by john | Sep 25, 2017 | Business of publishing, Writing
Not really. But I have begin referring to myself as “Simon Cowell of small press publishing.” If you’d really like to see why, you can go check out the finalists of Son of a Pitch, an online query contest that gets things read by actual publishers. My pal Samantha, she of the menopausal superhero novels asked me to participate, so I read the 20 finalist queries, and the 250-word samples they submitted. Out of the finalists, who had been winnowed down through two previous rounds of judging, I requested three submissions.
Despite the rapidly growing size of our Falstaff Books catalog, I’m not an easy sell. Let’s be honest, most stuff gets rejected before it gets to me. We have multiple acquiring editors reading submissions at Falstaff, and they have to like it before it gets referred to me. Then I have to read the book and like it enough to put it into one of our very limited novel-length publications slots. Then I have to converse with the author and come to terms with them on a contract. Then they’ve sold a book.
But I’m the bottleneck. Probably 80% of submissions that come in are rejected before they get to me. I take less than half of what comes through our acquiring editors, and only about a third of what comes to me directly.
Yes, there are way to bypass the acquiring editors (the slush pile). Here’s how – meet me face to face and pitch me. I do open pitch sessions at any convention that will let me, but the downside to getting face time to pitch a publisher at a con is that it’s in front of a room full of people and you get my critique of your pitch right there on the spot. If you can stand it, come to Atomacon in November, I’m doing a 9AM Saturday morning pitch session. So now you have to pitch me in front of people, AND I’ll be pissy because it’s early.
I won’t really. By 9AM most day’s I’ve already been working for at least an hour.
We did one of these at Congregate in July, and one of the authors there is in the queue for a contract already. So it works.
But I’m not nice. I try not to be rude, but I really do channel my inner Simon Cowell. Now I never watched him on American Idol, but I’ve seen him on America’s Got Talent, and Simon is the tough judge. Not because he’s a dick, although he puts on that front to attract viewers. No, he’s the tough judge because he’s in the business of making money. He wants to turn records into dollars, just like I want to turn books into dollars. So if you show up with a half-assed pitch, or trying to pitch an unfinished book, I’m going to bounce you off the stage as fast as Simon will. But if you show up with something that you’ve obviously put a lot of work into, and you’ve researched our press, and you’ve done all the right things before you get there, then I’ll probably ask you for a submission.
Then the book has to be ready to submit, and it has to be awesome, but those are steps 2-27 of selling a book. First you have to get past Simon. And only about a third of the 20% that actually gets to me make it to contract.
And I accept a LOT more books than most publishers. So get your shit ready before you submit!
by john | Sep 20, 2017 | How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
I wrote a couple of posts early in this series about how to build a mailing list with Incentivized and Organic Subscribers, and all that stuff remains true. If you missed them, the first part is here, and the second one is here. This won’t be about the philosophical elements of making a newsletter, this will be about the nuts and bolts, the mechanics, and what I personally do with my mailing lists to monetize them. Some of this is stuff I’ve gleaned from the internet, some of it I’ve come up with on my own, and fair chunk of it is from notes I took in a long conversation with my friend Stuart Jaffe. If you want to read some kickass adventure or supernatural mystery stuff, check him out. And if you sign up for his email list, you’ll get some free shit! Eric Asher is another person I use for a resource on promos and mailing lists, and he’s also got a deal or two running right now.
But how do I deal with my mailing list(s)? Well, that’s been the subject of a lot of thought over the past few days, as I’ve recently relocated my mailing list from Mailchimp to Mailerlite, because for the number of subscribers that I have (currently about 3,600 across four lists) Mailerlite is $20/month, where Mailchimp was $50, and going to $75 when I reach 5K. So that’s not an insignificant savings, especially given what I have in the marketing budget most months, which is frequently dryer lint. By the way, if you click on those links and sign up for Mailerlite, you get a discount and I get a kickback, so if this is helpful, that’s one way to show the love.
As I mentioned, I have four mailing lists, three of which are active, and one I’m just getting moving (slowly) on. The lists are – my newsletter, the Falstaff Books newsletter, and the ARC team for me & Falstaff. Yes, those links are the signup forms for the linked newsletters. Yes, you can get a metric ton of free ebooks just for signing up to all of those email lists and then auto-dropping. I mean, by my rough reckoning, if you signed up for all the lists that I’ve shown you here, you would get six complete novels, two short stories, one sampler anthology, and one anthology. All for free!
