Category: friends.

friends. travel. writing.

05JUL2022

Back when we had our driveway redone, we had the construction crew extend it all the way around the house. The surface is hard pack gravel, so if I don’t consciously use the entire driveway during the spring and summer instead of just driving on the convenient front half, the weeds will come up between the gravel and slowly reclaim that strip of ground.

Much like that driveway, the blog gets a little overgrown from time to time when I forget to tend to it, but I don’t think the weeds have ever been this high. I haven’t posted any updates since early February. I’ve been busy with the editorial back-and-forth for CENTERS OF GRAVITY, the eighth Frontlines novel, but that one’s all in the bag now and ready to meet its readers in two months. Every time I am finished with a novel, my brain needs to go into refill mode for a while instead of diving into the next project full throttle. And with the ongoing dumpster fire that is the 2020s, those refill breaks seem to get a bit longer every year. Alas, the break has been over for a little while now, and I am at work writing another novel in the Frontlines universe, for publication in 2023. (Next up on the schedule is DESCENT, the fourth book in the Palladium Wars, which will hopefully get a 2023 release as well if I manage to finish the draft as planned.)

With those two drafts on my dance card before December 31, I don’t have any firm plans for conventions or other big events this year. I simply don’t have the time right now to bounce around a con for a few days—it breaks up my work schedule, and I never manage to get any meaningful work done on the road. That probably means you won’t be seeing me out at an event in person in 2022, but it also means there’ll be two novels out next year instead of only one. (That was the pace I had set myself in 2019, before the Horrendous Times, and I’d love to be able to get back to it this year.)

That said, I did get to go out for a day recently and meet up with some colleagues for some shenanigans and shared meals. My friends Kevin (Hearne), Delilah (S. Dawson), and Chuck (Wendig) were in Boston for their joint book tour, and we used the opportunity for socializing a little. It was great to be among friends again and back to some normality.

(Also, I’ve lived in New England for 16 out of the last 25 years, and I just now found out that a.) the coffee milk is the state beverage of Rhode Island, and that b.) it’s actually pretty good.)

With the release of CENTERS OF GRAVITY just around the corner, I will have author copies before too long, so stand by for the traditional paperback give-away. Until then, I’ll try to use this here internet driveway more often so the weeds don’t take over and entropy doesn’t win…

friends. history.

Memento mori

I used to have a lot of those silly old things. Now I only have this one because I could not bear to get rid of it when I cleaned house.

It’s a 1935 Royal DeLuxe that was owned by a dear old friend of mine who passed away in 2007 at the age of 73. He was a low-key downeast Maine teacher and scholar, and without him I probably wouldn’t have ended up in the United States.

From what I know, his mother bought the typewriter new in the 1930s and passed it down to him. After he died, his sister held a yard sale with his old things, and she let me pick something as a memento. I chose the old Royal.

I had not taken it out of the case since shortly after I got it 14 years ago, but I dusted it off today, and what do you know? It still works just fine.

awards. friends. travel. wild cards.

Conned out

I am back home, and very tired.

Two weeks ago, I did Worldcon, which was super fun. Then I ended up being nominated for a Dragon Award for Best Military SF/Fantasy novel, so I let my friend Melissa F. Olson guilt me into going to Atlanta for DragonCon on short notice. I thought that almost two weeks since Worldcon would be enough rest to be able to tacke a DragonCon weekend, especially since I didn’t have any panels.

Reader, I was SO VERY WRONG.

I was fine on Friday, so-so on Saturday, and on Sunday my social battery and energy level were both in the red and blinking. DragoCon is a crazy, big, loud affair (word has it there were over 90,000 attendees), and those kind of cons, while fun, tend to wear me down much faster than the smaller literary-minded ones. I will say that downtown Atlanta is a big party during DragonCon, and that the cosplay in particular was off-the-charts excellent.

I did not win, by the way…just like my first Dragon nomination in 2016, I lost to David Weber, so I guess it’s a tradition now.

