by john | Oct 27, 2014 | Real Life, Writing
I know, this year has sucked donkey nuts for blogging. I’m a terrible blogger and a late-ass writer and nobody can find me to buy my shit, yadda yadda yadda.
The truth is, 2014 has sucked ass and I’m ready for it to be over.
As a lot of folks who have followed this blog for a while know, in 2012 I left a job of almost 18 years to write full time. Which worked out fairly well for about a year, then I went back to work.
Which also worked out fairly well for about a year, until it didn’t. Then I left that job at the end of January and started a new one right after Connooga, so the second week in March. And I thought it was going quite well and was just about ready to go into my boss’s office and talk about an end-of-my-first 90 days review and maybe salary bump.
When he fired my ass without any warning. So right before ConCarolinas I was fired, and I spent the next eight week trying to figure out how I was going to live. Because all my savings had been eaten up in that whole “write for a living” year. But I scrabbled through, sold off a bunch of unnecessary shit, dumped a large portion of my Magic card collection, collected on some back pay that had been floating out there, and got another job that started at the end of July.
So that was good. So far the new job is working out well. I enjoy the work, I enjoy the people, and we are beginning to see some results from my labors.
Then I went to DragonCon, knowing that while I was working the con, my mother was dying. I went to see her the day I left for Atlanta. I spent some time in her room, said my goodbyes, talked to the hospice nurse, and spent all weekend in Atlanta waiting for the phone call that she was gone and it was time to come home. She waited until Monday morning, and a part of me will always believe that she knew how important this con was to my career, and she held on for me. I was in the shower Monday morning when she died, and I felt it. I stood there, water running down over my face, and I felt something in my world shift. I got dressed and started packing, and by the time I got my suitcase half loaded, my sister was on the phone.
I expected it to be easier. My mother had dementia, or Alzheimer’s. or whatever. I don’t know the difference, but I know it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I thought I had reconciled myself to her death, because in a way it felt like she was already gone. The part of her that was really my mother hadn’t been there since before last Christmas. Up until then she would have moments of lucidity, flashes of herself. But I didn’t see those at all after Christmas. And I didn’t react very well. I don’t deal well with things I can’t do anything about – helplessness is not a feeling I process well at all. And I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about my mother’s decline, so I stopped going to visit. I couldn’t stand to see her like that, so I stopped seeing her.
So I expected to handle her passing with calm and grace. After all, I had intellectually processed everything and resigned myself to the fact that my mother had really been gone for years. She never really understood that I had written a novel, much less published six of them. The last publication of mine that she really understood was Red Dirt Boy, a collection of poetry I self-published in 2010. I gave her copies of all my novels, but she never read them. I don’t think she read any of the poetry either, but that never bothered me – I swear a lot in my poetry and she wouldn’t have approved. So I had rationalized all that to myself, and I would be able to handle her eventual physical death without any real impact.
I was wrong.
I have been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but I may have never been so classically, spectacularly wrong about anything before. Even right now, writing this, I don’t understand why it hurts so much. I don’t know if there was some part of me that expected her to make an amazing momentary recovery and we could have some Hallmark movie moment right there at the end where she told me she was proud of me and then slipped away peacefully. I don’t know if it’s guilt because I was working at a con while my siblings sat at her bedside. I don’t know what it is, but I miss my mom. And it hurts more than anything has hurt since I got dumped transcontinentally by the girl I thought I was going to marry.
That one worked out really well in the end, because I married Suzy, but it was pretty fucking gut-wrenching at the time.
So all that oversharing is to explain to you, my fans, why you don’t have In the Still of the Knight, which is Boof 5 of the Black Knight Chronicles, yet. It’s also why you don’t have The Big Bad: An Anthology of Evil vol. 2. It’s also why my editors for a couple of anthologies don’t have Bubba stories and why you haven’t seen very many this year, either.
Because 2014 has been pretty well fucked and it’s made it really hard to write. I’m getting better every day. The new job is stable so far, I’m slowly getting over losing my mom, and I’m back in the saddle writing. I had a meeting with Emily this past weekend to go over layout for BB2, and that should drop in the near future. So both books should be out by the end of the year, with Black Knight 6 hopefully making a summer release next year, because Book 5 flows pretty tightly into 6, so I need to just keep writing and making it all happen.
So I’m sorry that I haven’t been more productive. I appreciate you letting me know that you’re still out there. I appreciate you letting me know that you still want the books, and I promise that I’ll get them to you. I know there has been a little oversharing in this post, and that some of you, and some of my family don’t really approve of such a thing. Too bad. This is what you get with me – I live out loud. It’s the only way I know how to be.
