If you would like an early electronic review copy of CHAINS OF COMMAND, the NetGalley link for downloads is now live here. Go download it, read it, review it, and revel in the knowledge that you get to have access to the fourth Frontlines novel almost a month before release. DON’T EVER SAY I NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR YOU.
Author: Marko Kloos
chains of command giveaway.
The clock is ticking for CHAINS OF COMMAND, the fourth book in the Frontlines series. It will be released in less than a month, on April 19th, and you can pre-order the paperback, Kindle, or Audible audiobook here:
Goodreads is also running a giveaway right now. You can enter to win one of 20 copies:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/178279-chains-of-command
So if you like free books in general and the Frontlines series in particular, you should put your name into the hat. As I type this, there are fewer than 100 requests for those 20 books, so you have better than 1-5 odds if you enter RIGHT NOW.
I may also do a fun contest with some of these author copies I have in the office. Those will have the added bonus that I can sign and personalize them for the recipients if desired. Stay tuned while I think about what to do for my own little giveaway…
The first issue of Frontlines: Requiem now has a product page on Amazon, where you can pre-order it if you are so inclined:
And if you’d like to preview some of the content, Fanboy Comics has one up on their page:
http://fanboycomics.net/index.php/fanboy-scoop/item/6232
I’m very excited about this project and happy with the way it turned out. I came up with the storyline, Ivan Brandon wrote the script, Gary Erskine did the artwork, and Yel Zamor did the colors.
It’s never quite possible to fully translate a story from a written medium to a visual one and have 100% fidelity because you have various artists bringing in their own visions and ideas. But Requiem is very, very close to the way that world looks in my head. It’s a great addition to the Frontlines universe, not just because it tells a new story from a different character’s point of view and shows that every faction in the story has its own motivations and reasons for what they do, but also because it finally gives readers concrete visual references. (“What do the Lankies look like? Will there be Lankies in the graphic novels?” is a question I get frequently. Yes, there will be, and the reveal is pretty bad-ass.) You will see SI troopers in armor, NAC capital ships, Lanky seed ships…and yes, finally the big, bad Lankies.
So that’s coming out in may, which is great timing, because CHAINS OF COMMAND is coming out in April, so you’ll be able to get your hands on new Frontlines stuff two months in a row. And having seen the finished issue #1 of REQUIEM, I can tell you that you’re in for a ride.
news about superheroes and graphic novels.
I can finally share some fun news I’ve been sitting on for a while:
(For those unfamiliar with the WILD CARDS books–these are shared world anthologies set in the WILD CARDS world, where an alien supervirus has killed a great deal of people and turned a small percentage of the exposed into monstrous freaks called Jokers, or turned them into superpowered humans called Aces.)
This is really fun stuff, especially because it’s slightly out of my usual ballpark, but in an area that I really enjoy: superheroes and supervillains. I don’t have specifics on the upcoming volumes yet because all of that is still getting hammered out right now, but I’ll be on the team, along with other WILD CARDS newbies Diana Rowland, Max Gladstone, and Saladin Ahmed.
In other excellent news, the first volume of the Frontlines: REQUIEM graphic novel series is now up in the Previewsworld catalog of new comics. It will be released in May, and the follow-ups will be released in a one-month cycle thereafter. Frontlines: REQUIEM will be released by Jet City Comics and features a new character, Colonel Soraya Yamin. The series takes place concurrent with some of the events in ANGLES OF ATTACK. It features a script by Ivan Brandon, artwork by Gary Erskine, and colors by Yel Zamor, all of whom are fantastically talented and a delight to work with.
old-fashioned word processing.
People who know me in real life are aware of my quaint love for fountain pens and my little ritual of buying a nice new fountain pen every time I finish a novel. (When I finished TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, I got a Lamy 2000. For LINES OF DEPARTURE, it was a Pilot Vanishing Point, and for ANGLES OF ATTACK, I bought a Pelikan M600. When I finished CHAINS OF COMMAND, I got a Namiki Falcon.)
