Category: art.

art. fountain pens. writing.

A magic wand for tattooing dead trees

The piston knob on my favorite fountain pen broke recently, so I sent the pen (a Lamy 2000) off to the mothership in Germany for warranty repair. It came back a little while ago, with a delivery note listing the repairs which were performed at no charge. That’s some awesome customer service for a pen I bought eleven years ago.

I started a new notebook for the current manuscript in January, but I had to use one of my other pens for the first few chapters because the Lamy 2000 was out of commission. I can tell by the quality of the handwriting changing mid-page when I got the 2000 back because it looks cleaner and neater. I put a lot of miles on that pen over the years–I wrote the first drafts of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE with it–so I’m glad to have it back for the next decade of novel-writing.

I don’t usually do product recommendations (except for my own novels, of course), but I’ll make an exception for the fantastic notebooks I found on Amazon last year. Before I came across those, I wrote in Moleskines until their paper quality started going downhill, at which point I switched to Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks, but these new ones are head and shoulders above even the Leuchtturms, and they cost about one third as much. If you’re a fellow ink-and-pen writer, you need to give them a try. The pages are sewn, so they lie flat no matter where you open the notebook, the notebooks are sturdy, and the paper is seriously thick–probably twice as thick as the ones on the Moleskines. There is no ink I’ve tried that will bleed or show through on the other side of the page, and it’s smooth paper with just a little bit of tooth, perfect for fountain pen nibs. The best part is the price: they’re twelve bucks for a pair. I throw another pack into my shopping cart pretty much every time I order other stuff, and I have enough now to keep me in first draft notebooks for the next six or seven novels.

Here’s the link if you’re interested. Stock up while they have inventory because you won’t find a better notebook, especially not for a mere six bucks a pop.

art. audible. books. the palladium wars.

Audiobook news

I’ve turned in my most recent two novels in the span of six months (BALLISTIC in August of last year and ORDERS OF BATTLE in January of this year), and while doubling one’s output is on the whole a good thing, it can also have some unintended effects.

One of those effects is that I’ve outpaced the schedule of Luke Daniels, the excellent and highly popular narrator of the Frontlines series and the first book of the Palladium Wars. Luke is very good at what he does, and because he is so good, his schedule is very, very packed. Therefore, 47North has had to switch artists to avoid holding up both series by a year or more. BALLISTIC isn’t voiced by Luke Daniels, and the upcoming Frontlines novel ORDERS OF BATTLE won’t be done by Luke either. The new narrator is Angelo Di Loreto.

I love Luke’s work on Frontlines and Aftershocks, and I know that a lot of you really love it too because I get frequent comments on the quality of the Audible narration. I know that this may be a disappointment to those who have come to associate Luke’s voice with Andrew Grayson. But that’s one of the realities of the publishing world. A recent commenter took me to task for not writing my books faster, but the production schedule involves more than just me turning in a draft and then someone slapping it on the Kindle store a few days later. There are many people who have a hand in the publication: the lead editor, the developmental editor, the copyeditors, the cover artist, and so on. And the audiobook production isn’t the smallest item on that list because they have to slot in a narrator and plan for studio time, then produce physical media for the CD and MP3 versions…you get the idea. This is a team sport, not a one-man show, and very little of it is up to me except for turning in finished manuscripts. Whenever something alters the flow–like, say, the writer retooling their work flow and doubling their output schedule–it sometimes has unpredictable knock-on effects.

Luke leaves some pretty big shoes to fill for the further narration of both series, but we really liked Angelo Di Loreto’s narrative style and voice, and I believe he will be a great fit. (You can check out his prior work here.)

Changing narrators in the middle of a series isn’t ideal, but the only other option would have been to clone Luke and bring the clone up to speed, and my editor was pretty firm that this would have blown the production budget for the next decade or so…

art. books. shameless self-promotion. wicked sharp. wild cards. writing.

Low Chicago

So I have something pretty wicked to show you today.

Remember how I mentioned that my first Wild Cards novella in the U.S. will be out in June as part of a novel called LOW CHICAGO?

Well, the final cover of LOW CHICAGO is in, and it’s freaking glorious. Not just because it’s cool by itself, which it definitely is…but because the cover character is mine. He’s called Khan, and he’s the protagonist of the novella “Stripes”, which is part of that book. This is the first Wild Cards character I got to create, and he’s probably the most fun to write of all the fictional people who sit around in the fiction casting office in my brain. He’s a joker-ace, which means that his Wild Cards mutation makes him look inhuman but also gives him great powers. What kind of mutation, you ask? Well, let me show you the cover:

That is a pretty beastly cover, I think. (Pun intended.) The artwork was done by Michael Komarck.

LOW CHICAGO will be out on July 16th, and the other stories in the volume were written by John Jos. Miller, Saladin Ahmed, Paul Cornell, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Christopher Rowe, and Melinda M. Snodgrass. It’s part of what we call the American Triad, but it’s a stand-alone volume, so you don’t have to have read the entire series to know what’s going on in this one. 

art. books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

lines of departure, polish edition.

