by john | Jan 10, 2011 | Poker
Free money is always the sweetest money, and this week I managed to claim a little of the sweetest money when I played in the inaugural Gambling Tales Podcast Freeroll on Full Tilt Poker. The kind folks at FTP put together a freeroll for us, and Special K and I promoted it to the best of our ability (which means that he did a lot of work, and I sent a couple tweets and emails, which is about the same division of labor as we have on the creation of the podcast, but that’s beside the point). All our efforts resulted in the freeroll filling up before it even started, with 1,000 people registered!
Now if they’d all showed up, I’d probably still be playing in the damn thing. But fortunately for my time commitment, only about 25% of the people that signed up actually played. A big part of my hated that, because there were some people who would have happily played that couldn’t get registered, but since I can usually outplay a ghost stack (only usually) I attribute my deep run to the fact that only two people at my first table were actually people. I managed to not get into any confrontations with the other live player at my table, and built up a decent little stack for myself by the time most of the ghosts were blinded off.
After a little while I finally got moved to a table with some real live people, which was a lot of fun, because the whole point of playing for me was to interact with our listeners and have some fun with my friends. I ended up at the same table as Special K for a while, then got moved, then got moved back, and hung around and hung around until the money bubble burst, guaranteeing me at least a $.06 return on my time! Ok, leave me alone, it was my first tourney cash of the new year, a real milestone. I played around, trying not to get involved with anything too embarrassing, and after a while I realized that being one of the hosts of the show actually was making me play better. Even though I’m a terrible poker player, and did get into one big hand with a guy where I called a preflop raise with suited 8-9, caught an 8 on the flop and then went runner-runner boat on him to send him home, I generally didn’t play too stupidly. So maybe I should host more tournaments if they’ll make me play better? Nah, one a week is plenty.
So this Thursday we’ll have another Gambling Tales Podcast freeroll, and this time we will not be releasing the password anywhere but on the show, so go listen and register! Congrats to DeeBakes for being the inaugural GT Podcast Freeroll winner! I had a blast playing and chatting with Dee, and hope that he can make it to a WPBT gathering sometime soon (like December)! So if you want to play poker with me, listen to the podcast and sign up!
Then last night I signed up to play the PokerSluts Tour Stud Hi tournament, with such stud geniuses as myself, BamBam, DocChako, VeryJosie, and GadZooks. At least one of those players is actually good at stud, and if you need a hint, I guarantee that it isn’t one of the men! That should narrow the field for you a little, huh? I built up a big stack early by being a ridiculous card rack, picking up trip 6s at least three times in the first three levels of the tourney. Just like I said to Doc early on, I caught cards early on and went card dead once the blinds got high, losing a big pot to Gadzooks when she made a flush on 5th and I played bad, then losing another big pot to SmBoatDrinks (or something like that, I don’t take notes and pay very little attention because, as I have said time and again I am a bad poker player) when I played bad again. So then I missed a big draw, I think I had a flush and a straight draw, or maybe a pair and a flush draw, or something that felt like it was a good draw that missed, but I might have mentioned that I don’t take notes so I don’t really remember, so gimme a break, I drink a lot and forget things, okay? So I bubbled, and that sucked, but it was a lot of fun seeing those folks again, and Zooks puts on a great tourney series, so check that out sometime!
by john | Jan 9, 2011 | Writing
It’s 7:03 PM and I’m 2,000 words off my goal for the day. So of course I’m writing a blog post instead of working on the sequel to Hard Day’s Knight. Because that’s how I roll.
My initial goal for ROW80 was to do 5,000 words per week and get the book finished by the end of the challenge. Well, I kinda dedicated this weekend to writing, and I’m floating at somewhere in the 14,000 word range since we started. I hit 5,000 words on Thursday, knocked out another 1,100 Friday and then did a little over 5,000 yesterday. I’ve done 3,000 or so today, and the book as a whole is right at 25,000 words. I think this book is going to run a touch longer than the first one, because a red herring I put in the book is taking longer to resolve than I expected. I needed another twist in this subplot, and I should finish this side plot up tonight and get my vampires out of FairyLand and back into the real world. Yeah, I just wrote that. You’ll have to buy the book to figure that one out.
