by john | Jul 29, 2011 | Appearances, Writing
I know, all you’ve gotten out of me for a couple weeks now is a bunch of guest posts and my whining on Facebook about rehearsals and edits. So strap in, kids, there’s an honest-to-God blog post, written by me, coming. This may even be it.
Last weekend I was fortunate enough to weasel my way onto a couple of panels at Fandom Fest 2011 in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first year Fandom Fest has had a literary track, and I met up with Stephen Zimmer at ConCarolinas back in June. He told me about the show, and I pestered him until he put me on a couple of panels. While I was there I met some great folks and wormed my way in as an impromptu moderator for a couple of panels that didn’t have one assigned, which was good practice for RoundCon 2011.1, coming up in October, which I’m heading up the literary track for.
Yes I know the grammar in that sentence was awful. But if you hold your head just right, it sounds better.
So, Fandom Fest. This is a fantasy/sci-fi con attached to a horror film fest, which made for some disturbing cosplay, but AWESOME t-shirt vendors. I picked up a couple of t-shirts from old movie posters, including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre shirt (in French) and the Fast Pussycat, Kill Kill shirt. I also got one that says “Quint’s Shark Fishing Tours, Amity’s Favorite since 1976,” which I kinda love. So I spent too much money on t-shirts. But I managed to avoid buying any books. Mostly because I just don’t read in print anymore. Everything I read nowadays is on my kindle or iPad, so I only buy print books when I really want the author’s autograph. And I’m not much of an autograph hound, so I don’t buy many print books.
Anyway, moving on. There were a TON of writers and publishers there, Stephen really did an awesome job in organizing things, bringing together a great lineup of talent and setting up some awesome panels. But he got boned by the con organizers, and being the nice guy that he is, Stephen stepped in to run a bunch of other stuff on top of what he was already slated to do, so he couldn’t really enjoy the weekend like he should have. And he had to bear the ire of any writer who didn’t have their stuff go perfectly. I didn’t see this happen, but it always does when you let humans get involved. He did the best job he possibly could have, but he was doing the work of four people, and it almost killed him.
And the hotel almost killed all of us. If you’re ever planning an event in Louisville, I strongly suggest you avoid the Fern Valley Hotel and Conference Center. It wasn’t really worth the $69 con rate. Not by a long stretch. The air crapped out on Friday, and the facility never recovered. There weren’t enough bartenders, and they weren’t particularly pleasant. The banquet services food was abysmal, and I actually walked out of the restaurant after waiting almost ten minutes for someone to bring me a menu and a glass of water. All the hotel facilities were terrible. The place felt, and smelled, like a Comfort Inn from circa 1980, and all they’d done was glass in the exterior entrances. The doors barely worked, and the hallway outside the room was hotter than anyplace I’ve ever been. And I’ve been to Vegas in July. One afternoon I went back to my room for an hour or so between panels, and when I left my room, the door handle was so hot I used a towel to open the door!
All that said, the con was still a good time, and I’d go back if it were in a decent hotel. At least something on the level of a Courtyard or Holiday Inn Express. All the people were nice, and I learned a TON. Not so much about the craft of writing, but that’s not what I was there to learn. I learned a lot about small press publishing, how it works and who some of the players are. I learned that just like everything else, there are major and minor players in the small press market, and I started to identify who was who. I’ve been thinking of shopping The Chosen around to small presses, because it could use a little editorial love, and I’d like to see what we could do with print sales if I had just a little better exposure. The book has decent e-book sales, so I’d like to keep those rights if possible, and the small press world is the only place I can find anyone willing to do that for me. But if the right offer came along, with the right developmental and promotional package, I’d sell all the rights.
Most of the writers there were published with small presses, and typically small presses that were exhibiting. There were a couple of folks who had New York publishing deals, or had them in the past, and a few self-pub folks like me. It was a good mix of writers, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them in bars. Now I’m really looking forward to Dragon Con, where I can reconnect with these guys, as well as my other writer pals that I’ve made over the last year.
