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Incredibly important post

by john | May 24, 2012 | Uncategorized

Because it’s been a while since I posted any pictures of my cats. And the internet is all about cats. Someday I’ll write a thrilling blog post about plotting and theatre stuff, but not today. Today the internet is for cat pictures.

Chained to my desk

by john | May 22, 2012 | Uncategorized

At least, that’s where I need to be for the next week and a half. ConCarolinas is coming up fast, and with it a pretty healthy panel schedule, plus hopefully scads of people clamoring for print editions of my books. But before I’m cut loose upon the unsuspecting hordes at the Hilton University Place in Charlotte, I’ve got revisions to work on. I’ve handed the revisions for Hard Day’s Knight off to the line editor, but while I’m waiting on those notes to come in, it’s time to tackle Back in Black. I’ll admit that there are some plotting issues with this book that I’ve noticed since publication, so it’s a good idea to go back and lay hands on it one last time. I did a quick pass this morning and got through the first nine chapters, so hopefully I can get through the first pass this week, then run through it again next week before it’s ConCarolinas time.

So here’s my current schedule for ConCarolinas –

Friday – I got nothing scheduled, so I’ll be at my table or crashing interesting panels that my friends are on.
Saturday – 9AM (I’m new, I get the primo slots) – The Next Step – So you’ve finished your book, what now? With David B. Coe, Gray Rinehart, Edmund Schubert and some folks I don’t know but am looking forward to meeting.

Saturday – noon – Kidnapping Your Muse – What to do when your words won’t flow well – With Stuart Jaffe, Rachel Aaron, Nicole Givens Kurtz and even more folks I haven’t met yet, so more new folks!

Saturday – 2PM – Bringing Life to Your Characters – another one with David Coe, adding James Maxey and A.J. Hartley to the mix, plus others.

Sunday – 1PM – Agents and how to find one – I suppose I’m on this panel for the “I don’t need one” perspective, but I dunno. Me, Rachel, Gray, Edmund, Gail Z. Martin and Angie Smibert.

I’m a little under-untilized at this one, but that’s normal for my first year guesting at a con. I’ll likely crash a couple of other panels, especially some of the ebook and self-pub panels on Sunday, and maybe some of the horror panels on Friday. Depends on how I feel and what the panel looks like, If it’s understaffed and I’m friends with the moderator, I might hop on. Otherwise I’ll probably behave myself. But you can find me in the author’s alley outside the panel rooms hawking my wares and hoping that the new Bubba print collection sells as well as I anticipate.

See you there!

Another Open’nin’ Another Show

by john | May 19, 2012 | Uncategorized

I barely got the songs from 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee out of my head before it was time to load in the first annual Blumey Awards. This is a local high school musical theatre awards program that’s tied to the national Jimmy awards (I think, or something like it) that gives scholarships, awards and a trip to New York for one lucky school. All for excelling in musical theatre. It’s pretty cool.

But I’ve crammed a bunch of hours in the theatre into the last three days. 8AM-5PM Thursday, 8AM-10PM yesterday, and a light day today, just 2PM-6PM. Then noon – 10PM tomorrow and I’m done. For this year. I’ve written somewhere around 150 light cues for ten musical numbers, none of which I’ve seen or heard in their full performance form, and there’s no real rehearsal.

Good thing we’ve got some awesome technicians, a great stage management team and an LD who cut his teeth on rock n’ roll. It’ll be a lot of fun tomorrow, and I hope I’ll get a chance to get some good photos.

But the big news is that I’ve been restocking my books, and I’ve ordered a SHITLOAD of print editions. I now have plenty of Black Knight Chronicles, Chosen, Headshot, Genesis and Bubba collections for these upcoming cons, and I’ll be putting up buy links here in the next week. But if you want to get your paws on them first, join me at ConCarolinas in two weeks! That’ll be the debut of Headshot, Genesis AND Bump in the Night, the Bubba the Monster Hunter print compendium! All eight Bubba stories in one handy volume! Perfect for the library of any home.

The library. You know, the room with all the porcelain furniture. This is a great way to introduce people to Bubba if they don’t have e-readers. Or just buy ’em an e-reader. But for people you don’t like that much, buy the Bubba book. It’s fun.

