travel. – Page 2 – markokloos.com

You wake up one morning, and half the year is gone.

August 6, 2018

There must be a glitch in the Matrix, because there is absolutely no way that Worldcon is a week from Thursday already.

I have just been informed by my producer that Worldcon is indeed a week from Thursday already.

I spent the first half of 2018 writing the first novel in the new series 47North is about to launch. In June I switched my brain to cool-down mode, and then I spent most of July editing the manuscript to hammer it into shape. Then we took a family trip down south to see the in-laws in Tennessee, and now we’re smack in the middle of August already, and I have to fly out to California next week.

In related news: I will be at Worldcon in San Jose. There’s a Wild Cards mass signing scheduled for Saturday, August 18 in the Dealers’ Room from 10am to noon. Bring your Wild Cards books, and you’ll be able to get them signed by a whole squad of writers. Consortium members in attendance will be Melinda Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Caroline Spector, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Bob Wayne, David D. Levine, George R.R. Martin, and that Marko Kloos fellow. I think we’re also doing a Wild Cards panel on Sunday, but the programming is still a bit in the air, so you may want to check the official program if you want to attend that panel.

Other than that, I’ll be mostly hanging out with friends, which is what I usually do at cons. If you happen to see me at the convention center or at the bar somewhere (a likely scenario), do come up and say hello. Worldcon is my main annual socializing event, and it’s always great to meet new people.

Let’s just hope that the fault lines stay quiet while I spend a long weekend right between the Hayward and the San Andreas. (Well, maybe a little earthquake would be cool.)

conventions. friends. travel.

Emerald City Comic Con after-action report

March 5, 2018

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…

conventions. friends. travel. writing.

Home again, home again, etc. etc.

August 23, 2017

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.

books. travel. wild cards. writing.

Emerging from the word mines

May 22, 2017

I turned in the final edits of POINTS OF IMPACT today, so now it’s full steam ahead toward publication. (I don’t have a date for you yet, but you’ll know as soon as I do.)

That makes six novels in the last five years, which isn’t bad for a slacker like me. That reckoning is cheating a little, because I had TERMS OF ENLISTMENT finished well before I got the first novel contract in 2013. Even so, that’s a novel a year so far–still not terrible. In the future, however, I want to strive to be a two-novels-per-year sort of writer.

I’ll be pretty busy on all fronts for the rest of the year. Now that POINTS is turned in, I have to finish a few Wild Cards-related items I can’t disclose yet, and then I have to get to work on a new novel. There’s also lots of travel coming up–this weekend, I’ll be at Manticon in Minneapolis, and the week after that, I’ll be attending the Launch Pad astronomy workshop in Wyoming, to help me make the science in my science fiction a little more, uh, firm. And this summer, the wife and I are going to Europe to do some global gallivanting before we attend Worldcon in Helsinki in August. I have to say that of all the jobs I’ve ever had, this one is by far the coolest, even better than the Assistant S’mores Tester temp job right out of college.

books. shameless self-promotion. travel. wild cards. writing.

Novels and conventions and such

April 26, 2017

I finished Frontlines #6, POINTS OF IMPACT, and sent it to my publisher. Now we do some editorial ping-pong, and then I’ll be able to share the publication date with you so you can preorder the book in VERY LARGE QUANTITIES.

I had to cancel plans for attending ConFusion in Detroit in January because I was still working on POINTS, so I haven’t been to any conventions since late October, but now the con season is starting up again. This weekend, I will be author Guest of Honor at ConStellation in Lincoln, NE. There will be a signing at Francie & Finch bookstore, which is a block or two from the convention hotel. I’ll be there for your amusenings from 1:30-2:30pm this Saturday, April 29th, so stop by to say hi and get a book signed if you’re in the area.

Next up on my List of Things What To Write is some Wild Cards business, and then I’ll spend the rest of the year writing a new military-ish SF novel that’s not related to Frontlines. (That doesn’t mean, however, that Frontlines will come to an end with the release of POINTS OF IMPACT.)

