by john | May 22, 2011 | Return to Eden, Writing
So once upon a time I promised to post sections of a work in progress, posted one bit and then forgot about it. Well, I didn’t really forget, more like the world took me in another direction for a few weeks, but I’m back now, so here’s the next little piece of Return to Eden. Let me know what you think!And thanks to everyone who’s discovered me through the blog tour, it’s exhausting running all over the internets, my feet are killing me, but it’s very worthwhile so far. The first installment can be found here, if you’re late to the party.
Christin drove into the parking lot at West Asheville High School, and parked the truck at the far end of the lot, as usual. It didn’t take too many mornings of being mocked by Cindy Monihan and her gaggle of bleached-blonde cheerleaders and wannabes for the Kinseys to decide it was easier to walk a few more steps up to the school each morning than deal with the popular kids. Of course, it didn’t matter where they parked, they still had to run the gauntlet of the beautiful people to get into the school, and that was as fun as your average dentist’s visit.
“Oh look, everyone, the Kinsey twins have decided to grace us with their pollution once again,” announced Cindy, who wielded her new Prius like a weapon against Christin’s gas-guzzling truck.
“Not twins, bimbo, but if you weren’t too vain to wear your glasses you’d see that,” muttered Matt as they walked into the school, heads lowered against the disapproving glances of Cindy’s psuedo-environmentalist friends. They cared about the planet because it was the latest flavor, not because they had any great connection to Mother Earth.
Since Matt had his head down, he never saw the chest he ran into, but it didn’t take anyone nearly as bright as the younger Kinsey to realize that Brian Regan, Cindy’s boyfriend, had heard his mumbled insult.
“What did you say, asswipe?” The much larger boy said to Matt, who had bounced off his chest like a superball.
“I said we’re not twins.”
“What else did you say, butt-munch?” Brian gave Matt a shove, spinning him into another of his friends. By now most of the starting offensive line for the football team had formed a circle around Matt, grinning and handing their letter jackets to their girlfriends just in case there was bleeding.
Matt’s temper flared white-hot, and he lost control of his mouth, as he was wont to do in these, or really any, situations. “I said, if your bimbo girlfriend would put on her glasses once in a while, she could see past the end of her makeup mirror.” Christin groaned quietly, hoping her mother had paid for the health insurance this month, because it looked like Matt was going to be needing another trip to urgent care.
“Hold the little chump,” Brian said to his buddies. They instantly grabbed Matt’s arms, but left his legs alone, which cost Brian dearly when he stepped in to deliver Matt’s punishment. The smaller boy was no football bruiser, but two years of varsity cross country had given him plenty of lower-body muscle, and the kick he landed on Brian’s groin was as good as any field goal the team had made all season. Regan dropped like a sack of well-manicured potatoes, and his buddies relaxed their grip on Matt’s arms just enough for him to wrestle his way free and bolt into the school building, his sister hot on his heels. The first bell was just ringing as they made their way inside, laughing hysterically.
“That was great, little bro. Meet you for lunch?” Christin asked.
“Yeah, if I can avoid the goon squad.” Matt gave his sister a high five and they headed off to their morning classes, for the last time.
by john | May 20, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Because I need one. It’s been kind of a rough week at work and I’m looking forward to a weekend of doing other stuff that isn’t working. My goals for the weekend –
1) Get a buzz tonight. I have beer, Vicodin and muscle relaxers thanks to a tweaked back and a doctor’s visit earlier this week. I think this one is a lock.
2) Get a haircut. I am turning into a shaggy beast and need to do something about it. Last Friday I found my beard trimmer after about a month’s absence, so I was able to tame the face-fur, now it’s time for a topside trim. My hair isn’t really that long, except for some mulletish tendencies curling around my collar, but it’s really thick, and with the thermometer reading past 80 it gets a little sweaty. And really, who needs that?
3) Write 5,000 words on Knight Moves. I did about 1,500 words this week, but that’s it. And if I’m going to make the publication deadline for The Really Cool Thing That Might Happen in July That I Can’t Talk About Yet, I need to get my ass in gear. Plus sales are going very well right now and I don’t want to lose any momentum.
4) Make sure I have all of next week’s Guest Blogs done for my blog tour. This is turning out to be a little more work than I expected, but I’m getting some great feedback, and having a good time.
Here are some cool things that have happened while I’ve been elsewhere –
Hard Day’s Knight got a couple of great reviews from Black Lagoon Reviews and A Chick Who Reads. Both reviewers gave it 5 out of 5, so I was really pleased with that!
