John

Drivel. I promise.

Live and in Stereo!

Nov 12

Posted by john in Uncategorized

“Press release” from bloggers Falstaff and Special K
Gambling Tales Podcast is now available. Join Falstaff (John Hartness) and Special K (Curtis Krumel) as we take you through the best in lies and legends about gambling today and through the ages. . Show #001 with Badblood and the origins of gambling is available immediately. New shows are scheduled to appear every two weeks. Guests scheduled to appear in future shows include Dr. Pauly, Lee Jones, Dr. David Schwartz (UNLV – Roll the Bones)

The podcast is available at http://www.gtpodcast.com

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GamblingTalesPodcast

Available on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=339814710.
It will be searchable on iTunes by the weekend.

Email address for Questions, Comments, and Suggestions: gtpodcast@live.com

Subscribe today!

Bloggers: Become a friend of the podcast (FOP) by posting this information on your blog. Drop us an email with a link to your post and we’ll link to you on the Friends of the Podcast list. See you in Vegas Dec. 10-14!

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This is neat

Jul 8

Posted by john in Writing Drivel

I thought this was neat.

“That was the setup—and now, thanks to a big collaborative effort, we’ve got a beautiful book full of ideas.

We’ll post a PDF online, free for everyone—but only after we sell this run of 200 real, physical objects. So think of it this way: You’re not just buying a thought-provoking, take-it-to-the-coffee-shop book for yourself. You’re buying access for everybody. You’re a patron of the new liberal arts!

Thank you, kind patrons! You ransomed this book in about eight hours flat.”

They made a book, put out an extremely limited edition of print copies, and when those print copes were gone, they put the book in a PDF and gave it away. That’s interesting to me.

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Some funny shit

Jul 8

Posted by john in True Stories Drivel

Fo’ real. This is some funny shit. It kinda reminds me of the time my brother in law Billy Wayne (yes, he went by both names. Yes, he had a belt with his name on it. And yes, many of our friends also referred to him as Bubba. No, I cannot make this shit up) convinced his buddy Jimmy Lee to lick a frog’s ass.

Now nobody ever accused Jimmy Lee (God rest his mullet-wearin’ soul) of being the brightest bulb in the box, but that boy did like to get high. Jimmy Lee used to work for my daddy with Wayne (neither my sister nor I ever referred to him with two first names, it’s an oddity in my family) and my brother Tommy (also known as Turtle, do not ask) in my daddy’s logging operation.

Yes, my daddy is a lumberjack. Yes, he is okay. No, he has not, to my knowledge, ever put on women’s clothing. Nor does he get the reference. He is an 80-year-old man from Bullock Creek, SC. Monty Python has not penetrated that particular culture. Just accept it.

So Wayne and Jimmy Lee were sitting around one evening drinking beer (Wayne used to pour salt on the top of his Budweiser can, and if anyone can explain that particular taste sensation, I’d appreciate it) when Wayne looks over at Jimmy Lee and says “You hear that?”

Jimmy Lee responds eloquently with “Hear what?”

“There’s a frog over there in the woodpile.”

“So what?”

“I saw on TV about these people that lick a frog and get hiiiiiiiggggghhhhhh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yeah, man. I saw it on the TV. You go over there and get that frog and lick it, and it will fuck you up.”

“Will not.”

“Yeah, man. It’ll get you stoned as hell!”

Well, stoned as hell was about Jimmy Lee’s favorite state, so he went over to the woodpile, found that hoppy toad, and after he brushed the sawdust off him, he commenced to licking that hoppy toad. He licked that hoppy toad like he was licking his first…

um, this is a family blog…

um, not fucking likely!

He licked that hoppy toad like it was the last pussy on earth. He stood there licking that frog for a few minutes and then looked over at Wayne and said, “Man, I don’t feel nothing.”

Wayne said, “Keep licking.”

So he did, and that’s how there came to be a 30-something year old redneck in the back yard of my sister’s doublewide wearing knee-high moccasins with fringe around the tops, no shit, cutoff blue jeans and blonde permed mullet licking a frog’s ass on a Friday night.

Good times, good times. I did mention that I can’t make this shit up, right?

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The Plan

Jul 7

Posted by john in Writing Drivel

Not much of one, but here it is – I’ve figured out how I want to try to go to market with my novel. I want to. I don’t really care how it gets out there, but my research has shown my that there are two basic paths to getting a book published.

1) Blow somebody
2) Be brilliant. Then blow somebody.