Between the writing projects and the convention travel, it will be a busy rest-of-the-year, but that’s how we roll here at the Castle Frostbite Magic Novel Factory. I am still amazed that I get to do this for a living. It feels like I’m getting away with some sort of high-level scam, but I’ll enjoy it until they find me out.

conventions. shameless self-promotion. travel.

My revised public schedule for 2017

March 16, 2017

After overbooking myself on cons in 2015 and 2016 a little, I decided to lay off the conventions until April this year, mainly because I have a book to finish. But the con year is about to start up again, and I’ve gotten to add a few things to the list. So if you want to meet up in person and say hello*, here are your opportunities for 2017:

April 28-30: ConStellation 8, Lincoln, NE (Author Guest of Honor)

May 26-28: Manticon, Minneapolis/Bloomington, MN (Author Guest)

June 4-10: Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, Laramie, WY (attendee) (This is not a public event, but if you’re a writer or IRL friend who lives in the area, we may have an opportunity to have dinner and/or drinks.)

July 28: Otherland Books, Berlin, Germany (Reading/Signing) (This is a free event, so stop by if you’re in or around Berlin at that time.)

August 4-6: Nine Worlds, London, UK (attendee)

August 9-13: Worldcon 75, Helsinki, Finland (attendee, although I may be on a few panels related to Wild Cards)

October 27-29: Honorcon, Raleigh, NC (Author Guest)

And that’s it for 2017 unless I get another invite I can’t turn down because I have a really hard time saying “no”.

*And yes, do say hello if you spot me at one of the cons listed and I’m not otherwise engaged. DO NOT meet up in person and say hello by coming up my driveway unannounced. That would be a little, how do you say, weird. And the dachshunds would maim you before I could even unlock the gun rack.

travel. wild cards. writing.

door, ass, way out, etc.

December 31, 2016

Everybody is slagging on 2016 in social media, myself included. But the truth is that while 2016 was a dumpster fire of a year when it came to politics and celebrity deaths, it wasn’t a bad year at all for me personally or professionally.

On the work front, I wrote a novel (FIELDS OF FIRE, out in February from 47North), and saw the release of the one I had written in 2015 (CHAINS OF COMMAND). CHAINS earned out its advance in the first week of release, which was very nice, and I hope that FIELDS will continue that trend because it means they’ll buy more books from me and let me keep paying mortgage and school tuitions.

I also wrote a novella called STRIPES, which will be part of a WILD CARDS novel next year (hopefully, depending on Tor’s schedule for the book it’s in, called LOW CHICAGO).

Jet City Comics brought out the Frontlines: Requiem graphic novel, a tie-in I did with Gary Erskine and Ivan Brandon. (Gary did the art, Ivan the script, and Yel Zamor the ink. I gave them the characters and general storyline, and they just went to town with it.)

I ended the office rental experiment and gave up my cool little private eye office near the kids’ school because it wasn’t working with my writing schedule. And I did a metric ton of research and groundwork for the next series I’ll be writing after Frontlines comes to a close. All in all, it was a normal year for me as far as output goes–I seem to be a novel-per-year writer right now. For 2017 and beyond, I would like to see if I can increase that output to at least two novels a year.

For travel, I got to go to Detroit in January (ConFusion), Orlando in February (took the kids to Disney), New York City twice (taking family members sightseeing), Quebec City in April (writing retreat of sorts), Chicago in May (Nebulas and Book Expo America), Minneapolis in May (author guest at MantiCon), New Mexico in July (WILD CARDS event at GRRM’s Cocteau Cinema and visiting with friends in Los Alamos), Delaware in July/August (vacationing with kids and friends), Kansas City in August (Worldcon), Martha’s Vineyard in October (Paradise Regained VP reunion), and Raleigh, NC at the end of October (Honorcon, where I received two Rampant Manticore awards, one for Best MilSF novel, and the inaugural H. Beam Piper Memorial Award). That was a lot of travel, and it’s crazy to think that this year was a lighter travel year than 2015…

For the coming year, FIELDS OF FIRE is coming out in February, and I’ll be finishing the sixth Frontlines novel, called POINTS OF IMPACT, hopefully in time for a 2017 release as well. For travel, I’ll be in Lincoln, Nebraska in April for ConStellation as author Guest of Honor, then Manticon again as author guest in May in Minneapolis, and then Worldcon in Helsinki in August (which I will combine with a nice kid-free jaunt to other parts of Europe with Robin). I’ve also committed to being author guest at Honorcon in Raleigh at the end of October again. That’s what’s solidly on the calendar right now, and I’m sure there will be a few other engagements popping up throughout the year.

