Category: writing.

shameless self-promotion. writing.

october things, and paradise lost (which isn’t in october).

It’s October, which is my birth month and also the very best of all the months, especially in New England. I vote that we rename this month to “Halloween”, which is also the very best of all holidays. I mean, how can you not like it the best? There’s costumes, hot mulled cider, candy, and ghost stories. No other holiday can compete.

I’ll be up in New York City later this week to do a thing or two at NY ComicCon. I’ll be doing a signing at the 47North booth, which is #860, at 4:00 on Friday, so please show up so I don’t look like a chump, pen in hand and a faltering smile on my face as I contemplate my UTTER LONELINESS.

Hope you’re all having a good October. Mine’s going to be busy, but fun.

Oh, I forgot to mention this on the blog: I’ll be an adjunct lecturer at the Paradise Lost V workshop down in San Antonio in April, corrupting the minds of up-and-coming writers with BLATANT MISINFORMATION alongside Chuck Wendig, Delilah S. Dawson, and Robert Jackson Bennett. Paradise Lost is open to graduates of Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox, and members of the Codex Writers Group. Some of my old Viable Paradise XII friends will be in attendance at Paradise Lost V, so I am greatly looking forward to it. Also, I’ve never been to Texas except for a two-hour layover at DFW, which clearly doesn’t count as a visit to the state, so that will be a big bonus. I hear they have decent barbecue down there.

More news on the Fictional Novel Product front later. Now it’s back to the word mines so I can take a three-day break with a clear conscience.

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

new york comic con schedule.

Going to New York Comic Con in October? What a coincidence–me too!

I’ll be there doing HIGHLY AUTHORIAL stuff for 47North. I’ll sign copies of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT at the 47North booth on Friday, October 10th, from 4-4:30PM, so if you are going to be there, stop by and say hi so I don’t feel like a goober sitting in front of a stack of books and looking longingly at the three-mile signing line for that Diary of a Wimpy Kid guy. And I’ll be part of the 47North author panel Meet the SciFi & Fantasy Authors of 47North Friday evening from 8-8:45PM, so by all means come and heckle me there.

 

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

the space kablooie saga goes international.

Today’s announcement involves the OUTSTANDING literary tastes of the Polish and German people:

The Polish language rights for TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE have been sold to the Polish publishing house Fabryka Slow. I don’t have an ETA for the Polish language version, but my best guess is “sometime next year”.

The German language rights for both TERMS and LINES have been sold to Heyne, one of the really big names in German Science Fiction. This is a rather big deal for me personally—I read a ton of Heyne SF when I was growing up in Germany, and had you asked me back then who I’d want to be published with, I would have said “Heyne” without a second thought. See? Dreams do come true. Eventually. After years of hard work. But! Dreams.

Both deals were made by Evan Gregory at the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency. Evan has been my agent for a year and a half now, and I am very happy with both his work and that of the agency. 

TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE in Polish and German! That’s foreign rights sales #2 and #3 (Evan sold the Czech rights a few months ago), and I just can’t wait for those sweet foreign language covers. I hope the Heyne book gets laser-firing spaceships on the cover, just like EVERY LAST ONE OF JOHN SCALZI’S HEYNE BOOKS. (Even the ones that don’t feature spaceships. Or lasers.)

castle frostbite. fountain pens. shameless self-promotion. writing.

novel the third.

Last Friday, I finished the manuscript for ANGLES OF ATTACK, the third novel in the Frontlines series. 

<insert tired “Hooray”>

Now it’s going to go through the editorial ministrations, and after all the bumps and potholes are fixed, there’ll be the usual publisher magic done to it. I’ll share the release date as soon as my publisher sets one.

I have a modest little splurge tradition going that I may have borrowed from Elizabeth Bear and tweaked for my own purposes. Every time I finish a novel, I buy myself a nice fountain pen. (Bear buys hers when she sells a novel, i think.) Then I use the new pen to start on the next novel. For TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, I got a Lamy 2000. For LINES OF DEPARTURE, it was a Pilot Vanishing Point. And for ANGLES OF ATTACK, it’s this one, which just arrived in the mail:

IMG 0265

That’s a Pelikan M600 “Souverän” in green, with a medium 14k nib. These are to fountain pens what a Benz is to automobiles—solid, traditional, high-quality, and a bit of a luxury. (It’s a modest luxury compared to a new Benz, to be sure.)

I didn’t write ANGLES in longhand like I usually do. Because of the close deadline (which I still managed to overshoot by, uh, LET’S NOT SPEAK OF IT EVER), I had no time for transcribing all the longhand, so I had to write everything straight into the computer, using my MacBook Pro, a Das Keyboard, and trusty Scrivener. 