Hard Day’s Knight broke 1,000 copies sold for the month! May is my biggest sales month ever, and it doesn’t look like things are slowing down, so that’s exciting (and all the more reason to get Book #3 out!)
I bought a Kindle. Yes, I’ve been reading on my iPad for a year and change, but I finally broke down and bought the $114 Kindle with special offers. The offers aren’t intrusive, they only show up on the screensavers and book listing page, and they don’t bother me at all. What amazes me about the device is how damn tiny and lightweight it is, and how good the image quality is. It fits in a jeans back pocket, and weighs next to nothing, so I love it so far. I’ll keep you posted on when I sit on it because I forget it’s in my back pocket, which I’m sure will be sooner rather than later.
And in an update-style thing – Hard Day’s Knight is now sitting at #7 on the Amazon Top 100 for Occult Horror! It’s been hanging around the Top 10 of this particular list for a month or so now, but 7 is the highest it’s ever been! And an overall Amazon sales ranking of #818 in Kindle Books is another record I’m pretty happy with!
by john | May 18, 2011 | Theatre, Writing
Rent is up, and it’s fantastic. If you’re in the Charlotte area anytime in the next two weeks, and can get a ticket (several performances are already sold out), you should come see this show. It’s one of the best casts I’ve worked with, very even from ensemble to leads, and the voices are amazing! They have a ton of energy, a ton of devotion to the show, and they leave everything they’ve got out on the stage every night. They hold nothing back, which is fantastic. It might be tough this Saturday night when they have two shows, but for everything else, it’s awesome! I’ll link to some photos and videos eventually, I was really happy with the way the show turned out, and a couple of folks have said that it’s probably the best thing they’ve seen me do.
I tend to agree, I think this is the best show I’ve ever lit. I’ve done well over a hundred shows, from musicals to straight plays, comedy to drama, and this one tops them all. There was one moment last week when I watched a scene unfold, the song finished up and I thought “I don’t know if I can do that any better.” Which is why I’m quitting.
I’m retiring as a lighting designer, at least for the near future. I’ve done what I can do in this market, with the available resources, and this is a great show to end my run on. Now this might end up being a Ric Flair-type retirement, that happens every couple of years until I die, but if I don’t ever do another show, I can be very happy with the body of work I’ve presented to the world. And with RENT being a show that I wanted to do for more than a decade, it’s fitting to call it done with this one.
Because I have this other career that is taking off. You know, the one that you are probably here to read about. The one that has me toodling around the internets for the next couple of weeks checking in at different blogs all over the place, doing interviews and guest posts and giveaways, oh my! So the tour continues, and today I’m over at Urban Fantasy Investigations giving an interview, so swing by and say hello!
by john | May 11, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
The Virtual Road, that is. Next week kicks off my blog tour with Bookish Snob Promotions, so here’s a rundown on where I’ll be and what you can expect when I’m there.
May 16 – I’ll be doing a Guest Post over at Black Lagoon Reviews
May 17 – I’ll be doing a Guest Post at Karissa’s Book Review, along with a chance for folks to win a signed copy of Hard Day’s Knight!
May 18 – The fine folks at Urban Fantasy Investigations have done an interview with me.
May 19 – Another Guest Post, this one at My Bookish Ways
May 20 – A Guest Post at A Chick Who Reads
May 21 – Interview at Paranormal Opinion with another signed book to give away!
May 22 – I’ll be interviewed at Reality Bites
You can keep up with me on Twitter or Facebook, where I’ll update the tour daily, and you can always find info here or at Bookish Snob Promotions. Please come over and check out these guest posts and interviews, where I get a lot more into the writing process than I typically do here on my rambling blog. And please go support Belinda over at The Bookish Snob, who’s putting this whole thing together for me.
There hasn’t been much progress on Knight Moves, because I’ve been working on RENT and getting ready for the SC Book Festival, both of which are this weekend. Also, Suzy is in a different play, which also opens tomorrow night. So it’s been a little nuts around the Hartness household. But everything calms down for a couple of weeks after Monday, so that’ll help out with my productivity. And my sleep :).
So please come visit me on tour, and if you’re anywhere near Columbia, SC this weekend, come visit me in Real Life. The Book Festival is free and features a big pile of authors, including me, Sam Morton, Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price.
by john | May 4, 2011 | Writing
Not much – yeah, that’s a load of crap. I’m up to my eyeballs in stuff from work, to theatre, to upcoming shows to trying to get Knight Moves polished up and ready to go. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the first draft now, and was hoping to finish the whole thing for the Heroes Con in June, but that’s realistically not going to happen. I go into tech rehearsals for RENT next week, so I’ll be losing most of two weeks’ worth of writing time in the evenings, what with loading things in this week and tech rehearsals next week.
