be available next month. Here’s a little sample – not safe for kids.
Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Episode 1 –
I fuckin’ hate demons. That’s what ran through my head as I got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to the Garda home. It was a nice place, for the suburbs. There was a two-car garage off to one side, a neatly manicured lawn leading up to flowerbeds in front of a nice little porch, and an SUV in the driveway because I’m sure the garage was full of bicycles, tools, lawnmowers and other shit that I only see when I get a call out here in the ‘burbs. I live in a condo in the middle of downtown Charlotte, so the only time I see lawn equipment is when I get lost in a home improvement store looking for a new mallet or maybe a new wheel for my grinder.
I walked up to the pale yellow siding nightmare of a home and stepped up on the front porch. The welcome mat was a little askew, the only imperfect thing in an otherwise totally Good Housekeeping image. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, opening my second sight and taking a look around. My third eye saw nothing out of the ordinary on the porch, no roiling black evil miasma ready to consume my soul and suck me down into the depths of Hell. It looked just as Martha Stewart in the supernatural spectrum as it did in the visible one. Good, I thought, maybe the little darlin’s just on the rag and I can get the fuck out of here and back uptown before the game lets out and traffic gets stupid.
I opened my eyes and snapped back to the mundane world. After a second to adjust back to seeing the world with my eyes instead of my soul, I rang the bell. A dog immediately went apeshit on the other side of the door, as if the real trouble wasn’t already in the house. A couple of shouted “shut up”s later, the door opened and a flushed forty-something man opened the door. The top of his balding head stopped at about my nose, but I’m tall, so I was used to that. His polo shirt had sweat stains under his man boobs, and it stretched tight across his spectacular belly. He looked up at me, close-set brown eyes set deep in a florid face, capped off with a red nose that only happens when you’ve hit the bottle pretty hard for a pretty long time.
“You Harker?” He asked, glaring up at me.
“Yep.” I said.
“You got ID?” He asked.
No. I just randomly wander up to houses in suburbia and pretend to be an exorcist, hoping to arrive at the exact time their appointment was set for. I bit my tongue before that one could escape and just handed him my card.
“You got any photo ID?” He had that belligerent tone of a middle manager, the kind of guy that shits on all his employees’ good ideas until somebody smarter than him hears them, then takes credit for the good one.
I didn’t bother to hold back this time. “You want my badge number, too? This shit doesn’t exactly come with a union card, pal. You called me, remember? I’m here, the right time, the right address, now let’s see if I’m in the right place. I’m Quincy Harker, you got something needs banishing or should I just go back to my sofa and NFL network?”
“Sorry, sorry. No need to be a —“ he cut himself off, but I didn’t.
“Dick? Yeah, I’m a dick. You’re the stupid bastard who lets a demon into his teenage daughter, yanking me off the couch in the middle of the first Panthers playoff run in living memory, but of course I’m a dick because I didn’t immediately take off my hat and wipe my shoes before entering your fucking Ikea palace here. Now point me towards your daughter’s room and get out of my way before I do something really dickish, like turn you into a toad.” I pushed past the stammering jackoff and stomped towards the stairs, registering him mumbling something about the bedroom at the end of the hall. I didn’t need his instructions, as soon as I stepped onto the second floor I could feel what I was there for. This time the sense of evil, of just wrongness was so strong I didn’t need my Sight to find it. It almost knocked me over the second I turned toward the door.
The hallway was just like a normal two-story house, scene for slaughter in so many slasher flicks. There was a small bathroom to the right of the stairs, and three bedrooms arranged around the left-hand hallway. One of these would be the master bedroom, with its own bath, and the other two would be the kids’ rooms. The one on the left had pictures of motorcycles and rock bands with more makeup than KISS, but the one at the end of the hall was unadorned. Just a simple brass nameplate announcing it as Kayleigh’s room.
I could tell from thirty feet away that Kayleigh’s room had some seriously evil shit in it. I rolled my head and cracked my knuckles, then opened up my Second Sight to get a good look at the evil in the magical spectrum.
I slammed my Sight shut almost as quickly as it came into focus, shaking my head to clear the images from my mind. But there is no Visine for the mind’s eye, and I was stuck with that shit forever. Whatever was on the other side of that door wasn’t human, was powerful as shit, and was really hungry. It was also in a really good mood, which disturbed the fuck out of me. There’s nothing worse than a happy demon, at least as far as the humans around it are concerned.
