by john | May 11, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
The Virtual Road, that is. Next week kicks off my blog tour with Bookish Snob Promotions, so here’s a rundown on where I’ll be and what you can expect when I’m there.
May 16 – I’ll be doing a Guest Post over at Black Lagoon Reviews
May 17 – I’ll be doing a Guest Post at Karissa’s Book Review, along with a chance for folks to win a signed copy of Hard Day’s Knight!
May 18 – The fine folks at Urban Fantasy Investigations have done an interview with me.
May 19 – Another Guest Post, this one at My Bookish Ways
May 20 – A Guest Post at A Chick Who Reads
May 21 – Interview at Paranormal Opinion with another signed book to give away!
May 22 – I’ll be interviewed at Reality Bites
You can keep up with me on Twitter or Facebook, where I’ll update the tour daily, and you can always find info here or at Bookish Snob Promotions. Please come over and check out these guest posts and interviews, where I get a lot more into the writing process than I typically do here on my rambling blog. And please go support Belinda over at The Bookish Snob, who’s putting this whole thing together for me.
There hasn’t been much progress on Knight Moves, because I’ve been working on RENT and getting ready for the SC Book Festival, both of which are this weekend. Also, Suzy is in a different play, which also opens tomorrow night. So it’s been a little nuts around the Hartness household. But everything calms down for a couple of weeks after Monday, so that’ll help out with my productivity. And my sleep :).
So please come visit me on tour, and if you’re anywhere near Columbia, SC this weekend, come visit me in Real Life. The Book Festival is free and features a big pile of authors, including me, Sam Morton, Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price.
by john | May 3, 2011 | Music, Real Life
I’m back from the Fest that was Merle, and while I appreciate the fact that I say this every year – holy crap what a show! Seriously, Robert Plant, Sam Bush, Lyle Lovett, Joan Osborne, Doc Watson, The Waybacks, Peter Rowan, Tony Rice, Tim O’Brien, and more, more, more! And we didn’t even go to the festival on Day 1!
I will admit to having a religious experience on at least four different occasions throughout the weekend. I’ll give you those highlights, but for the full experience you’ll have to go with me next year!
#1 – Hartford Tribute Band – if you’re not a John Hartford fan, its just because you don’t know you’re a John Hartford fan yet. In a tribute to the late great Hartford, Sam Bush, Allison Brown, Laura Boosinger & Tim O’Brien got together for an awesome rendition of “Steam Powered Aero-Plane,” one of my favorite Hartford songs.
#2 – The Hillside Album Hour – over the past four years, The Waybacks have created a tradition of covering a classic rock album with a host of special guests every Saturday at Merlefest. Past albums include Led Zeppelin II, Sticky Fingers and Abbey Road. Being raised on The Allman Brothers, when they tore into Eat a Peach it was a particularly special moment for me. That I shared with probably 15,000 of my closest friends. This year’s special guest vocalist was Joan Osborne, and man, that chick can wail!
#3 – same set – at the end of the set, they decided that Little Martha was too mellow to end with, so they ripped out a monstrous rendition of “Whipping Post” that must have caused tremors miles away from all the concentrated dancing and clapping. I wept a little. Just a little.
#4 – Sunday – Robert Plant and The Band of Joy – the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame made an appearance at the bluegrass festival, and it was amazing! From the opening number (Black Dog), Plant and his new Band of Joy – Buddy Miller, Patti Griffin, Darrell Scott, Byron House and a drummer who I forgot because I suck – killed it. The closer for the set was a beautiful version of “Ramble On.” I wept a little again, and danced like a happy fat man, which I was.
At some point I’ll get around to telling the traumatic story of trying to get home, but for today we’ll accentuate the positive. It was a great weekend of music with great friends – hope to see you there next year!
by john | Apr 25, 2011 | Real Life
So this weekend I’ll be making my annual trek into the hills of North Carolina for the Merle Watson Memorial Music Festival, or Merlefest. Me and tens of thousands of my closest friends will descend upon North Wilkesboro, NC for some of the finest bluegrass and Americana music the world has to offer. This is a huge vacation for me every year, because I don’t take a computer.
