by john | Jan 9, 2011 | Writing
It’s 7:03 PM and I’m 2,000 words off my goal for the day. So of course I’m writing a blog post instead of working on the sequel to Hard Day’s Knight. Because that’s how I roll.
My initial goal for ROW80 was to do 5,000 words per week and get the book finished by the end of the challenge. Well, I kinda dedicated this weekend to writing, and I’m floating at somewhere in the 14,000 word range since we started. I hit 5,000 words on Thursday, knocked out another 1,100 Friday and then did a little over 5,000 yesterday. I’ve done 3,000 or so today, and the book as a whole is right at 25,000 words. I think this book is going to run a touch longer than the first one, because a red herring I put in the book is taking longer to resolve than I expected. I needed another twist in this subplot, and I should finish this side plot up tonight and get my vampires out of FairyLand and back into the real world. Yeah, I just wrote that. You’ll have to buy the book to figure that one out.
So I think this book may end up around 70-75,000 words, but since it’ll primarily publish in ebook form, who really cares? Even in print form it won’t be too cumbersome, since I’ll be doing the 6×9 size just like I did with the other books. I also got about 500 words in on a new book, which is a terrorist thriller completely different from anything else I’ve written. If I get back to it, and decide to publish it, I may need to look at a pseudonym for that one. It’s just so far afield from the urban fantasy genre I’m working in that I don’t want readers to go looking for something like The Chosen or Hard Day’s Knight and get all confused. Of course, it’s still gonna be me writing it, so I have no doubt that it’ll have a fair share of snark in it. Either way I’m months away from even thinking about that issue, so it may be all resolved by then.
I’ve started to sell a few more copies. Hard Day’s Knight sales are starting to pick up, but it needs some review love. Hopefully folks will see the Win A Kindle contest and write reviews to enter. I’m not unhappy with it so far, it’s averaging about a copy a day, which is good for me. For now. Hopefully in a year or so I’ll look back on those numbers and chuckle fondly. Alright, back to the grindstone – go buy a book!
by john | Jan 7, 2011 | Writing
So I hope you enjoyed Willie’s guest post yesterday. And if you came here because of Willie’s post and decided to hang around, welcome! I will be opening up this space to guest blogs from independent writers in the future, once a week. So if anyone wants to pimp a book, or a project of any type, feel free. I don’t have any restrictions on content, because if I tried to keep this blog PG-13, I’d never be able to whine effectively about my poker game :).
I mentioned somewhere earlier about how Scrivener makes it super-easy to create and publish ebooks of your own, so I’ve uploaded and made available two new projects this week. Here are the links and some info. I made the covers myself in Pages, and just dropped them into Scrivener. Pretty badass, huh?
The Christmas Lights is a PG-rated 100% clean Christmas story. I know, right? I was surprised when I wrote it, too! It’s only $.99 on Kindle. It was also in the collection Returning the Favor, but I thought it could stand alone and some folks who don’t approve of my potty mouth might be able to get into it this way.
Red Dirt Boy is a collection of all poetry, and it’s a lot of fun. There are drunks, strippers, guns, suicides, junkies, natural disasters, heartaches, broken headboards, beer and religion all in one little volume. It’s poetry for people who hate poetry, and I’m pretty proud of it. This is the first time it’s been available in e-book format.
So check out one or both of these new e-books, while I go hide in the mountains this weekend and write my fingers to the bone in hopes of having the sequel to Hard Day’s Knight out to you by the end of March.
And don’t forget to enter the contest for the Kindle 3/Nook/Amazon Gift Card! Buy something, it’ll give you something to read this weekend!
by john | Jan 6, 2011 | Writing
Hey folks, I’m opening up the blog to a guest post by William Meikle, an author I met through the KindleBoards message boards. William is doing a blog crawl to promote his upcoming book and put together a quick post for us today. I hope you enjoy it and check out William’s work!
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com
Single-Author Horror Short Story Collections
One of those Facebook apps got me thinking. It wanted Single Author horror collections not by Stephen King
It was hard to choose, so I went with the ones that got me started on reading beyond Dennis Wheatley in the days before Stephen King and/or The Exorcist.
1. Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
2. H. P. Lovecraft: Tales (Library of America)
3. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
4. The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
5. The October Country
All of these were on the shelves of a small library in a steelworking town in Scotland. I doubt that is the case nowadays.
Staggering to think that I first read Lovecraft and Bradbury forty years ago now! I’m officially an old fart.
That does also mean I’ve read a -lot- of other collections, so here are five more, from more recent times.
1. Alone With The Horrors – Ramsey Campbell
2. The Dark Country – Dennis Etchison
3. The Ice Monkey – M John Harrison
4. The White Road – Ron Weighell
5. The Books of Blood – Clive Barker
In doing this I realize I’m missing many of my favorites, from Arthur Machen through Joseph Payne Brennan, Karl Edward Wagner and up to people like Conrad Williams, Steve Duffy and Tim Lebbon. But these are the ones that I go back to and re-read so I’ll stick with these choices.
For today at least.
by john | Jan 5, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
So on the first check-in day of ROW80 (Round 1), I should be at either 2,000 or 3,000 words, depending on whether I’ve gotten my quota for the day in or not. So where am I really?
3,795 words.
That’s right, kids, I’m almost a full day ahead of schedule, with the possibility of taking an extra day off on Friday, or forging ahead and getting a huge head start on next week. I won’t get any writing done tonight, most likely, because there’s an errand I’ve got to run to SC that will take up most of my night. but I pounded out 1,117 during lunch and I’m at that magic point of the book where I know where it’s going and how to get there, I just need to get my butt in front of a keyboard and write it.
I’ve also started using Scrivener for this project and have become totally enamored with it. I love how it organizes notes for me, and I really love how it makes converting to ebook super-easy. Since starting the trial I’ve uploaded a collection of poetry and a short story to Kindle, and I’ve re-formatted Returning the Favor and re-published it. I’m also probably changing the prices of all my books after my Kindle giveaway contest, so buy the novels now while they’re cheap! Once the contest is over my pricing structure is going to look something like this – short stories for $.99, short story collections $2.99-4.99 depending on length, novels $4.99-6.99 depending on length, with a loss leader of $.99 intro books in series. But those changes won’t kick in until April 1, so you’ve got plenty of time (and I have time to change my mind elebenty million times by then).
And today I finished my second workout in the Couch to 5K regimen. I have a little shin splint that’s really cutting down how much actual running I’m doing, but I did better today than I did Monday, so that’s progress. I only managed to run for about 6 of the 9 segments, but Monday I think I only did 4. Hopefully Friday I’ll be able to do all 9, but I may give myself an extra recovery day and do the run on my own Saturday.
And here’s another way to earn entries into the Win A Kindle Giveaway!
For every $10 you donate to my 24 Hours of Booty page, I’ll give you one entry into the contest. So go read about this great fundraising ride for cancer, and donate generously. You might win a Kindle for your trouble!
by john | Jan 4, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Now through March 2011, I’m accepting entries into a contest to win a brand new Kindle 3 or Nook e-reader! That’s right, kids, just for being cool and commenting on this here blog you could win almost $200 worth of swanky electronic toys! And to make it better, I’ll load my books onto the device for you, so you don’t have to do anything but take it out of the box and start to enjoy it! This contest will run through the end of March, 2011, and here’s a sweetener for those of you who already own e-readers – if you win and decide you don’t want a Kindle or a Nook, let me know and I’ll send you a $200 Amazon gift certificate! So no matter what, you can get some cool stuff!
Here are the rules for the contest –
1) No Purchase is necessary. You may earn an entry into the contest by simply commenting on this blog post. You will earn one entry for commenting here. You will not earn multiple entries for multiple comments.
2) You can earn multiple entries, and this is how you do that. You earn two entries for each copy of my books you buy, no max. Just send me an email with the Amazon/Apple/BN order confirmation and your name. Please block out confidential information like where you live.