That’s enough drivel for today, I’ve got to go work on edits for Knight Moves. The hopeful release date of August 14 is looking better, but a lot depends on my proofreaders and my cover guy. I did knock together a temporary cover that I can live with if I have to, but I’d really like to relaunch the back stories with new covers and drop them all three at the same time. We’ll see. But it’s written, and I’m almost through with the first round of edits, so I have high hopes for getting it into people’s hands in the next two weeks!
by john | Jul 8, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
I know, I’ve neglected this space all week. Sorry, I’ve been busy, and when that happens the first thing to go is this blog. Well, the first thing to go is exercise, but since that’s been gone for a while now I don’t think I’m allowed to even count it. Still plugging along at Return to Eden Book 1 – Genesis, with about 32K words done. I know I’m going to have to go back through and completely re-write the beginning, but that’s more an issue of voice than anything else, because the voice I’ve written most of the book in is significantly different than the voice I started it in last year.
Here’s some quick news before I bury the lede too much – TOMORROW at Barnes & Noble, 3400 Forest Drive Columbia, SC I’ll be on a pair of panels and doing a monster book signing with Kalayna Price (buy her new book, Grave Dance right now!), Faith Hunter, Rachel Aaron and Misty Massey. We’ll be doing a panel at 5, then a signing, then another panel later in the evening. Should be a lot of fun! You can sign up for the Facebook event here – we’re giving away a Nook!
Also, please don’t forget to donate to my 24 Hours of Booty fundraising page. I’d really love it if my readers came together and gave a big buttload of money to this great cause. You can really help people. Please do so.
Other news – I’m back in the theatre, but this time not on a ladder! I’ve been cast in the Queen City Theatre Company’s production of The Irish Curse. It’s a great little comedy about men, how we see ourselves, our body image, and who does or doesn’t “measure up.” And if you’ve never heard of the the Irish Curse, just ask any Irishman about it! I play a priest from Boston living in New York, and I’ve got some very nice moments in the script. I’m enjoying being an actor again, and will enjoy even more the check that comes along with it! Yep, for the first time in my 20+ years of theatre, I’ll be paid for my work as an actor! This is a real rarity in Charlotte, and I’m very happy for my buddies Glenn and Kristian that they have managed to build their company from nothing to a place where they can compensate their actors in just a few short years.
What else? I went to West Virginia last weekend, played some poker and wrote quite a bit. I won about enough to cover the trip, so the poker games made it a free writing vacation – always nice. At one point I was up over a grand on the morning of my second day, but I ran into some run-bad and some bad play and bled off until I came home with just a couple hundred extra. But that’s still enough to keep me going back there every few months to replenish the cash flow.
And I’m happy to report that June was another great month, sales-wise. I topped July by a few units shipped, thanks largely to the short story I published, but increased revenue significantly due to a price increase. I’ve seen no slowdown in sales since moving my novel price from $2.99 to $4.99, so that is likely where prices will stay for now.
In other news, I’m listening to a lot of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. I blame Pauly.
by john | Jun 28, 2011 | Writing
Here’s the deal – I’m going to crowdsource a couple of ideas for the next Black Knight short story. I plan to write it this weekend, and offer it for free here on the blog for a week. After that, it’s going to be $.99. By contributing ideas as part of this hopefully fun experiment, you give up any ownership of said ideas, and they become mine to do with as I wish, for this experiment or future stories, books, novels, etc. Your submission of an idea explicitly agrees to those terms. All you get out of the deal is a thank you.
In advance – Thanks!
You can comment, Facebook or tweet your answers –
First – Gimme a villain
Second – Gimme a location
Third – Gimme a Song to incorporate somewhere in the story
Fourth – Gimme an adjective that I have to use somewhere
Fifth – Gimme an expletive that has to be used somewhere
It’s kinda like MadLibs, only sillier. This is why I should always go to bed earlier.
by john | Jun 28, 2011 | Writing
I wrote a scene last night that took longer than any 600 words I’ve ever written, or at least since high school. I’m working on a serial killer novel, and this was the first scene where we shifted to watching the killer instead of watching the heroes. It was surprisingly tough. Obviously I’ve never killed anyone, and certainly not in as gruesome a fashion as this guy does, but I didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was.