But how does it work? How do I get people onto the lists, and how do I deal with the lists once I’ve got them there. Okay, here’s what I do. It’s more than most people, and scale it back to fit your productivity, but remember that I release at least one new product every month, and sometimes more, plus I have a publishing company releasing at least two new books each month, usually more. So I have a lot of shit to notify people about. But here’s the plan.
1) Consistency – I’m a flake, and anyone that has worked with me knows it. I know it, and I also know that I can’t do the things I need to do if I’m flaking out all over the place. So I have an event set up in my calendar to write a newsletter every Wednesday. It’s also when I write these posts, so it kinda just gives me a couple hours in publisher headspace to do this kind of stuff. I do a John Hartness newsletter one week, then a Falstaff newsletter the following week. If for some reason I don’t have anything new coming out that week, the week before, or the week after, I skip a week. That doesn’t happen very often, between appearances, book releases, and audiobook releases, I have something hitting the virtual streets almost every week, so there’s something to talk about. But consistency is critical. If you go too long without sending out a newsletter, people forget about you. And obscurity is our enemy. So I send out a newsletter about every two weeks for each of my major newsletters. The ARC team is a whole different story, and one that I’m still working on. I’ll keep you posted.
2) The Funnel – This is what I learned from Stuart, setting up my automation. I know he didn’t invent the idea. He’s smart, but not that smart. But he was kind enough to take the time to sit down and explain the whole thing to me. So here’s what happens when someone signs up for my email newsletter, and this is another place in which Mailerlite has Mailchimp beat, hands down. This shit was so much easier to set up on Mailerlite that it wasn’t even funny.
Step 1 – Janet signs up for the newsletter. Janet gets a confirmation email with a link in it directing her to confirm that she’s a human and really wanted to sign up for this crap. Once she does that, she is sent to an Instafreebie page. Instafreebie is a website that automates ebook giveaways and integrates them with mailing lists. It lets me do all this without actually having to sit down and send people ebooks. I use it for all my mailing list giveaways. Yes, there is a referral link buried in that link, too, so if you sign up for Instafreebie and upload a book, I get a discount. Just assume that I have put referral links in every link in here, because I probably have. It doesn’t add anything to your cost, and if I am recommending that you sign up for a service, might as well get them to pay me for it, right?
Step 2 – But anyway, Janet goes to Instafreebie and gets her free ebook. Then the automation starts rolling. In a few days, Janet will get a second email, with another Instafreebie link, this one to a different free short story. She doesn’t have to sign up for anything extra, she doesn’t have to get the story. But it’s free, and it’s a story I like, so why not give it away?
Step 3 – Seven days later, Mailerlite runs an if/then sequence. If Janet opened the email, then she gets an email inviting her to join the Falstaff Books email list. This will get her two more free ebooks, plus another set of notifications. If she didn’t open the email, it will resend, to give her a little reminder to become an active fan and read all my shit (and get more free shit!).
Step 4 – Seven days after that, another step runs. If Janet didn’t open the email a second time, she’s removed from the list. I pay per subscriber, and if people aren’t reading the things I’m sending, then I would rather not pay to keep them around. If they are actively interested and just got busy, they can sign up again and get more free shit all over again. If Janet opened the email the second time it sent, she then gets invited to the Falstaff Books email list. To get more free shit. If she opened the Falstaff Books invite, then she gets another email inviting her to join Stuart’s email list and get his shit for free. Because we all like to work together, and a rising tide lifts all boats. So the more books Stuart sells, the more books I will eventually sell, because we’re all about training people to buy indie and small press books, and love us all. So I like pimping my friends.
If Janet didn’t open the Falstaff Books email, then nothing else happens. I don’t refer only moderately active subscribers to other folks, but I don’t boot them, either. If they’ve opened 2/3 of the emails I send, then I definitely want them around.
That’s the way my funnel is currently set up, and it’s constantly evolving. But I want to draw people in as much as I can, and engage them as much as I can. Those are the initial steps to building a list, signup forms, and creating a funnel to suck them into your loving arms forever.
We’re way over the thousand word limit I try to keep these at, but just a quick note – there’s a new Quincy Harker short story coming out soon, and I’m giving away 100 copies on Instafreebie. You don’t have to sign up for shit, just click this link and you can get a free Harker story. Now, you CAN sign up for the email list while you’re there, but it’s not required. There are 80 or so available as of this writing, so go get some free shit!
by john | Sep 18, 2017 | Uncategorized
So you might have missed it, because it isn’t something that I am promoting all that heavily, but I reinstalled the “Writer Services” tab on this site. I have a few skills that people are willing to pay for, but since the use of those skills is illegal in most states, I decided to whore myself out to help people get their books produced instead.