Now I’m back home and finishing some projects I’ve had cooking for a while (a Wild Cards and a Frontlines novella), and then I’m off to work on the next novel, which I hope to finish by the end of the year…or at least by the end of the winter, which will probably start to descent on us here in NH by the end of next month. We’ve had snow as early as my birthday in late October, although it usually doesn’t really start in earnest until December.

That was my last con appearance this year. Apologies to everyone who messaged me to maybe get together at DragonCon…my social dance card was too full, and the place was too big and complicated to navigate in a hurry to squeeze in a lot of coffee or lunch meetings, especially with the lines everywhere. My next con will probably be ConFusion in Detroit in late January…if I end up finishing the new book by then, that is.

In closing, have some snapshots from WorldCon and DragonCon:

The lobby of one of the four DragonCon hotels, the Marriott, on Saturday night.

The view from the executive floor of the Marriott Marquis, 47 floors up.

Downtown Atlanta from my hotel room window.

DragonCon street traffic. Lots of cosplay.

ATL in the late PM.

Downtown ATL from above.

The view up from the Marriott lobby.

George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Losers’ Party.

The Hugo Awards ceremony.

That’s me, sitting on a panel next to Larry “Ringworld” Niven.

The view from the podium. Standing room only.

Our Wild Cards panel, with Mary Anne Mohanraj, GRRM, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Levine in the picture.

Wild Cards panel, sitting with Mary Anne and George.

A tiny slice of the Wild Cards signing line.

Con hotel in San Jose.

Obligatory view from the hotel window.

Another view from the hotel window, overlooking the San Jose Museum of Art and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph.

These don’t grow in New Hampshire.

conventions. friends. travel.

Emerald City Comic Con after-action report

This past weekend, Robin and I went to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. My publisher, 47North, is an Amazon Publishing imprint, so they’re based in Seattle, which meant I finally got to visit the Mothership and meet most of the rest of the APub team.

The Doppler building, where Amazon Publishing is housed, is FULL OF DOGGOS. It’s a dog-friendly building, and it seems like every third or fourth employee brings a dog to work. We were hanging out in the lobby for a bit at the start of the business day, and the stream of Good Boys And Girls coming in with their owners was a cheery and relaxing sight. If I had to work in a corporate environment, a corporate headquarters with lots of dogs in it would be my top pick.

Oh, and the view from the office isn’t bad either:

Then there are the Spheres, which are the most Science Fiction-looking piece of architecture I’ve ever seen. We didn’t have the time to check them out on the inside, though.

I was on two panels at Emerald City Comic Con. One was a pop culture throw-down with fellow authors Chuck Wendig, Django Wexler, Cherie Priest, Amy Bartol, and Kevin Hearne. Chuck, Amy, and Cherie are friends (Cherie is a fellow Wild Cards writer, Amy is a fellow APub author, and I’ve known Chuck online and in meatspace for years), and it was great to meet Django and Kevin. My wife is a big fan of his Iron Druid books, which are narrated by the same guy who does my Frontlines books, the awesome Luke Daniels. She was thrilled when he came over to her and introduced himself before the panel.

The second panel was about world-building for magical and futuristic worlds, where I sat in with fellow APub authors Emily King, Charlie Holmberg, Amy Bartol, J.D.Horn, Robert Cargill, and Jeff Wheeler. Both panels were extremely well attended and a lot of fun, and I am happy to say that while I didn’t win the pair of fuzzy shark slippers for the victor of the throwdown (that honor went to Chuck Wendig because he got to answer ALL THE STAR WARS TRIVIA), I managed to avoid ownership of the Jar-Jar Binks mask that was the last-place prize.

I did two signings, and there were quite a few fans showing up to get their books defaced, but my signing line wasn’t nearly as busy as those of the guys to either side of me (Chuck Wendig and Kevin Hearne), and all three of us put together probably didn’t sign as many books as Patrick Rothfuss or Terry Brooks did. Here’s Kevin and Chuck at work:

The thing I enjoy most about cons other than meeting fans is getting together with my friends and colleagues in the business. We go months or sometimes years without meeting in real life, but when we do, it’s always like we just saw each other at a con a week ago. The SF/F genre is so small and familial that it feels there are no more than two degrees of separation between any of the writers working in the field. If you don’t know the writer in question, you are friends with someone who does. (I may have said the sentence “How do YOU know each other?” in astonishment more than once last weekend.) My field of work is full of awesome people, and that’s part of what makes this writing thing the best job in the world.