So I think this book may end up around 70-75,000 words, but since it’ll primarily publish in ebook form, who really cares? Even in print form it won’t be too cumbersome, since I’ll be doing the 6×9 size just like I did with the other books. I also got about 500 words in on a new book, which is a terrorist thriller completely different from anything else I’ve written. If I get back to it, and decide to publish it, I may need to look at a pseudonym for that one. It’s just so far afield from the urban fantasy genre I’m working in that I don’t want readers to go looking for something like The Chosen or Hard Day’s Knight and get all confused. Of course, it’s still gonna be me writing it, so I have no doubt that it’ll have a fair share of snark in it. Either way I’m months away from even thinking about that issue, so it may be all resolved by then.
I’ve started to sell a few more copies. Hard Day’s Knight sales are starting to pick up, but it needs some review love. Hopefully folks will see the Win A Kindle contest and write reviews to enter. I’m not unhappy with it so far, it’s averaging about a copy a day, which is good for me. For now. Hopefully in a year or so I’ll look back on those numbers and chuckle fondly. Alright, back to the grindstone – go buy a book!
by john | Jan 7, 2011 | Writing
So I hope you enjoyed Willie’s guest post yesterday. And if you came here because of Willie’s post and decided to hang around, welcome! I will be opening up this space to guest blogs from independent writers in the future, once a week. So if anyone wants to pimp a book, or a project of any type, feel free. I don’t have any restrictions on content, because if I tried to keep this blog PG-13, I’d never be able to whine effectively about my poker game :).
I mentioned somewhere earlier about how Scrivener makes it super-easy to create and publish ebooks of your own, so I’ve uploaded and made available two new projects this week. Here are the links and some info. I made the covers myself in Pages, and just dropped them into Scrivener. Pretty badass, huh?
The Christmas Lights is a PG-rated 100% clean Christmas story. I know, right? I was surprised when I wrote it, too! It’s only $.99 on Kindle. It was also in the collection Returning the Favor, but I thought it could stand alone and some folks who don’t approve of my potty mouth might be able to get into it this way.
Red Dirt Boy is a collection of all poetry, and it’s a lot of fun. There are drunks, strippers, guns, suicides, junkies, natural disasters, heartaches, broken headboards, beer and religion all in one little volume. It’s poetry for people who hate poetry, and I’m pretty proud of it. This is the first time it’s been available in e-book format.
So check out one or both of these new e-books, while I go hide in the mountains this weekend and write my fingers to the bone in hopes of having the sequel to Hard Day’s Knight out to you by the end of March.
And don’t forget to enter the contest for the Kindle 3/Nook/Amazon Gift Card! Buy something, it’ll give you something to read this weekend!
by john | Jan 6, 2011 | Writing
Hey folks, I’m opening up the blog to a guest post by William Meikle, an author I met through the KindleBoards message boards. William is doing a blog crawl to promote his upcoming book and put together a quick post for us today. I hope you enjoy it and check out William’s work!
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com
Single-Author Horror Short Story Collections
One of those Facebook apps got me thinking. It wanted Single Author horror collections not by Stephen King
It was hard to choose, so I went with the ones that got me started on reading beyond Dennis Wheatley in the days before Stephen King and/or The Exorcist.
1. Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
2. H. P. Lovecraft: Tales (Library of America)
3. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
4. The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
5. The October Country
All of these were on the shelves of a small library in a steelworking town in Scotland. I doubt that is the case nowadays.
Staggering to think that I first read Lovecraft and Bradbury forty years ago now! I’m officially an old fart.
That does also mean I’ve read a -lot- of other collections, so here are five more, from more recent times.
1. Alone With The Horrors – Ramsey Campbell
2. The Dark Country – Dennis Etchison
3. The Ice Monkey – M John Harrison
4. The White Road – Ron Weighell
5. The Books of Blood – Clive Barker
In doing this I realize I’m missing many of my favorites, from Arthur Machen through Joseph Payne Brennan, Karl Edward Wagner and up to people like Conrad Williams, Steve Duffy and Tim Lebbon. But these are the ones that I go back to and re-read so I’ll stick with these choices.
