by john | Jul 18, 2011 | Uncategorized
Brent is more than welcome to come squat in my cyber-space, especially after the great review he gave to Hard Day’s Knight! Check out his new book, Bert the Barbarian, over on Smashwords! You can find out more about Brent and Bert on his website here.
I’m thoroughly happy to be kicking off my blog tour in the company of John Hartness. John writes his books just the way I like ’em. I checked out Hard Day’s Knight and I think I was laughing out loud before I reached the end of the first page. He doesn’t let a good joke get in the way of a good story, though. Mystery, suspense, action, it’s all in there. And the prose is solid as well. John’s hitting the marks that I’m aiming for.
But enough about him. I’m here to talk about myself, or more accurately about my creation. I’ve been a novelist for a couple of decades now, but not a successful one. It takes a long time to learn this goofy trade. I wrote, I re-wrote, I sent submissions off to editors and agents, and I racked up an impressive stack of rejection letters. And I got discouraged.
After a while I wasn’t writing very often. I wasn’t satisfied with the results when I did write. Writing was a disheartening chore, and the meagre results hardly seemed worthy of lining the floor of a bird cage.
Then I heard about NaNoWriMo. How many of you have heard of it? Let’s have a show of hands. Okay, more than I expected, but not nearly everyone. NaNoWriMo stands for “National Novel Writing Month.” Speaking as a Canadian I can assure you that it’s international. The idea is to spend the month of November writing a novel of at least 50,000 words. NaNoWriMo is a beautiful concept because it gets writers out of all kinds of mental traps. If you’re going to finish a novel in a month you can’t agonize over every paragraph. You can’t spend a year trying to get the first chapter perfect. You have to move on.
It was exactly the kick on the seat of the pants that I needed. After years of dithering I finally got back to work, and an unexpected bonus was that writing became fun again. It actually took me about three months to get through my first draft of Bert the Barbarian, but that was still a massive increase in productivity.
At the end of it, of course, I had a deeply flawed manuscript. However, you can’t fix a blank page. For me at least, the only way to write a good novel is to write a bad novel and then refurbish it. It’s been a couple of years and an astonishing amount of learning since I finished that first draft. I’m pretty proud of the end result.
Bert the Barbarian is science fiction that reads like heroic fantasy. Bert Hoover, who’s a bit of a loser, gets kidnapped and taken to a primitive planet. His friend Janice is in terrible danger with no one else to turn to. Bert must find strength and courage to escape from slavery, rescue Janice, and find a way back home. Look for it wherever fine e-books are sold.
Thanks for stopping by Brent, and good luck with Bert!
by john | Jul 15, 2011 | Theatre
We take a break from our regularly scheduled discussions of writing and promotion to talk about my imminent return to the stage. On a lark, I auditioned for a role in the upcoming play The Irish Curse, directed by an old friend of mine. There were a couple of factors that made me want to audition. I’ve known the director for ten years or more, and we used to run a theatre company together, so he knows I can act a little. So it was a stress-free audition on that front. There were two roles that I thought would fit my type, which is becoming increasingly rare as I get older and fatter. And then there were the magical words in the audition announcement – “all roles will be compensated.”
You see, I’ve spent more than twenty years in theatre in some form or another. I’ve designed, directed, produced, performed and done almost everything that there is to be done in a piece of theatre. For the record, the list of jobs I haven’t held is – Musician, Musical Director, Choreographer, Dancer, Props Designer, Dresser and Dramaturg. I think I’ve done everything else that has a name, including Costume Designer, Makeup Artist and Poster Designer to name just a few. And I’ve been compensated fairly well for some of those things.
But I’ve never been paid to act. I’ve been paid to speak in front of crowds, and I’ve been paid to perform poetry for an audience and cameras, but I’ve never been paid to be an actor. And that’s always bugged me a little. I haven’t auditioned much (not in years), but it always felt a little off that I’ve never done anything as an actor that garnered me any cash.
So I auditioned. I have no idea how many guys came out that fit the part, but I got it. And having been on the other side of the audition room, I know that there are a lot of things that go into casting. Being friends with the director helps. Being easy to work with helps a lot. Having a proven capacity for learning my lines and not tripping over the furniture doesn’t hurt, either.
So I was cast as Father Kevin in The Irish Curse. The cast so far has been great to work with, and it’s a lot of fun working with Glenn (the director) again after all these years. But I’m working muscles that haven’t seen much use lately, so to speak, and it’s an adjustment. I haven’t been onstage since 2008, and that was only a few lines. I haven’t had a major role since 2007, and haven’t performed any contemporary shows in even longer. So I’m trying to remember how to learn lines, how to learn blocking, and still trying to fit writing in amongst all that. It’s a challenge, to say the least.