There was only a single negative thing that happened on this otherwise excellent weekend trip, and that was the loss of my iPad Pro, which I left in the seat pocket of the plane to Seattle. I remotely activated Lost Mode and filled out the online lost property form with Delta, but I’m not terribly hopeful. Lesson learned, I suppose. Next time I’ll take the 10-pound Alienware with the 17″ screen, which won’t get lost in between the safety card and the in-flight menu because it won’t fit into the seat pocket. As a side effect, I only had my phone all weekend, but it was kind of nice to be mostly unplugged for a few days.

Now it’s back to work–I have a novel to finish that I meant to complete before ECCC (and the face-to-face meetings with my publisher). Thankfully, they didn’t lock me up in the secret author dungeon in the basement for blowing my deadline…

friends. wild cards.

Evernight

There’s a new Wild Cards story up at tor.com, “Evernight” by Victor Milán. 

This is a bitter-sweet thing because Victor Milán passed away yesterday.

I understand that Victor was practically the father of Wild Cards (he’s the one who gave George R.R. Martin the RPG Superworld for his birthday, which inspired George to start Wild Cards.) I did not get to meet Victor because I only joined the Wild Cards consortium two years ago and haven’t had many chances to meet everybody in real life (it’s a huge group, and a lot of its members live out west, where I am not), and now I’m sad that I won’t get a chance to know him in person. I have a copy of Victor’s book The Dinosaur Lords on my Kindle, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. Now I’ll have to bump it to the top of the reading list.

It’s a strange thing, the human condition…it can make you feel kinship with people you’ve never met, and sorrow at the news of their passing even though you’ve never talked to them.

 

conventions. friends. travel. writing.

Home again, home again, etc. etc.

We have been back from Europe for a week now, and my brain is still adjusting. You know when you start a lawnmower up for the first time in the spring after it’s been sitting in the garage all winter? That hesitant sputtering? Yeah, that’s what it feels like, even though I came back from Worldcon with a bunch of new ideas and motivation. But on Monday, the kids will be back in school, and things will be back to normal.

I didn’t do any official panels or programming at Worldcon. I attended the Hugo reception as an acceptor for my friend Scott Andrews, who couldn’t make it to Finland this year. Alas, Scott didn’t win (my friend Kat calls him “the Susan Lucci of the Semiprozine category”),and I didn’t have to hold a speech in front of a few thousand people.

The rest of Worldcon was basically just hanging out, meeting up with friends, and sightseeing in and around Helsinki, which is a nice place full of impossibly attractive people. Like I said on Facebook–you know when you see that boy or girl on the street that would have been the hottest thing in your high school by a wide margin? Helsinki has one of those every fifteen yards. And they all dress like they just stepped out of an A&F catalog, too. Even the ones in the sloppy outfits look like they spent about half an hour putting together just the right sort of sloppy look. Robin and I concluded that there’s a Finnish facial type that looks model-esque to North American eyes.

This was also the first trip we’ve taken together where we were both equally disadvantaged in the language department, because neither of us spoke the primary language. We usually end up traveling to places where one of us is in reasonably good command of the language, but we were both uncomprehending illiterates in Finland. The one assist I got was the bilingual signage–I could make sense of the Swedish signs. But Finnish isn’t related to Germanic or Romance languages at all, so even with German, Dutch, English, and Spanish between us, we couldn’t even guess at most of the Finnish words. Luckily, most of the Finns spoke good to excellent English, so we weren’t reduced to pointing at pictures.

We combined Worldcon with a visit to Germany and some sightseeing in the Netherlands and the UK, so this was our one big trip this year. I know some writers who are on the road far more than I am, but I don’t know how they do it. Not only do I not get anything written while I’m traveling, it also takes me a good while to get back to my regular work routine after the trip. But we’re back, the laundry is done, the luggage is stored, and I have stuff to write, so back to work I go.

awards. books. conventions. friends. writing.

the dragon awards have been dragon-awarded.

