They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with John G. Hartness, whose most recent releases are Swamp Music and Inflection Point, both from Falstaff Books!
What does John love when he’s not writing urban fantasies, horror stories, and comedies about cryptids, monsters, faeries, and other creatures that go bump in the night? Spoiler alert: psychopaths quoting Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas, a television show that gets adaptation right, a tabletop game that’s taking advantage of the pandemic, and a series that takes urban fantasy and science fiction and blends it all together for a quick, enjoyable read. Intrigued? Read on to learn more!
So just to be clear, The Sound of Music is so far from one of my favorite things, it’s not even in the same time zone. ☺ As most people who have ever worked in technical theater will tell you, there are certain things that are rites of passage, and “The Sound of Money,” as that particular show is often called, is one of them that we all go through, and we seldom enjoy. I at least had the pleasure of designing it in a lovely new theater, so I had lots of cool toys to play with.
And that’s what I’m going to talk about today — cool toys. Or more to the point, my favorite non-writing things to do right now. Because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as I read in a story once. I write a lot. And I publish and edit a lot. And I handle the layout and interior design for over sixty books a year. So I spend a lot of time working.
But writing for a living means that I don’t have to spend that time on a set schedule, so that means that I’m just as likely to be sitting on the couch at two in the afternoon as I am to be sitting at a desk. So if I’m not writing, or doing one of the other dozen or so parts of my publishing job, here are my favorite things to occupy my time.
Favorite Video Game — Borderlands
It’s ultra-violent, incredibly irreverent, and often gory, profane, and maybe even gross. So in short, it’s right up my alley. Because it’s also smart, irreverent, and features some of the best writing I’ve ever experienced in a video game. If someone told me ten years ago that I would play through every edition and every expansion of a first-person shooter game, I would have laughed in their face. But then I found a game with a comic book art style, characters that I actually grew to care about, a social conscience that is embedded into the story and the world, and snark oozing out of its every pore. Let’s be honest, they had me at the axe-wielding psychopath quoting Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas.
2019’s Borderlands 3 features some awesome new gameplay elements, but has a story that left a lot of fans bemoaning the lack of character development. I disagreed with that assessment, finding the story to be a slow build, but a satisfying payoff, but I agree that with the expansions they have completely knocked it out of the park. The first expansion sees the protagonist putting together a crew to pull off an outer space casino heist, a la Ocean’s Eleven. The second creates a Lovecraftian horror story told within the framework of a biracial gay marriage on a desolate ice planet. And the third, which just released a few weeks ago, mimics one of my favorite movie genres ever — the Western. I can’t wait to see what the end of 2020 brings us for the next expansion, because I’m very much looking forward to what type of movie they drop us into next.
Favorite TV Show — Bosch
Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I get it spectacularly wrong. Having read some of the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly over the years, and being a Titus Welliver fan for a long time, I was initially excited to see the books adapted into a TV show by Amazon. I watched the first season, and…found it a little slow. The pacing didn’t work for me, so I never went back. I don’t know if I just had a lot going on when I watched it, or if my ADHD was particularly bad at the time, but for whatever reason, I held off on checking out any of the later seasons of Bosch until this summer. I’ve watched three seasons in the past week and a half, with no signs of slowing down.
Welliver is awesome, as always, and the show does an excellent job of translating the style of Connelly’s books. It’s been years since I’ve read them, so I can’t speak to the literal adaptation, but I wouldn’t anyway, because they’re two different mediums. The acting is excellent, and the build in tension and intermittent reveals and twists are an excellent exercise in long-form storytelling. I get more impressed with every season.
Favorite Non-Video Game — Magic: The Gathering
No one who knows me is surprised by this, since I’ve been a Magic nerd off and on since college (and we aren’t going to discuss how long that’s been, but suffice to say I remember when the game was new). But over the course of the past year, the design and creativity of the new sets has improved by leaps and bounds. I haven’t played Magic face to face with people in four months and counting, but playing on Arena (the free to download online version) has made it very much worth installing Parallels on my Mac. I mean, come on, they did a whole run of alternate art cards with Godzilla and other various movie monsters on them. What could be better than that?
Favorite Book Series — The Innkeeper Series by Ilona Andrews
I’m gonna confess, right here in front of the whole internet — I like light, fast-paced stories, and most of the time I read to escape. The Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews is perfect for that. It’s an urban fantasy/sci-fi mashup with a little thread of a romantic subplot, and it features a killer shih tzu, space vampires, werewolves from another planet, and a magical B&B with enough mojo to power interstellar travel. Great characters, great stories, and just a ton of fun, this series has been my go-to for most of the summer. There are currently four novels and one novella, and I highly recommend them all.
So that’s what I’m doing when I’m not writing. When I am writing, I’m working on the next release in my Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter series, or on the eighth and penultimate book in my Black Knight Chronicles series. You can find out more about those and all my other upcoming projects by signing up for my newsletter at www.falstaffbooks.com.
John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy series The Black Knight Chronicles, the Bubba the Monster Hunter comedic horror series, the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter dark fantasy series, and many other projects. He is also a cast member of the role-playing podcast Authors & Dragons, where a group of comedy, fantasy, and horror writers play Dungeons & Dragons. Very poorly.
In 2016, John teamed up with several other publishing industry professionals to create Falstaff Books, a small press dedicated to publishing the best of genre fiction’s “misfit toys.” Falstaff Books has since published over 200 titles with authors ranging from first-timers to NY Times bestsellers, with no signs of slowing down any time soon. 2019 saw the launch of Book Babble, a YouTube show where John and Falstaff Books Associate Publisher Melissa McArthur interview professional writers about the books they love.
In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and playing Magic: The Gathering. John’s pronouns are he/him.
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Author Photo by Drea Atkins
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