But when I am out and about with my notebook, I don’t use a fountain pen. Those are for desk use at the office, not for scribbling down notes or making sketches at the coffee shop or in the school’s pickup line. For travel note-taking, I use a pencil–usually a Lamy 2000 mechanical pencil with 0.5mm 2B lead.
The benefits of the pencil over the fountain pen, ballpoint, or gel ink stick are numerous. It doesn’t make a mess, it doesn’t bleed through pages, it tolerates airplane travel without leaking (unlike most fountain pens), and it’s quick and easy to refill. In addition, pencil marks–being graphite–are the most durable way to put words on paper. Graphite doesn’t smear when the page gets wet, and it doesn’t fade. Pencil marks are impervious to light or chemicals, and they won’t make the cellulose of the paper deteriorate over time like most inks. The only enemy of pencil writing is the eraser, but I’m way more concerned about fading or moisture than I am about the possibility of some stranger taking an eraser to all my notebooks.
the cost of going to a con.
I went to ConFusion in Detroit last weekend and a had a terrific time meeting old friends and making new ones. (It marked the first time a fan recognized my name in the elevator and got all excited. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.)
I tend to do the local cons regularly because I can drive to those and can be home quickly if needed. Boskone and Readercon are both in Boston, a 2-hour drive away, I can bring tax-free NH liquor in my own car, and if I had to, I could pack a cooler and a lot of sandwiches, so I can do those cons on the cheap if needed.
Out-of-town cons are a different story, fiscally speaking.
I just totaled up receipts for the ConFusion trip, so I thought I’d take a second to share the numbers. I spent a total of $1,888.00, which breaks down as follows:
Air fare: $319.20 (Manchester–Detroit, basic economy)
Hotels: $889.27
Rental car: $267.66
Food and drink: $284.01
Other expenses (gas, luggage fees, etc.): $127.86
Now, I did spend an extra $400 staying at the Clarion in the Detroit airport because I volunteered my seat on Sunday and had to stay an extra night, and the airline’s voucher was for a run-down shithole of a hotel that had dirty walls and smelled like cigarette smoke throughout. Subtract that as a non-essential expense, and chop $100 off the rental car price because I took their insurance coverage instead of just chancing it with my own. I also brought my own bow, which cost me $70 in luggage fees, and if I were a teetotaler, I could have saved roughly $200 in bar tabs I racked up buying drinks for myself and friends. But even when you subtract the frills, I still spent north of $1,000.
For a lot of fans and even new pro writers, that’s an expense they can’t swing for a long weekend of drinking and talking about books.
To be sure, it’s a tax write-off (which doesn’t mean it’s a freebie–it only reduces the tax burden a bit), but in order to even get that little financial break, you have to have writing income to write the con expenses off against. A lot of writers don’t have that, especially ones just breaking into the field or selling mostly short fiction. And fans don’t have it at all.
I came out slightly ahead because I volunteered my seat twice (the snow storm travel mess meant a lot of people were trying to get alternative flights east due to the closures of NYC and all DC area airports), and got to bag more than my expenditures in Delta travel vouchers. But every other con I’ve been to has been a loss leader for me, financially speaking. It’s great to see old friends (and truth be told, that’s why most writers primarily go to cons), and it’s fun to meet fans and sign books, but it’s not nearly enough of a career helper to justify the expense. You pay for the fun and the mini-vacation among like-minded people, not for the networking and the career benefits (although those can be an ancillary bonus if and when the networking does happen.) But the expense involved in attending even a small regional con is why a lot of writers and fans only do cons that are in reasonable driving range, or strictly local stuff. Our field simply doesn’t have a lot of people who can afford to lay out the cash to go to half a dozen or more cons every year.
ConFusion schedule.
I’ll be at ConFusion in Detroit next weekend. If you’re going to be there, here’s where you can find me:
Friday 9:00:00 PM Who Threw Away My Monster Compendium
When was the last time a zeitgeist novel had a bugbear or a cockatrice? How long is it since someone fought a giant, flesh-eating beast instead of pikeman? Where did all the monsters go? With quest plots out of fashion, deus ex machina ditched, treasure-hunting too economically dull, and stories about ethics, is the monster still relevant in today’s fiction?