NEWSFLASH: I did not win the Dragon Award for Best Military SF Novel. David Weber did, and congratulations to him. Congratulations also to Larry Correia, whose SON OF THE BLACK SWORD won the award for Best Fantasy Novel.

(I didn’t expect to beat David on votes because he has a lot more fans and a lot more books out than I do, and I am but an egg in the genre.)

But it was fun and an honor just to be nominated, and I want to thank everyone who voted for CHAINS OF COMMAND and got it onto the shortlist. I wasn’t at DragonCon because I promised the wife I’d take September off from traveling, but my friend Melissa F. Olson graciously agreed to accept for me in the unlikely event of my win. I don’t know who’s more relieved now—Melissa because she didn’t have to walk up to the podium and make an acceptance speech…or me because Melissa didn’t have a chance to get creative with that acceptance speech.

 

books. family. friends. travel. writing.

WorldCon recap.

I’m on the plane back from MidAmericon II, the 74th Worldcon, in Kansas City. Some cons are great, some are so-so, some are…not that good. But Worldcon is the main event of our genre, the big Annual Nerd Prom, where most everyone gathers regardless of what other regional cons they attend.

I went with a fairly light schedule. Being a new member of GRRM’s Wild Cards consortium, I got to attend a gathering thrown for the Wild Cards writers by Tor Publishing. (And let me tell you–when you’re a junior woodchuck novelist with a little more than three years of pro experience under his belt, having GRRM introduce you to Tom Doherty can be a slightly tongue-tying experience.) I love the Wild Cards gang–they are all amazingly accomplished and talented writers, most with decades in the business, and they all make me feel welcome and appreciated.

On Friday evening, we had the big Wild Cards mass signing for the new book, called HIGH STAKES. I figured I’d be sitting and watching GRRM’s signing line for three hours, but most people wanted signatures from all the rest of us in their books as well. (The event only allowed Wild Cards books to be purchased and/or brought into the ballroom, but one of my fans smuggled in a copy of LINES OF DEPARTURE for me to sign, which I happily did.)

There was also a Wild Cards panel that was an almost Pokemon-like death match between characters. GRRM put all our names into a bucket and pulled out two names at random to fictionally fight each other, and the audience got to decide the winner. My character Khan, a 300-pound underworld bodyguard whose left body half is that of an anthropomorphised Bengal tiger, is a straight-up bruiser suited for heavyweight physical fights, but he had to go up against the Amazing Bubbles, who was quite possibly the worst possible opponent for him in the entire lineup because his strength and reflexes were of very limited utility against someone who can ensconce him in a near-breakable bubble that limits his air supply. So I got eliminated in the first round and got to watch the rest of the fights from the bench. But it was all good fun, and the auditorium was filled with people who seemed to enjoy the format.

(I also had several people waiting for me after the event to get FRONTLINES books and posters signed, which was super weird and awesome at the same time.)

Other than the panels, I met up with friends both old and new. My long-time Internet pal and new IRL friend Ellie took me to the best barbecue joint I had ever been to, and there were a number of parties and the usual bar meet-ups and long nights chatting with friends. Whenever you go to a con like this one, it’s like a big family reunion, only you don’t have to put up with your weird uncle who thinks that the stickers on the back of traffic signs are secret markers for invading UN forces. You see people you haven’t seen in a year or more, but the conversations flow as naturally again as if you had seen each other last only a few days ago.

The crowning highlight of the weekend was GRRM’s Hugo Losers Party, which was held in a spectacular Gilded Age theater just two blocks from the hotels and the convention center. The party in Spokane last year was awesome, but this one easily topped it for setting and glitz, and I have no idea how he’s going to top that next year in Helsinki. Maybe there are castles for rent, or he can get the Queen Mary for the night.

