by john | May 4, 2011 | Writing
Not much – yeah, that’s a load of crap. I’m up to my eyeballs in stuff from work, to theatre, to upcoming shows to trying to get Knight Moves polished up and ready to go. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the first draft now, and was hoping to finish the whole thing for the Heroes Con in June, but that’s realistically not going to happen. I go into tech rehearsals for RENT next week, so I’ll be losing most of two weeks’ worth of writing time in the evenings, what with loading things in this week and tech rehearsals next week.
I watched rehearsal for the first time last night, and it’s going to be a very good show. One of my big problems with theatre in a small market is the casts are typically very uneven. You’ll have very good leads, and decidedly mediocre supporting actors. Or you’ll have one lead that is significantly better than the other, or something like that. This cast is all pretty even. They’re good, and there are some very nice moments already, so give them a few more rehearsals and an audience, and they’ll be very good.
I’ve acquired 16 LED fixtures and a new lighting console of my very own for this show, so I’m spending about $5k on a show that will pay me $1,500 (design fee + rental budget), but then I’ll have a bunch of gear that can be rented out for the next few years. I’ve already lined up 3-4 rental shows for the summer, so I oughta be able to pay for this gear in a year or two. Worst case, I can sell it on eBay and get my money back. I’ve also borrowed a bunch of other gear, so the show should be pretty awesome looking. Which I hope will be the case, since this is probably my theatrical swan song, at least for a little while. I just don’t want to take time away from my writing to sit in a dark theatre for a couple of weeks anymore. And I’m almost to the point where I make more money writing than I do designing, but not quite.
So after Rent I’ll be taking a break for a while to focus on getting Knight Moves out the door, then turning my attention to one of several projects that I have floating around. I think the next project will be something outside The Black Knight Chronicles, so here’s your chance to help me decide what to write next. Here are my current ideas, what do you want to read?
1) Spy Thriller in the Vince Flynn/Tom Clancy mode?
2) Coming of Age horror novel about kidnapped kids?
3) Mystery/Action novel about a city falling into an abandoned mine?
4) Epic fantasy novel about an unrepentant elf assassin?
5) Space bounty hunter?
Your vote counts, people! Lemme know what to write next. I might completely disregard your ideas, but I might not. Leave it in the comments.
by john | Apr 27, 2011 | Return to Eden, Writing
Not as silly as some, but I really want to work on two stories at once, one in a completely different vein than Knight Moves (pun intended, of course). So each week I’ll present a new segment of Return to Eden, another work in progress. This stuff is so very first draft, but I think it might go somewhere interesting. It will be presented here in bite-size chunks, not even chapters, and when I’m done there should be a book in it.
So here’s the beginnings of a new project, because I just don’t have enough to do, right? All feedback is welcomed!
Return to Eden
The day the world ended started off just like every other Thursday. Christin Kinsey got up after the alarm went off for the third time, staggered to the bathroom in her t-shirt and pajama bottoms, went about her morning business, took a shower, brushed her teeth, yelled at her brother Matt to drag his sorry butt out of bed because she wasn’t going to be late on account of him again this week, went back into her room, got dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a Kings of Leon T-shirt she’d borrowed from her boyfriend Kent a week or two ago, and beat on Matt’s door a couple more times before heading downstairs for breakfast.
While Christin was settling in behind a bowl of Lucky Charms and a Coke, her mom was in the kitchen in dress slacks and a bra, ironing a shirt that had obviously spent the night in the dryer and mainlining coffee with CNN on in the background. There was some other big fuss going on somewhere in the world with people that hated Americans shooting Americans, and Americans going in to stop them from shooting too many other people, and some talking heads with French accents whining about the overbearing American policies.
“Mom,” Christin asked between mouthfuls of cereal and marshmallows, “why don’t French people like us?”
“Because all frogs are douchebags” answered Matt, clumping down the stairs in baggy cargo shorts and Doc Marten boots, the uniform of his whole bunch of loser friends.
“Matthew!” Shrieked their mother, putting on her shirt and zipping up her slacks while simultaneously trying to butter a bagel and put away the iron. “We do not use terms like ‘douchebags’ or ‘frogs’ in this house! There are some French people who would rather eat Brie and smoke stinky cigarettes than do what needs to be done in the world, but that’s no reason to condemn the whole country. The French contributed some wonderful things to society,”
“Yeah,” Matt interrupted, “like eating snails and the guillotine.”
“I can think of some times when the guillotine would be useful, muttered Christin.
“Alright you two comedians, get your butts out of here or you’re going to be late. Again.” Their mother hustled them out of the kitchen and thrust some cash into Christin’s hand. “This should get you some gas and cover lunch for both of you. There’s frozen pizza in the fridge for tonight, I’ve got to go to Charlotte for a meeting with the B of A people about the loan.” She had been negotiating with the mortgage demons at Bank of America for months about refinancing their home, and it was, in her words, time for someone to “shit or get off the pot.” Sandra Kinsey didn’t swear often, but more and more often lately when she did, it involved someone with the mortgage company.