“Mr. Garda?” I yelled down the stairs.
“Yes?” His voice came back. I might have heard ice cubes jingle in a glass. Good, if this was as bad as I thought it was, he was going to need to get seriously drunk.
“Who else is home?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, who else is in the building? Is your wife here? Your son?” I left off the “jackass,” but it was pretty well implied.
“No, they’re gone. My wife is out of town on business for two weeks, and my son has been staying at a friend’s house since Kayliegh got sick. It’s just you, me and Kayleigh.” And whatever has got its claws wrapped around Kayleigh’s soul.
“That’s good. You might want to leave yourself for a little while.” Please don’t ask a lot of fucking questions.
“Why?”
Shit. “Because what I’m dealing with up here is pretty dangerous, and I don’t want you to get hurt.” And I don’t want this fucker to have another vessel to jump to if your daughter suddenly becomes uninhabitable.
“I don’t think I can -“
“Would you please just get the fuck out so I can quit worrying about your fat ass and save your daughter?” I yelled. Maybe a little direct, but I really didn’t want to have to fight this thing more than once. I heard a clatter of footsteps and then the front door slammed shut. Nice. I didn’t believe he’d actually leave. Maybe that panicked edge in my voice was useful after all.
I turned back to the door. “Just you and me, now, buddy. So why don’t you come out of the girl and let’s handle this like men?”
The voice that answered rang through my head like a dentist’s drill, piercing and ululating. “I can’t come out. Not yet. But when I do you’ll see that I’m nothing like a man.” Then it laughed, and in that laugh were the screams of millennia of tormented souls, all shrieking together to make one terrible sound.
“Then I guess I have to come in.” I said, and strode to the door. I lifted a size 11 Doc Marten and kicked the door just beside the lock. The jamb splintered, the door flew in, and my worst nightmares were realized.
by john | Feb 17, 2014 | Writing
Otherworldly Lines
If you are not moved by Roy Batty’s final words at the end of “Blade Runner,” then you are the replicant—a poorly built one at that, lacking an emotions chip. Just in case you have forgotten those impassioned words, here they are:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Wow! The ‘wow’ was this author’s uncontrollable reaction, not part of the famous quote itself.
“No, I am your father.” Hearing these five words for the first time felt like getting hit in the face with a bag of bricks. If you are lost, exit the cave right now—you have been in there way too long. This is Darth Vader’s revelation to Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back.” It may not seem like a big deal nowadays, but back in 1980, it was as mind-blowing as it could get. Note: Many people seem to think that the line was, “Luke, I am your father,” but it’s not. See for yourself.
Coming off an extremely disappointing, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979, expectations were low when “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” released three years later. It has been 32 years since, and with all the subsequent “Star Trek” movies, many fans believe that “Star Trek II” outshines them all. This brief interaction has a lot to do with it:
Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh…”
Kirk: “The needs of the few.”
Spock: “Or the one.”
Goose bumps anyone? Here are some things you may not know about our favorite sequel.
This was just a very short list of breathtaking lines. Weirdmedia has 100 out-of-this-world quotes for you to feast on.
It’s What Got Us Here
Take a moment and think of all of the wonderful innovations used regularly. We have Netflix streaming, BetFair gaming, satellite radio, and GPS gadgets, just to name a few. These and many more life-changing inventions are here because of dreamers, constantly trying to reach for the stars.
What inspired these brilliant minds and did Science Fiction play a role? Were they fans of “Star Trek” or H. G. Wells? Asking these questions is not just important—it is our responsibility as well. The answers could provide us with a blueprint for ingenuity and set our children on similar paths. It could make the world a better place for generations to come. Check out the top ten most influential Science Fiction writers, provided by Listverse. I’m surprised that Gene Roddenberry was not on the list.
The Science Fiction genre offers a universe of poetry that sparks the imagination and enriches the soul. The importance of such beauty cannot be overstated. The inspiration it releases into the atmosphere on a daily basis allows us all to dream. And dreaming is the seed of discovery and creation.