But it’s a lot of fun, and it’s reminding me why I decided to do this all those years ago. The friendships, the fun of working hard for a good show, the magic of theatre. If you’re around in August, stop by the show. It’ll be a fun ride.
by john | Jul 14, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today we welcome Christine Amsden, author of The Immortality Virus. Christine is the first indie author to take me up on my offer of guest posts here, and I’ve got one scheduled weekly for the next two weeks as well. She’ll tell us a little about her book and where the idea came from. You can check it out on Amazon here, and on Barnes & Noble here.
Dreams of Immortality
Inspiration never strikes me all at once. It grows from seeds, and it takes time to blossom. When it came to “The Immortality Virus,” it all began with Wikipedia, and the “random article” button. My debut novel, “Touch of Fate,” had just been released and all I had were vague notions of doing something more science fiction than fantasy for my second book.
I like to tell beginning writers that ideas are cheap, and they’re everywhere — in the news, in the fight you had with your best friend, in your dreams, and even in Wikipedia. An article on DNA led me to look into a genetic cause for old age, which led me to consider a world in which that did not happen. How? With The Change, an event that, in my world, takes place in the mid 21st century, though no one is sure precisely when. Most people barely noticed the odd strain of flue that hit so many people that year, nor did they connect their fevers and runny noses to the life-changing event that followed.
What would cause an entire race to stop aging? If immortality were for sale, it would go to the highest bidder, and not everyone would have access. For a fundamental change to the human genetic makeup, we needed something else: Biological warfare. An engineered virus, highly contagious and capable of altering DNA on a cellular level. I drew this idea from a novel by Orson Scott Card: Xenocide.
Who would do such a thing, though? And how? This was probably the toughest part of the entire process, and one that took several revisions to perfect. My heroine and sole point of view character, Grace Harper, was a far easier character to create than the elusive Jordan Lacklin, who we get to know mostly through old journal entries. First, he had to be smart, capable, and armed with a lifetime of experience, so I gave him a background in developing biological weapons for the military. Then, I had to turn him into someone who honestly believed the entire race would be better off if they didn’t age. Deep inside, I wanted him to be a good person, with good intentions, even if they didn’t work out very well. So I gave him a wife, a woman he loved deeply, a woman who was there in body, but who, thanks to Alzheimer’s Disease, had pretty much gone in every other way that mattered. He did it for her, and for everyone else who might have to experience similar pain. Growing old, he believed, was the worst thing that could happen to people.
After that, I spent a lot of time working on his journal entries. The ones in the book are sort of the highlights, the ones I hoped would convey his motives and character most concisely. He’s a complicated man, however, and by the time I finished with him he had become, at least in my mind, more than a tool to implement The Change. He and The Change have kind of blurred together a little bit in my mind, so that despite the results, I think of the actual event as a work of honest human compassion, and a sign of the best humanity has to offer. I suppose the message there is that we sometimes don’t know what’s best for us.
I began working on “The Immortality Virus” in the summer of 2006, and finished it in the fall of 2008. It wasn’t a smooth process, as I set the manuscript down several times while I worked on other things, and at some points I wasn’t sure it would ever be truly finished. Perhaps it still isn’t. I did leave the end open for a sequel, even if I haven’t written it yet, and I hope to one day revisit the world and the possibilities therein.
Thanks for stopping by, Christine, and I hope you have great success with your book!
by john | Jul 13, 2011 | Appearances
Saturday night I headed down to Columbia, SC to hang with Faith Hunter, Kalayna Price, Rachel Aaron and Misty Massey for the first ever Fantastical Mystery Tour multi-author book signing and extravaganza! It was a whole bucketful of awesome, as it is anytime I get to hang with those folks. This whole thing came about from Kalayna and Faith having a brilliant idea at the SC Book Festival, and me being in the right place at the right time. They wanted to do a big signing with a bunch of authors in Columbia to celebrate the release of Kalayna’s new book, Grave Dance.
I just started it, but so far it rocks. Not surprised since it’s the sequel to one of my Top 5 books of 2010.If you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for?
So they wanted to do this thing, and they asked Misty to join. Then they looked over at my booth right next to theirs, and asked me to join. Then they added Rachel, and it was all set. This is just another case of the world being run by those who show up. I was in the right place back in January at RoundCon to meet Faith, Misty and Kalayna. Then I was in the right place in May to get invited into this signing. Then last Saturday night I was TOTALLY in the right place, because we had around 50 people at various times through the signing. It was a fantastic crowd, we had two lively panel discussions, with great questions from the audience, and we all sold a bunch of books.