So yeah, 2014 has sucked. I’ll be glad to see it go. But I’m still here. I’m glad you’re still here, too.
by john | Feb 17, 2014 | Writing
Otherworldly Lines
If you are not moved by Roy Batty’s final words at the end of “Blade Runner,” then you are the replicant—a poorly built one at that, lacking an emotions chip. Just in case you have forgotten those impassioned words, here they are:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Wow! The ‘wow’ was this author’s uncontrollable reaction, not part of the famous quote itself.
“No, I am your father.” Hearing these five words for the first time felt like getting hit in the face with a bag of bricks. If you are lost, exit the cave right now—you have been in there way too long. This is Darth Vader’s revelation to Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back.” It may not seem like a big deal nowadays, but back in 1980, it was as mind-blowing as it could get. Note: Many people seem to think that the line was, “Luke, I am your father,” but it’s not. See for yourself.
Coming off an extremely disappointing, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979, expectations were low when “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” released three years later. It has been 32 years since, and with all the subsequent “Star Trek” movies, many fans believe that “Star Trek II” outshines them all. This brief interaction has a lot to do with it:
Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh…”
Kirk: “The needs of the few.”
Spock: “Or the one.”
Goose bumps anyone? Here are some things you may not know about our favorite sequel.
This was just a very short list of breathtaking lines. Weirdmedia has 100 out-of-this-world quotes for you to feast on.
It’s What Got Us Here
Take a moment and think of all of the wonderful innovations used regularly. We have Netflix streaming, BetFair gaming, satellite radio, and GPS gadgets, just to name a few. These and many more life-changing inventions are here because of dreamers, constantly trying to reach for the stars.
What inspired these brilliant minds and did Science Fiction play a role? Were they fans of “Star Trek” or H. G. Wells? Asking these questions is not just important—it is our responsibility as well. The answers could provide us with a blueprint for ingenuity and set our children on similar paths. It could make the world a better place for generations to come. Check out the top ten most influential Science Fiction writers, provided by Listverse. I’m surprised that Gene Roddenberry was not on the list.
The Science Fiction genre offers a universe of poetry that sparks the imagination and enriches the soul. The importance of such beauty cannot be overstated. The inspiration it releases into the atmosphere on a daily basis allows us all to dream. And dreaming is the seed of discovery and creation.
This is a guest post by Michael Page. Michael is an avid sci-fi fan and film enthusiast. When not blogging about all things science fiction, he enjoys binging on the latest video games and eating chinese food.
by john | Dec 31, 2013 | Magic:the Gathering
As I’ve gotten back into playing Magic:The Gathering, it’s given me a way back to blogging, but I realize that not everyone who reads my blog plays Magic. Or has any idea about how to play Magic. And when my friend T was trying to learn the game, she wanted to know what book she could buy that would teach her how to play, and how to build decks, and all that jazz. That’s when I realized that there really isn’t a good beginner’s guide to Magic right now. So I figured I’d write one.
You know, along with all my other projects.
But I also thought that if I did it as a series of blog posts first, that would allow me to kill multiple birds with one stone. I get to write the Magic book I want to see available. I get my blog back on track and it becomes a place for people to find out more about me and my writing. And I get to do it in small enough snippets to fit it in between the other projects I’m working on.
So here’s the beginning. This is Part 1, the general concepts.
You are a Planeswalker. This is the intro to Magic:The Gathering. Four little words, that started a bajillion-dollar business. You are a Planeswalker. Right there in that sentence is a lot of information, and a lot of mystery. It tells you that you’re going to go somewhere outside yourself, you’re going to have an element of roleplaying in the game, and that there will be something new and exciting involved. Planeswalker – what the hell is that, anyway? Well, we’ll get there.
At its heart, Magic (or MTG) is a collectible card game. Two or more players (but for the purposes of most examples here, two) take on the role of wizards trying to destroy their opponents. Both players start with a predetermined life total, and they can win the game either by reducing their opponent’s life total to zero or by forcing them draw a card when they are out of cards to draw. That’s most of it. There are a few alternate win conditions that are dependent on cards, but those are the most common paths to victory.
