Header image

Author: Marko Kloos

happy fun car.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I used to ride motorcycles. When I met Robin back in Tennessee, I owned a Kawasaki Ninja 250, dubbed “Happy Fun Bike” because it was, well, happy and fun. Alas, when we started having kids (and I almost got cleaned off the bike twice in the span of a week by inattentive drivers), I decided to hang up the helmet and sell the bike. Kids are better off with a live daddy than one turned into road pizza by some derpy grand-aunt in a Mercury Medicare. I did keep my motorcycle license current, and in fact paid extra to transfer the endorsement to my NH license when we moved, thinking that I may want to start riding again some day.

Fast forward to the present. Lucky circumstances and some good wind in my writing sails finally put me in a position where I could think about acquiring another Happy Fun Mobile. I’ve been driving minivans for the last decade, which are eminently comfortable and practical vehicles, but while they are many things, “fun” is not really a word you use when talking about driving a two-ton box on wheels. So I voiced the idea of maybe, possibly getting another motorcycle for the sole purpose of fun transportation.

Robin wasn’t too enamored with the idea on account of preferring her husband alive and undamaged (see: road pizza; derpy grand-aunt in mercury Medicare &etc.), and cautioned against this course of action. I sympathized with her concern, but proposed a compromise solution: I would look for a four-wheeled conveyance that’s fast, fun, and equipped with a manual gearbox, and spend about as much on it as I would for a nice new motorcycle. This was an acceptable compromise solution for both of us.

Long story short, this is the new Happy Fun Mobile:

11794635_10207579475428773_1828216415982372796_o

 

It’s a 2009 Subaru Impreza WRX. It has a 265HP turbocharged boxer engine bolted to a permanent symmetrical AWD drivetrain and a 5-speed manual transmission. Goes fast in the summer, isn’t scared of snow in the winter, and won’t be hauling anything but ass. It’s not quite a new Corvette or Porsche, but it was within my budget and at just the price/mileage/performance intersection I wanted. Considering it’s purely a plaything for one person, it’s probably a tad excessive as a third car, but the ability to actually get up my fucking driveway in the winter was a huge selling point for the WRX over other options.

Oh, and it does 0-60 in under five seconds. OR SO I’VE HEARD.

 

in the eye of the husband of the eye of the cow.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Comment spam–usually annoying, but occasionally amusing, in a “Cylon hybrid random stream of consciousness babbling” sort of way. Here’s the latest:

What i don’t realize is in reality how you are now not
really a lot more neatly-preferred than you may be now.
You are so intelligent. You recognize therefore considerably when it comes to this subject, made me in my view imagine it from so many various angles.
Its like men and women are not fascinated unless
it is one thing to do with Woman gaga! Your personal
stuffs nice. At all times deal with it up!”

I will endeavor to use “Your personal stuffs nice!” and “At all times deal with it up!” as motivational commentary more often.

“be a space marine” update.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Thanks again to all of you who donated to the Semper Fi Fund to get a slot in a Spaceborne Infantry squad in Frontlines #4. I’m happy to report that I managed to slot everybody who made a donation into a squad position in the Ass-Kicker Platoon featured in Frontlines #4, CHAINS OF COMMAND.  (In addition to your name popping up in the storyline, I am also including a full roster of Andrew’s platoon in the appendices, so you’ll be able to find yourself there with rank and name.)

That was a fun little thing that managed to raise over $1,200 for a good cause. I’ll probably do something like that again in the future.

 

GRRM read “angles” and didn’t hate it. 

Posted on by Marko Kloos

In the wake of my Hugo withdrawal, George R.R. Martin picked up “Lines of Departure” a while ago and had some pretty nice things to say about it. It must have entertained him enough to move on to “Angles of Attack”, which he considers to be better than “Lines”, an assessment shared by quite a few reviewers:

http://grrm.livejournal.com/434047.html
He also said some nice things about me, calling me a “writer to watch”, and I’d have to lie if I said that this verdict didn’t please me. 

As far as his concerns about the Frontlines series go: it will not balloon up to 20 books, there will be a definite resolution,  and we will learn more about the Lankies. 

convention schedule for (the rest of) 2015.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I just got back from Readercon, which was perfectly lovely and fun. Being in New England, Readercon is sort of my home convention, and I go every year to reconnect with friends and keep up the annual traditions we have developed over the years.

When I was there, I realized that I had not mentioned my Readercon trip in advance to give folks a heads-up in case they wanted to say hi or meet up or have stuff signed or what-have-you. So here’s the short calendar of public business for the rest of the year:

 

August 20-23, 2015: Worldcon (Spokane, WA)

I’ll be at Worldcon for the weekend with the 47North crew, to have a good time, meet new people, and see how the whole Hugo thing turns out this year.

September 19-20, 2015: Vermont Comic Con (South Burlington, VT)

No publisher business or panels or anything, just a weekend visit for fun.

October 8-11, 2015: NY ComicCon (New York City, NY)

I’ll be signing at the 47North booth (exact date and time TBA), and possibly do a panel or two. Other than that, I’ll be enjoying the hustle and bustle (and the pizza) of New York City in October, which was a lot of fun last year.

There’s a chance I may be able to go to Saratoga Springs in November for the World Fantasy Convention, but those plans are still very tentative, and I’ll announce if I manage to get firm arrangements in place.