Headshot – Buy it Here and Free Sample!

by john | May 9, 2012 | Uncategorized

Something is goofy with Amazon’s uploader today, or at least I’m having issues. So if you want my new novella, which features Cindy Slaughter, a new character, you’ll have to buy it here or on Barnes & Noble until I get all that shit sorted.

Here’s the cover, and a sample. If you enjoy the sample, spread the word. And included with this novella (about 30,000 words, or 100 pages) is the complete first Bubba the Monster Hunter story – Voodoo Children. AND you get Gone Daddy Gone, a Black Knight Chronicles prequel. AND you get the first chapter of Genesis, Book I of the Return to Eden trilogy.

All for just $2.99.

If you have an iPad or a Nook, I can send you the ePub file from here as well. Just click the appropriate box. This would be a pretty good intro to my writing if you’ve got a friend you want to read cool stuff, since the novella is a complete story, then there’s the intro to Bubba and the intro to the Black Knight boys. So help spread the word!

Thanks, and enjoy!

Your Email Address!

File Type (ePub/Kindle/PDF)

Chapter 1

I was freezing. My feet were numb and the only thing keeping my hands from going the same way were the chemical hand warmers I had tucked inside my mittens. My breath would have been billowing steam around me if not for the black balaclava I had wrapped around my head. Only my eyes were exposed, and even those were starting to freeze shut. The steady drizzle had long since turned my black ski coat into a sodden, heavy mass of cold that pinned me to the rooftop where I’d set up my surveillance.
Finally, the light in the bedroom I’d been watching for the past three hours clicked off, and the foyer lights in the house clicked on. A few seconds later, my target stepped out the front door, and it was show time.
I set down the binoculars I’d been watching through and blinked a couple of times to clear the ice off my lashes. Cursing my thick dark eyelashes, not for the first time in my life, I settled my cheek alongside the stock of my Remington 700 SPS tactical rifle and slipped my hands out of my mittens. I took careful aim as the target kissed his mistress, closed the door and turned to go down the steps to the Lexus sedan parked half a block away in a feeble attempt at discretion. He stopped, checked his watch and looked up and down the sidewalk before taking his first step.
I exhaled as he lifted his foot and squeezed the trigger. The .223 Remington round spat out of the barrel, dropping slightly due to wind and the drizzle, and struck the target just above his right eye. His head snapped back and his feet went out from under him, dropping him solidly on the porch. I slid to the edge of the roof and zoomed in on his corpse with my Canon T3i digital SLR camera. The 75-300mm zoom lens made it a snap to focus on his face from fifty yards away, and I took several pictures as he lay there in the porch light. The small round left a neat hole in his forehead; no exit wound to leave a mess on his girlfriend’s door.
Evidence collected; I broke down the rifle into the false bottom of the hard-sided cello case I used to carry my guns and put the camera into the extra space. I slung the whole mess onto my back and started for the stairs. I had just pulled the heavy door shut behind me when my cell buzzed in my pocket.
“Crap,” I muttered as I pulled a mitten off with my teeth and dug around in my sopping jeans for my phone. I swiped a thumb across the screen and peered down at the text glowing up at me.
“Where u at, gurl?” My best friend Tina asked in her pseudo-streetwise lingo even though she lives in Back Bay with her dad and stepmom.
He’s ostensibly some kind of neurologist or psychologist or some doctor that messes around in your head. Her stepmom’s pretty with big boobs. That’s her job, and she works hard at it. Pilates, yoga, tennis, manicures, pedicures, and massages – if it tightens, stretches or tones Tina’s stepmom is all over it. Tina kinda hates her; she thinks she’s a gold-digger. She’s right, but it’s not really that bad. I could think of a whole lot of worse things in a stepmother, but my mom had never remarried, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Just getting off work, u?” I texted back.
Tina thought I worked at a used bookstore in Jamaica Plain. Since she’d never read anything in her life that wasn’t in Cliff Notes format, that kept her from asking too many questions about my work. Which was a good thing since bookstore clerks were seldom called upon to shoot state senators in the head from fifty yards away.
“Home. Bored. Duh. Wanna come over?”