I now have so many lovely, smart, generous, and funny friends in the business that I can’t go to a con without running into dozens of people I would gladly spend a whole weekend just drinking and chatting with. Our not-so-little SF and Fantasy tribe of writers and readers is for the most part a stellar group of folks that are welcoming to newcomers and just fun to hang out with, and I greatly value the friendships I’ve made in the genre since I started out at VP and then at my first official convention (which was Boskone in early 2009.) I can’t wait for Worldcon 75 in Helsinki.

In closing, here are a few shots from the trip I’d like to share:

That’s me chatting with Jo Walton. If I have a smug look on my face, it’s because she just told me that she read all the FRONTLINES books and really liked them.


My friend and fellow 47North author Melissa Olson, who was my tag-along for the Hugo Losers party. I roped her in by mentioning the free booze.


The venue for the party. Now that’s how you throw a shindig.


The convention plaza in KC.  Infinitely superior to the one in Spokane last year.


The Wild Cards cage match panel, moderated by George R.R. Martin.


That was breakfast on Saturday.


The Midland Theatre.


The other side of the convention plaza. 

friends. travel. Uncategorized writing.

Worldconning in Kansas City.

It’s 5am in KC, which means it’s 6am in New Hampshire, which means I’m up already despite the two drinks at the hotel bar last night.

KC seems nice. I haven’t had a chance to wander much, but the area around the convention center is definitely 100% tailored for conventions. Four or five big hotels around one square, and the convention center on one side of that square, which means that my hotel is 100 yards from the front entrance of the Worldcon facility. This is much better than the arrangement in Spokane last year, where we had to drive or take a shuttle bus for a mile and a half because the con hotels were all over the place and not within easy walking distance. (Also, Missouri is not on fire, and it doesn’t smell like a badly stoked barbecue grill outside.)

Travel went super smooth yesterday. No delays, the usual short TSA line in Manchester, and a layover in Detroit that was just long enough to switch terminals in no hurry and grab a sandwich, but not so long as to be a boring pain in the ass. When I got to Kansas City, I tried an experiment and hailed my first Uber ever, and I must say that I was impressed. It took 5 minutes for the driver to get there, the fare was half of what a cab would have cost me, and I didn’t have to deal with cash or swiping cards. I think I’ll use them from now on instead of surly cabbies who drive like NASCAR hopefuls.

The only fly in the ointment yesterday was the hotel bar, which forgot my dinner order. I ended up waiting for my food for 45 minutes, but took the time to have the aforementioned two cocktails. On the plus side, the bartender was so mortified that she comped my whole dinner, drinks and all, and I tipped her $20 because it wasn’t her fault the kitchen was watching the ball game or whatever. And I ran into Ann Leckie again, who is one of the nicest people in the genre, so that was a lovely end to the evening. 

Today: more Worldconning. I’m meeting up with friends and walking the convention floor today, and then there’s a party tonight. (There are parties every night at Worldcon, which is What We Do when we get together at our annual nerd proms.) So if you’re there and see me around, stop and say hi!

And now I’ll see if I can get some fiction-wording done before breakfast…

friends. travel. writing.

my worldcon schedule.

MidAmericon II, the 74th Worldcon, seems to be almost upon us. I’ll be in Kansas City next week for the event, armed with a credit card and a light convention schedule.

There are two Wild Cards-related events I’ll be attending as a panelist/signing author. One is the big Wild Cards signing at Rainy Day Books on Friday, August 19th at 5pm. It’s a public event off the convention floor, so you won’t need a WorldCon membership to attend.

The other event is the Wild Cards cage match panel on Saturday, August 20, on the Tucker Stage (3501A) from 3-5pm. GRRM will be moderating as we (as our characters) will engage in a fictional battle until my awesome charact…uh, until the best character emerges as the victor.

Other than that, my schedule is wide open, and I intend to meet up with as many old and new friends as I can. If you are going to Worldcon and see me out and about on the convention floor, come say hello!

Worldcon will mark my second-to-last con attendance this year. The other con on my schedule is Honorcon in Raleigh (October 28-30 in Raleigh, NC), where I’m not officially on the roster as a guest, but I’ll be on a few panels nonetheless.

I was going to cut down a bit on travel in 2016, but in the end, it turned out almost as busy as 2015. It seems that my calendar fills up much more quickly these days.