As with life, there are plenty of examples in MTG that contradict the basic rules. There are advanced cards that literally change the win conditions of the game, but they are few and far between. What I’m going to try to do is present the normal circumstances of the game, and you keep hold of the basic understanding that if there’s a card on the table that says that the normal rules are suspended for a time, that card applies. For example, some cards say that if you have X amount of life (where X is typically greater than your starting life total) you win. If that card is in play, you have a third path to victory. But those are outliers and we won’t spend too much time on them.
So you have a deck of cards, and you have a friend with a deck. Those two things are all you really need to play Magic. Cards and a friend. And frankly, if you’re short on one and have plenty of the other, there are local game stores to help you acquire whichever one you’re lacking.
So sit down with your friend and your deck, and you’re ready to play. You each start with 20 life. Your job is to bash your opponent to zero while not allowing your opponent to bash you to zero. You do this by casting spells. And you cast spells by using something called mana.
Mana is the energy of the world around you. The elemental forces, if you will. There are five different colors of mana, each representative of a different style of magic. Over time, you’ll determine what type of magic best suits your personality and play style, and you will naturally gravitate toward those types of decks. Each color has a personality, and types of creatures that go along with it.
The five colors of mana are Black, Blue, Green, Red, and White.
Black is the color of death, disease and things that go bump in the night. Creatures like zombies, vampires, ghouls, ghosts and demons are typically black. Black spells frequently use your life total as a resource. You may spend life to draw cards, summon creatures, deal damage, etc. Black has a lot of spells that take life from your opponent and give it to you. Black also has spells of disruption, that take cards out of an opponent’s hand or destroy the creatures that they have out on the table. I play a lot of black decks, because I write horror novels. What do you expect me to play, decks full of sunshine and unicorns?
Blue is the color of rational thought and control. Blue is also the color of the sea and sky , so lots of fish, merfolk, birds and flying creatures. Blue has long been considered one of the most powerful colors in MTG, partly because it features lots of spells that let players draw extra cards. Having more cards than your opponents is a huge advantage in game play, so it’s never something that should be overlooked. Blue is also very disruptive, because it has counter-magic. Basically spells that just say “NO” to anything your opponent wants to do. I like to play blue because I like to be in control, but it’s sometimes considered an “un-fun” color.
We’ll get to the other three colors next time, because I want to keep these under 1,000 words and I babbled too much in the beginning. Anyway, I’ll try to do at least one of these Magic intro posts each week, and maybe by the end of the year I’ll have the guide written. If anybody has any hookups at WOTC, I need to know who can give me permission to use their trademarks like mana symbols in illustrations.
by john | Dec 27, 2013 | Magic:the Gathering
So I think of myself a something of a Limited specialist. At my local game shop (Get Some Game) we draft every Friday night, and there are a fair number of really solid players there. I’m not the best in the store, but I’m usually in the top 5-6. But Theros drafting has completely dumbfounded me. I have had only limited success in the format since the set came out (get it, limited success in Limited? See what I did there? It’s gonna get worse, I promise), winning very few of the drafts that I’ve played and rarely coming in Top 4 in our weekly drafts.
So there are few things that I wanted to talk about as my failures have continued to pile up, all of these being things that have kicked my ass over the months that we’ve been drafting this set.
1) Green/Red Monsters is pretty good, and often pretty open. I actually went against type last weekend and won a three-round draft going with Green/Red Monsters. I started out trying to be Blue/Red, but moved into Green after a Nemesis of Mortals wheeled. That means it went all the way around the table and made it back to me. When a really strong card like Nemesis of Mortals does this it typically means that no one is playing that color, so you can take anything you want in that color with impunity. From there I started picking up Satyrs. Not the piping one, I think Satyr Piper sucks ass, but all the others. Voyaging Satyr is an incredible two-drop in Green, giving a body and ramp. Satyr Hedonist has an awesome sac effect that lets you drop a monster really fast, and Satyr Rambler is just solid, a 2/1 body with trample for two mana. Slap a Dragon Mantle on him and you’re golden. So I rode the back of my Nessian Asps and my Nemesisesisesis to victory. And a Mistcutter Hydra, which is just really bad news for your opponent who is playing almost mono-blue.
2) Green heroic guys are trap cards. I have been such a sucker for Staunch-Hearted Warriors that I must have lost half a dozen matches because of them. The initial cost is too high, and they fall prey to Voyage’s End or Griptide just as easily as a more reasonably costed card. And don’t get me started on the Battlemaster. So Green heroic guys are to be avoided.