First off, why am I doing this?
There are two reasons. The first is the most obvious – money. I have skills, people are willing to pay for those skills, and they want to pay someone. I think it should be me. Plus, let’s face it, Dragon Con was expensive. Even splitting the room cost with three other people, it’s not cheap. And I have a bunch of other events coming up that will take me out of town, and thus put me in a hotel, in the fall. So that costs money. Book sales are okay, but it hasn’t been the best quarter, and I could use a little extra cushion coming in. So if I can pick up a couple hundred bucks helping people produce good-looking ebooks and print books, I might as well.
The second is that there are a lot of people who want to self-publish, but don’t have the technical skills. It’s not a knock on anyone, it’s just a set of skills that they haven’t learned. I haven’t learned how to wire a house or build a brick wall. They may have learned these things. If I need a house wired, I call an electrician. If they need an ebook built, they call me. So I can help some folks with their ebook creation, make a good-looking product, and get paid in the process. Sounds like a win-win-win to me.
Now – what do I do?
Ebook Formatting
I take a Word document and I turn it into an ePub or .mobi file. EPub is what the world uses for their e-readers, mobi is what the kindle uses. Even if you’re only putting your book into Kindle Unlimited, you should still get an ePub made. You might need it in the future, and you may need it to email to reviewers, Patreon patrons, or just your mom.
I dunno. Maybe your mom really loves her Nook. It could happen.
I use a piece of software called Vellum, and it makes a very nice-looking ebook. Vellum lets me do the nice section breaks and page headers, as well as making nice drop caps at the beginning of chapters and after section breaks.
It also doesn’t take me very long, so I can do this work pretty cheaply. I charge $50 for basic ebook creation. This means it comes to me in MSWord, and I put it out the door as both an ePub file and a mobi file. If you have a bunch of illustrations, need to send me the file in something other than MSWord, or have a file over 150,000 words, we will negotiate a price.
Print Formatting
I use Vellum for print, too. It has four basic sizes that are available, and it makes a nice, basic, clean print book. This isn’t anything fancy, but it’s good for fiction books. I’ve used it on several of our novellas that we produce at Falstaff Books, as well as on my novel Fireheart. If you want something fancy and awesome, go to Clicking Keys. They have a much deeper suite of services, including edits and cover design. They are who I use for any of our books that require special interior formatting. But if you just need a basic book with page numbers and chapter headers and a clean interior design, I’ll do that for $50. If you want me to do both print and ebook formatting at the same time, I’ll do that for $75.
Those are the primary things I’m offering, but if you want more, I can also do newsletter setup, ebook uploads, keyword optimization, and social media setup. Those rates are all on the Writer Services page.
What I Don’t Do –
Freelance Editing – I tried it, it was a debacle. I’m a good developmental/story editor, but a shite copy editor. And now that I’m working as a publisher, I’m much more interested in mentoring through that avenue that any other, so if you have the next awesome novel, submit it to Falstaff Books and we’ll take a look at it.
Cover Design – I’m no cover artist. You can tell that from the early Bubba short story covers. I know good cover artists, and I’ll happily recommend them to you. But I ain’t them.
Complex Interiors – If you want a bunch of images, I’m not your guy. If you want chapters, text, and headers, I’m there. But let’s be honest, $50 isn’t getting you eight hours of an InDesign specialist. My services are intended to lend a hand, help people make cool ebooks and print books, and maybe make a few bucks.
So that’s the deal. In other news, Falstaff Books has a brand new Patreon! If you love the stuff coming out of the Misfit Toys, you can support us and get previews of ebooks, signed books, stickers, and other cool stuff! Check it out!
by john | Sep 14, 2017 | Promos/Giveaways
Hey there! Here’s a badass new book bundle that I’m part of along with some awesome writers including Gail Z. Martin, Mario Acevedo, Dean Wesley Smith, Quincy Allen, Jean Rabe, Kelly Harmon, Stuart Jaffe, and Mindy Klasky. It’s on sale wherever ebooks are sold, and also is available on BundleRabbit!
It includes Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1, and eight other great books for as low as $2.99 for the whole set!
Get your bundle today!
by john | Sep 12, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Yeah, it might seem like an odd question for someone who runs a small press to ask, but bear with me.
It is easier now than it has ever been to make money self-publishing. There are more ways to dissect the market, more tools to create and distribute a quality product, and more people making a solid living self-publishing their own work than ever before. So why would you want to work with a publisher? Particularly a small press, which might not be able to do anything better for you than you could do yourself.