Things had been okay when Christin and Matt’s dad had been around, but Jacob Kinsey had died of lung cancer three years ago, and things had gotten tight with all his medical bills. Sandra had mortgaged the house to the hilt to pay off all the doctors and hospitals, but when the housing market in Asheville, NC went into the toilet like it did all over the country, they owed a lot more on the house than it was worth. President Obama’s plans to help American homeowners sounded good on TV, but didn’t always work out so well when reality hit the fan, as Sandra had become increasingly fond of saying. So today she was headed down to Charlotte, and she was determined to come home with some answers, or at least with a pound of flesh from some useless paper-pusher to make her feel better.
Sandra followed her kids out the front door and watched as they piled in Jacob’s old F-100 pickup truck and headed off to school. She’d kept the truck around until Christin had been old enough to drive, then given it to the girl for her sixteenth birthday. Big, blocky and decidedly un-sexy, the truck was nevertheless dependable and certainly better built than anything that had come out of Detroit in the past 30 years. It was a 1965 model, the year Jacob was born, and he had restored it to working order, if not much more than that. So it was a big rolling hunk of steel that Sandra didn’t mind sending her kids off to school in while she headed down the mountains in her Nissan Murano to do battle with the evildoers at the great corporate headquarters.
by john | Apr 23, 2011 | Writing
So it’s been a good month, I think that’s a pretty solid understatement. I’ve sold far more copies of all of my books than I have in any other month, and in some cases I’ve sold more copies this month than I have all other months combined. And in a great bit of circular sales, as my books sell more, they appear on more bestseller lists on Amazon, so they’re easier to find, so they sell more. So they move up on lists, so they’re even easier to find than before, so they sell more. And so on…
It’s been a lot of fun watching my books hover around the middle of most of these lists, but the great part has been watching Hard Day’s Knight skyrocket up the Occult Horror list. It’s currently sitting around #10, and is sharing the list with folks like Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking, Scott Nicholson, and other big-selling authors. But making these sub-lists isn’t what I’m shooting for – I want to make the big list. The Amazon Top 100.
Honestly, I don’t know what the criteria are anymore for being considered a “best-seller.” It used to be making the NY Times list, and for traditionally published authors maybe it still is. But they don’t count indies, no matter how many we sell, so I think their list is skewed. Obviously the Amazon list is skewed, since it’s only one store, but it is a pretty good barometer for ebook sales. At least I think.But I’ve got a long way to go before I can use the term best-seller with regards to any of my books, at least with a straight face. But sales are chugging along, and if things keep going like they have been, then I’ll probably do fewer book shows and stay home and write more. But we’ll see how I feel after the SC Book Festival and Heroes Con in the next couple months.
Meh, file this under incoherent blog posts, I need a nap. Happy Easter, folks!
by john | Apr 20, 2011 | Writing
Yep, I’m going to try out one of these new-fangled blog tours. I stumbled upon The Bookish Snob while looking for book bloggers to see about getting some love for my books, and I found out that Belinda over there has a service that she offers that is basically a tour director gig. So I checked the rates, thought they were very reasonable, and shot her an email. She replied that my stuff looked like a good fit, and got rolling setting everything up.
So next month I’ll be going on tour! I’ll be visiting more than two dozen blogs all across teh interwebs, ending up here on June 10th. I’ve got a slew of guest posts and interviews to write up, so my output here may be limited during that time. Because between the guest posts and cranking out a pile of words each night on Knight Moves, I’m gonna be a busy boy.
But I finished the outline for Knight Moves last night, so I should be able to jam on that in the next three weeks or so, and maybe (just maybe!) have the first draft complete before I head off to the SC Book Festival. If any of you are in Columbia, SC May 13-15, come see me at this free event! But I do have a couple of things looming before that, including a lighting design for RENT here in Charlotte (not that I’m in Charlotte at the moment, I’m actually in Atlanta for work) and Merlefest! There will be plenty more Merlefest info coming soon, but suffice to say that I’m crazy excited about it for a ton of reasons, not the least of which is ROBERT PLANT.
by john | Apr 19, 2011 | Writing
So the vast majority of this post was taken directly from Derek Canyon’s blog post of yesterday. I asked him to send me over the copy because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to write a blog post of my own announcing this very excellent project. I am very proud to be part of Twelve Worlds, and hope that everyone who enjoys the Black Knight Chronicles will buy a copy to get the exclusive Black Knight story!
I’m pleased to announce that the science fiction and fantasy short story anthology, Twelve Worlds, is now available for $2.99 on Amazon.com. Buy it here!
I contributed a Black Knight Chronicles short story, Daddy Issues, to the anthology. The story takes place before the events in Hard Day’s Knight, so it should be a lot of fun for fans of the series. Admittedly it’s still a little surreal to me to think about having “fans,” but I think it’s actually starting to be true, so I’ll try not to make snide comments about the fact that I have fans. It’s kinda been a dream of mine, and is somewhat hard to believe that it’s happening, but that’s beside the point.