For today at least.
by john | Jan 5, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
So on the first check-in day of ROW80 (Round 1), I should be at either 2,000 or 3,000 words, depending on whether I’ve gotten my quota for the day in or not. So where am I really?
3,795 words.
That’s right, kids, I’m almost a full day ahead of schedule, with the possibility of taking an extra day off on Friday, or forging ahead and getting a huge head start on next week. I won’t get any writing done tonight, most likely, because there’s an errand I’ve got to run to SC that will take up most of my night. but I pounded out 1,117 during lunch and I’m at that magic point of the book where I know where it’s going and how to get there, I just need to get my butt in front of a keyboard and write it.
I’ve also started using Scrivener for this project and have become totally enamored with it. I love how it organizes notes for me, and I really love how it makes converting to ebook super-easy. Since starting the trial I’ve uploaded a collection of poetry and a short story to Kindle, and I’ve re-formatted Returning the Favor and re-published it. I’m also probably changing the prices of all my books after my Kindle giveaway contest, so buy the novels now while they’re cheap! Once the contest is over my pricing structure is going to look something like this – short stories for $.99, short story collections $2.99-4.99 depending on length, novels $4.99-6.99 depending on length, with a loss leader of $.99 intro books in series. But those changes won’t kick in until April 1, so you’ve got plenty of time (and I have time to change my mind elebenty million times by then).
And today I finished my second workout in the Couch to 5K regimen. I have a little shin splint that’s really cutting down how much actual running I’m doing, but I did better today than I did Monday, so that’s progress. I only managed to run for about 6 of the 9 segments, but Monday I think I only did 4. Hopefully Friday I’ll be able to do all 9, but I may give myself an extra recovery day and do the run on my own Saturday.
And here’s another way to earn entries into the Win A Kindle Giveaway!
For every $10 you donate to my 24 Hours of Booty page, I’ll give you one entry into the contest. So go read about this great fundraising ride for cancer, and donate generously. You might win a Kindle for your trouble!
by john | Jan 4, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Now through March 2011, I’m accepting entries into a contest to win a brand new Kindle 3 or Nook e-reader! That’s right, kids, just for being cool and commenting on this here blog you could win almost $200 worth of swanky electronic toys! And to make it better, I’ll load my books onto the device for you, so you don’t have to do anything but take it out of the box and start to enjoy it! This contest will run through the end of March, 2011, and here’s a sweetener for those of you who already own e-readers – if you win and decide you don’t want a Kindle or a Nook, let me know and I’ll send you a $200 Amazon gift certificate! So no matter what, you can get some cool stuff!
Here are the rules for the contest –
1) No Purchase is necessary. You may earn an entry into the contest by simply commenting on this blog post. You will earn one entry for commenting here. You will not earn multiple entries for multiple comments.
2) You can earn multiple entries, and this is how you do that. You earn two entries for each copy of my books you buy, no max. Just send me an email with the Amazon/Apple/BN order confirmation and your name. Please block out confidential information like where you live.
3) You can earn multiple entries by answering trivia questions about the books, and those will be posted below. You get one entry for each correct answer. Please don’t share the answers, the whole point is to generate readers. That said, if you borrow the book from someone, you can still get all the entries for the correct answers.
4) You can get two entries for posting a review on Amazon, regardless of whether you liked the book or not. If you hate it and give it a review (must be at least 100 words, and no bs like “I hated it” 34 times) I’ll give you two entries. That’s two entries per book reviewed, so the more reviews you write, the more entries you get. Obviously you can only review each book once, because to do anything else skews the review process. And I really do want honest responses, so if you think it’s crap, don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ll just curl up under my keyboard any cry, that’s all.
Please email any questions or entries to johnhartness AT gmail DOT com. You know what to do with that.
Trivia Questions – one entry per correct answer
The Chosen
1) In The Chosen, what is Adam’s Irish love’s name?
2) In what famous American town did Cain play cards with Lucky?
3) What apostle was really Adam?
4) Name any three musical acts/musical artists mentioned in the novel.
Hard Day’s Knight
5) Where did Greg and Jimmy go to college?
6) What is Father Mike’s last name?
