Archive for category Real Life

Last Shopping Days…

Dec 16

Posted by john in Appearances, Promos/Giveaways, Real Life, Writing | No Comments

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

Dec 12

Posted by john in Promos/Giveaways, Real Life | No Comments

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

Dec 8

Posted by john in Promos/Giveaways, Real Life | 5 Comments

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.

Home again

Dec 7

Posted by john in Real Life, Travel, Vegas | 1 Comment

And home for a while, this time. I got back from Vegas a few dollars lighter, but with some great times and great memories, as always. A bunch of my friends ran the marathon, and I went down to cheer them on. I drank a little, but less than on most trips. I lost some cash, but less than on a lot of trips. I spent a lot of time with Suzy just chilling out, and that was cool, especially since we coupled this trip with our 16th wedding anniversary. So for an anniversary gift I got her a pedicure and foot massage at the hotel spa, which she loved.

December’s looking like a good writing month – I’ve got a couple of short stories I want to work on, plus a couple of novels that I think I can make significant progress on if I focus. I don’t have much out of town travel planned, so I should have little or no trouble getting dialed in to those projects. In Atlanta next week, then home the rest of the month, and I’m taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off to write, so that gives me plenty of time.

And play Skyrim, which is awesome! Definitely game of the year material. I knew a little better what I was getting into with this game than I did with Morrowind, so I’m having a lot more fun this time around. Still low level right now, but I can definitely see at least a hundred hours of gameplay in this one. I’ll catch up with you guys a little more thoroughly later, but for now it’s time for some lunch.

It’s coming…

Nov 30

Posted by john in Poker, Real Life, Travel, Vegas | 3 Comments

Picture 078If you know where this picture comes from, then you’re either a degenerate gambler or you’ve done waaaayyyyy too many drugs. Or both. In any case, you might recognize the Chihuly sculpture that lives in the lobby of the Bellagio. Or maybe not. But if you’re looking for me for most of the next week, I’ll be closer to that sculpture than I will to any of my normal haunts. I’m heading to Vegas for my annual pilgrimage to the city of sin to hang with some of my best friends that I don’t see nearly often enough.

I started making this trek in December of 2005, and haven’t missed a year. Next year looks a little cloudy because of my impending self-employed status, but something tells me all the poop will miraculously form into a group at the right time and I’ll be there anyway. In those six years we’ve all laughed, cried, drank, overindulged, gambled and won, gambled and lost, married, divorced, lost and found loved ones and generally lived life, gotten older, not a damn bit wiser, and richer for the friendships we’ve made. This is a special group of people I’m privileged to be part of, and this weekend is just like Merlefest for me, only completely different. It’s going home. Only a different home.

Where Merlefest is a chill weekend punctuated by great music and great friends, this blogger gathering in Las Vegas is a frenetic maelstrom of drunken hijinks, crazy prop bets, gambling on anything that moves (or doesn’t) and great meals punctuated by the magical quiet moments among the storm where you connect with someone you don’t really know, but know you should. It’s less about the poker for me nowadays, and a lot more about hanging with my friends. And I can’t wait.

If you’re anywhere near Vegas, this would be the weekend to come out and hang. I’ll be at the Sherwood Forest Bar in the Excalibur tomorrow night starting around 8-9PM. Friday I’ll be at The Pub at Monte Carlo in the late afternoon/early evening drinking and munching with buds. Then Friday night we move to the Aria poker room for mixed game goodness. Saturday we have a private tournament at noon, then I’m wide open after that. Hopefully I’ll run a little better than I did last year, but I’m not holding my breath :) . My poker is teh rusty. No real plans so far for Sunday, but I’ll be betting on some football and watching some games. Sunday night I have a bunch of friends running a half marathon, so I’ll be at the finish line cheering them on. Then Monday we come home, and Tuesday I detox. So you kids behave while I’m gone, and maybe I’ll even hook you up with a scheduled post or two.

New Bubba story forthcoming!

Nov 14

Posted by john in Appearances, Fiction, Real Life | No Comments

Yep, he’s back and bigger and badder than ever. This time Bubba faces his most deadly challenge yet – the ballet!

I intentionally went with kind of a cheezy font for this, because it’s kind of a cheesy little fun story. Bubba goes to the ballet to investigate strange occurrences, as usual things are not what they seem, and as usual there ends up with significant bloodshed and property damage. It’ll be out in ebook form sometime later this week.