I teach classes on this shit. I’ll be teaching this very thing as a workshop at Penned Con in St. Louis at the end of the month. That workshop is about choosing a path to publication, and it dissects the decision-making process about going indie, small press, or shopping a book to agents and then New York. Since I’ve never sold a book to a Big 5 publisher, or any other press that doesn’t accept unaccented submissions, I can’t say a whole lot about that.
I know, it’s never stopped me before. 🙂 It won’t this time, either. Don’t worry.
But for today, let’s look at the reasons you might want to use a small press publisher over self-publishing.
You don’t want to learn how to do all that shit.
There’s nothing wrong with that as a response. I’ve been at this for seven years and I still can’t design a decent cover wrap. Hell, I can barely design a serviceable cover at all. But I do know how to hire those people. But there are parts of the process that are non-writing related that you have to learn when you are a publisher, whether you are the entirety of the client list, or you have dozens of writers in your stable. You need to learn how to build an ebook, how to create a cover, how to create a cover wrap, how to navigate ISBNs, deal with CreateSpace, deal with Ingram, find an audiobook producer, navigate ACX, upload to Amazon, get the book listed on all other ebook distribution sites, and make decisions about pricing, exclusivity, and all sorts of other market factors.
That’s a lot of shit. If you have a family and a day job, you might just not have the bandwidth to learn all that shit, no matter how intelligent you are. My buddy AJ Hartley is a hell of a writer. He publishes with several big houses, and has had quite a successful career to this point. He also has a day job and a kid to raise, and his wife has a thriving career as well. He should never self-publish (I’m sure he’s glad to hear this, since he also has never wanted to), because he has too much other shit going on in his life. It’s all I can do to get him to send out his newsletter. 🙂 Love ya, buddy.
So not wanting to learn how to do all the things a publisher does is a perfectly valid reason to give up part of your royalties. Conversely, if you are very interested in how the sausage gets made, selling one book or one series to a publisher and following it through the creation and distribution process can also be a great way to learn.
You want to learn to be a better writer.
This is why Bell Bridge Books publishes The Black Knight Chronicles. I have often said that I consider working with Deb Dixon and Bell Bridge to be my MFA writing program, with a fair side of editing classes thrown in. I couldn’t have learned as much in five years of college as I did in the two years we spent taking the first three Black Knight books apart and rebuilding them. Every book I do with Deb, I learn more about story, pacing, plotting, building a series, and writing good, tight fiction. I sincerely hope that someday some of my Falstaff authors say the same thing about their work with me and my team. If you’re not learning, you’re pushing up daisies. So if you can find a bunch of people who you like working with that will help you grow in your craft, then the amount of money you “lose” by working with a publisher is insignificant in comparison to the increased earnings you’ll see down the road.
Let’s also be clear: I 100% made more money on The Black Knight Chronicles with Bell Bridge than I would have on my own, even if I had stayed 100% indie and pushed books out as fast as I can. In addition to the education I’ve gained, getting a Kindle Daily Deal feature several times sure doesn’t hurt!
You need a confidence boost.
It’s a tough world, and a lot of the time it feels like nobody is on your side. A good publisher will always be on your side. Sure, the interest is also partially self-serving, since you selling more books makes money for both of you, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m a fan of enlightened self-interest. It’s a motivation that I understand. So I try to be a cheerleader for my authors. I suck at it, so I usually give them a little Simon Cowell-style tough love and then bring in somebody else to be all huggy, but I try. But whenever you get down, and think it’s too much and you should give up, having a publisher behind you gives you at least one person who really wants you to succeed. And they believe that you can. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have wasted the ink sending you a contract. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have spent time editing your work, and building a cover, and doing all the other shit that we do. Even if we don’t put any money where our mouth is as far as an advance, we do put a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears into making every book the best it can be. That’s another thing that a publisher does – we spend a fair amount of time as career counselor and cheerleader for our authors. Because a happy author is a productive author. And a productive author writes better.
There are a ton of people out there who’ll tell you why you don’t need a publisher today. And everything they say is correct.
But I don’t need a Krispy Kreme doughnut, either. Like, ever. But damn, a lot of times I want one.
by john | Sep 11, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Serialized Fiction, Writing
Well, it’s done. Amazing Grace is complete at 29 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The whole thing is off to my editor now, actually has been for a month or two, honestly. I’ve enjoyed having all of you along with me for this ride. It’s been a fun change of pace for me to serialize something, and to work in a longer format than the novellas I do every month. I also found myself loving Lila Grace and the Dead Old Ladies Detectives.
Don’t worry, there will be more.