There were several things that hung me up, and I thought I’d share a little with y’all today. First, the manner of death was not pleasant. It wasn’t even standard, like strangulation, shooting or stabbing. So figuring out how to write a horrific murder without glorifying the act was a challenge. It was hard not to resort to too much cliche, or too many conversational descriptors for things. And it was challenging to write this guy doing things to the girl that he enjoyed, without taking away from the horror of his actions for the reader. I guess at the end of it if I creeped myself out a little, then I was still doing okay.
It got me to thinking about bad guys. In most of my books, the bad guys don’t play a terribly big role. In The Black Knight Chronicles, the attention is all on the good guys. Mostly because the books are first-person, so it’s not really feasible to spend too much time on the bad guy, because by the time the good guys get to where the bad guy is, there’s a fight. But in third person omniscient, I can shift the perspective from the good guys to the bad guy and back, so I have to get into the head of the bad guy from time to time. It’s not a really fun place to go, but the more I dislike it, the better I think the character will be when the book is finished.
I’m enjoying the process, because it’s harder to write than the stuff I’ve been doing. But on the other hand, it’ll be nice to spend part of the weekend hammering out another light-hearted Black Knight short story.
by john | Jun 27, 2011 | Fiction, Return to Eden, Vampires, Writing
So Knight Moves will likely not be available for purchase in July of this year.
It’s not ready. That’s just the deal. I’ve completed a couple of drafts on the book, sent it off to some beta readers, and am awaiting feedback. I’ll then incorporate that feedback into another revision and send it off to my new editor, Lynn. Then (if the sample pages she did for me this weekend that led me to say “you’re hired” in about eight seconds are any indication) she will rip the thing to absolute shreds and I’ll spend a few weeks putting it back together. By this time July will be gone, and there won’t be a book yet. But when the book comes out it will be a few things. First, it will be the most expensive book I’ve published so far. Second, it will be the most polished, and hopefully typo-free. And I think it’s going to be pretty good.
I’m happy with the overall flow of the story. There’s a little more character development in this one than in the last two, and a few new characters added to the world. Some I kill, some leave town and some stick around, at least for a little while. There’s more Father Mike, because people missed him in Back in Black (so did I), and more Sabrina. There’s also a lot more bloodshed, and I think that I’ve successfully raised the stakes for the characters. They have more on the line than in the other books, and I think that makes for a stronger book.It’s about the same length as the others, maybe a hair shorter.
So it needs more polish, and that’s going to mean it won’t be out until the end of July at the latest, and August is more likely. Sorry if there was anyone really desperate for more of the Black Knight boys, but you can go to Amazon and pick up Movie Knight, the short story I published last weekend. That should hold you over. I’ll probably make another short story or two happen between now and the release of Knight Moves, so keep an eye out.
In the meantime, while I’m polishing Knight Moves, I’ve made some pretty good progress on Return to Eden. I’m pretty sure that will end up being the title for the series, so I’m not sure what this book will be called yet. For now, we’ll keep it as is and call it R2E. I hammered out a couple thousand words this weekend, then got stuck. I mean bad stuck, like a Hummer in a mudhole kinda stuck. So Suzy and I sat around for the better part of an hour brainstorming, and between the two of us we got the thing back on track. She helped a ton with the overall plot arc of the book, and that let me get back to outlining and writing. I’m about 25,000 words into the thing, and now I actually know where I’m going with it.
It’s going to need some serious love and attention when I finish the first draft, because I know the first 15K or so needs a total rewrite. The language just doesn’t work, it’s way too formal for the book, but I’m consciously not going back to work on that until I get to the end of the first draft. I can’t let myself go back and edit until I’m done with the first run – otherwise I’ll never write the damned book! But now that I know where I’m going it should come together pretty quickly, and I might have it ready to go as early as September. It’s a big departure from The Black Knight Chronicles, but I think most folks will like it. I’m really starting to dig these characters, for totally different reasons than the BK boys.