7) What kind of guns does Jimmy usually carry?
8) What is the wi-fi password to Greg and Jimmy’s wireless network?
Red Dirt Boy
9) What is the stripper’s name in Small Caliber Love?
10) Where was Aftermath originally published?
Alright, those be the questions – email me your answers, your screenshots where you bought books, and leave a comment here for your entries. I’ll have somebody (probably Suzy) do the drawing the first week of April, and then announce the winner once I know what you decide your prize should be!
Good Luck!
by john | Jan 3, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Just got back in from doing the first workout in the Couch to 5K program. Several of us at the office are trying to get into shape, and two laps around the office park pretty much equals two miles and it took us all of thirty minutes to make it. I couldn’t run more than half of the times I was supposed to run, so I think this 9 week program might take a little while longer than that for me and at least one other slacker. But having people at the office to work out with should provide a great motivator for all of us.
I also managed to meet my ROW80 goal for the day, and am trying out Scrivener as a new writing tool. I particularly like the fact that it will compile and create epub and Kindle format ebooks, so that might save me a couple hundo on each future book. I sent out a couple of sample chapters this weekend, and response has been good so far. I’m something like 12,000 words into the book, and just finished the first big fight scene, so I think I’m about a quarter of the way through the book. I’m hoping for a March release on that, then maybe release a couple of short stories later in the spring, especially if Scrivener continues to be as user-friendly as it appears at first glance.
But I promised you the tale of how we almost died on the way home from the poker game, didn’t I? So we’re cruising north on I-85 almost to Gaffney, and I’ve got the cruise control locked in at 70 or so. The speed limit is 60 or 65, and it’s foggy and been raining all day, so I’m feeling pretty good about not being in too big a rush. I’m in the left lane, because traffic is light and even going relatively slowly, I’m still rolling faster than most of the traffic on the road. Out of the corner of my eye I see a little car zip up alongside us in the right lane, and just as I hear Special K say “John, look out!” I hear the little shitbanger’s oversized exhaust rev up and watch him try to shoot the gap and slide into the lane in front of me. I tap the brakes to kill my cruise control as he does, but the doucherocket can’t keep his little overjuiced Civic under control, and he goes off the left side of the road into the median. I swerve to miss him, making the truck bobble a little more than I’m happy about, but regain control and move into the right lane. He does not manage to regain control, and I see him go sideways into the retaining wires and fence at 70 MPH or so. I can hear the plastic parts snapping off of his car as I hear T get on the phone to call 911. And that’s how we started 2011 off with almost dying on I-85. We didn’t stop, largely because I didn’t see a safe way to get back to provide any assistance, and also because I’m not really qualified to provide any type of first aid or medical assistance. We called 911 and let the professionals take care of it. Part of me hopes the idiot was okay, since I don’t want to wish ill of anyone, but part of me also hopes that he can never drive again, because he was a dangerous driver.
by john | Jan 3, 2011 | Poker
So yesterday Suzy, Special K, T and I rode down to G-Vegas for the annual BadBlood New Year’s Day tournament, an event that I won in 2006 and have not experienced any real success in since then. I continued my streak, managing to save the least amount of face only by not busting first. I busted second. 24th out of 25 runners, that’s me.
But I did pretty well in the cash game, more than making up for my tournament buy-in, and Suzy’s as well. We played half No Limit Hold’Em, Half Pot Limit Omaha, with two $1 blinds. The original idea was to keep the game kinda reasonable, with a $100 max initial buy-in, and if you went busto you could rebuy for $200. That went out the window along about the second hour, and the cap was raised to $300 per reload . It turned into a wild game, with aggro play from TheMark, tight play from Special K, bad play from me that caught up, and generally a good time to be had by most. Depending on the hand. We all complimented BadBlood on his “This dad is so sick…” T-shirt that his son gave him for Christmas, and by the end of the night we had appended several different endings to the shirt title.