3) Minotaurs are fun. There are a fair number of minotaurs in the set, more than enough to draft a tribal minotaur deck, and the Kragma Warcaller often gets passed around the table, so he can be a fairly late pick. Grab all of those guys you can and just curve out perfectly from Deathbellow Raider to Minotaur Skullcleaver to Borderland Minotaur to Kragma Warcaller and smash face. Supplement with Harpies for flyer defense and it’s a thing.
4) Flyers are tough. Blue/White flyers is totally a thing, and when you add in that white has the best heroic guys, and blue has the best bestow creature, you can make an unstoppable air force pretty easily. Wingsteed Rider, Phalanx Leader, Nimbus Nyad, Fabled Hero, Akroan Hoplite, Battlewise Hoplite, Triton Fortune Hunter are all valid cards, and then at the top of the curve you have all the sphinxes for beatdown. Definitely a solid strategy, but a popular one, so you’re gonna have to fight for your cards and get a little lucky to get enough stuff to make it work. But one Phalanx Leader and a couple of Chosen of Heliod makes for a decent little army.
5) Pay attention to what’s open. I have such a problem with this, because I’ll try to lock in a strategy based on one rare, and I do better when I pay attention to the signals and just take what the table gives me. I have to pay more attention to taking early removal and bombs, then worrying about solidifying a strategy in packs 2-3.
So there are a few tips based off my mistakes in Theros drafting. If you’ve got anything to share, leave it in the comments!
by john | Dec 23, 2013 | Magic:the Gathering
So folks who sometimes stop by this little corner of the interwebs may have seen that over the past year and change I’ve gone back to an old pasttime – Magic:The Gathering (or Magic:The Addiction). I started playing again at LibertyCon because Brandon Sanderson invited me to a draft with him, and I had a blast, remembering how much I enjoyed the game all those years ago. That was the first step. Then I found a local game shop that I really like, and it was all downhill from there. I’ve spent a piece of almost every week since slinging cards, trading cards, and generally nerding out over chunks of cardboard.
For those that have never played, Magic is kinda like a blend of poker, chess and Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a collectible strategic card game set in a fantasy environment with awesome art and lots of smart marketing. And I’m totally hooked. I’ve primarily focused on my Limited play since coming back to the game (Limited is when you take a set of new packs of cards, open them and build a deck from what you find there). I enjoy Limited because the playing field is pretty level, and I can fall back on my game theory and understanding to lead me to some modicum of success. I’m a decent Limited player, but most of the major tournaments are Constructed format (Constructed is when you build a competitive deck from all the cards you own or can borrow and bring that to the tournament), so I decided about a month ago that it was time to step up my Constructed game.
In Magic there are two main ways to build a deck – homebrew something that you think will be awesome, or go on the internet and get the deck list from last week’s major tournament winner. After a year and change of homebrewing without real success, I moved on to Plan B and built a Mono-Black (with a splash of white) deck. I splashed white for Blood Baron of Vizkopa, because it has protection from white and black, which makes it very difficult for many decks to deal with. Once it resolves, it’s going to give a lot of people a lot of problems.
Last weekend was a Star City Games Super Invitational Qualifier tournament at Be There Games in Indian Trail. It’s not far from my house, and I’d heard good things about their events, and a bunch of my friends were going, so I decided to give it a shot. I got there and started to register my deck (bigger tournaments have you list the cards in your deck and then do random deck checks to fight cheating) and took a little advice from my friend Joe. Joe has had a lot of tournament success recently, winning two major events this year, so I listen to his advice. I was running one Prophetic Prism so that when I stole a card with my Nightveil Specter I could cast it no matter what. Joe suggested I cut that, because I’ll often pull land with the Specter and be able to cast the card anyway. That allowed me to add one more Blood Baron, upping the threat level of the deck considerably.
Unfortunately I had no answer for the other glaring error Joe pointed out in my deck. When I was tweaking things I cut back on my white mana sources from eight to four. I cut the Godless Shrines and kept the Temples of Silence, which meant that there could be times I was going to have mana troubles. I took a live and learn attitude to this mistake and hoped it wouldn’t screw me too badly. It didn’t crush me, but definitely ended up being relevant.
Round 1 – I played against a very nice guy from Atlanta (which set my tone for the whole day – all my opponents were very cool, which made the day way better) who was playing a Mono-red aggro deck. This deck feels on the surface like a terrible matchup for me, and in fact I had play-tested with Taco in a small tournament the week before and got my ass kicked by his mono-red deck. My Round 1 opponent had a couple of rough draws, but was still able to get some early threats on board, but I managed to push through his pile of early attackers and bad draws and beat him down 2-0 (Magic tournament matches are best of three).
