March is for Monsters

I’ve enrolled all the Bubba the Monster Hunter stories (except Cat Scratch Fever, because it’s new and I want you Nook owners to be able to get the story) in Kindle Select through April, and I’m going to use the month of March to work on really seeing what I can do with this program from Amazon. Now I’m no Scott Nicholson, so don’t expect me to be giving away no ten Kindle Fires or anything like that, but I do think giving away one Kindle Fire is not out of the question. So I’m working on a giveaway, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Watch this space for more details!

Here’s the schedule for the free Bubba stuff –

Monsters Beware – Free February 29-March 2

Voodoo Children – Free March 5-9

Ballet of Blood – Free March 12-16

Ho-Ho-Homicide – Free March 19-23

Tassels of Terror – Free March 26-30

 

And Bloggers – you can get entries just by posting, tweeting, sharing or otherwise helping publicize this giveaway!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Kindle Fire Giveaway

Indie authors Joe Konrath, Scott Nicholson, J. Carson Black, Lee Goldberg and Blake Crouch and giving away a buttload of stuff! You should go enter. I sure as hell am!

WIN A KINDLE FIRE IN THE BIG KINDLE BOOGIE

10 Free Kindle Fires, 75 free ebooks, $300 in gift cards, a $500 library donation! Entries for 10 free Kindle Fires are already underway at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com and gift cards are bing randomly awarded on Twitter for those who tweet about the Big Kindle Boogie.

 

On Feb. 1-2, bestselling thriller authors J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, Lee Goldberg, and Scott Nicholson are making 75 Kindle books free on Amazon. They are also making a $500 donation to the local library of one Kindle Fire winner. They are also releasing the five-book Ultimate Thriller Box Set for free during the event. Contest is international, no purchase necessary. You can also join the Facebook party at http://www.facebook.com/BigKindleBoogie.

 

Three easy ways to enter:

  • Use the entry counters at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com
  • You can also enter manually by tweeting to be eligible for Kindle Fires and Amazon gift cards: 10 free Kindle Fires. 75 free ebooks. http://bit.ly/xWOoKN #bigkindleboogie RT to enter for a Fire!
  • You can email bigkindleboogie@yahoo.com ONCE PER DAY with “Boogie entry” as subject line

Everything free, everything fun. Good luck!

Winner, winner…

I’m not sure why the phrase “winner, winner, chicken dinner” annoys me, but it does. Perhaps because it makes no sense other than to force a mediocre rhyme. Maybe I’m just an ass.

Whatever. But today we do have some winners to announce – the winners of the Kindle Fire giveaway! That’s right, two lucky people won a Kindle Fire last night, and they already know who they are. So now I can tell you fine folks.

Our first winner is Valerie Huffman. She tweeted about the contest, bought books to get extra entries, took a picture of herself reading a book in public, liked all my pages, and basically did everything you can do to earn extra entries into the contest. And it paid off with her brand new Kindle!

Our second winner is Erin Wood. She liked my Facebook page. That’s it. She got one entry. And it’s all she needed! She also has bought a bunch of my books, but she had them before the contest, so didn’t get any extra entries for it.

So a tale of two winners, I’m glad that both of them are actual fans, instead of drive-by entrants. I also hope that some of the drive-by entrants turn into real fans in time. I also hope that everyone had fun, and has a happy holiday season, even without me giving you an electronic toy.

Merry Christmas (and Hannukah, and Solstice, and Kwanzaa, and Festivus, etc. etc.)!

 

Last Shopping Days…

If you wanna guarantee delivery before Christmas, and you want signed books, Monday is pretty much the last day you have any hope of making that happen. So put in your order now!

I’ll be signing at the Charlotte ComiCon this Sunday, come on out and say hi!

Don’t forget that the Win a Kindle Fire contest ends Monday, so get your entries in!

One of my other sites, Red Dirt Review, has a new print and ebook out – check it out. Red Dirt Review is a literary magazine dedicated to bringing you the best in Southern-themed poetry, short stories and memoirs. And you can earn the same number of Kindle fire entries by buying the print or digital edition of that magazine as any of my other books!

And since ’tis the season, here’s my favorite Christmas song of all time, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.

