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Author: Marko Kloos

BALLISTIC giveaway

Posted on by Marko Kloos

 

BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series, will be out in a little less than two weeks. I just got my author copies in, so I figured I’d do a little giveaway.

Leave a comment on this post if you’d like a signed trade paperback of BALLISTIC. I’ll leave the post open until release day, which is Tuesday, May 26. On May 26, I will let the computer pick five entries out of the hat, and I will send those five people a signed paperback. This giveaway is open to anyone in the world, and I’ll cover the shipping.

Don’t forget that Goodreads still has a giveaway for the Kindle version going on until May 25, so put your name in the hat over there if you’d rather have an electronic copy.

Berlin is never Berlin

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Tor.com has a new Wild Cards story out today, written by me.

It’s called “Berlin Is Never Berlin”, and it features Khan, my joker-ace character who is half Bengal tiger and 100% bad-ass. (Khan was my point of view character in “Stripes”, my contribution to our Wild Cards novel LOW CHICAGO.)

In this story, Khan takes a bodyguard assignment for a bunch of spoiled rich kids who want to go clubbing and socializing in Europe. Spoiler: it doesn’t turn out to be the milk run he expected.

The title comes from a saying about Berlin: “Paris is always Paris, but Berlin is never Berlin.” It refers to the ever-changing face of the city, which seems to be in constant flux.

I had a lot of fun writing that story, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. As with all stories on Tor.com, it’s free to read.

Frontlines #7 cover

Posted on by Marko Kloos

That’s the cover for ORDERS OF BATTLE, seventh book in the Frontlines series. As with all Frontlines covers, it features spaceships…but as with all Frontlines covers, the art doesn’t necessarily correspond to any specific event in the book, so don’t try to divinate plot points or anything.

What I can tell you about ORDERS OF BATTLE is that it takes place a few years after the events of the last Frontlines novel, POINTS OF IMPACT, and that it follows Andrew Grayson on the next chapter of his life and career in the war against the Lankies. Without giving away too much, I can say that those of you who want to know just what the hell the Lankies are and where they originated should get your money’s worth out of this book and the ones which are to follow.

(Yes, that means there’s a Frontlines #8 in the works.)

ORDERS OF BATTLE will be released on December 8, 2020. I know the product page doesn’t show an Audible book, but that’s most likely because it’s still in production. (The Audible versions need to be narrated, which means the production calendar has to allow for the schedule of the narrator.) But this will be my ninth published novel with 47North, and all of the previous ones have had Audible versions on release day, so I have no reason to believe this one will be different.

Isolation update

Posted on by Marko Kloos

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We are safely isolating here at Castle Frostbite and doing what we do most of the time anyway, which is to cook food and eat snacks and play games. The kids have been in an online charter school for a year now, so not much has changed around here other than the fact that I still can’t find toilet paper at our usual grocery store.

Life and work continue as we wait out this current craziness. I am busy with CITADEL, third novel in the Palladium Wars series. Number 2, called BALLISTIC, is going to be released next month, and I hope you give it a read because I think it turned out very well. Booklist had some nice things to say about it: “Fans of The Expanse series will enjoy this engaging and fast-moving combination of corporate machinations, police procedural, and interstellar naval combat.” And while we’re on the subject of reviews, LOCUS gave AFTERSHOCKS a very nice review in their April 2020 issue, calling it “a great start to what should be a fun, thought-provoking series.” 

I hope you’re all doing well in your respective isolation headquarters. Maybe one day we’ll have conventions and bar-hopping again, but I have a feeling it won’t be this year. Alas, that will make the company of our friends ever so much sweeter and the overpriced hotel cocktails ever so much tastier.

New Wild Cards story at Tor.com

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Tor.com has a new Wild Cards story up. It’s called “The Visitor: Kill Or Cure”, and it was written by Mark Lawrence. As with all tor.com stories, it’s free to read.

https://www.tor.com/2020/03/18/the-visitor-kill-or-cure-mark-lawrence/

As I have mentioned in my last post, I have a story in the queue there as well (featuring my favorite joker-ace, Khan), but it won’t be released until May. I’ll be sure to let you all know when it goes live.