 

So—those are the cons where you can maybe, possibly spot me and come say hi. If you do, please do. Or something.

i went to europe, and it’s still there.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

You may not have seen me around on the blog or social media these last few weeks. That’s because I went on a two-week trip to Europe, from which I just returned a few days ago.

I had some novel research to do in various places, and the German edition of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT was released on June 15, so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and combine both occasions for a business trip. Heyne (my German publisher) hosted me at their office in Munich, and they organized a reading/signing for me at Otherland, a great SF/F indie bookstore in Berlin. In between, I visited my mother, who spends the summers at her vacation home in Croatia’s Istria region, and I squeezed in two days to see a good friend in London. It was a fantastic trip, albeit a very tiring one involving criss-crossing northern and central Europe a few times.

The reading/signing at Otherland was awesome. Made a bunch of new friends and read my work in German for the very first time, which was a novel experience (no pun intended.) They treated me like a rockstar and made me feel very welcome, and their store kicks some serious ass. If you’re ever in Berlin, you should go check them out (and tell them I said hi).

IMG 0595

Currywurst, the most popular blue-collar fast food in Germany. You can get it just about everywhere. Even McDonald’s Germany offered it once upon a time as McCurrywurst, but they couldn’t compete with the traditional wurst stands.

IMG 0577

My book! On the shelf! In a Berlin bookstore! (My awesome tour guide Charleen and I stopped at every book store we passed to check inventory, of course.)

IMG 0579

There it is again, next to some genre heavyweights.

IMG 0611

Marko Kloos im Otherland! I know that guy. 

IMG 0613

Seeing my name on those covers never gets old.

IMG 0616

There were people there! And I didn’t even have to bribe most of them to come!

 

So yeah—lovely trip, met lots of readers, made new friends and reconnected with old ones, saw lots of sights, and had a blast. But after two weeks of GOGOGOGOGO, I’m also happy to be back home and get back to work.

avian squatters.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

P1010331

These little guys are currently costing me $5 a day.

We rented a huge dumpster for our long-overdue major spring cleaning and attic junk culling. It costs a flat amount up front that includes the fee for dumping all the trash, and then $5 per day for every day we keep the dumpster beyond the included 5-day period.

I hauled a bunch of old furniture out onto the porch before the dumpster arrived so I’d be able to just take everything apart and chuck it into the dumpster. Right after they delivered the unit, we found that a robin had built its nest on one of the furniture piles sheltered underneath the overhang from the porch roof. There were little blue eggs in there, which turned into the little fuzzy birds you see in the picture above. I can’t remove the furniture until the wee ones have flown the nest because I don’t want to displace them, which would kill the baby robins. So the meter on the dumpster is running. On the other hand, it gives me a good excuse to take my time with the cleaning of the attic, which is handy because right now my priority is finishing Frontlines #4 anyway.

Here’s the parental unit, collecting protein for the kids in our backyard:

P1010333

Like Dr. Jeff Goldblum said in that Mostly Cretaceous Park movie—“Life will find a way.”

foreign frontlines editions update.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I love seeing the covers of foreign editions of my novels. Here’s the cover of the Japanese edition (published by Hayakawa), which apparently went on sale on May 25th already:

0000000126922

According to a Japanese friend, the title translates to “Enlisting For A Space Soldier”, which is one heck of a lot more accurate than the translation that Google gave me at first. It has a few reviews on Amazon in Japan already, and they’re very positive, which makes me happy:

“Interesting SF novel for the first time in many years. Looking forward to the following translations”; and “Great details about the army things which we can’t know from our secretive Self-Defense Forces. And good translation!” 

And here’s the cover of the German translation of “Lines of Departure”, which is available for pre-order for a January 11, 2016 release:

 

91wdtUAaTML

The “Frontlines” series has been retitled as “Alien Wars” by Heyne, and the subtitle “Planetenjagd” means “planet hunt”. I am pleased that I finally have my very own Heyne novel with laser-firing spaceships on the cover. IT’S A CHILDHOOD DREAM COME TRUE.

There are translations into Polish and Czech in the works as well, and I can’t wait to see the covers for those. It’s still a little surreal to see my name on the covers of foreign translations when the first Frontlines book went on sale only just a little over two years ago on the Kindle store in the United States.

 

 

kindle deals on frontlines #1 and #2.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Hey, kids!

Amazon has my first two novels, Terms of Enlistment and Lines of Departure, on sale as the Kindle Daily Deal in Science Fiction today for a measly $1.99 a copy. That’s, like, less than two bucks!

And if you already own those books on your Kindelmaschine, but you have a friend or three you want to introduce to the Frontlines books, today would be a good day to do it, seeing how LESS THAN TWO BUCKS. Why, that wouldn’t buy you anything but a pitying look from the barista with the tongue stud at that trendy coffee shop on the way to work!

uther hendragon, first of his name.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

IMG 0083

This painting of Henry was commissioned by my friend Chang for me after Henry died, and he brought it to Castle Frostbite with him when he came to visit not too long ago. 

I still miss my boy terribly, especially right now. The days are sunny and warm, and the remaining dachshunds are having a great time sunning themselves in the backyard or running around on the lawn and barking at passing cars. Henry would have enjoyed this, especially after being cooped up for months during this last, awful winter. But life goes on, as it does.

I’m keeping that painting in my new office for now until I have a suitable place to hang it. I’m very glad to have such good friends.