Saturday 4:00:00 PM Power Armor and Rail Guns: The Science of Future Wars
Military technology in science fiction settings: Who wore the powersuit better?
Saturday 6:00:00 PM The Fallacy of Commercial Fiction
Literary culture often derides the idea of commercial work, suggesting that marketability signals a lack of refinement. What exactly is commercial fiction and why is it snubbed? Furthermore, are science fiction, fantasy, and horror equally burdened by this dichotomy?
Outside of the panels, I’ll be hanging out with old friends and making new ones, so if you see me there, feel free to come up and say hi. I’ll also be at the Autograph Session on Saturday, and my awesome publisher is sending a box of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT paperbacks to the event hotel to give away as promo freebies. I am not above using bribes to make sure people show up for the signing, so if you want to snag a free signed coy, SHOW UP. I’ll hand out the freebie copies until they’re gone. (Of course, I’ll also sign stuff you bring with you.)
If you’re going to ConFusion: see you in Detroit next week!
dispatch from the frontlines graphic novel front.
Here’s something extremely cool: the provisional cover for Issue #1 of the Frontlines: Requiem series of graphic novels, due out by Jet City Comics this spring. I just got the green light to be able to share this with you all.
Frontlines: Requiem will be a tie-in of sorts. It tells the story of a different character in the Frontlines universe, someone you haven’t met yet. The protagonist is Colonel Soraya Yamin, an NAC starship commander in her Forties and mother of two. The story takes place during the events in Angles of Attack, and it will provide a lot of backstory to the series. In particular, it shows what’s going on back on and around Earth while Andrew is gallivanting around in space. There will be four issues, and the artists are Ivan Brandon and Paul Erskine.
That’s all I can tell you right now, but I’ll post updates as soon as there’s a page for pre-orders via ComiXology and/or other sources.
2016 already?
I’ve been an awful blogger in 2015.
I’m pretty active on Twitter and Facebook, but I use them mostly to stay in touch with friends and family (Facebook), and dash off one -liners and short thoughts as they pop into my head during the day (Twitter). But the long form requires one to actually sit down, open an editor, and think about content and structure and stuff, and that comes perilously close to work. Alas, there are readers out there who don’t do Twitter, and my private Facebook account is limited to real-life friends and family, so I suppose I should get more regular with the updates on the blog again.
2015 was great. I don’t have a thing to complain about—the curve of professional good fortune that bent sharply upward in early 2013 has been going on that trajectory ever since. Angles of Attack came out in April and earned out its advance on Day One on the strength of pre-orders alone, which is a feat I would love to repeat with Chains of Command when it comes out this April. I did more work-related travel than ever before: San Antonio in May, Europe in June, Readercon in July, Worldcon in August, NY ComicCon and Honorcon in October, World Fantasy Con in November. And it looks like this year will be just as busy, if not more so.
Right now the calendar has ConFusion in it later this month, so I’ll get to see more of Detroit than just the airport for once. I’ll be Guest of Honor at Manticon in Minneapolis in May, and I’ll be going to Europe again in June when the third Frontlines book comes out in German. I never miss Readercon in July, and I’d like to do Worldcon again this year, and then there’s NYCC again, and so on.
New fiction this year includes Chains of Command in April for sure, and very likely the first of a series of tie-in Frontlines graphic novels around the same time. If I get Frontlines #5 (Fields of Fire) finished reasonably on schedule, you’ll probably see that one this year as well, which would make 2016 the first year in which you’ll see two Frontlines novels.
2016: More fiction, more travel, mmmmmmmmaybe more blogging. We’ll see how things go.
chains of command, the shocking cover reveal!
Hey, boys and girls—do you want to see the kick-ass cover for Frontlines #4, CHAINS OF COMMAND, due out on April 19th? OF COURSE YOU DO.
Pretty sweet, huh?
I like all the covers, of course, but I have a particular fondness for the first one, TERMS OF ENLISTMENT. That said, this one may just be the best cover yet. It’s very dynamic in a Star Wars: battlefront sort of way. What do you think?