Yeah, there will be more Lila Grace, more Dead Old Lady Detectives, and more of this fictionalized Lockhart, SC. Lockhart is a real place, and John D. Long Lake is where Susan Smith drowned her children. There was a guy who lived there named Johnny Thomas, but he wasn’t a sheriff, he was a barber, and my dad’s cousin. The Lockhart in Amazing Grace is a blend of the real Lockhart, plus York and Sharon, all tossed into a blender and mixed until chunky. The cemetery where Lila Grace walks is the cemetery where my mother is buried, and she is one of the Dead Old Lady Detectives, along with her best friends Faye Russell (nee Comer) and Helen (Tot) Good. Miss Faye is still alive, but Miss Tot left us earlier this year, right about the time I started this book. I couldn’t think of a better way to memorialize her than to put her in this book with Mama and Miss Faye, because the three of them did form the Western York County grapevine for a long time.
So there’s a lot of truth in this book, despite the fact that none of the ghosts I talk to have ever talked back. And I’m good with that. So I hope you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace, and sometime in 2018 I’ll start giving you chapters of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, the next Lila Grace Carter Mystery. The book will be on sale in ebook and print next month, most likely, unless I decide to submit it for publication elsewhere, in which case it will take longer. But I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, next week we’ll start something COMPLETELY different. Like, more different than you can even imagine. Starting next week, we’ll have a near-future cyborg adventure called TECH Ops kicking off. I hope you enjoy it as much as you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace.
Thanks!
by john | Sep 6, 2017 | Appearances
Nah, I’ve still got DragonCon brain, so I’m not going to try to drop any knowledge on you this week.
But I’ll tell you where you can find me in the next few weeks to ask me yourself!
Saturday, September 9 – Bookmarks Literary Festival in Winston-Salem, NC
I’ll be there sharing a tent with Matthew Saunders, Darin Kennedy, and Gail Z. Martin. We’ll have a shitload of books for you buy, so bring a wagon! Also attending will be awesome people like Christina Henry, Leigh Bardugo, and Sherrilyn Kenyon. They won’t be in the tent with us, but they’ll be there.
Saturday, September 23 – Con2 – Cabarrus County Main Library – Concord, NC
Falstaff Books will have multiple authors representing us there, with a truckload of books to sell and some awesome panels to present. So come out and say hi, and bring your wallet!
Friday, September 29 – Saturday, September 30 – Penned Con – St. Louis, MO.
There are a flaming shitload of writers at this multi-genre book festival in St. Louis, including me and Eric Asher. So if you’re anywhere near there, come out and say hi!
That’s the rest of this month. There’s more to come, always! See you soon!
by john | Sep 4, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
Epilogue
There were only three of us at the graveside for Jeff’s funeral. Me, Willis, and Reverend Turner. The rest of the deputies disavowed any connection with the murderer, and I couldn’t really blame them. The town tried its best to forget they ever knew the man, too, because to claim him would be to claim their part in making him what he was, to claim their tiny piece of guilt. His family was long dead, the only person in the world who depend on him was a sweet little Corgi named Butch, who I had on a leash next to me at the funeral.
Reverend Turner spoke kind words about the man, ignoring his end and focusing on the parts of his life he spent in service. He kept it short, though, not needing to embellish for his audience of two. When he was done, I knelt beside the casket for a moment and prayed for him. I knew full well he wasn’t in a better place, I’d seen him go, but maybe my prayers could lessen his sentence a little bit. The things he did were terrible, and he deserved to pay for them, but he was, in the end, a pitiful, scared little man, and that deserved a little leniency.
Reverend Turned stepped over to me and extended his hand. “Lila Grace, I feel I may have wronged you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
I stood up, brushed the dirt off my knees, and shook his hand. “All is forgiven, Reverend. I appreciate you speaking here today.”
“If I don’t minister to the lost, what kind of shepherd would I be?” He asked with a gentle smile. “I don’t understand what you do, but I believe now that there is no malice in you, and no touch of evil in your gifts.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I might not ever turn Baptist, but I reckon we can at least sit next to each other at the church softball games,” I said, smiling back at him.
He shook hands with Willis and turned to walk into the church. Willis raised an eyebrow at me. “That was unexpected.”
“Not really. We had a talk a little while ago. I think he learned a thing or two.”
“Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Willis said with a grin.
“Maybe,” I said, grinning back “As long as one of those tricks is putting the toilet seat down, we’ll be fine.”
We laughed as we walked back to the patrol car. I stopped at the door and looked back at the grave, where three filmy images of old woman wavered in the wind. The Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency had helped solve their first case, and even if it didn’t end happily for everyone, it did end, and we did put Jenny Miller to her heavenly rest. I had to count that as a win, I decided.