I’ve also created a new print book that will primarily only be available at signings. It’s a sampler of sorts, with a Black Knight short story (Movie Knight), a Bubba story (Voodoo Children), a few of my literary fiction stories, and a few poems. It is actually available for order in print online (here’s the link), but I won’t be making this an ebook. The stories are all already available in other things, so I don’t see a lot of point in creating the ebook for this one. I just wanted a cheap sampler for people to pick up at art shows and things like that. Speaking of which, I’ll be at the NoDa All Arts Market this Friday night, so if you’re around, come on out to the Neighborhood Theatre and come see me!

Had a great weekend of music and theatre, starting Thursday night with Don Dixon and Marti Jones performing at The Evening Muse. Those guys are just awesome together. Then spent the weekend at the SC Theatre Association meeting, catching up with old friends and making new ones. Then last night I went back to the Muse and saw Bleu Edmondson and Roger Creager. They put on an awesome show in front of only about 60 people (sorry, it’s a bank town, what can I say? Nobody goes out on a school night). I’m a big Bleu Edmondson fan, and Creager killed it. It was a lot of fun, and a lot more dancing and jumping up and down than I’m used to at the Muse. Most of the stuff I go see there is pretty sedate, but most of the stuff I go see anywhere is pretty sedate.

So that’s what’s up. Genesis is gathering some good reviews, and starting to build some excitement, and I’ve already come up with my next bright shiny idea for a trilogy, so I need to get some writing done, fulfill some obligations, and get on with all these novels I have rolling around in my head!

Help a writer out – BookBombs away!

Nov 10

Posted by john in Real Life | No Comments

From Larry Correia’s blog -

Amazon link to Variant:  http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=monshuntnati-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0062026089&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Today is the day to go purchase Variant by Robison Wells from Amazon, and then to tell all of your friends to do the same.

Rob Wells is a writer with a problem, and he’s lost his job because of that problem. You can help by buying his book, and by telling all your friends to do the same thing. I’m buying it today, and you should too.

Go to Larry’s blog to find out more – Monster Hunter Nation.

The next couple of months

Nov 9

Posted by john in Appearances, Real Life | 10 Comments

Are going to be busy.

I know, broken record and all that. But I’ve got quite a few things going on, and some of them are even exciting, so I figured I’d tell y’all about them. But first, I just deleted about 450 spam comments in one fell swoop from the blog here, so if you left a comment in the past week and it didn’t show up, please let me know what it said, because I probably just nuked it. Sorry.

Next week I’ll be hanging out at the NoDa Arts fest again, showing off new samplers of my short stories and the new canvas promo print. These samplers include a few stories from Returning the Favor, a few poems from Red Dirt Boy, as well as Voodoo Children and Knight Moves, which have never seen print before. It’s only $5, but the only way to get one is to see me in person.

Then the week after Thanksgiving I’m doing a signing at Park Road Books in Charlotte. I don’t do many signings, and even fewer in real bookstores, but Park Road Books is a great independent bookstore and they’re giving me a couple hours to do my thing. Come on out and get some Christmas shopping in!

I’m probably doing the 2-Day Noda Arts Fest in December, right after I get back from my annual Vegas degenerates’ gathering. If any of you guys want books, you gotta let me know how many to bring!

Then in January I’ll be a guest at Chattacon in Chattanooga. And I just got notice today that I’ve been accepted by ConCarolinas as a guest, so I’ll be there this summer.

Then at the end of March I’ll be quitting my day job to write full time. I stuck that at the end of the post to see who reads this far. After sixteen years with the same company, I’m going out on my own in the spring to scribble for a living. Wish me luck!

Chicken Dinner?

Oct 10

Posted by john in Appearances, Real Life, Travel | 1 Comment

This past weekend the wife and I ventured out in public more often than is natural for us, with great results. You see, we’re kinda boring nowadays. We like to be at home, and aren’t much for going out in crowds. That’s more me than Suzy, because while I love meeting new people and don’t ever mind getting up in front of people, I kinda don’t like crowds. I get a little freaked out when I don’t have a clear path to an exit, and I really don’t like hanging out too much with my back to an open door. But this weekend presented us with multiple opportunities to be social, and this time we actually participated.