3) You can earn multiple entries by answering trivia questions about the books, and those will be posted below. You get one entry for each correct answer. Please don’t share the answers, the whole point is to generate readers. That said, if you borrow the book from someone, you can still get all the entries for the correct answers.
4) You can get two entries for posting a review on Amazon, regardless of whether you liked the book or not. If you hate it and give it a review (must be at least 100 words, and no bs like “I hated it” 34 times) I’ll give you two entries. That’s two entries per book reviewed, so the more reviews you write, the more entries you get. Obviously you can only review each book once, because to do anything else skews the review process. And I really do want honest responses, so if you think it’s crap, don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ll just curl up under my keyboard any cry, that’s all.
Please email any questions or entries to johnhartness AT gmail DOT com. You know what to do with that.
Trivia Questions – one entry per correct answer
The Chosen
1) In The Chosen, what is Adam’s Irish love’s name?
2) In what famous American town did Cain play cards with Lucky?
3) What apostle was really Adam?
4) Name any three musical acts/musical artists mentioned in the novel.
Hard Day’s Knight
5) Where did Greg and Jimmy go to college?
6) What is Father Mike’s last name?
7) What kind of guns does Jimmy usually carry?
8) What is the wi-fi password to Greg and Jimmy’s wireless network?
Red Dirt Boy
9) What is the stripper’s name in Small Caliber Love?
10) Where was Aftermath originally published?
Alright, those be the questions – email me your answers, your screenshots where you bought books, and leave a comment here for your entries. I’ll have somebody (probably Suzy) do the drawing the first week of April, and then announce the winner once I know what you decide your prize should be!
Good Luck!
by john | Jan 3, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Just got back in from doing the first workout in the Couch to 5K program. Several of us at the office are trying to get into shape, and two laps around the office park pretty much equals two miles and it took us all of thirty minutes to make it. I couldn’t run more than half of the times I was supposed to run, so I think this 9 week program might take a little while longer than that for me and at least one other slacker. But having people at the office to work out with should provide a great motivator for all of us.
I also managed to meet my ROW80 goal for the day, and am trying out Scrivener as a new writing tool. I particularly like the fact that it will compile and create epub and Kindle format ebooks, so that might save me a couple hundo on each future book. I sent out a couple of sample chapters this weekend, and response has been good so far. I’m something like 12,000 words into the book, and just finished the first big fight scene, so I think I’m about a quarter of the way through the book. I’m hoping for a March release on that, then maybe release a couple of short stories later in the spring, especially if Scrivener continues to be as user-friendly as it appears at first glance.
But I promised you the tale of how we almost died on the way home from the poker game, didn’t I? So we’re cruising north on I-85 almost to Gaffney, and I’ve got the cruise control locked in at 70 or so. The speed limit is 60 or 65, and it’s foggy and been raining all day, so I’m feeling pretty good about not being in too big a rush. I’m in the left lane, because traffic is light and even going relatively slowly, I’m still rolling faster than most of the traffic on the road. Out of the corner of my eye I see a little car zip up alongside us in the right lane, and just as I hear Special K say “John, look out!” I hear the little shitbanger’s oversized exhaust rev up and watch him try to shoot the gap and slide into the lane in front of me. I tap the brakes to kill my cruise control as he does, but the doucherocket can’t keep his little overjuiced Civic under control, and he goes off the left side of the road into the median. I swerve to miss him, making the truck bobble a little more than I’m happy about, but regain control and move into the right lane. He does not manage to regain control, and I see him go sideways into the retaining wires and fence at 70 MPH or so. I can hear the plastic parts snapping off of his car as I hear T get on the phone to call 911. And that’s how we started 2011 off with almost dying on I-85. We didn’t stop, largely because I didn’t see a safe way to get back to provide any assistance, and also because I’m not really qualified to provide any type of first aid or medical assistance. We called 911 and let the professionals take care of it. Part of me hopes the idiot was okay, since I don’t want to wish ill of anyone, but part of me also hopes that he can never drive again, because he was a dangerous driver.