Then I slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and let my boyfriend drive me home, the first time that had happened in my fifty-seven years. I guess that was another win, this one for the Living Old Lady.
THE END
by john | Aug 28, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
29
I was stuck in a ramshackle trailer in the middle of the woods in a makeshift fishing camp nobody knew about, with a crazy as a loon deputy turned murderer pointing a pistol at my head. My only living backup was shot and unconscious on the floor across the room, and I, being a genius hostage negotiator who’s seen way too much Law and Order, had disarmed myself. So all I had to save me was my wits and a couple of ghosts.
This was not how I thought I would die, let me just be clear about this. Like everybody, I’ve imagined my own death on more than one occasion. When I was younger, I assumed I would die at home, surrounded by a passel of grand- and great-grandchildren, my descendants all dutifully weeping in the parlor while I passed my last breath in some lavender-scented dignity that in no way involves messing my bed or any other bodily fluids.
As I grew older, and my lack of descendants became more pronounced, I realized that if I was lucky I would be able to shuffle off my mortal coil in a decently appointed rest home somewhere, but if the cost of things continued to do what they inevitably do, I would most likely be relegated to some state-run old folks’ home with last week’s sheets and and yesterday’s Depends.
At no point did I envision myself getting shot in a trailer while trying to save a woman who despised me from a former student who once idolized me while my brand new boyfriend lie perforated on the floor and two dead people watched the whole sideshow unfold like a tawdry hillbilly episode of Murder, She Wrote.
“Jeff,” I switched into my “teacher voice,” and his head snapped up. It was good to see I still had it, at least a little. I managed to hold my voice steady and my expression severe. “This has gotten ridiculous. Put that gun down, untie that woman, and turn yourself in immediately. You are not going to shoot me, and you are not going to hurt anyone else tonight. What Karen and her friends did to you back then was awful, but it did not ruin your life. It ruined your prom, but anything that happened after that night was your responsibility.”
“I couldn’t go back to school!” He wailed. “I couldn’t take them laughing at me in the halls. Every time I saw somebody from school, I knew that was all they were talking about.”
“For a few days, yes,” I agreed. “You were a laughingstock. For a little while. But you know as well as I do that children can’t keep a thought in their head longer than five minutes. You would have had a bad week, maybe two, but by the time school was out it would have all blown over. But you didn’t let it, did you?” I poured it on. I knew the only way I was walking out of that trailer was to get him to move off his plan of killing us all, and this was the only thing I could think of to do that.
“No,” he said, his voice wavering. “You don’t know what it’s like to have everybody whisper about you.”
“I don’t? Boy, have you even lived in this town? Who do you think you’re talking to? Why, the woman in that chair right there wouldn’t even eat my casserole because Reverend Turner convinced her that Satan helped me bake it. Like the devil himself would help me snap green beans,” I said with a laugh.
My voice softened, and I took a step closer. “Jeff, sweetie, I’ve been the one they talk about behind their hands for fifty years, and I’m still here. My front yard has had more toilet paper in the trees than the principal’s house, and I’ve been thrown out of more Bible study groups than the Whore of Babylon. I know exactly what it’s like to have the whole town staring at you, and talk about you, and that’s how I know that it don’t hurt. All you have to do is hold your head up and walk on by. If you don’t acknowledge the fools, they can’t touch you.”
He looked up at me, his eyes full. “But I let them. I let them, and they just kept going, and going. That’s why I didn’t get the sheriff’s job, because I wasn’t strong enough. It’s why I never got married, because I was too weak. Well, I’m not weak now! I’m strong! I’m strong, and everybody’s going to know how strong I am!”
His gun, which had drifted to point toward the ground while I spoke, snapped up and pointed at Karen Miller’s head from less than three feet away. There was nothing I could do, no way I could get there in time. He was going to kill that woman, and all I could do was watch.
But Jenny didn’t. Jenny, sweet, dead Jenny, who helped start all this in motion by picking at Jeff with her stupid little pretty girl teasing, summoned up enough energy somehow to smack his wrist away and send the bullet slamming through the side of the trailer. Jeff looked down at his hand, then looked to where Jenny was standing right in front of him.
She looked more solid than any ghost I’d ever seen, and the way the color ran out of his face, I knew Jeff saw her, too. He staggered back, raising his gun and firing into her face three times. The bullets passed right through her, barely making the girl’s image flicker, and he backed up more until he slammed into the small bar separating the kitchen and living room.