I watched rehearsal for the first time last night, and it’s going to be a very good show. One of my big problems with theatre in a small market is the casts are typically very uneven. You’ll have very good leads, and decidedly mediocre supporting actors. Or you’ll have one lead that is significantly better than the other, or something like that. This cast is all pretty even. They’re good, and there are some very nice moments already, so give them a few more rehearsals and an audience, and they’ll be very good.
I’ve acquired 16 LED fixtures and a new lighting console of my very own for this show, so I’m spending about $5k on a show that will pay me $1,500 (design fee + rental budget), but then I’ll have a bunch of gear that can be rented out for the next few years. I’ve already lined up 3-4 rental shows for the summer, so I oughta be able to pay for this gear in a year or two. Worst case, I can sell it on eBay and get my money back. I’ve also borrowed a bunch of other gear, so the show should be pretty awesome looking. Which I hope will be the case, since this is probably my theatrical swan song, at least for a little while. I just don’t want to take time away from my writing to sit in a dark theatre for a couple of weeks anymore. And I’m almost to the point where I make more money writing than I do designing, but not quite.
So after Rent I’ll be taking a break for a while to focus on getting Knight Moves out the door, then turning my attention to one of several projects that I have floating around. I think the next project will be something outside The Black Knight Chronicles, so here’s your chance to help me decide what to write next. Here are my current ideas, what do you want to read?
1) Spy Thriller in the Vince Flynn/Tom Clancy mode?
2) Coming of Age horror novel about kidnapped kids?
3) Mystery/Action novel about a city falling into an abandoned mine?
4) Epic fantasy novel about an unrepentant elf assassin?
5) Space bounty hunter?
Your vote counts, people! Lemme know what to write next. I might completely disregard your ideas, but I might not. Leave it in the comments.
by john | May 3, 2011 | Music, Real Life
I’m back from the Fest that was Merle, and while I appreciate the fact that I say this every year – holy crap what a show! Seriously, Robert Plant, Sam Bush, Lyle Lovett, Joan Osborne, Doc Watson, The Waybacks, Peter Rowan, Tony Rice, Tim O’Brien, and more, more, more! And we didn’t even go to the festival on Day 1!
I will admit to having a religious experience on at least four different occasions throughout the weekend. I’ll give you those highlights, but for the full experience you’ll have to go with me next year!
#1 – Hartford Tribute Band – if you’re not a John Hartford fan, its just because you don’t know you’re a John Hartford fan yet. In a tribute to the late great Hartford, Sam Bush, Allison Brown, Laura Boosinger & Tim O’Brien got together for an awesome rendition of “Steam Powered Aero-Plane,” one of my favorite Hartford songs.
#2 – The Hillside Album Hour – over the past four years, The Waybacks have created a tradition of covering a classic rock album with a host of special guests every Saturday at Merlefest. Past albums include Led Zeppelin II, Sticky Fingers and Abbey Road. Being raised on The Allman Brothers, when they tore into Eat a Peach it was a particularly special moment for me. That I shared with probably 15,000 of my closest friends. This year’s special guest vocalist was Joan Osborne, and man, that chick can wail!
#3 – same set – at the end of the set, they decided that Little Martha was too mellow to end with, so they ripped out a monstrous rendition of “Whipping Post” that must have caused tremors miles away from all the concentrated dancing and clapping. I wept a little. Just a little.
#4 – Sunday – Robert Plant and The Band of Joy – the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame made an appearance at the bluegrass festival, and it was amazing! From the opening number (Black Dog), Plant and his new Band of Joy – Buddy Miller, Patti Griffin, Darrell Scott, Byron House and a drummer who I forgot because I suck – killed it. The closer for the set was a beautiful version of “Ramble On.” I wept a little again, and danced like a happy fat man, which I was.
At some point I’ll get around to telling the traumatic story of trying to get home, but for today we’ll accentuate the positive. It was a great weekend of music with great friends – hope to see you there next year!
by john | Apr 27, 2011 | Return to Eden, Writing
Not as silly as some, but I really want to work on two stories at once, one in a completely different vein than Knight Moves (pun intended, of course). So each week I’ll present a new segment of Return to Eden, another work in progress. This stuff is so very first draft, but I think it might go somewhere interesting. It will be presented here in bite-size chunks, not even chapters, and when I’m done there should be a book in it.