Release date for Frontlines #7

Posted on by Marko Kloos

ORDERS OF BATTLE, the seventh novel in the Frontlines series, will be released on December 8. There’s now a product page up on Amazon, where you can pre-order the book on Kindle, in paperback format, or as an Audible book:

There’s no cover art yet as the book is still in production, but that will be added as soon as the cover is final.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the product page for BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series, due to be released on May 26:

And there’s a third release this year! This one is my Wild Cards novelette titled BERLIN IS NEVER BERLIN, due out from Tor.com on May 6:

Not a bad year for new releases, I’d say. And I am hard at work to make sure that things will keep coming at this pace.

 

Emerald City ComicCon update

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Due to health concerns related to the current coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak, my publisher has decided to cancel their participation at Emerald City Comic Con, so I won’t be in Seattle or at ECCC next week. (Sorry if you were looking to come to panels or get a book or two signed.)

In related news, we just had our first confirmed COVID-19 case in my state, and it’s someone from my county. That person is an employee of the local university hospital, so there’s a good chance people in the Upper Valley are going to buy the local grocery stores empty now. Alas, we here at Castle Frostbite are homebodies even in the most favorable conditions, and we are out in the country, so we are in a good position to ride this out.

 

The highest and most noble use for potatoes

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Every expat I know has a dietary vice they imported from their home country. It’s invariably something that is a.) bad for you, and b.) hard to obtain outside of its country of origin. Those two factors combine to make it far more desirable than it would be if you could walk down to the local grocery store and see it readily available at all times.

For me, it’s these:

These, my friends, are objectively the very best potato chips in the world–FunnyFrisch-brand Chipsfrisch Ungarisch.

I bring them back in bulk when I am in Germany, and I barter with German friends and relatives, exchanging a box of FunnyFrisch for whatever items they want to get from the U.S. but can’t readily get in Germany. (My brother, for example, has a thing for Chips Ahoy cookies with Reese’s bits…don’t ask me why.) But with the costs of parcel mail between Germany and the U.S., it’s thing that happens once or twice a year at most because the postage is usually far more expensive than the contents of the box.

There are online grocery stores that sell these on Amazon if you’re dying to put my claim of “best chips in the world” to the test, but they’re stupid expensive when bought that way, to the tune of $8-10 for a single 150g bag, so I only use that channel in life-threatening potato chip emergencies. It’s probably a good thing they are that expensive via the ‘zon, though, because otherwise I’d have them on auto-refill, which wouldn’t be good for my middle-aged waistline.

ARCs for BALLISTIC are in

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I just got a box of ARCs for BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series. Still massively digging the cover, which was apparently the first shot the cover artist took at the concept. I looked at it and said, “I’m good with that.”

The Palladium Wars series is different from Frontlines by intent. Frontlines is first person present tense, Palladium Wars is third person past tense. I made that choice deliberately to give each those universes their own voice, and to make sure that Aden and the other POV characters don’t read and sound like Andrew in Frontlines. Writing in two different universes and narrative techniques has helped me improve my craft because I had to stretch slightly different writing muscles, so to speak. Starting a new series to run concurrently with Frontlines has also enabled me to look at the Frontlines universe with a new eye. Switching back and forth helps me stay on my toes and hopefully avoid falling into a rut.

You’ll be able to judge for yourselves whether I’ve succeeded with that because 2020 will see new book releases in both universes, and I hope to be able to keep that frequency going from now on.

(BALLISTIC will be out on May 26. ORDERS OF BATTLE will follow late in the year, and I’ll update this page as soon as I have a firm release date.)

 

Frontlines #7 is done

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I was planning to go to Detroit for ConFusion this past weekend, but the draft for the seventh Frontlines book, ORDERS OF BATTLE, wasn’t quite done yet. Work comes before fun because fun don’t pay the bills, so I sucked it up and cancelled the trip altogether just before the weekend.

It turned out to be a good decision in more than one way because I came down with a stomach bug over the weekend, and a winter storm moved in that would have made the 1,200-mile round trip a bit of an ordeal, so I am glad it panned out the way it did even if I was moping a bit on Friday that I wouldn’t get to hang out with friends.

But all’s well–I turned in the book on Monday morning, and my editor has assured me that it will make a 2020 release. I’m guessing it will be out in November or December. (The book needs to be proofread, put into print, get read for an Audible version, have a cover designed, and so on. The schedules of dozens of people have to be in sync, so you can’t just slap a draft onto your editor’s desk and expect to see the book out a month later.)

Now I get to start planning the two novels I’ll be writing this year while I wait for the first round of edits to come back. I do have some Frontlines novellas in the works to fill in the gap between now and the release of ORDERS OF BATTLE, so I should have something for you soon to tide you over.