Soon.
Author: Marko Kloos
Knaves Over Queens review at Locus
Paula Guran at Locus Magazine reviewed KNAVES OVER QUEENS, our first UK-centered Wild Cards mosaic novel, and had some nice things to say about it.
KNAVES OVER QUEENS came out in the UK last year already, and it will be available in the US in August of this year. (That’s due to some release date shuffling and release precedence by the publisher.) If you want to get your US-based hands on it earlier than August, I hear that Amazon UK will gladly ship books to the US.
I have a novella in that volume, called PROBATIONARY. It tells the story of the first mission of newly minted British ace and Silver Helix member, Sub-Lieutenant Rory Campbell, who gets to assist the British armed forces in their mission to reclaim the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982. He has a very utilitarian and not-so-flashy talent–he can control directed EMP blasts. That makes him useful as a military asset, even if it won’t get him on the cover of SEXY ACES magazine.
Other novellas in the book were written by Emma Newman, Charlie Stross, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Caroline Spector, Paul Cornell, Peadar Ó Guilín, Mark Lawrence, Peter Newman, and Melinda Snodgrass. (The volume was edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass.)
It’s a fun book that’s a little off the beaten path for Wild Cards because it’s not US-centric. (On a related note, I had to take out one instance of a character saying “lock and load” because the editor at Harper Collins UK said it was an Americanism. I’ve done some research since then, and it turns out that the phrase originated with the British Army in the days of the flintlock rifle, so I WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL.)
Anyway, PROBATIONARY is a war story, and I tend to be pretty okay at writing those, so I think it turned out quite well. If you’re interested, pick up a copy of KNAVES OVER QUEENS from a UK bookseller online, or pre-order the US edition.
News from Poland
I got word that CHAINS OF COMMAND is nominated for the 2018 Best Book Award in Poland. From what I know, that’s the Polish equivalent of the Goodreads Awards and the largest book award in Poland, so that’s pretty cool.
I’m feeling very warmly about Poland. My Polish publisher was the first foreign house to buy the rights to all six Frontlines books, and the Fabryka Słow covers are the best-looking of all the editions. And my favorite video game of all time, The Witcher 3, was made by a Polish software developer, CD Projekt. That’s a lot of positive associations they’ve managed to rack up in my book.
(Also, in a strange twist of fate, both my and the wife’s paternal grandmothers came from the same town in Poland, now called Elblag. When they lived there in the early 20th century, it was East Prussia, so they weren’t Polish, but they both had Polish last names.)
Thanks, Polish readers, for liking the Frontlines series so much! And if there’s ever a Polish equivalent of ComicCon, I’d love to come over for a visit.
One year with the Tactical Off-Road Banana
One year ago, the minivan went to the Great Junkyard in the Sky with less than 40k on the odometer due to circumstances that shall remain vague. I had to source a replacement very quickly because we are most definitely a two-car household by necessity. We had a good experience with the wife’s Jeep Cherokee, so I opted for another Jeep and picked up a 2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk with only 8k miles on it.
Fast forward to January 2019, and the Renegade now has a little under 20k miles on it. It has been a trouble-free car so far. The only things that needed fixing were the front sway bar links, which had started to make popping sounds about six months in, and they replaced those under warranty. Other than that, no problems or annoyances to report.
It’s a surprisingly roomy car on the inside thanks to the box shape of the cabin. There’s almost no front or rear overhang, and the car is very nimble, which means that I can squeeze into parking spots few other cars can claim, like the ones where the spots on either side are taken up by giant tugboat SUVs parked right on the line or slightly beyond. The turning radius is ludicrously small. The seating position is high, and the windows are large, so visibility is great. And the Jeep 4WD system works as well or better in the snow than my old Subaru’s AWD.
I like this little car. It’s agile, fun to drive, and easy in bad weather. Sometimes I miss the space of the minivan (usually when trying to transport something bulky), but most of the time I drive around in the Jeep by myself or with just the kids, and the Renegade is plenty big enough for that. It’s a small car that feels bigger than it is. I wouldn’t want to do a multi-day trip with the whole family in it, but it’s pretty much ideal as a daily runabout in a rural setting in the snow belt. And it has some credible off-road chops as well–the Trailhawk trim means it has a slight lift for higher ground clearance, a rock-crawling 4WD mode, skid plates to shield the oil pan and undercarriage, and external tow hooks front and back.
Oh, and the color has really grown on me. It’s super visible in bad weather, and it’s very easy to spot in a parking lot. Turns out that yellow is the least common color for vehicles. (I wanted to get a vanity plate that said WASP-A, but the wife said people would think it stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, so I ended up getting a regular plate instead of a vanity one.)