So here’s the beginnings of a new project, because I just don’t have enough to do, right? All feedback is welcomed!
Return to Eden
The day the world ended started off just like every other Thursday. Christin Kinsey got up after the alarm went off for the third time, staggered to the bathroom in her t-shirt and pajama bottoms, went about her morning business, took a shower, brushed her teeth, yelled at her brother Matt to drag his sorry butt out of bed because she wasn’t going to be late on account of him again this week, went back into her room, got dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a Kings of Leon T-shirt she’d borrowed from her boyfriend Kent a week or two ago, and beat on Matt’s door a couple more times before heading downstairs for breakfast.
While Christin was settling in behind a bowl of Lucky Charms and a Coke, her mom was in the kitchen in dress slacks and a bra, ironing a shirt that had obviously spent the night in the dryer and mainlining coffee with CNN on in the background. There was some other big fuss going on somewhere in the world with people that hated Americans shooting Americans, and Americans going in to stop them from shooting too many other people, and some talking heads with French accents whining about the overbearing American policies.
“Mom,” Christin asked between mouthfuls of cereal and marshmallows, “why don’t French people like us?”
“Because all frogs are douchebags” answered Matt, clumping down the stairs in baggy cargo shorts and Doc Marten boots, the uniform of his whole bunch of loser friends.
“Matthew!” Shrieked their mother, putting on her shirt and zipping up her slacks while simultaneously trying to butter a bagel and put away the iron. “We do not use terms like ‘douchebags’ or ‘frogs’ in this house! There are some French people who would rather eat Brie and smoke stinky cigarettes than do what needs to be done in the world, but that’s no reason to condemn the whole country. The French contributed some wonderful things to society,”
“Yeah,” Matt interrupted, “like eating snails and the guillotine.”
“I can think of some times when the guillotine would be useful, muttered Christin.
“Alright you two comedians, get your butts out of here or you’re going to be late. Again.” Their mother hustled them out of the kitchen and thrust some cash into Christin’s hand. “This should get you some gas and cover lunch for both of you. There’s frozen pizza in the fridge for tonight, I’ve got to go to Charlotte for a meeting with the B of A people about the loan.” She had been negotiating with the mortgage demons at Bank of America for months about refinancing their home, and it was, in her words, time for someone to “shit or get off the pot.” Sandra Kinsey didn’t swear often, but more and more often lately when she did, it involved someone with the mortgage company.
Things had been okay when Christin and Matt’s dad had been around, but Jacob Kinsey had died of lung cancer three years ago, and things had gotten tight with all his medical bills. Sandra had mortgaged the house to the hilt to pay off all the doctors and hospitals, but when the housing market in Asheville, NC went into the toilet like it did all over the country, they owed a lot more on the house than it was worth. President Obama’s plans to help American homeowners sounded good on TV, but didn’t always work out so well when reality hit the fan, as Sandra had become increasingly fond of saying. So today she was headed down to Charlotte, and she was determined to come home with some answers, or at least with a pound of flesh from some useless paper-pusher to make her feel better.
Sandra followed her kids out the front door and watched as they piled in Jacob’s old F-100 pickup truck and headed off to school. She’d kept the truck around until Christin had been old enough to drive, then given it to the girl for her sixteenth birthday. Big, blocky and decidedly un-sexy, the truck was nevertheless dependable and certainly better built than anything that had come out of Detroit in the past 30 years. It was a 1965 model, the year Jacob was born, and he had restored it to working order, if not much more than that. So it was a big rolling hunk of steel that Sandra didn’t mind sending her kids off to school in while she headed down the mountains in her Nissan Murano to do battle with the evildoers at the great corporate headquarters.
by john | Apr 25, 2011 | Real Life
So this weekend I’ll be making my annual trek into the hills of North Carolina for the Merle Watson Memorial Music Festival, or Merlefest. Me and tens of thousands of my closest friends will descend upon North Wilkesboro, NC for some of the finest bluegrass and Americana music the world has to offer. This is a huge vacation for me every year, because I don’t take a computer.
That’s right, I will not be taking a computer to Merlefest. I won’t blog for three days, and I’ll barely check email or look at my Amazon stats (yeah, right!). But this is an opportunity to unplug, relax, commune with nature and music, and generally relax. Obviously I’m looking forward to it, as I do every year, but a little more so this year, because this guy’s going to be performing on Sunday, and he’s been on my list of people to see for, oh, my whole life!
