Category: Uncategorized

Here are the collected band names from a few months of private chats with friends. (I am claiming all of those, by the way.)

Schnitzelburger

Compensatory Treats

Automatic Umlaut

Inner Dilbert

Bourbon & Carbs

Parsimonious Electrons

Contraband Soda

Strategic Meatball Stockpile

Ablative Skateboard

Spiky Dong

Hashtag Countermeasures

Technically Rich

Presumably Sedated

Heirloom Bling

Experimental Bread #1

Hobo Gauntlet

Zero Hair Autonomy

Dubious DVD-R

Homeschool Loophole

Alternate Geralt

Heckfire

Mandatory Love Gift

Thiccmoose

Cross of Okra

Cranial Nerve #8

Fractional Bard

Apotheosis of Karens

Parking for Ponies

Spatchcocked Mastodon

Flight of Chowders

 

 

Ten days to go.

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Soon.

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.

 

I just received my (hopefully) final con schedule, so I figured I’d share it here for the people who are going to be attending and want to come see me and/or the other panelists and participants.

Of course, I’ll also be on the floor and at the bars and parties all weekend long when I am not scheduled for anything else, so there’s a good chance you’ll see me around.

Tor: Wild Cards Signing

Format: Autographs

18 Aug 2018, Saturday 10:00 – 12:00, Autographing (San Jose Convention Center)

The long awaited reprint of Wild Cards VIII: One Eyed Jacks is August 28th.  But you have an opportunity to get a copy while at Worldcon and to get autographs from many of the authors.  This is a special group signing. 

 

Copies of the trade paperback will be available from Borderlands Books, in the Dealer’s area.   

The authors will ONLY be signing Wild Cards books.  

 

 

George R. R. Martin, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Marko Kloos, Caroline Spector, Walter Jon Williams, Saladin Ahmed

Wild Cards: An Ongoing Shared Universe

Format: Panel

18 Aug 2018, Saturday 12:00 – 13:00, 210G (San Jose Convention Center)

Who knew when Wild Cards was released in 1987 that it would grow to over 2 dozen books and still be going strong over 30 years later.  

The latest installments are Texas Hold ‘Em and Knaves Over Queens.  The eighth book, One-Eyed Jacks, is being reprinted and released during the convention.

Join the creators and authors for this discussion about how it all started, and where it’s going to be going.

 

 

Kevin Andrew Murphy (M), George R. R. Martin, Marko Kloos, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary Anne Mohanraj

Sciencing the Heck out of Exposition

Format: Panel

19 Aug 2018, Sunday 14:00 – 15:00, 212D (San Jose Convention Center)

One of the joys of hard science-fiction is the science itself. Sometimes you can gloss over the details of exactly how doubly uniparental inheritance of mitochondrialDNA works, and sometimes you need people to know about the package in the sperm’s tail. Sometimes the rocket just launches, and sometimes you need the reader to understand the details of orbital mechanics. In this panel, our hard SF authors will go over the ins and outs of handling exposition. For science!

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (M), Nancy Kress, Larry Niven, Catherine Asaro, Marko Kloos

 

 

The novel is finally done and turned in, thank the old gods and the new. It has a provisional title that may change before release, but whatever it will be called, it’s going to be the first book in a series called THE PALLADIUM WARS.

This one is a different style than Frontlines: third-person past tense instead of first-person present, and different POV characters instead of just one. It’s also not 100% USDA-certified pure military SF–while there’s lots of military action going on, some of the POV characters aren’t military, so I’d classify it more as leaning toward Space Opera with a healthy dose of military detail. I hope that those of you who come here for the military SF will give this one a shot as well. So far, beta reader input has been very encouraging.

In other news, I have two novellas out this month. The Wild Cards stand-alone mosaic novel LOW CHICAGO comes out on June 12th, featuring my novella STRIPES, which in turn features a very bad-ass underworld bodyguard named Khan. He gets to mix it up with the criminal underworld of late 1920s Chicago, which was a ton of fun to write.

The second one is called PROBATIONARY, and it’s part of the Wild Cards novel KNAVES OVER QUEENS, the first detailed WIld Cards foray into the alternate British history of the Wild Cards universe. PROBATIONARY is told from the perspective of an ace I created, Rory Campbell a.k.a. Archimedes. His special ability is rather less flashy than Khan’s (who is a half-tiger), but I got to put him into the middle of the Falklands War and gave him a chance to rewrite that bit of history a little.

LOW CHICAGO will be published by Tor in the US and widely available on June 12. KNAVES OVER QUEENS will be out from HarperVoyager UK as a UK release (Tor will publish the book for the US market next year), which means that you won’t be able to buy the Kindle version outside the UK…but they’ll happily ship you a paper copy to a US address as it counts as a UK sale.

In other, other news, I have started work on a new Frontlines story. It’s a novella that will cover the events of Andrew’s tenure with the Lazarus Brigades in the three-year gap between FIELDS OF FIRE and POINTS OF IMPACT. I’m hoping to have this one out before the end of summer, and then I’ll be starting a new three-book story arc that will wrap up the Frontlines universe for now. Stay tuned for more news on that.

You know, every time I finish a novel, I tell everyone that I’m going to rot my brain with Netflix and video games for a month straight…and every time, I get bored after a week of that. Guess that means I’m in the right line of work.