Kalayna had a bunch of friends and family present, because this was her book release party, but the great thing about fantasy fans is that they don’t lock into one author. When they hear something they like, they’ll buy stuff from anybody who tells a good story. So all the rest of us were able to pick up a few of Kalayna’s stragglers, which is always fun. It never hurts to have a New York Times bestselling author (Faith) at the end of the table, either. I had a great moment chatting with one of my oldest childhood friends, who I haven’t seen in probably twenty years. He now lives only about 15 minutes from the store, so he came over to hang for a while.
It’s always a little tough being the only self-published guy in an event full of traditionally published authors, because the natural inclination is to segregate based on experience. That’s where I have to give a huge thanks to Faith, Kalayna, Misty and Rachel. They’ve never once made me feel like a second-class citizen or an inferior writer because my books are self-published. I read about folks getting snubbed by traditionally published authors just for being self-pubbed and have to report that my experience has been totally the opposite. All the people I’ve met who are traditionally published have been welcoming to me as a writer, regardless of how my books go to market. It might help that I put some of my typical arrogance aside when I’m around other writers because I assume that I’m the least experienced person in any roomful of writers until I’m proven wrong. And since I’m seldom proven wrong in that, it pays for me to be a little humble. I know I’m new to this whole game, and am learning different things every time I get to hang with other writers.
Now back to working on lines, because I’m now in a play. As if I didn’t have enough to do. It’s called The Irish Curse and runs the first three weekends of August. So if you’re in Charlotte around that time, I hope you’ll come by and check it out.
by john | Jul 8, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
I know, I’ve neglected this space all week. Sorry, I’ve been busy, and when that happens the first thing to go is this blog. Well, the first thing to go is exercise, but since that’s been gone for a while now I don’t think I’m allowed to even count it. Still plugging along at Return to Eden Book 1 – Genesis, with about 32K words done. I know I’m going to have to go back through and completely re-write the beginning, but that’s more an issue of voice than anything else, because the voice I’ve written most of the book in is significantly different than the voice I started it in last year.
Here’s some quick news before I bury the lede too much – TOMORROW at Barnes & Noble, 3400 Forest Drive Columbia, SC I’ll be on a pair of panels and doing a monster book signing with Kalayna Price (buy her new book, Grave Dance right now!), Faith Hunter, Rachel Aaron and Misty Massey. We’ll be doing a panel at 5, then a signing, then another panel later in the evening. Should be a lot of fun! You can sign up for the Facebook event here – we’re giving away a Nook!
Also, please don’t forget to donate to my 24 Hours of Booty fundraising page. I’d really love it if my readers came together and gave a big buttload of money to this great cause. You can really help people. Please do so.
Other news – I’m back in the theatre, but this time not on a ladder! I’ve been cast in the Queen City Theatre Company’s production of The Irish Curse. It’s a great little comedy about men, how we see ourselves, our body image, and who does or doesn’t “measure up.” And if you’ve never heard of the the Irish Curse, just ask any Irishman about it! I play a priest from Boston living in New York, and I’ve got some very nice moments in the script. I’m enjoying being an actor again, and will enjoy even more the check that comes along with it! Yep, for the first time in my 20+ years of theatre, I’ll be paid for my work as an actor! This is a real rarity in Charlotte, and I’m very happy for my buddies Glenn and Kristian that they have managed to build their company from nothing to a place where they can compensate their actors in just a few short years.
What else? I went to West Virginia last weekend, played some poker and wrote quite a bit. I won about enough to cover the trip, so the poker games made it a free writing vacation – always nice. At one point I was up over a grand on the morning of my second day, but I ran into some run-bad and some bad play and bled off until I came home with just a couple hundred extra. But that’s still enough to keep me going back there every few months to replenish the cash flow.
And I’m happy to report that June was another great month, sales-wise. I topped July by a few units shipped, thanks largely to the short story I published, but increased revenue significantly due to a price increase. I’ve seen no slowdown in sales since moving my novel price from $2.99 to $4.99, so that is likely where prices will stay for now.
In other news, I’m listening to a lot of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. I blame Pauly.
by john | Jun 28, 2011 | Writing
Here’s the deal – I’m going to crowdsource a couple of ideas for the next Black Knight short story. I plan to write it this weekend, and offer it for free here on the blog for a week. After that, it’s going to be $.99. By contributing ideas as part of this hopefully fun experiment, you give up any ownership of said ideas, and they become mine to do with as I wish, for this experiment or future stories, books, novels, etc. Your submission of an idea explicitly agrees to those terms. All you get out of the deal is a thank you.
