The paperback version of ODDMENTS is now live on the Amazon page.
Fun fact: at 121,000 words and 521 print pages, it’s bigger than any of my novels. (The one that comes closest is CHAINS OF COMMAND at 114,000 words.)
Author: Marko Kloos
Release day: ODDMENTS
Today sees the release of my short fiction compendium, titled ODDMENTS.
A while ago, I took stock of all the short fiction I’ve ever written. It’s a sizable pile of stories, but it’s distributed across a whole lot of online ‘zines, mosaic novels, or individual Kindle editions. If someone wanted to have all my short fiction, they’d have to go to a bunch of websites, purchase several different separate Kindle copies, and buy two mosaic novels. That’s a lot of footwork even if you know where to look, and too much of a hassle if you don’t.
I decided to put them all in one book, with a new introduction and forewords for each story.
The product description on Amazon reads thusly:
ODDMENTS is available via Amazon right now, in either Kindle or paperback formats. (The paperback isn’t live yet as I write this but should show up at some point today.)
If you were looking for a handy way to put all my short fiction on your shelf and get a few new stories as a bonus, it’s now super easy and highly convenient!
SCORPIO release date and cover reveal
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I updated the “The Next Book” countdown widget in the sidebar a little while ago.
Today I can announce that SCORPIO, the first novel in a new series called Frontlines: Evolution, has an official release date: November 14, 2023.
You can pre-order the Kindle version here. I don’t know when they’ll add the paperback and audio versions to the pre-order page, but the release date ought to be the same for those once they appear as pre-order options on the product page.
Frontlines: Evolution will take the series to new places and introduce new characters…but that doesn’t mean you won’t meet some of the ones you already know along the way.
Terms of Enlistment is 10
Put on your party hats, because we have a birthday to celebrate. TERMS OF ENLISTMENT is ten years old this month. I brought it out in March 2013, and 47North bought it (and the second Frontlines novel, LINES OF DEPARTURE) in May of that year. Thanks to everyone who has ever bought this book and its sequels, but special thanks go out to those of you who took a chance on a self-published work from an unknown name when I put this novel out on Kindle Direct with the hopes of maybe selling a few hundred copies. It sold rather a lot more than that, which is why I had an agent and a publishing contract less than two months later.
Whenever I read through it these days, I can very much tell that it’s a first novel, but I am also positively surprised by how well it has managed to hold up, so I must have gotten that one mostly right. It certainly changed everything for me–I became a full-time writer that year, and the royalties for my books have been paying the bills since then.
Ten years…. don’t they go by in the blink of an eye. Now let’s see what the next ten years will bring.
30 years ago
German Erkennungsmarke (dog tag), issued January 1989. The new ones have the country code of DEU instead of GE.
When I checked the calendar for something unrelated earlier this week, I realized that I turned in my gear and became a civilian again exactly 30 years ago this month, after serving 4 years and 2 months in the German Army. I was only 21 when I got out because I was barely 17 when I enlisted almost straight out of high school.
The Erkennungsmarke isn’t something you usually get to keep. At the end of active service, it gets turned in with most of the other issued gear, to be put into the personnel file for reissue if there’s a reservist call-up or general mobilization. I have this one because I reported mine lost and they struck a replacement, only for me to find the original later, so I kept the duplicate.
I picked a wild time to serve in the military. When I joined up, the Cold War was still going on, although nobody in January of 1989 anticipated that eleven months later, the Berlin Wall would come down, and that all the communist satellite states of the Soviet Union would fall like dominoes within a few months, choosing democracy, Levi’s jeans and McDonald’s over socialism, Bulgarian shoes, and khlav kalash. By the time I got out, the Cold War was won, the Soviet Union didn’t exist anymore, the Baltic countries were independent, and Germany was reunited.
It doesn’t really feel like it was three decades ago. But I guess it’s correct because I got an email from my high school class reunion committee a few weeks ago, inviting me to our 35th anniversary high school reunion. Unfortunately, the math seems to check out…
Boneless Andy
Dog broke. Please advise.
My two favorite words to write
This is the part of the novel that the reader hates to read and the writer loves to write. Whenever I type those two words, it’s like a permission slip for my brain to let go of something that has occupied it every day for the better part of a year.
I just turned in the completed draft for SCORPIO, the first novel in a new Frontlines spin-off series. I don’t have an exact release date yet, but it will most likely be toward the end of this year.
Now I’m going to engage in my usual post-draft brain rinse where I work through a backlog of shows and play games for a week or two, and then I’ll reset the office for the new project and get back to work. Next on the docket is Palladium Wars #4, which will be called DESCENT.
2022 wasn’t a great year for me as far as output goes. Starting a new series always takes more time and energy than continuing in an existing world with established characters, and I underestimated how long it would take my brain to turn the idea I had into a cohesive whole. But I think I managed it, and you’ll be able to judge for yourselves when the book comes out later this year.
Worst criminal ever
I don’t think I need to hire an investigator to find the identity of the culprit who stole a handful of animal crackers from the low table next to the recliner.
Insta-tired
Dinky of House Doo, first of her name.
I still have an Instagram account, but it has been getting increasingly annoying to be served with stuff that has no connection to my friend feed, things that Facebook/Meta thinks I should see. Every time I check Instagram these days, I see two or three posts from friends, a long string of some of the dumbest, low-effort garbage from accounts I don’t know, and several friend notifications from obvious catfishing accounts or crypto bots. It used to be kind of fun, and now it’s not. I’ll keep the account on life support but I think I’ll post more stuff here instead, where there’s no algorithm using my content to sell ads.
Achtung! Kein Kinderlakritz!
“An acquired taste is an appreciation for something unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it. It is the opposite of innate taste, which is the appreciation for things that are enjoyable by most persons without prior exposure to them.” –Wikipedia
I explained the concept of acquired taste to my kids as flavors that you generally have to grow up with to find them appealing. Salmiak is a great example of acquired taste. It’s licorice (which in itself is a polarizing taste–people tend to either love it or absolutely hate it), but not the sweet form you can find in grocery stores everywhere. Salmiak licorice cranks the flavor dial up to 19 because it is flavored with ammonia salt (ammonium chloride), which gives it an extremely intense astringent taste.
Salmiak is only common in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and northern Germany. It’s pretty much impossible to find outside of those areas. People who love salmiak flavor almost invariably grew up with it, and I’ve never met anyone that liked it who wasn’t from one of those countries. Everyone else usually finds it disgusting. In Germany, salmiak licorice has to be labeled “Erwachsenenlakritz-Kein Kinderlakritz” (“Adult Liquorice – Not Children’s Liquorice”). Even my son, who’s the only other person in the house that likes licorice, will not touch the salmiak licorice. It’s pretty much the only candy I can buy for myself and just leave sitting out in the kitchen somewhere because I know it’s in no danger of being pilfered by teenagers in search of a snack.
The little baggies in the picture are salmiak-flavored Fisherman’s Friend menthol drops. I usually carry one of those with me when I am out of the house in the winter because let me tell you, that ammonia salt in combination with menthol will clear your sinuses right up. My daughter came down with COVID a few weeks ago, but nobody else in the house got it. I know it’s likely because she was mostly isolated in her room and we’re fully vaccinated and boostered with the new bivalent shots, but I’d like to think that the virus didn’t find a foothold in my nasal passages because it smelled the ammonia salt from the salmiak and went all, “Nope, nope, nope. I’m out.”