Interview with me over at The Verge
Andrew Liptak at The Verge interviewed me about my new series, The Palladium Wars. I go a little bit into the world-building for the new story, and how my week at the Launch Pad astronomy workshop in 2017 helped to make the new series more scientifically grounded.
With the publication of the interview, the cover for AFTERSHOCKS, the first book in the series (out on July 1), is now public, so here it is in all its glory. It’s very different from any of the Frontlines covers in art style, which is intentional. Frontlines is a first-person story that’s limited to the scope of one point of view. Palladium Wars is a multi-POV narrative with a much bigger scope, and the cover is supposed to reflect that.
AFTERSHOCKS will be available in paperback, Kindle, and <drumroll> HARDCOVER. This is my first book to get the hardcover treatment. There will of course be an Audible version as well, and I am happy to report that it will be narrated by the awesomely talented Luke Daniels, who has been the voice for all the Frontlines novels so far.
CAUTION: Contains gratuitous self-promotion.
All right. Fine. After some feedback from fans and colleagues, I have reconsidered my stance on award posts. Even though it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, here’s my own award eligibility post.
In 2018, I had two published works that are eligible.
First, POINTS OF IMPACT, book 6 in the Frontlines series, came out in January and is therefore eligible in the Best Novel category for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Second, my Wild Cards novella STRIPES was published in our mosaic novel LOW CHICAGO in July and is therefore eligible in the Best Novella category.
And lastly, the FRONTLINES series as a whole is eligible in the Best Series category for the Hugo Award (not the Nebula because there’s no Best Series category there.)
You have to be a member of Dublin Worldcon 2019 or San Jose Worldcon 2018 to nominate works for the 2019 Hugos; only members of Dublin 2019 get to vote on the final ballot. And you have to be an active or associate member of SFWA to nominate works for the 2019 Nebulas or vote on the final ballot.
If you find that any of my mentioned works merit nomination, feel free to put them forward for the shortlist when you make your choices this year. BUT YOU DON’T GOTTA. That is all.
This post brought to you by the Superhero Writers Union.
I love writing for Wild Cards. It’s an amazingly detailed world that has been expanded by thirty-plus writers over thirty years, and it’s a ton of fun to be a part of that. I mean, I get to make up my own super-powered characters and then let them loose in a playground that has been constantly expanded and improved for three decades. And the Wild Cards consortium is just stacked with super-nice and super-talented people.
That said, there’s one thing that annoys me about being a Wild Cards writer, and that’s entitled Game of Thrones fans.
Every time GRRM posts something on social media about Wild Cards, it takes about five seconds before someone responds with a dismissive one-liner that totally shits on whatever it is he’s trying to promote or announce. And it’s always a variation of the same boring, unoriginal garbage. Finish Winds of Winter. Nobody cares about Wild Cards. WHERE’S THE BOOK, GEORGE? NOT BUYING ANYTHING FROM YOU UNTIL YOU FINISH WINDS OF WINTER. Etcetera, etcetera. Yawn.
GRRM is the editor of Wild Cards (along with Melinda Snodgrass). He edits the books, he doesn’t write them. They are written by the members of the Wild Cards consortium. It’s a total dick move to dismiss out of hand the talents and work of the writers just because you think that the editor of the book ought to be spending all his time on that other book, the one you think you’re entitled to receive. (Never mind that “nobody cares about Wild Cards” is flat-out wrong. Our signings and panels are always busy, and the longest signing line I’ve ever sat for was a Wild Cards signing. The series has picked up a lot of fans in thirty years, and I highly suspect that it wouldn’t be thirty years old–or getting developed into a TV series AS I TYPE THIS–if nobody cared about it.)
I’m pretty proud of my Wild Cards contributions. I think they are some of the best stories I’ve written so far. And it makes me cranky whenever we try to do Wild Cards promo, and some whining garage dweller comes along and dismisses the whole thing with prejudice because OMG GRRM SPENT HIS TIME ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN WINDS OF WINTER. It annoys me, and when I am annoyed, I start adding names to my Go Fuck Yourself list.
A wild blog post appears!
I’ve nuked Facebook again, and this time for good–I deleted my account instead of just deactivating it. I’d love to claim that it was solely because of the privacy and ethics concerns. They certainly played a role, but the truth is that Facebook was sapping too much of my attention and time, and those are my only finite resources. There was also the realization that I posted on Facebook quite a bit, and that every time I did, I was providing them completely free of charge with content to draw clicks and attention. In a productive day, I only have so many words to wring out of my brain, and I’d rather channel them into work that lets me get paid. So: Facebook is gone, and Twitter is on probation. And to protect my writing time, I’ll only reply to emails sparingly, so don’t be offended if you get a delayed reply or none at all.