Lots of work on the schedule for 2017, and plenty of travel. This is a strange and crazy job, even if much of it consists on sitting in a chair and looking at a screen. But it beats the hell out of every other job I’ve had in my life.

Let’s just hope 2017 isn’t going to turn out in a way that will make us remember 2016 fondly…

books. conventions. travel.

back from honorcon, and some award braggery.

October 31, 2016

I just got back from Honorcon yesterday, where a lovely surprise was waiting for me during the awards ceremony for the inaugural Rampant Manticore awards.

Not only did I get the Best Military SF Novel award (for ANGLES OF ATTACK), but I also managed to win the H. Beam Piper Memorial Award. These are doubly meaningful and special because they are fan-voted awards (the membership of Honorcon and Manticon voted on the Rampant Manticore), and the awards themselves are just plain cool-looking. They are little engraved glass books, and they are quite heavy for their size. Luckily, TSA didn’t have an issue with them in my carry-on, so they made it home safe and sound in my hand luggage.

Thank you again for your hospitality and your votes, Manticon and Honorcon attendees, and thank you to TRMN (the Royal Manticoran Navy, the official Honorverse fan group) for having me as a guest at both cons.

Also: congratulations to Larry Correia (who won Best Fantasy Novel for “Son of the Black Sword”), Linda Nagata (who won Best Fantasy Short Story for “The Way Home”), and all the other winners.

shameless self-promotion. travel. writing.

what i’ll be doing with the rest of 2016.

October 17, 2016

I just returned from the Viable Paradise writing workshop’s 20-year reunion on Martha’s Vineyard. It was nice to catch up with old friends and meet VPers from other years, and the weather was ideal for some extended sightseeing drives around the Vineyard. Of course, I didn’t get too much writing done between all the socializing and panels, so this week I’m going to have to do word count penance.

There’s only one trip left for 2016, and that’s Honorcon in Raleigh. I’m not on the official program, but I’ll be doing a few panels and gaming sessions. There will also be another meeting of the Frontlines fan club (yes, I have an official fan group now, which is still kind of mind-blowing). I’ve commissioned a tailor to make a prototype NAC Fleet shipboard uniform as seen in the Frontlines: Requiem graphic novel, and that one should be ready in time for me to show it off at Honorcon.

After Honorcon, I’m taking the rest of the year to finish Frontlines #6, which will be called POINTS OF IMPACT. (Frontlines #5, called FIELDS OF FIRE, will be out on February 28th, and can be pre-ordered already in all formats.)

The dance card for 2017 is already getting kind of full. I’ll be Guest of Honor at ConStellation 8 in Lincoln, NE from April 28-30. Then I’m going to Minnesota again as author guest at Manticon 2017 from May 26-28. And I’ve already reserved a hotel room for WorldCon 75, which will be in Helsinki, Finland from August 9-13. After that, I’ll probably throttle back on cons and other engagements for the rest of 2017 a bit, but there’s no telling yet what kind of stuff will hit the inbox between now and mid-2017, so we’ll see what happens.

Traveling and going to cons is a ton of fun, but it really dings my word count because I’m already easily distracted in my natural habitat, never mind a place where there’s stuff to see and people who want to talk to you. I just need to pace myself in a manner that won’t slow the writing output down too much.

And with that, I am back to work on Frontlines #6. It’s the middle of October, which is objectively proven to be the best of all months, and the weather outside is like a parting kiss from summer. I’ll leave you with a few shots from Martha’s Vineyard, which is about twice as pretty as my cell phone photography makes it look.

books. family. friends. travel. writing.

WorldCon recap.

August 21, 2016

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.