 

Kindle Fire Review – Part Deux

So in my initial review, I mentioned that I had a long flight coming up and that would be my test for the Kindle Fire and battery life. Well, I flew from Charlotte to Las Vegas last week and was perfectly content with the battery life on my Fire. I don’t know that it would have lasted the entire flight, but it certainly lasted the part of the flight I was awake for! I watched a couple of episodes of a TV show, and I was right that the smaller size with the stand-style case was a better size than the iPad for watching movies on a plane. For me, the iPhone is too small, but the iPad is too big to stand on its own when the dude in front of me leans the seat back. The Fire was perfect for that.

I turned off the wifi in Vegas, because I wasn’t places where the wifi was free, and I didn’t feel like paying for it, so my battery life was significantly longer for the rest of the trip. I think I charged the device once during the four-day trip, and then again the night before we flew to make sure I had a full charge on the plane.

I’m still carrying my iPad on trips for the time being, because of the larger storage capacity, but you can believe that as soon as someone comes along with a Fire 2 with removable SD card, I’m there. And I’m sure that will happen eventually, just like the camera. But I’m still really happy with my purchase, and don’t forget – I’m giving away two of them!

Warning – Politics inside

If you came here to read about fantasy literature and want to keep the political views of your authors separate from that, you should skip this post. Also if repeated uses of profanity offend you, you should go visit someplace else for a little while.

Because I’m pissed, and this is my website, so I get to say whatever the fuck I want while I’m here. I had this whole piece mostly written about my gay friends and the pain they’ve been through just for being gay and how upsetting it is to me that gay rights is still something that we even question in this country. I had a whole reasoned response to Rick Perry’s asinine campaign ad about the “war on religion” and gays in the military, but that went out the window this morning.

Because I read this. Go ahead, click the link. I’ll wait.If you want to skip my diatribe and do something about it, just scroll to the bottom. I get a little bitchy for the next few paragraphs. But I think I mentioned that I was pissed off.

Short answer, a teen in Tennessee killed himself this week because his classmates made his life miserable over being gay. Honestly, the article doesn’t say whether or not Jacob Rogers was gay, and it doesn’t matter. Even is he was straight, somebody decided he was a fag, so they made his life a living hell. They forced him to drop out of school, and eventually they convinced him that his life wasn’t worth living.

Of course he was wrong. We all know that. At least, those of us who have survived the hormonal maelstrom that is high school (and a goodly chunk of college) know that. But a seventeen-year-old boy in the backwoods of Tennessee doesn’t know that. And now we’ll never know what he would have grown up to be. He might have been a doctor, lawyer, actor, athlete, factory worker, father, husband or minister.

But now he won’t. Because he’s dead. Because he decided that it hurt too much to keep going. Because one night, he forgot that It Gets Better. Or maybe he didn’t know about the Trevor Project. Or maybe he just didn’t believe that it would get better. Maybe he looked around and saw people campaigning for President that want to keep him be a second-class citizen, despite the history our nation has of establishing freedoms, not taking them away. Maybe he heard one time too many that he was going to Hell for his sexuality, despite there being NO POINT IN THE GOSPEL where Jesus condemns homosexuality. NONE. Not one.

So yeah, I posted on Facebook that I think Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann should pay for this boy’s funeral. Because I do believe that they indirectly contributed to his death. Their rhetoric of hatred and fear made it all right for people to condemn this child. Their rhetoric contributed to the climate of fear that he had to live in, that ultimately killed him. Because when you work to remove basic human rights from a group of people, you’re actively working to dehumanize those people. And when you take away someone’s humanity, you can do whatever you want to them. That’s what this debate has morphed into. It’s not about marriage, an institution that obviously has no fucking sanctity given the enormous divorce rate in our country. It’s not about family values, which are as different from family to family as shoe sizes. It’s just another fucking sound bite to pigeonhole a section of the electorate.

Until somebody ends up dead. Again.

Here’s your part. And mine. There are several organizations that work very hard to keep shit like this from happening, and a couple of them I support with all my heart. And my wallet. This year for Christmas, I’ll be supporting The Trevor Project and The It Gets Better Project. Both of these are initiatives I believe in very strongly, and I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’ll be donating to each of these charities, and for every $1 that you donate, I’ll give you one entry to win one of the two Kindle Fires that I’m giving away this month. Just email me a copy of your donation receipt, and you’ll be entered into the drawing. Email me at Johnhartness AT gmail DOT com. And for a $30 donation to It Gets Better, they’ll send you a t-shirt and you’ll get a bunch of entries.

Don’t let this continue. Work to fight hatred and prejudice in your community. Give to these two charities to help on a national level. Save a kid. You might have been them once.