The last thing I wanted to do was go over to Tina’s and watch another chick flick movie while her mom drank red wine until she passed out. I was cold, wet and still had homework. But there was one thing I had to check on first.
“Where’s Jason?”
Jason was Tina’s older brother. He was eighteen and on the swim team. He had dark, curly hair and pale blue eyes that made his tanned skin look even darker. In a word: yum.
“Sorry, no luck for you tonight, I think he’s got a new girlfriend. But he’s supposed to be home by 11. So get yr ass over here! LOL”
“Be there soon.”
I slid my phone back in my jeans and continued down the stairs. At the third floor I pushed through the door and into the hallway, pausing long enough to remove the duct tape I’d used to hold the door open when I went up to the roof earlier. I passed under the security camera, wire dangling from where I’d cut it a week before and made my way down the hall to my apartment.
There was nothing there except an air mattress, a duffel bag, a backpack bulging with my schoolbooks, and a roll of toilet paper. I stripped off all my wet clothes and draped them over the moderately functional radiator. I dug a pair of panties, bra, towel and washcloth out of the duffel and stepped into the bathroom. I grabbed a travel size soap and shampoo from my bag and set them on the edge of the bathtub, then set a Walther P22 pistol on the back of the toilet. I had a 22Sparrow suppressor screwed onto the barrel of the Walther, so if anyone disturbed my shower there shouldn’t be any noise louder than a handclap. I wasn’t expecting visitors, but it’s always better to be safe than dead.
I stood under the hot spray for a long time, washing the smell of gunfire out of my hair and the chill out of my bones. I personally thought that the tangy, slightly salty smoky smell of firearms was a little sexy, but I doubted Tina’s brother would . He’d probably think I burned dinner or something.
I got out of the shower, dried off and padded into the apartment in my underwear. My clothes were still soaked, so I dug around in my duffel for the spare jeans, Harvard sweatshirt and socks I had with me. I finished dressing, pulled on tennis shoes and a light raincoat, and grabbed my camera out of the cello case. All my wet clothes went into the duffel, the backpack onto my shoulders, and the cello case in one hand. I grabbed the duffel with the other hand and did a quick idiot check of the room before I left.
“Idiot, indeed,” I muttered at myself as I went back into the bathroom, grabbed my Walther and slipped it into the cello case with my other weapons. The shampoo container and soap wrapper went into the duffel, and out the door I went. I left the door open a crack behind me, figuring it wouldn’t take long for one of the junkies on the floor to take me up on my unspoken offer of a place to crash. I still had three months paid up on the place; somebody might as well use it.
The street was awash with red and blue lights when I stepped out the front door, just another little redheaded girl in a city full of Irish. I stepped up to a cop working the yellow tape and asked, “What happened?” in my best innocent little girl voice.
He looked down at me and smiled a little. “You shouldn’t see stuff like this kid, head on home.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned to walk away.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a big man in a suit eyeballing the crowd suspiciously, a detective, wondering if the killer had revisited the scene to check on the investigation. Yup, I had. And they had no idea. They just saw another skinny, clean and maybe cute someday little girl going home from a cello lesson.
I walked a couple of blocks over, then tossed the duffel into an alley where I knew a homeless family with a daughter about my size had taken up residence. I’d cased the neighborhood well before I decided on my attack strategy. I knew every person that lived in a four-block radius of my strike zone, and knew that the cops in this neighborhood only had a 35% close rate on homicides. The precinct where the target lived, make that had lived, reported a 77% close rate on murders. Didn’t take a math whiz to figure out which neighborhood was better to shoot someone in. Of course, I am a math whiz. Come to think of it, I’m pretty bright in general.
I’m Cindy O’Shea, teenage assassin. Pleased to meet you.

Photo Bomb Update

by john | May 8, 2012 | Uncategorized

Well, kinda. Here are some photos of where I’ve been the past few weeks. I hope this explains my relative quietude on the bloggy front. I’ve been traveling a lot, but now I’m home for a couple months, but I do have one big announcement – I’ll be at NY Comic Con this year! Yep, I’m sharing a small press booth at one of the biggest cons in the US this October. Hope you’ll come by if you’re in the Apple!