In advance – Thanks!
You can comment, Facebook or tweet your answers –
First – Gimme a villain
Second – Gimme a location
Third – Gimme a Song to incorporate somewhere in the story
Fourth – Gimme an adjective that I have to use somewhere
Fifth – Gimme an expletive that has to be used somewhere
It’s kinda like MadLibs, only sillier. This is why I should always go to bed earlier.
by john | Jun 28, 2011 | Writing
I wrote a scene last night that took longer than any 600 words I’ve ever written, or at least since high school. I’m working on a serial killer novel, and this was the first scene where we shifted to watching the killer instead of watching the heroes. It was surprisingly tough. Obviously I’ve never killed anyone, and certainly not in as gruesome a fashion as this guy does, but I didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was.
There were several things that hung me up, and I thought I’d share a little with y’all today. First, the manner of death was not pleasant. It wasn’t even standard, like strangulation, shooting or stabbing. So figuring out how to write a horrific murder without glorifying the act was a challenge. It was hard not to resort to too much cliche, or too many conversational descriptors for things. And it was challenging to write this guy doing things to the girl that he enjoyed, without taking away from the horror of his actions for the reader. I guess at the end of it if I creeped myself out a little, then I was still doing okay.
It got me to thinking about bad guys. In most of my books, the bad guys don’t play a terribly big role. In The Black Knight Chronicles, the attention is all on the good guys. Mostly because the books are first-person, so it’s not really feasible to spend too much time on the bad guy, because by the time the good guys get to where the bad guy is, there’s a fight. But in third person omniscient, I can shift the perspective from the good guys to the bad guy and back, so I have to get into the head of the bad guy from time to time. It’s not a really fun place to go, but the more I dislike it, the better I think the character will be when the book is finished.
I’m enjoying the process, because it’s harder to write than the stuff I’ve been doing. But on the other hand, it’ll be nice to spend part of the weekend hammering out another light-hearted Black Knight short story.
by john | Jun 28, 2011 | Poker
Some players prefer to avoid thinking about the mathematics behind poker but learning some basic skills in this area could help improve your game.
Poker, like many card games, is a game of chance – but if you can calculate statistical odds, you are more likely to place bets that have a higher percentage of winning and at the same time avoid those hands that are likely to cost you money.
Among the mathematics you can learn to help your online poker game is how to calculate estimated value, which enables you to work out approximately how much each individual play will make – or lose.
Figuring out the pot odds is another way in which you may be able to avoid big losses, by calculating your chances of winning each round and also an estimate of how much money you can make if your odds play out the way you expect them to.
This has been a sponsored post
by john | Jun 27, 2011 | Fiction, Return to Eden, Vampires, Writing
So Knight Moves will likely not be available for purchase in July of this year.
It’s not ready. That’s just the deal. I’ve completed a couple of drafts on the book, sent it off to some beta readers, and am awaiting feedback. I’ll then incorporate that feedback into another revision and send it off to my new editor, Lynn. Then (if the sample pages she did for me this weekend that led me to say “you’re hired” in about eight seconds are any indication) she will rip the thing to absolute shreds and I’ll spend a few weeks putting it back together. By this time July will be gone, and there won’t be a book yet. But when the book comes out it will be a few things. First, it will be the most expensive book I’ve published so far. Second, it will be the most polished, and hopefully typo-free. And I think it’s going to be pretty good.
I’m happy with the overall flow of the story. There’s a little more character development in this one than in the last two, and a few new characters added to the world. Some I kill, some leave town and some stick around, at least for a little while. There’s more Father Mike, because people missed him in Back in Black (so did I), and more Sabrina. There’s also a lot more bloodshed, and I think that I’ve successfully raised the stakes for the characters. They have more on the line than in the other books, and I think that makes for a stronger book.It’s about the same length as the others, maybe a hair shorter.
So it needs more polish, and that’s going to mean it won’t be out until the end of July at the latest, and August is more likely. Sorry if there was anyone really desperate for more of the Black Knight boys, but you can go to Amazon and pick up Movie Knight, the short story I published last weekend. That should hold you over. I’ll probably make another short story or two happen between now and the release of Knight Moves, so keep an eye out.
In the meantime, while I’m polishing Knight Moves, I’ve made some pretty good progress on Return to Eden. I’m pretty sure that will end up being the title for the series, so I’m not sure what this book will be called yet. For now, we’ll keep it as is and call it R2E. I hammered out a couple thousand words this weekend, then got stuck. I mean bad stuck, like a Hummer in a mudhole kinda stuck. So Suzy and I sat around for the better part of an hour brainstorming, and between the two of us we got the thing back on track. She helped a ton with the overall plot arc of the book, and that let me get back to outlining and writing. I’m about 25,000 words into the thing, and now I actually know where I’m going with it.