Round 2 – Another nice dude, one of the other oldest guys in the room (he even had a few years on me). His name was Stephen, and he was playing a white weenie deck (lots of small creatures that kill with a swarming strategy). He couldn’t get anything going and once I resolved a Blood Baron (which has protection from white so he had no answers for it) it was pretty much game over. Game 2 I think I killed him with a swarm of Pack Rats. 2-0 and I was feeling pretty good about my deck and myself.
Then I got to Round 3, and found out what a problem my deck could be when I played a mirror match (a mirror match is what happens when two players piloting the same deck get matched up against each other). And my opponent had a lot more tournament experience than me, and more experience with the deck, and had better draws to boot. So a better player with more experience and better draws beat me in less than fifteen minutes out of the fifty-minute round. I was still in the running at 2-1, but couldn’t afford to lose another match.
Round 4 I clashed with Chris, another nice dude from Augusta. I don’t remember what his deck was, but I remember they were very good matches. Beating him was far from easy, with back-and-forth matches and the first time all day I went to Game 3. We were 1-1 going into Game 3 and it was going to come down to who got their deck going first. I got the advantage and took down the match, but don’t remember any of the details of the match.
Round 5 should have been better than it was, but I got stuck in the mirror match again, against a better player again, with more experience again, and got my ass kicked again.
Since I was eliminated from contention for Top 8 and major prizes (major for Magic, but first place was $400, which is a good day no matter how you look at it) I went ahead and dropped out of the tournament and entered a booster draft. Back in my Limited comfort zone I went 3-0 to win the booster draft and redeem myself a little for the day.
by john | Sep 11, 2013 | Real Life, Writing
So here’s my post for the week – OW MY FUCKING FOOT HURTS.
Thank you, and goodnight.
Nah, I’ll do better, but my fucking foot does hurt. But since I usually don’t type with my feet, it’s pretty much irrelevant to my work here, isn’t it? Yep, so you get a blog post. A boring one, but a blog post nonetheless.
I haven’t written shit this week, but I got 3-4K words done on a new Bubba story and a new YA novels about dragons that I’ve been working on most of the year. Did all that last weekend, then Sunday I jumped into theatre mode hot n’ heavy. I’m directing a Southern farce called Dearly Departed in Rock Hill, SC this fall, and auditions were this week, Sunday – Tuesday. Lots of great women showed up for the six female roles, but we’re short a few actors for the four male roles.
Like three.
So we’re working on that. Hopefully we can scrape up some guys and move forward. I gave us an extra week between auditions and the beginning of rehearsals because I remembered this being an issue the last time I directed for this company.
But at some point I also hurt my foot. I don’t know what I did to cause it, but I have an acute case of achilles tendinitis, which hurts like a bitch. Actually, I think I do know what I did – I drove wrong. I took my dad to the VA hospital on Monday to have a stitch removed from his eyeball (yeah, I said that) after his very successful cataract surgery, and I took Suzy’s car. Now a Nissan Versa is a fine automobile, and I enjoy her car quite a bit usually.
But driving it for six hours apparently causes me to hold me foot and legs in a funny position which seems to have tweaked my Achilles. A lot. It’s better today than it was yesterday, and hopefully through the good graces of Advil and ice, it’ll be almost back to normal tomorrow, but for now – FUCK.
Let’s face it kids, this is a whole lot of sexy to try and carry around on one foot.
So tonight I watched Lost Girl with my foot up and basically dicked around, so I’ll work on some word count tomorrow. In the meantime, you want a taste of the dragon thing I’ve been working on? Here’s a little nibble –
The ride to school gave Rachel a chance to clear her head and cool down a little after the argument with her dad. She knew he meant well, but the methods the mining company used were just so destructive. It seemed like no matter how much they fought, she couldn’t get him to see what she saw so clearly – that there’s no way blowing the tops off mountains could possibly be good for the environment. But it was definitely good for the CEO’s pockets, and the shareholders’ portfolios, and that’s all anybody cared about anymore. Some days Rachel wished she lived in a bigger city instead of the bucolic mountain town, then she could pitch a tent on the city hall lawn and protest. She could pitch a tent here, of course, but people would just think she was camping.