That’s right – Robert F’n Plant is closing out Merlefest with his Band of Joy! And there’s plenty of joy for me with that! I just bought the album off Amazon and have been taking advantage of their free cloud storage and music player all day (wish there was an app for iPhone, but I see why that isn’t likely to happen). If you don’t think that Jeff Bezos is a flippin’ genius, then you’re not paying attention. First the Kindle, then the whole thing with giving free access to all the Amazon tv shows to Prime subscribers, now giving 20GB of free online storage to anyone who buys an MP3 album from them. Crazy like a fox, I tell you.
But anyway, I’m looking very much forward to Merlefest for the weekend. A few days of shorts, Birkenstocks, festival food and great music is just what I need before I come back into town to the craziness that will be RENT technical rehearsals. I started loading in gear for that this weekend, and if I wasn’t already convinced that this needs to be my last show for a while, that did it. I haven’t even really done anything yet and I’m tired! But I think it will be an awesome show, if we all survive the tech process :). I’ll post photos as we get into the process, but that will be a while.
And of course the same weekend that RENT opens, which is already the weekend I’m double-booked at the SC Book Festival, my wife has a show opening! Yeah, Suzy decided to go audition for The Edge Theatre Company’s production of Miss Nelson is Missing, and damned if she didn’t land the title role! It’s the first thing she’s auditioned for in probably 5-6 years, and she gets the lead! I’m so proud of her I could bust, but I don’t really know how I’m going to be in three places at once that weekend. I mean, I’m a big dude, but I’m not that big!
Meh, I need a clone. Or a fat hillbilly look-alike.
by john | Apr 23, 2011 | Writing
So it’s been a good month, I think that’s a pretty solid understatement. I’ve sold far more copies of all of my books than I have in any other month, and in some cases I’ve sold more copies this month than I have all other months combined. And in a great bit of circular sales, as my books sell more, they appear on more bestseller lists on Amazon, so they’re easier to find, so they sell more. So they move up on lists, so they’re even easier to find than before, so they sell more. And so on…
It’s been a lot of fun watching my books hover around the middle of most of these lists, but the great part has been watching Hard Day’s Knight skyrocket up the Occult Horror list. It’s currently sitting around #10, and is sharing the list with folks like Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking, Scott Nicholson, and other big-selling authors. But making these sub-lists isn’t what I’m shooting for – I want to make the big list. The Amazon Top 100.
Honestly, I don’t know what the criteria are anymore for being considered a “best-seller.” It used to be making the NY Times list, and for traditionally published authors maybe it still is. But they don’t count indies, no matter how many we sell, so I think their list is skewed. Obviously the Amazon list is skewed, since it’s only one store, but it is a pretty good barometer for ebook sales. At least I think.But I’ve got a long way to go before I can use the term best-seller with regards to any of my books, at least with a straight face. But sales are chugging along, and if things keep going like they have been, then I’ll probably do fewer book shows and stay home and write more. But we’ll see how I feel after the SC Book Festival and Heroes Con in the next couple months.
Meh, file this under incoherent blog posts, I need a nap. Happy Easter, folks!
by john | Apr 20, 2011 | Writing
Yep, I’m going to try out one of these new-fangled blog tours. I stumbled upon The Bookish Snob while looking for book bloggers to see about getting some love for my books, and I found out that Belinda over there has a service that she offers that is basically a tour director gig. So I checked the rates, thought they were very reasonable, and shot her an email. She replied that my stuff looked like a good fit, and got rolling setting everything up.
So next month I’ll be going on tour! I’ll be visiting more than two dozen blogs all across teh interwebs, ending up here on June 10th. I’ve got a slew of guest posts and interviews to write up, so my output here may be limited during that time. Because between the guest posts and cranking out a pile of words each night on Knight Moves, I’m gonna be a busy boy.
But I finished the outline for Knight Moves last night, so I should be able to jam on that in the next three weeks or so, and maybe (just maybe!) have the first draft complete before I head off to the SC Book Festival. If any of you are in Columbia, SC May 13-15, come see me at this free event! But I do have a couple of things looming before that, including a lighting design for RENT here in Charlotte (not that I’m in Charlotte at the moment, I’m actually in Atlanta for work) and Merlefest! There will be plenty more Merlefest info coming soon, but suffice to say that I’m crazy excited about it for a ton of reasons, not the least of which is ROBERT PLANT.