The Polish edition of LINES OF DEPARTURE is out this month from Fabryka Slow, and they continue their excellent cover illustration streak:

For the American covers, I only ever had one specification–no character faces. (That’s because I wanted the readers to picture the characters any way they wanted in their heads. Note that young master Andrew Grayson never has his physical appearance described in the books. He could be white or black or any shade in between–the PRCs are multi-racial shitholes, after all–and his hair and eyes could be any color because I never say what they are.) But if you have to do a cover with a character face, this one is very good indeed. I like how the Polish covers blend the current and the futuristic, and then coat everything with a patina of grunge. And I really dig the little spin counter on the cover that tells you which book in the series you’re looking at.

Looking at the calendar, it’s only two weeks until the release of FIELDS OF FIRE. People who have read the ARCs have said that it’s the best Frontlines book yet, and I hope you’ll buy it and evaluate that claim for yourselves.

Now I need to dive back into POINTS OF IMPACT, Frontlines #6, so you get to maybe buy that one in 2017 as well…

 

art. books. writing.

what I done wrote in 2016.

Since all the Kool Kidz(tm) are doing it, I guess I will have to list my finished projects for 2016 as well. It’s a short list, so don’t get up and make tea.

I wrote FIELDS OF FIRE, the fifth novel in the Frontlines series, and a novella for a future book in the Wild Cards universe, due to be out in the next year or two (I hope). The novella is called STRIPES, and it will be part of the Wild Cards book called LOW CHICAGO.

I didn’t write any short fiction in 2016, although I’d like to go back to that particular format in 2017, and it looks like I may have a good excuse to do so. I’m also trying to increase my production schedule–there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to finish at least two full novels a year from here on out, and Frontlines #6 (POINTS OF IMPACT) is well on the way to completion. If I don’t blow my deadline, you may get your hands on that novel in 2017 as well. There are also other things in the works for next year I can’t yet talk about, but you’ll be SUITABLY AWED when I announce them.

So there–that’s how I justified my existence in 2016. Wasn’t super-prolific, but wasn’t bad either. There’s a lot of middle ground between Harper Lee and James Patterson when it comes to writing pace.

art. books. shameless self-promotion.

cover reveal for fields of fire.

Frontlines #5, FIELDS OF FIRE, now has a cover. Want to see? SURE YOU DO.

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Pretty cool, eh? It’s the most explodey cover yet, which is cool because it also has the most explosions of any Frontlines book so far.

FIELDS OF FIRE will be out on February 28, by the way. Tell your friends, and tell them to tell their friends, and so on.

art. books. bullets & links. NACDC. writing.

on the NACDC, a frontlines fan group.

The official fan group of the Frontlines series, the North American Commonwealth Defense Corps, was founded at Manticon this year. There’ll be a fan group meeting at this year’s Honorcon, and a member who’s a very talented graphic designer made up a recruitment poster style ad for the convention program. It’s so well done that I wanted to share it with you.

(And if you’re in Raleigh and/or at Honorcon in October, swing by and check it out! There’s also a Facebook page for the fan group and an official web page.)

Color_NoBleed [273656]

art. books. friends. travel. wild cards.

new mexico.

I just got back from New Mexico, where I spent three days visiting friends and attending some fun Wild Cards events.

The first was an “in-character” interview done for the audience at the Jean Cocteau Cinema. Due to the fact that I got into Albuquerque a little late, I got to the theater halfway through the event and basically had to do a cold interview–from the car onto the stage (in front of an audience, jumping into a show already in progress), and getting handed a microphone before I had much of a chance to get nervous. It was good fun, though, and I find I’m definitely getting better at public speaking/performing because I’ve done it so much now that my pre-event anxiety is a great deal lower than before.

On Monday, I went to a Wild Cards author party thrown by KayMcCauley at Meow Wolf, an art venue in Santa Fe that is pretty spectacular. I had a chance to meet Wild Cards writers and reconnect with those I’ve met before. I also got to meet Thomas Olde Heuvelt, who was whisked into the event by George R.R. Martin after his own signing in town the same evening. (He’s in the US on a book tour for the English version of HEX, his best-selling debut novel.) It was a fun event, and I had a good time, even though I still feel like the new kid in high school among so many well-known high-caliber writers.

I also had a chance to see a bit of New Mexico–at least the parts around Los Alamos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque (which I just now managed to type properly without autocorrect assistance for the first time in three days), and sample the local food. Man, folks in NM really take their chile seriously. It’s a very scenic state, and Los Alamos has a ton of interesting history.

It’s still slightly bizarre sometimes to be Regular Me most of the time, but then to fly off to distant locales and big events to be Writer Me, who can selectively switch off his introverted tendencies and do stuff like sign books or speak in front of audiences without breaking into a cold panic sweat. But I’m getting better at it the more I do it, even though I suspect I’ll never fully get rid of the feeling that I’m getting away with a con, and that they’ll find out any minute that I’m just some random dude pretending to be a writer. Maybe I’ll even get used to it when I am sitting at a signing table, and people walk up to me to tell me that a.) they know who I am, and b.) they’ve read all my books.

(By the way, if you’re in Santa Fe or nearby, and you’d like to grab signed Frontlines books, I signed the stock on hand at the Jean Cocteau.)

In closing, allow me to regale you with my amateur photography and share some shots from the trip. Like I said on Twitter–New Mexico is made for the panorama setting on the phone camera, or vice versa.

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art. technology. writing.

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.

IMG_2363

art. books. capitalism. shameless self-promotion. writing.

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_cover_CLR_FINAL_editR2

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.