Since I’m neither brilliant nor a fellatist, I’m gonna try two (or maybe three) paths. The first is the more traditional method of publication – I’ll shop for an agent and then if I can find anyone crazy enough to sign on as an agent they’ll shop for a publisher. Alternately, I may try to submit directly to some publishers, but that’s a pretty good way to get things on a slush pile, and I’d rather avoid that if possible. I plan to submit a cover letter each day for the rest of the summer to one agent or agency that has shown a tendency to take on fantasy and science fiction authors, and we’ll see how that goes.

Plan B is to self-publish. This is the more definite way to get the book out on the street, but it might take a lot more work to get it read and to actually get it into the hands of a significant number of people. Like I’ve always said, I didn’t write the thing to make a ton of money, but self-publishing carries with it a certain level of risk, and I’ll have to figure out what level of risk I’m willing to assume (i.e. how many copies I’m going to print). I’ll also have to deal with things like cover design, etc. The upside is that I can control the price and retain a larger percentage of the cover price, as well as handle electronic distribution. So if I don’t get any positive response from agents by Labor Day, I’ll start the self-publishing process. If I go that route, I foresee availability to order by year-end from this site, and a cover price of around $15 for paperback. I may offer a hardback special edition type thing if people want it, and I’d almost certainly include a personal message of undying gratitude to everyone who bought a copy of the first run.

But if you know any literary agents or publishers, this would be a great time for you to hook a brutha up.

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I warned you…

Jul 6

Posted by john in Writing Drivel

That this space would be drivel. This post will change NOTHING about your expectations, if only to further fulfill them. If you’re expecting drivel, that is. If you’re expecting life-altering philosophical musings, you’re fucked. Try somewhere else. I’ve recently become a big fan of Amanda Fucking Palmer’s blog, so maybe try there. I first heard of her by reading Neil Gaiman’s blog, because he’s a literary ninja and I’m a big dork, so I read blogs by people whose books I buy. And they’re dating now, which is cool, because she’s cool and he’s cool and it’s cool when cool people get together.

See how blogs make you feel like you know people you’ve never really met (regardless of the fact that I did once meet Neil Gaiman, but it was at a comic con and he was signing books so I was just one of thousands of people in line that day so it’s not like we actually met and hung out, but anyway, that was just a kind of full-disclosure thing in case anyone gave a shit. Which you didn’t. So there.).

I did mention drivel, right?

This is what you get on a Sunday night while I’m watching (peripherally) people play poker on the internet for enough money to pay off my mortgage (twice if you take first place) and waiting for the final table to start so I can begin to pay more direct attention, then crank out a thousand words or so for the PokerStars blog, then maybe spew forth another few hundred works for PokerNews before I go to bed, thinking all the while that it’s a good thing I chose to be off Monday when given the option to be off Thursday or Monday for the July 4th holiday. Which I thought was odd, since we were closed on Friday the 3rd, and Saturday, which was actually the 4th, but if you wanna give me an extra day off, I’ll get right on that, bossman.

So I finished the first draft of my novel this week, which is an excellent thing. There are several things I want to go back and touch on with it, but the bulk of the work is done. So now I’ve stared sending out query letters to agents to see about getting it published. I may end up going the self-publish route, simply because I’m an impatient shit and I don’t want to wait to hear back from people, but that will require some capital that I’m not completely in possession of right now. But there are a bunch of options there, and while the potential for sales is likely lower, the potential percentage profit is greater. And since I didn’t write the thing thinking I was going to get rich and famous for it, anything that happens with it now is better than nothing.

And I’ve got the next project ready to get going already. I’m not sure of the format yet, either a graphic novel (which would be a whole new format that I’d have to learn how to write in, but might be interesting) or another novel. This one’s about vampires, teenage vampires specifically. Angsty, snarky teenage vampires, not the sexy Twilight-y teenage vampires. Imagine if Anthony Michael Hall’s character from Sixteen Candles got turned into a vampire, and then went and turned his best friend Wesley Crusher into a vamp. At first, they’d think it was the coolest thing since sliced bread, because they’re teenage geeks. But after about 20 years of being sixteen years old, and not even being able to go into a DMX and get an ID that says different, being a teenage vampire would kinda suck. I mean, here you are supposed to be this badass bloodsucking chick magnet, but you can’t even get into bars because you got turned before you outgrew your acne!