That’s right, I will not be taking a computer to Merlefest. I won’t blog for three days, and I’ll barely check email or look at my Amazon stats (yeah, right!). But this is an opportunity to unplug, relax, commune with nature and music, and generally relax. Obviously I’m looking forward to it, as I do every year, but a little more so this year, because this guy’s going to be performing on Sunday, and he’s been on my list of people to see for, oh, my whole life!
That’s right – Robert F’n Plant is closing out Merlefest with his Band of Joy! And there’s plenty of joy for me with that! I just bought the album off Amazon and have been taking advantage of their free cloud storage and music player all day (wish there was an app for iPhone, but I see why that isn’t likely to happen). If you don’t think that Jeff Bezos is a flippin’ genius, then you’re not paying attention. First the Kindle, then the whole thing with giving free access to all the Amazon tv shows to Prime subscribers, now giving 20GB of free online storage to anyone who buys an MP3 album from them. Crazy like a fox, I tell you.
But anyway, I’m looking very much forward to Merlefest for the weekend. A few days of shorts, Birkenstocks, festival food and great music is just what I need before I come back into town to the craziness that will be RENT technical rehearsals. I started loading in gear for that this weekend, and if I wasn’t already convinced that this needs to be my last show for a while, that did it. I haven’t even really done anything yet and I’m tired! But I think it will be an awesome show, if we all survive the tech process :). I’ll post photos as we get into the process, but that will be a while.
And of course the same weekend that RENT opens, which is already the weekend I’m double-booked at the SC Book Festival, my wife has a show opening! Yeah, Suzy decided to go audition for The Edge Theatre Company’s production of Miss Nelson is Missing, and damned if she didn’t land the title role! It’s the first thing she’s auditioned for in probably 5-6 years, and she gets the lead! I’m so proud of her I could bust, but I don’t really know how I’m going to be in three places at once that weekend. I mean, I’m a big dude, but I’m not that big!
Meh, I need a clone. Or a fat hillbilly look-alike.
by john | Apr 17, 2011 | Poker, Real Life, Writing
Not for me so much, but certainly for a bunch of my friends in the poker industry. For those of you new around here, I spent several years doing tournament coverage for major poker news and play sites. Before and during that time I made a little money, and made a lot of good friends. Due to a change in leadership at my major employer, a disagreement with an editor and a shift in focus in my life, I left all that pretty much behind me a couple years ago. Last summer was the first in several that I didn’t cover the World Series of Poker, and I haven’t stayed up late to watch an internet poker tournament in at least a year.
Turns out to be good timing on my part, since Friday the US Dept. of Justice laid out indictments against key figured in the operation of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and UltimateBet. What does this mean for yours truly? About $700 of my money is trapped in online poker accounts that I won’t be able to get to for the immediate future. I’m sure I’ll be able to get it eventually, and I’m not really sweating it.
What does it mean for some of my friends and acquaintances? Unemployment, major chunks of their life savings locked away in the poker sites’ accounts, uncertainty in their income stream for the foreseeable future, and a lot of other ugliness. I have the utmost faith that most of my friends will eventually come out okay, because they are very bright and talented people, and they also were pretty aware that they were riding a volatile vehicle and it could go KABOOM at any moment. So, with the exception of some denial that may have led some folks to leave more money in online poker accounts than they should have, they’ll be okay in the long term.
But for me, the events of the weekend did make me sit back and look around for a minute. Two years ago, I was counting on about a quarter of my income coming from writing about poker. When that went away, I tightened the belt a little (but not much, because it’s still a significant girth to go around), but I’ve never really replaced that revenue. Now I’m beginning to be in a place where that revenue is starting to trickle back in via book sales. This month will be my best month ever for sales (by a LONG shot), with over 500 e-books sold already. That’s more than triple the number of books I sold last month, and if I’m lucky, I’ll break 900 for the month. That’s a big help with the monthly finances, and with at least two more books to come this year, hopefully we can keep things on an upward trend.