Rachel was still a little lost in thought as she turned into the school parking lot, so she didn’t see the taillights of the Mercedes until it was almost too late. The little coupe stopped on a dime, and Rachel had nowhere to go but to swerve hard left into oncoming traffic if she didn’t want to completely taco her front wheel on Jessica Baker’s back bumper. She knew whose car it was, of course. Not many Mercedes convertibles in the student parking lot, so everybody knew who it belonged to. But all Rachel thought about when she saw the red lights fill her vision was whether or not she could avoid putting her head through the back window of the ragtop. She swerved hard to the left, right into the path of an oncoming pickup.
Brakes squealed, Rachel pedaled hard to clear the front of the truck before it hit her, and she almost made it. The truck’s front bumper just clipped her rear wheel, but it was enough to send Rachel flying sideways off the bike to land on the asphalt. Her head smacked the pavement, hard, and her bike helmet exploded into shards of plastic and styrofoam. Her backpack dug painfully into her back and she felt a sharp burning in her left knee that told her one more pair of jeans was probably done for.
Rachel lay in the parking lot for a few seconds trying to collect herself before she managed to sit up. Just then, the driver of the truck got his vehicle turned off and made it to her side.
“Don’t sit up, you might be really hurt.” Rachel’s heart fell into her stomach at the sound of a familiar voice. Of course it’s Scott Morrison’s truck that I swerve in front of. Because the universe really does hate me. Please tell me it’s the thirteenth. I know it’s Friday, but it’s totally NOT my lucky day. Rachel sagged back to the pavement, wishing she could sink through it into the ground. When the ground steadfastly refused to open up and swallow her, she struggled up to her knees and tried to stand. Her left leg buckled under her, though, and Scott hurried forward to catch her before she fell.
“Hey! You really shouldn’t be standing.” She looked up at his brown eyes full of concern, and her knees went weak all over again. Scott helped her back to a sitting position on the ground and started to look her over for injuries.
“Are you all right?” He asked. “You seem a little …I don’t know. Did you hit your head?”
“No, I’m fine.” Rachel replied. “My helmet did its job. I think I’ve just got a little road rash on one knee. Just help me up and I’ll be fine.” As long as I don’t smell your cologne or look in those eyes again.
“Are you sure? Holy shit! You’re bleeding!” He pointed at her left knee, and sure enough, the fabric was shredded and soaked with blood.
“It’s not a big deal.” She said, trying to wave off the crowd that was gathering. “Just a little scratch. Don’t worry about it. It was totally my fault.” She saw Scott look at her out of the corner of one eye and held up her hands. “No, really! Look, you didn’t even bend the wheel of my bike. Much. Shit.” When she looked closer she could see that the wheel was just enough out of true that she wouldn’t be able to ride it until she got it fixed.
“Look, I’ll take care of the bike. I promise.” Scott said. “And I’ll give you a ride home today. You’re Ben Hampton’s daughter, right? Your dad works with my dad. I think I know where you live. I’ll take you home after school, then give you a ride to the bike shop and pay for the wheel. Okay?” It was more than okay with Rachel, who was getting a fluttery feeling in her stomach at the thought of that much time with Scott Morrison. Maybe today won’t be a total suck-fest after all.
by john | Apr 14, 2013 | Fiction, Writing
There’s a new Bubba story coming! Finished the draft, just gotta knock out the typos, tighten it up a little, and give it a cover. Oughta have it ready for y’all later this week. Here’s the opener –
Love Hurts
A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
The last thing I saw was the handle of my Grandpappy’s sword sticking out of my belly, covered in blood that was supposed to still be inside me. The last thing I heard was my brother’s voice, speaking to me for the first time in about fifteen years, mocking me as he twisted the blade. The last thing I thought was how much family reunions suck.
The next thing I knew I was laying in a hospital bed with more tubes and wires stuck to me than Wolverine in that crappy X-Men prequel. I stared up at the ceiling for a minute, wiggling fingers and toes and other parts that would wiggle before I turned my head to the side. Agent Amy was asleep in the chair by my bed, a strand of blonde hair creeping loose from her ponytail to brush across one cheek. I reached out to brush it back into place, but was really surprised to find that somebody had tied hundred-pound weights to my hands. Or at least that’s what it felt like, because I couldn’t move either mitt.
Amy must have heard or sensed something, because her eyes snapped open and she reached for the call button on my bed.
“Can I help you?” Came the tinny voice from the little speaker thingy that doubled as a speaker for the TV and a walkie-talkie to the nurses’ station.
“He’s awake. You should probably come untie him now.” Amy replied. I heard what she was saying, but didn’t quite get what she was saying until Amy looked back to me.