“Jenny?” Karen’s voice was soft, thready, a timid little thing that might escape at any moment.
Jenny turned to her mother, and Jeff did at the same time. He raised his pistol again, but before Jenny could whirl back to strike his hand, another shot rang out, followed by two more. Jeff’s eyes went wide, and his legs went rubbery as he collapsed straight down, blood pouring out onto the carpet.
I looked to Willis, who sat on the floor holding his pistol, smoke wafting from the barrel. “You’re alive!” I said, thrilled and surprised in equal measure.
“This is one of those nights I’m glad I bought new vests for the department when I started. I reckon I’m also glad not everybody decided to wear them.” He nodded to Jeff, who lay on the floor, his eyes open and glassy.
Before my eyes, his spirit peeled up from his body, looked around the room, and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.” Then he vanished, a small dark hole opening up in the air around him and taking him to wherever he was destined to spend eternity.
“Apology not accepted, asshole,” Jenny replied, and my head whipped over to where she stood by her mother’s chair. A bright white light appeared behind her, and she looked up at me with a wistful smile. “I guess it’s time for me to go, huh?”
“Yes, sweetie, it’s time for you to go,” I said.
“What’s happening?” Jenny’s mother said, her head whipping around.
“There’s a white light opening up right past that wall over there, and Jenny is supposed to go to it. She’s done what she stayed here to do, and now it’s time for her to go.” Karen smiled at my words, but one tear slid down her cheek all the same.
“Time for me, too,” came a gravelly voice from the kitchen as Sheriff Johnny walked through the bar and headed to the light. “I think my town will be in fine hands. But tell that boy to take care of my people, or he won’t like it when I come back to pay him a visit.”
“Will do, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.
Jenny and the sheriff walked into the light, which blossomed to blinding brilliance before fading to just water-stained paneling once more. “They’re gone,” I said. I felt a strange wetness on my own face, and reached up to find tears on my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying, and I certainly wasn’t sad, but it was a night full of emotions, that’s for certain.
I helped Willis up off the floor, and we untied Mrs. Miller, then we waited outside for the ambulance and coroner and crime scene unit to arrive. I scrounged up a blanket from behind the seat of my truck to put around Karen, since she was in her pajamas, and then Willis went down to pull my truck up into the yard beside Jeff’s Bronco. We told our story more times than we cared to, leaving out any mention of dead sheriffs or daughters, and the sun was peeking over the horizon before we finally pulled back onto the highway and headed back to my house.
We didn’t speak as we walked in the front door, I just reached back and took his hand. I led Willis through the house to my bedroom, undressed him, and laid beside him, feeling his solid masculinity next to me as I drifted off to sleep. There would be more to come, I was sure, but there was plenty of time for that.
by john | Aug 25, 2017 | Appearances
Yeah, I know I post something like this almost every year about this time. These tips are still relevant, and become only moreso as the convention grows and the hotels do not. So here are Hartness’s tips for surviving Dragon Con.
- Carry a water bottle. You don’t have to carry a full one, there are water stations all over the place, and many of the hotel bars will fill your bottle for you if you’re nice and don’t jam it in their faces when they’re crazy busy. But it’s hot as Beelzebub’s ballsack in Atlanta Labor Day Weekend, and humid as a gator’s taint. If you aren’t accustomed to moving around in that kind of heat and humidity, you could end up in real trouble. So stay hydrated. For every beer or alcoholic drink you have, drink one glass of water. Ditto for soda.
- Plan for shit. There’s an app and everything. Your favorite writers have probably posted their schedules to their websites or Facebook. So there’s no excuse for doing nothing, unless you want to do nothing for a little while.
- Plan for shit to go sideway. It’s fucking crowded. It’s fucking hot. You’re fucking hungover. Hell, maybe you’re just fucking. But be prepared to throw your plans in the shitter if something awesome comes up. Maybe you’ll be waiting in line for a restaurant and one of your favorite cover artist of all time will invite you to go sit in the back of a panel and have a picnic with he and his wife, who happens to be one of your literary heroes. Maybe you’ll end up dancing with this amazing guy/girl/genderfluid person at DJ Spider’s set and you’ll go hook up. Maybe you’ll walk past a room and find a legendary knife maker teaching knife throwing. These are all things that are worth abandoning your spot in line to get Nathan Filion’s autograph, I promise. Have the flexibility to enjoy an experience more than a thing. And two of those three cool things happened to me. No, I’m not telling you which one didn’t happen. If you want to know buy me a drink, or bring a cold Miller Lite to one of my panels for me.