But what happens in the future? Do I quit my job and try to write for a living? I could certainly be more prolific if all I had to do each day was write and promote. But will the money ever be there? I dunno. I honestly have no idea. I have hopes, and I have examples from other indie authors that I’m trying to follow, but who knows if I’ll ever get to David Dalglish numbers, or Michael Sullivan numbers, much less Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking numbers. I’m not looking for James Patterson money, just enough to pay my bills and live comfortably (and I could be very comfortable in a yacht, BTW). Right now I have a good job and my book sales are finally approaching enough money to be considered a nice side income. For now, I’ll live with that and keep writing. Book 3 of Black Knight Chronicles will drop this summer, with another book coming in the fall. I’m not sure if it will be book 1 of Return to Eden or this odd horror novel that’s been bugging me the past few days. But my point is, I have plenty of ideas, so I can keep writing for a while. And as long as people are buying books, I’ve got something going for me.
by john | Apr 7, 2011 | Poker, Real Life, Vegas, Writing
Ok, not as young as I once was, but as the song goes, I’m as good once as I ever was. I leave tomorrow night for Vegas. I’m going out to attend the National Association of Broadcasters show for the day job, but since the show starts Monday I thought I’d take the weekend and play a bit. Then I found out that the Venetian is having their Deep Stacks Extravaganza poker tournament series this month, so I’ll definitely be playing that on Saturday. My friend Hoyazo went deep in one of those last year for a very nice score, and since I’ve cashed in the Venetian daily tournament several times I thought I’d give it a shot. I get in around 8PM Vegas time Friday, and hopefully I’ll catch a couple hours sleep on the plane so I can stay up for a while when I get there. I don’t really care if I do anything tomorrow night, but I want to be able to go to bed and sleep until at least 8AM Saturday, so my sleep schedule will get right quickly. It’s usually not an issue for me in Vegas.
So if you’re in Vegas, and want to get together, email me. I’ll be at the Venetian Saturday, and hopefully Sunday, and at the Convention Center during the day Monday thru Wednesday. I fly home on the redeye Wednesday night and am participating in a writer’s panel Thursday afternoon. That should be entertaining for everyone!
Book sales are soaring, for some reason I’ve jumped from averaging 3 books a day in February to 20 or so per day in April. Hard Day’s Knight keeps creeping up and up in the Amazon rankings, finally breaking through the 3,000 mark today. Lower is better on those rankings, and all three books had been living in the 20-30,000 level. Now HDK and Back in Black are pretty much living under 10,000, and The Chosen is hanging out around 20,000. I’m thrilled with the progress, and with some recent reviews. Obviously I hope it keeps up, I’ve got truck payments to make :).
Volume 3 of The Black Knight Chronicles is coming right along, I’m probably about 10% finished with the first draft. I hope I’ll be able to get some work done on it while in Vegas, but I’m not holding my breath. NAB is a tough show, with long hours and a huge attendance, so I’ll be working pretty much non-stop the whole time I’m there. That’s okay, I’ve got this weekend to play!
by john | Mar 2, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Atlanta, of course, because I’ve spent way too much time down here lately. The Southeastern Theatre Conference is in town, so I’ll be here through Saturday, teaching classes, buying drinks and generally trying to make the company some money while having as good a time as is allowed by law. You know how to find me if you’re in town.
I’m also online in the new issue of Truckin’. Pauly was kind enough to offer up a spot in a couple of issues for previews from my books, and being the attention whore that I am, I took him up on it gladly. There are always great stories by great writers in Truckin’, you should check it out!
I’m in proof review for Back in Black, so hopefully hard copies will be available for people to order from Amazon next week. They would likely already be good to go, but for the fact that I’m not in town to see the proof, and the pagination in the first copy was all jacked up.
Until I have time to write more, check out this pic I swiped off Tommy Tomlinson’s Facebook page.