“Good morning, sleepyhead. The nurses kept the keys to your restraints, and I didn’t think it was worth fighting over while you were still asleep.”
“Where am I?” I don’t really have a problem with cliches, as long as they’re valid. And this one was. I had no friggin’ clue where I was.
“Atlanta. I had you flown here after Jason skewered you.”
“Like a damn shishkabob. Little bastard ran me through like poop through a goose.”
“That’s attractive, Bubba.” A new voice came from the door, and I looked up to see my best friend, wingman and technological guru Skeeter standing in the doorway, striking a pose. He woulda looked more heroic standing there all backlit and shit if he was bigger, or maybe armed. As it was, his skinny ass was the best-looking thing I’d seen in weeks. Except for Agent Amy, but she’s a chick, which gives her a default boost in the good-looking department. Anyway, Skeeter stepped into the room and flipped on the lights as a cute Asian nurse pushed past him.
“Mr. . . .”
“Bubba.” I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “Just Bubba will do fine, sweet-cheeks. Now, you wanna let me loose from all these cuffs and tubes and wires and shit? I gotta go rip my brother’s head off and crap down his neck.”
I didn’t know Asian people could get that pale, but she turned white as a sheet. I think she was afraid I was gonna kill Jason right there in the hospital. Which I reckon I woulda if I’da thought for a second that he was in the hospital.
She glanced over at Agent Amy, who gave her a nod. I reckon it was supposed to reassure the little thing that I didn’t want to kill her. It must have worked, since she set to unfastening me from the bed. “Mr. Bubba, you can’t rip anyone’s head off for a while. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you’re going to be in much shape to be ripping open a bag of Doritos anytime soon. You suffered serious internal injuries, and if it were not for the work of a lot of very fine surgeons and your friends here rushing you here in a —“
“Black government helicopter that none of us knows anything about.” Skeeter said with a grin. He was sitting in a straight chair by the window, grinning like a possum that had just crossed the freeway. He’d been full of conspiracy theories since we were in middle school, so finding out that the government really did have black helicopters was the best Christmas present he could have ever imagined.
“Yes, that.” Nurse Whatsherface finished. “My name is Lucy, and I’m your daytime nurse. Ethel is the charge nurse and your technician is Alex. Dr. Watson will be by later to talk with you about your injuries and how long you can expect to stay here.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Serious about what?” Lucy had that look on her face that said she knew exactly what I was asking about but didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of just answering the question.
“My doctor is named Watson?”
“Yes, sir. Dr. Watson is one of our most competent surgeons, with experience in a wide range of internal injuries. And your injuries were apparently quite extensive.”
“Yeah, that’s what happens when your kid brother shoves a sword through your guts. Extensive injuries.”
She looked back down at her charts, doing a good job of not asking any of the obvious questions. “Yes, well, my sibling rivalries were slightly less violent. Now Agent Hall, Mr. Jones, would you please step out of the room for a few minutes while I check the dressing on his wounds?”
They left, and Nurse Lucy did a thoroughly professional job of checking my wounds, redressing the hole in my back and my front, and making sure that nothing got kinked up in my catheter line. And if you ever need to feel like the least sexually interesting human being in the world, let a nurse slap a huge bandage across your naked belly while you’re pissing into a catheter bag.
“How long?” I asked, more to take my mind off what she wasn’t doing than anything else.
“How long what?” She replied, not bothering to look up from the task at hand.
“How long was I out?”
“You were in surgery for about eleven hours, then there were some issues with getting you stabilized, so it says here that they went back in to patch up a couple of other small bleeders and then you were out for about three days.”
“So it’s been four days since that little son of a bitch gutted me?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t the authorities been involved? You came in here on a government helicopter and you’ve said repeatedly that you know who stabbed you. So why aren’t there any police around?”
I looked up at her and tried to remember the days before I knew that the things that go bump in the night are real and that the monster under your bed was usually a boggart, not a figment. Those days were way too long ago, I couldn’t drag up that innocence anymore. I gave her my best lopsided grin. “Nurse Lucy, I’d love to tell you, but it was a government training exercise, and I can’t say anything more.”