Then since I didn’t have anything better to do, and because I can’t resist a bright shiny, I started a completely different book. And by completely different, I mean a cop thriller. No magic, no supernatural creatures, just a serial killer and a cop that’s chasing him. I’ve got the first couple of chapters done, and I’ve got the outline done for that as well. That one’s been an interesting journey as well, because the character that I started Chapter 1 with, who I thought was going to be the main character for the whole book, turned out to be the sidekick. Because it can’t be his book, it has to be the cop’s book. I think it’s an interesting concept, and once it’s a little further along I’ll give you a couple of hints about it to see what you guys think. It should be finished up early fall as well, maybe October or so.
So in summary –
Knight Moves will not be available in July, but should be out in August.
Return to Eden (tentative title) will be out early fall, maybe as early as September.
Untitled Thriller will be out later in the fall, maybe as early as October.
I’ve got a bunch of Black Knight short stories in mind, and want to get at least one per month out for the rest of the year.
Black Knight Book 4 will be coming late this year or early 2012, depending on how quickly I finish up the other stuff. I already know a little about that book, as in what will be the Big Bad and what a couple of subplots are going to be. I also know the Big Bad for Books 5 & 6 in that series, so that’s a good outlook for next year.
by john | Jun 22, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Writing
This was originally going to be a sad piece about not having the right words at the right time. You see, a young woman I went to high school with died last night from leukemia. It sucks. She was a sweet person, and even though I hadn’t seen her in 20 years, she was good people growing up and her older sister (who I was much better friends with because we were in the same grade) is still good people. She left behind a loving family including three young kids, all under ten.
So I had a post written (twice) about how sad it all is that she’s gone and that her kids don’t have their mom anymore, and I scrapped it. Twice. Because of course I’m sad. A very nice person is gone way too soon and her family has to live with that loss. But that’s not the point. The point is I’m pissed off about it. If I were just a little more religious I’d be pissed off at God, but I’m not quite there. I’m pissed off that we as a society have not made this enough of a priority to fix it. We can put men on the moon, land a space shuttle (most of the time) and drop a bomb down a chimney easier than beating Legend of Zelda, but mothers are still dying of cancer before they see their 40th birthday.
It’s bullshit. And I’m going to try to do something about it. For the last several years I’ve ridden in the 24 Hours of Booty charity bike ride to raise money for cancer research and treatment. This is a great cause, one that’s touched me personally more times than I care to think about – from my friends that are survivors (Yay Roz & Lou & Lydia!) to my friends, relatives and acquaintances that are gone (Blair, Caroline, Breana, Joe, Ed, Debbie, Mr. C, Laura and more than I care to name). 24 Hours of Booty is a national and local-level organization – half the money raised goes to NC cancer treatment and research organizations, and half goes to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which regardless of whether or not you think he doped to win the Tour de France, is a great national organization dedicated to keeping more people alive.
So do me a favor – help me raise money for a cure. There are a lot of people I’ll be riding for this summer at the 24 Hours of Booty ride to fight cancer, and unfortunately now there’s another name to add to the list. But rather than whine about not having anything comforting to say, I’m going to let myself be pissed off, and we’ll test the load rating on my old road bike one more time. Screw cancer.
I’ll even throw in a few incentives for people who donate –
For a $25 donation I’ll email you a copy of any book you want in either Kindle, Nook or iPad format.
For a $50 donation I’ll mail you an autographed paperback copy (continental US only).
For a $100 donation I’ll name a character in an upcoming novel after you (or someone else of your choosing), and I’ll mail you an autographed book.
For a $500 donation I’ll send you autographed copies of all of my books, name a character after you or someone of your choosing, and buy you a nice dinner (scheduling might take a while unless you live in the Carolinas or the Atlanta area).
So go to my 24 Hours of Booty page and donate something. Cancer touches all of us, and I’m tired of it touching me. I’ve decided to smack it back. You can help.