It’s going to need some serious love and attention when I finish the first draft, because I know the first 15K or so needs a total rewrite. The language just doesn’t work, it’s way too formal for the book, but I’m consciously not going back to work on that until I get to the end of the first draft. I can’t let myself go back and edit until I’m done with the first run – otherwise I’ll never write the damned book! But now that I know where I’m going it should come together pretty quickly, and I might have it ready to go as early as September. It’s a big departure from The Black Knight Chronicles, but I think most folks will like it. I’m really starting to dig these characters, for totally different reasons than the BK boys.
Then since I didn’t have anything better to do, and because I can’t resist a bright shiny, I started a completely different book. And by completely different, I mean a cop thriller. No magic, no supernatural creatures, just a serial killer and a cop that’s chasing him. I’ve got the first couple of chapters done, and I’ve got the outline done for that as well. That one’s been an interesting journey as well, because the character that I started Chapter 1 with, who I thought was going to be the main character for the whole book, turned out to be the sidekick. Because it can’t be his book, it has to be the cop’s book. I think it’s an interesting concept, and once it’s a little further along I’ll give you a couple of hints about it to see what you guys think. It should be finished up early fall as well, maybe October or so.
So in summary –
Knight Moves will not be available in July, but should be out in August.
Return to Eden (tentative title) will be out early fall, maybe as early as September.
Untitled Thriller will be out later in the fall, maybe as early as October.
I’ve got a bunch of Black Knight short stories in mind, and want to get at least one per month out for the rest of the year.
Black Knight Book 4 will be coming late this year or early 2012, depending on how quickly I finish up the other stuff. I already know a little about that book, as in what will be the Big Bad and what a couple of subplots are going to be. I also know the Big Bad for Books 5 & 6 in that series, so that’s a good outlook for next year.
by john | Jun 22, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Writing
This was originally going to be a sad piece about not having the right words at the right time. You see, a young woman I went to high school with died last night from leukemia. It sucks. She was a sweet person, and even though I hadn’t seen her in 20 years, she was good people growing up and her older sister (who I was much better friends with because we were in the same grade) is still good people. She left behind a loving family including three young kids, all under ten.
So I had a post written (twice) about how sad it all is that she’s gone and that her kids don’t have their mom anymore, and I scrapped it. Twice. Because of course I’m sad. A very nice person is gone way too soon and her family has to live with that loss. But that’s not the point. The point is I’m pissed off about it. If I were just a little more religious I’d be pissed off at God, but I’m not quite there. I’m pissed off that we as a society have not made this enough of a priority to fix it. We can put men on the moon, land a space shuttle (most of the time) and drop a bomb down a chimney easier than beating Legend of Zelda, but mothers are still dying of cancer before they see their 40th birthday.
It’s bullshit. And I’m going to try to do something about it. For the last several years I’ve ridden in the 24 Hours of Booty charity bike ride to raise money for cancer research and treatment. This is a great cause, one that’s touched me personally more times than I care to think about – from my friends that are survivors (Yay Roz & Lou & Lydia!) to my friends, relatives and acquaintances that are gone (Blair, Caroline, Breana, Joe, Ed, Debbie, Mr. C, Laura and more than I care to name). 24 Hours of Booty is a national and local-level organization – half the money raised goes to NC cancer treatment and research organizations, and half goes to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which regardless of whether or not you think he doped to win the Tour de France, is a great national organization dedicated to keeping more people alive.
So do me a favor – help me raise money for a cure. There are a lot of people I’ll be riding for this summer at the 24 Hours of Booty ride to fight cancer, and unfortunately now there’s another name to add to the list. But rather than whine about not having anything comforting to say, I’m going to let myself be pissed off, and we’ll test the load rating on my old road bike one more time. Screw cancer.
I’ll even throw in a few incentives for people who donate –
For a $25 donation I’ll email you a copy of any book you want in either Kindle, Nook or iPad format.
For a $50 donation I’ll mail you an autographed paperback copy (continental US only).
For a $100 donation I’ll name a character in an upcoming novel after you (or someone else of your choosing), and I’ll mail you an autographed book.
For a $500 donation I’ll send you autographed copies of all of my books, name a character after you or someone of your choosing, and buy you a nice dinner (scheduling might take a while unless you live in the Carolinas or the Atlanta area).
So go to my 24 Hours of Booty page and donate something. Cancer touches all of us, and I’m tired of it touching me. I’ve decided to smack it back. You can help.