That would suck (pun completely intended). So I’m not sure what the plan is with that, but there’s going to be at least one scene that opens with light streaming out from under a crypt door and a whole lotta PS3 going on. Because that’s what you get when you give a dork high-speed internet and a shiny MacBook. And that’s really all I am at the heart of things: a dork with a Mac and a cable modem.

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Yeah, I know

Jun 30

Posted by john in Poker Drivel

I’m not blogging any more here than I was on my old site. Cut a brother a break. It’s Tuesday and I’ve churned out somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 words between my novel, PokerNews and PokerStars Blog. Add onto that a real job, and I’ve been a little busy.

So I’m back in Atlanta this week for work, but it looks like my three-day trip is going to turn into a two-day trip, so I’ll be back to NC on Wednesday night instead of Thursday. Bonus!

Last weekend saw a return to Bad Blood’s place for some poker. I did a fine job of combining bad cards with abominable play, and left four buyins lying around the table. I think the rest of the players combined for three rebuys, so I rebought as many times as every one else. Combined. Yay me. I think my game is kinda broken right now, and I think I may have figured out what the issue is, so I’m going to make a couple of adustments this weekend at Jim’s to see if I can get back into the habit of raking in chips instead of only adding to my stack via rebuys. Because that shit’s getting old.

Anyway, nothing to see here, move along. I told you this space would be filled with drivel.

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Hello world! Wherein our hero co-opts the basic WordPress template for his glorious (or vainglorious) return to blogging

Jun 21

Posted by john in General Drivel

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I’ll go with the “edit it” option. And then I’ll be witty and ironic and I’ll leave the base text in. Because we’re aliens, and that’s how we roll.

So I’m a blogging junkie, I admit it. I haven’t blogged in a long time, not since I relaunched johnhartness.com as a site for my fiction, essays and poetry. And I missed it. So I’m back to blogging. I don’t promise to blog all that frequently, especially since I do have that small novel project I’m working on elsewhere on this site, and then there’s poetry that I try to write, and at least for the rest of June I’m still churning out 1,000 words/day for PokerNews.

And I still have a day job.

So this week sucked. And not even in a good kinda I’ll swallow when I’m done way, either. Monday I posted to FaceBook “is it a bad thing that I’ve had this headache for two weeks?” And I got a wealth of responses, most of them referring to blood pressure in some way. So I get my BP checked, and it’s sky-high. So I go to the doctor, and now I take 50MG of Atenelol (or something like that) every day. Yay me.

Then, since the cosmos apparently decided that I wasn’t taking my health seriously enough, Tuesday morning I get the news that a colleague died suddenly Monday night of apparent heart attack. And he was in shape. He was in his mid-sixties I’d guess, and he exercised regularly, didn’t smoke, drank red wine, and generally did those things that you do to stay healthy. But it didn’t matter. Like my Death t-shirt says, “You get a lifetime.” He lived his well, and he’ll be sorely missed. So that freaked me out more than a little.

Then Wednesday – Friday we had recurring issues with a project at work, and Thursday night my sister-in-law’s mom died, so all in all, I picked a hell of a week to stop sniffing glue, as someone that I can’t remember once said.

But today was absolutely the highlight of my week, and maybe my June. I got more in touch with my inner geek (and that’s really not as nasty as it sounds) and went to the Heroes Comic Convention. I wandered around wondering who let all these girls in, talked to a bunch of self-published artists and writers, and bought a ridiculous number of $5 trade paperbacks. It’s probably been 10 years since I went to a Con, and I hadn’t even realized that I’d missed it, but I had. It was a lot of fun, I picked up some neat-looking new comics by some interesting people, and started to brew ideas about maybe finding an artist type and doing Choices as a graphic novel if I ever finish the thing.

And that’s been an interesting exercise for me, too. What started as a writing exercise: write 30 minutes of fiction or poetry every day (except weekends) has blown up into 36,000 words and counting. With people who are enjoying reading it. I remember reading interviews with authors who would talk about not knowing what their characters were doing and thinking “yeah, right. Pretentious tool.” But now I totally understand it because I figure I’m about halfway through this novel, and I don’t really know what’s going to happen. I know where I think they’re all going geographically, at least roughly, and I think I have an idea of what’s going to happen at the end, but I’m not sure how it’s going to come together. I’m figuring it out as I go along. Of course that’s been the pattern for my entire life, so nothing new there.

So lock in your RSS readers, I’m back to blogging. As if your signal-to-noise ratio wasn’t bad enough :) .

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