Pretty much all of my profit came from a couple of key hands, which is typical for my poker sessions, online or live. After gifting my first buyin to TheMark in a hand you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear about, I reloaded for another hundred. In a round of Omaha, I woke up with kings and a couple of other crap cards, but I did have one suit with my kings. There was a raise in front of me from TheMark, I re-raised, and G-Rob pushed all in right behind me. TheMark called, and I put the last of my chips in the middle, figuring if I’ve run into aces, then I’m glad I brought more money. Turns out I had run into Queens and something else, as I showed my hand to take the main pot and don’t remember what Mark held, but it was better than G-Rob’s hand. So I tripled up and then had some chips to play around with.
Another big hand that featured me and Gucci Rick was probably one I played badly, but caught just enough on every street to stick around. I’m sure there was a raise preflop, and I called with Qd-9-Ad-x. The flop came down nine-high with two diamonds, so I had top pair, decent kicker and the nut flush draw. Rick bet out, and I called. The turn brought a queen, and I checked. Rick bet out again, and I moved all in over the top. It was about sixty bucks more for Rick to call, and he went deep into the tank before finally deciding that there was way too much money in the pot (over $400) for him to fold for another $58. He made the call and showed his flopped two pair. I had caught up, making a bigger two pair on the turn, and my hand held up to bring me up to profitable for the night. I ended up running Rick down another couple of times when straights hit on the river to take a significant chunk of his stack, and I was able to leave the game with a tidy profit, and a win over one of the better players in that game, in my opinion. Rick is one of those guys who up until last night has always had my number, betting me off hands when I have weak holdings and catching up when he needed to against me. But poker, she’s a fickle bitch, and last night things were running my way and I got out alive. It was a good way to start the year, and the first time in a couple of years I’ve been able to log a big win on the first day of the year.
Then we almost died on the ride home because of bad road conditions and a doucherocket on I-85, but that’s tomorrow’s story. Now go buy a book! And if you’ve bought a book, leave an Amazon review, they really do help!
by john | Jan 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
Another year here on the interwebs. I worked out this morning, and now I know why they call it “work.” That crap’s hard. But I’ve let myself become a great big fatass again, so I’ve gotta do it. I can hear Suzy pounding away on the treadmill downstairs as I write this, so we’re definitely getting something going. Of course, it’s January 1, so that’s easy enough to say today. Check back in April, and if I’m still wearing this size jeans, you can feel free to kick my ass. And I’ll still be an out of shape tub o’ lard, so it’ll be easy, too!
Played a little online poker last night, over at Full Tilt. I do a little bit of Rush Poker most every day, micro stakes PLO usually. I’ve found that it’s easier to get people to put their entire stack in while behind in PLO, because most folks just aren’t very good at it. I’m not very good at it either, but I have a little tiny edge in that I’m so broke online right now I cant afford to shove unless I have the nuts, even at micro limits. So I’m making a little bit. I usually open up two tables, and if I win or lose one buy-in, I rathole it and go away. That keeps me from playing too long, so my minute attention span can keep up, and it also doesn’t get in the way of other things I need to do, like writing and working out. And obsessively checking my sales numbers at Amazon. But it’s fun, and is a good way for me to pass a few idle minutes. I’ll have to step up my attention span when the Gambling Tales Freeroll Series kicks off (hopefully this Thursday, download the latest episode for more info!), because if folks are going to just give away money, it would be rude of me not to try and take it, right?
Just a quick note for now, because I need to finish getting ready to head south for my annual New Year’s Poker excursion this afternoon. More about that upon my return. In the meantime, I know you’re off work, go buy a book!
by john | Dec 30, 2010 | Writing
I’ve decided to use Kait Nolan’s Round of Words in 80 Days to kick-start me into finishing Back in Black (and Blue) – Black Knight Chronicles, Vol. 2. I’m about 7,000 words into the book now, and I should be able to finish it out within 80 days if I have someone that I have to report in to. So here goes – I’m going to write the last 50,000 words of Volume 2 between now and March 24th, with an intermediate goal of 5,000 words each week. I usually write 1,000 words per day during the week and give myself the weekends off, but this will let me use the weekends to catch up if I fall behind. I should be able to finish up the first draft during that time, which lets me get the print edition ready to go for the Heroes Con in June!
This word count should leave me a little float time near the end because I know I have a lot of work travel in the beginning of March that could screw me. Wish me luck!