This is a guest post by Michael Page. Michael is an avid sci-fi fan and film enthusiast. When not blogging about all things science fiction, he enjoys binging on the latest video games and eating chinese food.
by john | Dec 31, 2013 | Magic:the Gathering
As I’ve gotten back into playing Magic:The Gathering, it’s given me a way back to blogging, but I realize that not everyone who reads my blog plays Magic. Or has any idea about how to play Magic. And when my friend T was trying to learn the game, she wanted to know what book she could buy that would teach her how to play, and how to build decks, and all that jazz. That’s when I realized that there really isn’t a good beginner’s guide to Magic right now. So I figured I’d write one.
You know, along with all my other projects.
But I also thought that if I did it as a series of blog posts first, that would allow me to kill multiple birds with one stone. I get to write the Magic book I want to see available. I get my blog back on track and it becomes a place for people to find out more about me and my writing. And I get to do it in small enough snippets to fit it in between the other projects I’m working on.
So here’s the beginning. This is Part 1, the general concepts.
You are a Planeswalker. This is the intro to Magic:The Gathering. Four little words, that started a bajillion-dollar business. You are a Planeswalker. Right there in that sentence is a lot of information, and a lot of mystery. It tells you that you’re going to go somewhere outside yourself, you’re going to have an element of roleplaying in the game, and that there will be something new and exciting involved. Planeswalker – what the hell is that, anyway? Well, we’ll get there.
At its heart, Magic (or MTG) is a collectible card game. Two or more players (but for the purposes of most examples here, two) take on the role of wizards trying to destroy their opponents. Both players start with a predetermined life total, and they can win the game either by reducing their opponent’s life total to zero or by forcing them draw a card when they are out of cards to draw. That’s most of it. There are a few alternate win conditions that are dependent on cards, but those are the most common paths to victory.
As with life, there are plenty of examples in MTG that contradict the basic rules. There are advanced cards that literally change the win conditions of the game, but they are few and far between. What I’m going to try to do is present the normal circumstances of the game, and you keep hold of the basic understanding that if there’s a card on the table that says that the normal rules are suspended for a time, that card applies. For example, some cards say that if you have X amount of life (where X is typically greater than your starting life total) you win. If that card is in play, you have a third path to victory. But those are outliers and we won’t spend too much time on them.
So you have a deck of cards, and you have a friend with a deck. Those two things are all you really need to play Magic. Cards and a friend. And frankly, if you’re short on one and have plenty of the other, there are local game stores to help you acquire whichever one you’re lacking.
So sit down with your friend and your deck, and you’re ready to play. You each start with 20 life. Your job is to bash your opponent to zero while not allowing your opponent to bash you to zero. You do this by casting spells. And you cast spells by using something called mana.
Mana is the energy of the world around you. The elemental forces, if you will. There are five different colors of mana, each representative of a different style of magic. Over time, you’ll determine what type of magic best suits your personality and play style, and you will naturally gravitate toward those types of decks. Each color has a personality, and types of creatures that go along with it.
The five colors of mana are Black, Blue, Green, Red, and White.
Black is the color of death, disease and things that go bump in the night. Creatures like zombies, vampires, ghouls, ghosts and demons are typically black. Black spells frequently use your life total as a resource. You may spend life to draw cards, summon creatures, deal damage, etc. Black has a lot of spells that take life from your opponent and give it to you. Black also has spells of disruption, that take cards out of an opponent’s hand or destroy the creatures that they have out on the table. I play a lot of black decks, because I write horror novels. What do you expect me to play, decks full of sunshine and unicorns?
Blue is the color of rational thought and control. Blue is also the color of the sea and sky , so lots of fish, merfolk, birds and flying creatures. Blue has long been considered one of the most powerful colors in MTG, partly because it features lots of spells that let players draw extra cards. Having more cards than your opponents is a huge advantage in game play, so it’s never something that should be overlooked. Blue is also very disruptive, because it has counter-magic. Basically spells that just say “NO” to anything your opponent wants to do. I like to play blue because I like to be in control, but it’s sometimes considered an “un-fun” color.
We’ll get to the other three colors next time, because I want to keep these under 1,000 words and I babbled too much in the beginning. Anyway, I’ll try to do at least one of these Magic intro posts each week, and maybe by the end of the year I’ll have the guide written. If anybody has any hookups at WOTC, I need to know who can give me permission to use their trademarks like mana symbols in illustrations.