Saturday I lit the second wedding I’ve designed at Theatre Charlotte, which also happens to be the second wedding that’s taken place in the 80+ year history of the facility. Our friends Nick & Kaddie got married, and I designed and ran the lights for the wedding, and also dealt with the pipe and drape to hide the set in progress that was on the stage. Suzy did all the flowers for the wedding, which kept her working for pretty much 48 hours straight. But the wedding went off almost without a hitch, the bride was lovely, the vows were lovely, and the reception was fun. I even danced, something my knee are reminding me about today in an unpleasant fashion.

Then Sunday the Metrolina Theatre Association hosted the annual theatre awards gala, and Suzy and I were both nominated for awards. She was nominated for two different costuming awards, and I was nominated for best lighting design for RENT. IT was a good night for the home team, as we both brought home new hardware for the trophy case. Suzy’s costumes for King Lear won the prize, and I received my award for RENT as well. It was nice hanging out with theatre people away from the stress of a production, and remembering why I like these people in the first place. We had a good time, but my ass is dragging this morning. And getting Facebook reminders from my banker friends about having Columbus Day off doesn’t really help.

I go back into the theatre this afternoon for tech rehearsals for You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, a new play that I’m designing. We’re in tech and previews this week, then my high school reunion is this weekend, then the show opens next week, then I go to Columbia for RoundCon. It’s an exhausting month, but I’ve got all November to sleep, right?

On the weight loss front, I backslid a little in week 2, putting back on four of the first six pounds I lost. But I got back on the horse last week and am down a total of five pounds since the beginning of the bet. Five pounds in three weeks isn’t great, but with my schedule right now it’s as good as it’s going to get, and it’s five pounds that I don’t have to carry around anymore. So overall I’m pretty happy with that.

How was your weekend? What are you working on? I’m still revising Genesis for a November launch, so hopefully we’ll still be good for that.

Grumpy

Sep 19

Posted by john in Real Life, Weight Loss | 4 Comments

That should be the best description of my mood for the next couple of days. So if I’m a little snippy, deal with it. I’m starting a diet, and that’s never on the top of a fat guy’s favorite things list. My buddies Nick and Russell came up with a $100 weight loss prop bet this weekend at poker, and I need some type of motivation to get my fat ass out of the chair and start losing some weight, and the prospect of winning a couple hundy off my friends should be just the thing. The worst part of any weight loss endeavor – the first weigh-in. I knew that I’d let myself get heavier than I’ve ever been, but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how high the numbers on my scale would go.

They go all the way to 296.8.

I suppose I should be happy that I didn’t weigh in over three bills, the way I’ve been living the past couple of years, but when I look back at pictures like this

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I realize that just a few short years ago I had lost 55 pounds and was down to a pretty svelte 215 lbs, but now I’m eaten my way through a small country and now look like this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, let’s suffice to say that I’m less than thrilled with myself. So I’m back on the same plan that I used a few years ago to lose weight. Start off with diet only for the first month. Cut back to less than 2,000 calories per day, with one cheat day per week. Add a little exercise whenever I can. Then start serious exercise in month two. Then work my way up to working out five days a week for at least half an hour a day. This helped me drop 55 pounds in six months, so I think by the time we weigh in on January 2nd, 2012, I should be able to have shed 10% of my total body weight. Which is a good start. But I’m going to get back to where I was a few years ago, and maybe even further. Because I have to. I’ve noticed the toll my weight has taken on my health and my enjoyment in life, and something has to change.

It really hit me at Dragon*Con, when I could barely walk from the Marriott to the Sheraton without dying. As it was, I got so horribly sweaty I had to change shirts two and three times a day, and it wasn’t that hot. It was warm, and it was humid, but I was sweating like a pig because I’m in terrible condition. And I’m the guy who used to be on my bike four or five times every week! It’s disgusting, and I’m going to fix it. I’m not even forty yet, and I take anti-inflammatory pills for my knees (because they aren’t meant to carry this much weight on them), blood pressure pills (because I’m a fatass), decongestant spray (because my neck and nasal passages are so fat it’s hard to breath) and cholesterol pills (because I’m a fatass). So for the $50-60 a month I spend on prescription drugs, I could be buying books!

So the good news for you, my loyal readers – now in addition to boring posts about writing, you’ll get boring posts about weight loss, too! Lucky you, right? Oh well,  if you’re anything like most of America, you need to be on this same exercise kick with me. So I’ll post my weekly weigh-in numbers here, and you get to hold me accountable for the crap I put into my body. So I’m off the beer, and (mostly) off the soda, and onto the carrot sticks and water. And hopefully off the super-heavyweight roster before too long.