Now for where I’ve been – Merlefest was a couple weeks ago now, and it’s always one of my favorite weekends of the year. This year I discovered a couple of great new bands. This chickadee is with a band called Jubal’s Kin. They’re from Asheville and have a great sound. Check ’em out.

This bunch is also from Asheville and is called Johnson’s Crossroad. The singer sounds like a bigger Tom Waits, and their songwriting is amazing. Their album is on my list to buy soon.

If you’ve been around this site for a while you’ve heard me talk about the Hillside Album Hour at Merlefest, which is one of the musical highlights of my year. The Waybacks pick a classic rock album, rehearse it, bring in amazing special guests, and play the album track by track. This thing has grown ridiculously over the five years or so that they’ve done it, and now there’s something like 10,000 people sitting on a hillside listening to some of the best musicians in the world jam to cover tunes. It’s THE thing to do at Merlefest on Saturday afternoon.

Past albums include (and I have been to every one of them) – Led Zeppelin II, Sticky Fingers, Abbey Road and (my personal favorite) Eat a Peach. This year’s selection was Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? And the crowd certainly experienced something special in this nearly two-hour set!

Sam Bush was amazing as always on the hill.

Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi/Trucks Band were only scheduled for one set Saturday night, but they were all over the place, jammin’ on the hill, joining Sam Bush for his Friday night set (their version of Bell Bottom Blues was amazeballs), hangin’ for part of Los Lobos’ set, and then doing their own jam.

James Nash of The Waybacks not only rocked the Jimi guitar, he got political with his Vote Against Amendment One sticker on his guitar. Way to speak out for equality, James!

And for the first time at Merlefest, I got some good pictures of the man himself, one of the living legends of bluegrass, Mr. Arthel “Doc” Watson.

If you’ve never seen Doc live, you’ll be amazed at what this old man can do. I recommend the “Three Pickers” album, with Doc, Earl Scruggs and Ricky Skaggs jammin’ at Reynolds Auditorium in Winston-Salem.

But that’s not all I’ve been up to. I wandered out to Arkansas for the Pulp Ark 2012 con, and had a great time hanging with the folks there.These photos all by Suzy Deacon, who knows how to use my camera much better than I do.

This is what my friend Sean Taylor looks like when he’s accepting his award for Best New Writer (which he beat me out for, congrats!).

This is me chillin’ with Felix Silla, better known as Cousin It on the Addams Family and Twikki on Buck Rogers.

This is me giving the stinkeye to my new friend Link, the Squirrel of Mass Distraction, acquired from my buddy Allan at Kerlak Publishing.

I had a great time at Pulp Ark, but I’m happy to be home for a little while. Next up is ConCarolinas, then HeroesCon, then Fandom Fest, all in June.

Alright, that was a bunch of photos, and a bunch of links. Now I’m off to Theatre Charlotte to touch up programming lighting cues for 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, then back to editing.

Ladders are for the young

by john | May 3, 2012 | Uncategorized

Just the damn truth, folks. The older I get, the more I realize that the way I light shows needs to change. I need minions. I’m too old and fat to be hauling my ass up and down an a-frame ladder for a week to get ready for a show. But that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been editing Hard Day’s Knight for the omnibus in the mornings and working in the theatre in the afternoons. Except for today, because I have a dentist’s appointment this afternoon to get a new crown installed.

Yay.

So I go into the wormhole that is tech rehearsal starting on Sunday, and most shows this is where I die for a week and then come out the other side exhausted but happy with the results. I think it will likely be a bit different this time around, without that pesky day job in the way of my rehearsals! Sunday will still be kinda brutal, with two rehearsals covering ten hours, but that’s the only really bad day we’ve got. And it’s a relatively simple show. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee won’t take nearly as many rock concert-like cues as shows I’ve done in the past like RENT or Seussical. It’s a very cute show, with adults playing the roles of kids at a spelling bee. The cast is in good shape, and I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

There’s a new Bubba story out, the silliest one yet. This one is called Hall & Goats, and yes, I’m totally riffing on the band Hall & Oates. Because I can. This month Bubba faces the dreaded Chupacabra! How is he supposed to kill something he can barely pronounce? Check it out on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.