- Meet new people. There are some awesome people at Dragon, and some of them are folks that you’ve either read or heard of or watched on TV. Meet them. Either go up to their table and say hi, or if they’re in a bar with a crowd of people, don’t be afraid to walk up and say hi. If you’re a public figure and you don’t want anyone to approach you, you won’t be hanging out in a bar. Don’t be a dick, and if they seem to be in an intense meeting or conversation, don’t bug folks. Ditto when they’re eating in a restaurant. But bars? Before or after panels (especially after)? Fair game.
- Go to a reading by an author you’ve never read. I suggest the one held in the Hyatt Marietta room at 1PM on Saturday. Even if you’ve read my stuff, there will probably be someone reading there that you’ve never heard of. I open my readings up to my friends, because I don’t want to read for an hour. So come see me and my pals! Then stick around for whoever is after me, because they’re probably awesome, too.
- Go to the Dealer Room Monday or during the parade. This is a legit pro tip – the dealer room is crowded as FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK. To avoid that shit, go when people aren’t there. Parade time and Monday are prime shopping times. Don’t know when the parade is? Use the app. You’re a damn adult, I can’t do everything for you. 🙂
- Don’t go near the fucking habitrails from 4PM Friday to 1PM Sunday. Those things are like a goddamn claustrophobic sauna during the height of the con. I avoid them at all costs during those hours.
- Take pictures, but don’t be a dick about it. Don’t stop in the fucking habitrails. Don’t stop at the top of the fucking escalator. Don’t stop right outside the fucking elevator. Don’t fucking stop abruptly. Don’t stop right inside or outside a fucking door. Don’t fuck up the traffic flow. There are 75,000 fucking people, and all of them want to get somewhere.
- Don’t be a perv or a creeper. Here’s how to tell if whatever you’re about to do or say qualifies. Ask yourself this question – “If someone said those words to my mother/sister/daughter/spouse/friend would I want to punch them in the dick?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t say those words. The same thing applies to actions. If you wouldn’t want someone to do it to you or someone you love, don’t do it. This does not apply to me slapping Tamsin Silver on the ass. I have been granted a lifetime pass, and she has a lifetime pass to grab my butt. We went to college together. We’ve seen some shit, y’all.
- Stay calm, stay flexible, have fun. We all have anxieties. We all have things that set us off. Keep all that shit in check, and if you need to go sit in a bathroom stall for fifteen minutes to chill the fuck out, then go do that. Just grunt every once in a while so people will think you’re taking a titanic shit and they won’t be afraid you died. But for real, I have hidden in the crapper for five minutes to escape the madness on more than one occasion and at more than one con. It’s a legit survival strategy. Anytime you’re in a new place, you find out where all the exits are, and where all the shitters are.
- Do at least one thing you never thought you’d do. For some of y’all, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. For others, it’s an annual thing. For some of us, it’s the toughest and most enjoyable work week of the year. But there’s one thing that’s universal – we love this shit. So do something awesome. Meet someone awesome. Have a motherfucking adventure!
- Buy my shit. No trip to Dragon Con is complete without buying my shit. You can place orders on the Autographed Books page and I’ll deliver them to Dragon Con. Just tell me which one of my panels you plan to be at (preferably one in the Hyatt, since that’s where I’m staying) and I’ll bring your books to the panel. Yeah, I’m a whore. What did you expect, public fucking service?
Here’s my schedule –
Title: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Angels & Demons in Urban Fantasy
Time: Fri 05:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Representations of angels & demons vary widely within folklore, religion, & literature. Our panelists will discuss how depictions often focus on their similarities as well as their differences.
Title: Reading: John G. Hartness
Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Marietta – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The author of urban southern fantasy and host of the podcast Literate Liquors reads from his works.
Title: The Black Dog: Depression & Mental Health in Fiction & Fandom
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Our panelists examine how mental health is portrayed in SF. Are there any portrayals that help those of us dealing with our own issues? Note that this is not a prescriptive or workshop.
Title: Writer’s Block: Real or Imagined?
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The debate about writer’s block is as old as the craft. Every writer has an opinion. The pros discuss the condition and the cures.
Title: Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: Piedmont – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Enjoy a varied sampler of short readings from authors whose work spans a range of fantasy sub-genres in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading.
Title: Run Screaming into the Night
Time: Sun 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Does your own writing scare you? Dark Fantasy & Horror need a real edge that guarantees a terrifying read…even for the writer.
Title: Coming to America: An American Gods Fan Panel
Time: Sun 08:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: A moderated fan-panel discussion of the new hit series based on the book by Neil Gaiman.
See you next week!