Oh, and happy 2019, everyone. 2018 managed the rare feat of both zooming by in a blink and feeling like it went on forever. I don’t know what 2019 will bring as far as politics and world events go, but my own goal is to spend less time on social media and news, and more time on writing stories. It’s better for my mental health and my bank account. I don’t know about you, but I can’t weather another year like this last one. Doing creative work in 2018 felt like dragging a piano across a gravel road with nothing but dental floss.
The first novel in my new series “The Palladium Wars” is titled “Aftershocks”, and it will be out on July 1. I am currently busy with Palladium Wars #2 and a new Frontlines novella, as well as several Wild Cards short stories and novelettes. (At least I think the Frontlines story will end up a novella, but those things mutate into full-blown novels sometimes.) People keep asking when a new Frontlines will be out, and the answer is: it depends. My plan is to have a new novella out by early spring, and then a full novel toward the end of the year.
Stay tuned for more while I take a broom to this blog and sweep the dust out of the corners.
Coming up Aces
I wrote a blog post about the difficulty of creating compelling superheroes and villains in a world with an established canon spanning 70 years, where hundreds of aces and jokers have already been put on the page by dozens of other writers.
You can read the blog entry over at the Wild Cards blog.
A (potentially annoying) ode to the Surface Go.
My MacBook Pro died on the plane to WorldCon while I was halfway through the trip to San Francisco. I rebooted it to finish a software installation, and it plain refused to come back to life. I’ve been using Macs for twenty years, so I know all the tricks to reset the PRAM and the SMC and all the nerd stuff you usually do as a first-level tech support protocol, but nothing worked, so it had to be hardware-related.
I had some work to do in San Jose, and all I had with me other than a dead MacBook Pro was my iPhone, but that doesn’t cut it for a lot of the stuff I have to do on a computer. So I sucked up the local California 9%+ sales tax and bought a Surface Go at a local Best Buy to let me get some of that needed work done before getting home.
I’ve been effusive about the little thing on social media, but after a few weeks of ownership, I can only reiterate what I said about it so far: it’s a near-perfect travel computer. I already have a Surface Pro and a Surface Laptop for various uses, so I am well familiar with the Surface line of products, and I think that Microsoft has hit an absolute home run with the Surface Go.
Its biggest selling point is that it’s a full-fledged Windows 10 computer that’s almost exactly the same size and weight of a standard iPad. I’ve tried to use the iPad Pro as a travel work machine, but while it’s very powerful–and a fantastic content consumption device–it’s not deserving of the Pro moniker when it comes to creative work. Its biggest drawbacks are the operating system (a souped-up mobile OS without robust file management), and a lack of mouse support. If you’re a writer, and you’ve ever tried to copy and paste text just with your finger on that touch screen, you know what I am talking about.)
The Surface Go has the same portable convenience, but it offers full mouse and keyboard support. Moreover, the Type Cover peripheral is excellent, especially for a device with a mere 10″ screen diagonal. The Type Cover for the Surface Go has a backlit keyboard that manages to be eminently usable despite its smaller size compared to its bigger brother, the Surface Pro, and the glass trackpad is closer to the Apple trackpads than any Windows machine I’ve used.
The rest of the hardware doesn’t feel like a budget compromise over the Surface Pro either. The Surface Go is made out of the same magnesium, it has the same excellent build quality, and the kickstand (the killer feature of the Surface tablet line as far as I am concerned) is the same as on the new Surface Pro, with infinite adjustability.
The Surface Go also has a SDHC expansion slot, a USB-C port which lets you recharge the device from a power bank on the go, and compatibility with the great Surface Pen for on-screen inking. (I’m telling you that if Apple put out a device like this, the Cupertino faithful would hail it as design genius, the Second Coming of Jobs.)
If it has any shortcomings, it’s the short-ish battery life compared to an iPad or Surface Pro, but that’s completely ameliorated by the fact that you can just top it off from a USB-C battery pack on the road. Some people have also commented on the processing power because the Surface Go has a Pentium Gold chip instead of a Core chip like the more expensive models, but I am here to tell you that the Pentium Gold is plenty fast for the stuff I do with this device, which is writing novels in Scrivener and Word, browsing the web, and checking email on the road. This is not a rig for playing World of Warcraft or Fortnite (although it can play them at low settings), so I won’t hold that against the Surface Go.
What is the Surface Go in the end? It’s a tiny, iPad-sized Windows 10 machine that runs full-fat Windows apps and fits into any bag that can hold a regular iPad, and that’s a major accomplishment on Microsoft’s part. I use it all the time now whenever I am away from my full-sized desktop, and I think the kids are going to get the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop as hand-me-downs. If you are looking for a writing rig that fits into the smallest of bags while still giving you full Windows 10 desktop OS power, this little device is pretty much king of the hill right now.