“But you said —“
“I’m pretty sure you misheard me. Didn’t you?” I smiled a little, which is usually enough to scare normal people. It worked. The little woman turned pale again, and went back to work without any other questions.
by john | Apr 7, 2013 | Appearances, Real Life, Vampires
I’ve been adapting to the new job fairly well. It’s been two months and I haven’t fired the entire staff. There have been some personnel changes, but that’s pretty normal when new management is brought in. But it’s taken more of my time than my last full-time job did, and that’s eaten into my writing time and certainly into my posting time here. I’ll be around this little spot on the interwebs, but it’ll mostly be to post updates on appearances, release dates, and that sort of thing. If you want to keep track of my whereabouts on a more frequent basis, Facebook is really the best way. I have a personal page and an author page, and you’re welcome to follow me on either one or both. The author page is more professional (marginally), while my personal page is pretty uncensored. You’ve been warned.
I’ll also be posting on Magical Words every week for the next little while as Kalayna works on some deadline stuff she’s got to take care of. So I’m posting there every Thursday on writing, the writing life, and the things we all do to keep on keeping on. And every once in a while I’ll post about David Coe’s underwear.
You really had to be there.
And speaking of being there – my next there to be will be JordanCon in Roswell, GA. I’m there in two weeks, from April 19-21, with James Tuck, Delilah Dawson, Mira Grant, Michael Whelan and a bunch of other folks. There might even be a sighting from that dude that finished the Wheel of Time series! If so, he’d better bring his Commander decks. It’s his fault I got into this mess.
So if you’re anywhere near Atlanta in two weeks, come say hi!
In the meantime, this place will be a little less deserted, but if I blog less, it’s because I’m working on Paint it Black, The Big Bad Anthology, new Bubba stories and some awesome ideas I’ve got brewing.
Be good to each other,
J
by john | Jan 19, 2013 | Appearances
Every once in a while I just like to remind y’all that you can find me all over the interwebs.
So if you visit here, feel free to “like” me on Facebook
You can follow me on Twitter.
You can even subscribe to my email list, which I’m using more since there’s a free Bubba story every week nowadays!
Nah, I’m not giving you my phone number, that’s a little creepy. But you check out all that stuff above, and you’ll see I’m really easy to find.
by john | Jan 9, 2013 | Appearances, Real Life, Theatre
With apologies to Scalzi. But not really. He doesn’t own the term, no matter what the Google machine might think :). I hate titling blog posts. Frankly, I hate titling anything, which is why I rip off song titles for almost all my books and story titles.
First off, the Help Peter David contest will keep going until next Monday! You have more chances to win a t-shirt, but the real reason the contest is going to keep keeping on is because the awesome Davey Beauchamp is donating some signed Peter David comics! So I have more prizes for more winners! You don’t need to buy anything to win, but the whole point is to get people to buy Peter’s books to help him and his family deal with the bills from his recent stroke. So don’t be a cheap-ass, go buy something to help one of my favorite writers.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, either scroll down or click here. According to his blog, which his wife is keeping updated, he’s been moved to rehab, which is way less cool when you’re not a rock star drying out, and will be living there apart from his family for a month or more. That’s gotta suck eight ways to Sunday, and is going to be hell expensive any way you slice it, so reach deep and buy his shit while he’s sick. Hell, buy his shit when he’s well, too. Peter is a giant in the comics industry and I’ve been a big fan of his almost as long as I’ve been able to pay attention to the writing in comics. I think after Chris Claremont, Peter David was the second comic book writer name I learned to recognize.
Moving along, because this can’t all be a blog about me being charitable and nice, otherwise it would fuck up a carefully crafted reputation. I got an agent! Not a literary one, which might make a few people shake their heads. Some of y’all know I’ve been an actor for a long time. It’s what I went to school for, it’s been a passion of mine for many years, and now I’m taking steps to make it a secondary revenue stream. Hell, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if it became a primary revenue stream. But don’t sweat it, I’m still writing, I’m still editing, I’m still designing. I’m still doing all the things I’ve been doing, I’m just trying to add a little acting on top of that to help pay the bills. But I’m excited about the prospect of doing some commercials, maybe some small features. Who knows, maybe I can get a little spot on Homeland? After all, it shoots right up the road!
Come see me this weekend at Illogicon! Here’s my Schedule!
The State of Short Fiction: (Friday, 5 PM, Reynolds)
Comedy in Sci-fi/Fantasy: (Saturday, 1 PM, Reynolds)
Reading (Saturday, 7 PM, Crescent)
Ebooks: (Sunday, 11 AM, Smith) (M)
Humanizing Your Villains: (Sunday, 2 PM, Smith)
Self Promoting Without Going Broke: (Sunday, 3 PM, Reynolds)
Other times I can be found somewhere drinking, so come look for me!