Daddy Issues was a challenge for me, because I don’t do many short stories. The shift from writing a 60,000-word story to a 4,000-word story was a tough thing for me, because I’ve kinda got my rhythm down for how the books go. In a novel, I take my time setting up the main fight, then there’s a red herring or two, a final plot twist then a resolution, usually with a big honkin’ fight at the end. In a short story, I had to strip away all the extra twists and dig right down to the plot and resolution. I think the story still works, and it’s pretty fun, so I hope you guys enjoy it. Plus the money goes to a great cause, so you should all buy it!
TwelveWorlds contains 14 short stories by new and aspiring authors. Genres include my own gritty cyberpunk as well as epic fantasy, romantic fantasy, paranormal detective mystery, star-faring scifi, and more. There’s around 80,000 words total, so that’s a great deal for $2.99.
Author royalties for Twelve Worlds will be donated to Reading is Fundamental, the nation’s largest nonprofit children’s literacy charity.
Here’s a full list of the stories in this anthology:
By a Whisker by Kevin O. McLaughlin (3500 words): Someone is siphoning magical energy from the powerful ley nexus at Northshield University in this urban fantasy. Ryan goes to investigate, and gets help from an unexpected quarter.
The Accidental Muse by Amy Rose Davis (6200 words): A girl with no memory, a grieving widower, and a sweet-natured boy with strange power live a quiet life in their sheltered Keep until the night a traveling musician arrives at the door. The power of the musician’s harp threatens to destroy their family unless one of them can stop it. A tale of gods, muses, mysterious spirits, and the power of love.
The Price of Vengeance by Derek J. Canyon (7400 words): In 22nd century Atlanta, Maggie hunts the genetically-engineered dwarf who killed her entire gang.
Insomnomancer by JE Medrick (3400 words): Witness life through the eyes of a predator. Kyle Hall, barely remarkable in a world of gray faces, is targeted by a very specialized hunter. To the target, it is night after sleepless night. To the Insomnomancer – a game of points and hungry satisfaction.
Thump by NB Kelly (4650 words): When a hitchhiker becomes part of an impromptu road trip, peace is the last thing that two young men will get out of it.
Iron in Shadow by Edward L. Cote (14900 words): The best thief in Rithmoor, the City of Dark Water, goes by the name Slip. He takes on a promising job, but it gets more complicated and dangerous the more he learns about what exactly it is he must do. To avoid certain death at the hands of the Great Magus Dibian, he must risk the wrath of the world’s hardest people.
Together They Die by Brian Drake (3220 words): A former cop helps a ghost solve her murder.
Incubators by Manley Peterson (3200 words): Lost in space, three astronauts struggle to accept their fate aboard a crippled ship. Could a last-minute rescue be all they hoped for?
Cube by Coral Russell (4150 words): Luke’s family isn’t perfect, but they’re worth saving. How far would you go to save your family?
The Star-Eater by K Gorman (6000 words): Karin wakes up one day on her starship, realizing her sister has been killed–but not before her sister cursed the murderer. Now she’s got a man to kill. And her boss is starting to suspect that she’s a little more than human…
Man-Maker by BC Woods (8050 words): A young boy in a society based entirely around defending itself against zombie-like demons refuses a sacred rite of passage.
Daddy Issues by John G. Hartness (4200 words): Vampires, voodoo, zombies and gold-diggers, it’s all in a day’s work for the boys at Black Knight Investigations. Vampire Private Investigators Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood are called in to dispose of a zombie in the library, but there’s always more than meets the eye where these detectives are concerned. Takes place before the events in Hard Day’s Knight.
BONUS STORIES!
Weird and Wondeful by Tony Lavely (6000 words): Mailira and Marelsa together bring an old Scottish folk tale to life for a young musician.
The Light Stream by Jaylin Baer (3060 words): The transition between waking and sleeping, dreaded by some and enjoyed by others, becomes something altogether different for a very select few. Discover one woman’s journey into the Light Stream.
So, if want to read new stories from 14 talented new authors, you should definitely buy this ebook! Who knows, you might find a new author that you really enjoy!
After reading it, don’t forget to write up a review on Amazon. It really helps sales.
You can also visit the official Twelve Worlds website and discuss the stories.
by john | Apr 18, 2011 | Writing
Never let it be said that there isn’t any benefit to procrastination – the winner of the Kindle 3 giveaway posted her review of Back in Black right under the deadline wire, and got her trivia questions in with just a week to spare!
Our winner is Cat Lail!
Cat did all the stuff you could do to get extra entries – she bought books, reviewed books and answered a bunch of trivia questions. Well, it all paid off because her lucky number was drawn and now she’ll be the proud owner of a Kindle 3G!
Congratulations Cat, and thanks to everyone who stopped by and entered! Stay tuned tomorrow (or the next day, because sometimes I’m slow) for a big announcement about an upcoming promotion event!