These last three months have been a bit challenging. Writing is not really hard on the body, but every time I finish a book, I feel like I’ve lifted a dump truck using just my frontal lobe. In addition to the regular mental strain of cranking out 100,000 words of fictional fiction, it has been noisy around the house for the last few months because of the various projects we need to get dome before icy death sets in for another six months. I’ve spent a lot of time out of the house to avoid the hammering, clanging, banging, and dog barking, and I’ve stayed up late a lot. When I turned the novel in, I felt even more drained than I usually do. The next day, I slept until noon and was still tired, and it took me about three days to get back to a regular sleep pattern. So yeah, writing can be hard work—just not the kind where you get blisters on your hands and come home covered in coal dust. But making up stuff all day for months on end can wear the body out in surprising ways.

Anyway, now I am going to reset my brain with video games and other leisurely pursuits for a week or three, and then I’ll ink up the fancy new pen and get started on the next novel. 

books. bullets & links. capitalism. friends. writing.

the novels of chang.

Chang Terhune is a good friend of mine.

We met for the first time back at Viable Paradise XII in 2008. He is one of the many talented writers in the VPXII alumni group that are also fine human beings and fabulously fun to hang out with. Because he’s practically a local (Castle Frostbite is in west-central NH, Casa Chang is in coastal southern Maine), we have been meeting up again at practically every SF/F convention since 2008. They say you don’t really know a man until you’ve gotten him drunk on chocolate martinis, and by that measure I KNOW CHANG VERY WELL INDEED.

Anyway, Brother Chang is a fellow SF writer, and he has decided to follow me down the self-publishing path I walked with some success before the magical 47North spaceship beamed me up. To that end, I want to direct your gaze toward his author page on Lulu, where he is offering up his three SF novels: HARVESTMAN, THE ASTROGATRIX, and AUGUSTA, MOTHER OF SALT. (HARVESTMAN is also available on Amazon here.)

So if your fancy new futuristic word tablet is out of new stuff to put on it, and you dig straight-up SF, consider supporting a deserving new author who is also a really nice guy EVEN IF HE CAN’T HOLD HIS CHOCOLATE MARTINIS. (Not a euphemism.)

books. friends. writing.

book b-day: “untalented”.

My friend Katrina Archer has a novel out today. It’s a fantasy novel called “Untalented”, and the cover is simply gorgeous.

Kat is a fellow Viable Paradise XII alum, and boy howdy, has VPXII produced some excellent writers. And not only are my VP friends great wordsmiths and -plumbers, but they’re also genuinely fine and fun people. 

(And did I mention how flipping gorgeous the cover for Kat’s novel is?)

Anyway, it’s out today, and you should check it out if fantasy novels float your boat. I know Kat’s writing, and I know you’ll find she’s a new and rising talent worth supporting. Even if she does keep trying to convince me that she lives in this mythical land to the north of us called Canadia. Everyone knows there’s nothing but ice dragons and snow ferrets north of the Wall.

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

the lucky giveaway winners who are winners of the giveaway.

There were 204 response comments to the Frontlines giveaway. This morning, I employed a random number picker to spit out two very random numbers:

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According to my scientific calculations (and starting the count from the oldest comment), the winners are:

Ken Malphurs and Marlo Brown.

Congratulations, you two. Please contact me at marko.kloos@gmail.com and let me know your shipping addresses and how/if you want me to sign/personalize the books. They’ll be winging their way to you this week.

Thanks for playing, everyone! I may do more of these in the future.

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

frontlines series giveaway.

IMG_0071

I’m in the mood to give something away, so I’m going to do a thing. Let’s call it a….”giveaway”. Yeah, that’s a good name for it.

If you would like to receive signed and personalized print copies of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE, leave an affirmative comment on this post. One comment per person, please—no multiple entries.

At the end of the coming weekend (that’s Sunday, July 20th, around 6pm), I shall pick two winners via random number generator and close the comments. I will announce the winning entries on Monday morning, at which point the winners can contact me via email for a mailing address and personalization details. (If you’d rather just get the books without me defiling them with my signature, that’s OK too.)

This giveaway is open to readers all over the world. If you win, I will ship the books to you whether you live right here in Upper Cryogenica, at the northern tip of Norway, the southern tip of Australia, or anywhere in between, even if you are currently pulling duty at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, absolutely FREE OF CHARGE.

One entry each. Open to anyone in the world. You know how to proceed. EXECUTE.

capitalism. gadgetry. technology. writing.

clickity-clack.

The Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard that ships with new Macs is very sleek and stylish, but it doesn’t stand up to hard typing. It has minimal key travel, lacks a Delete key, and the tactile feedback is so-so at best. For checking Facebook and writing emails, it’s OK, but folks who have to drum out thousands of words a day need something a little more industrial.

I’ve been a long-time fan of the old IBM Model M, the clicky battleship-grade keyboards from the 1990s. I still have three or four of the old things, and all of them are working. With every passing year, however, it gets more difficult to make them work with modern PCs. Not only do they require PS/2 adapters, but they also draw a lot of power through the USB port, and most PS/2-to-USB adapters will not work with a Model M correctly. Also, using them with a Mac requires remapping of the Control, Alt, and Option keys, which are backwards on a Mac, so that’s a bit of a hassle. {Also, the Model M has the old PC standard Ctrl and Alt keys, whereas the Mac has Control, Option, and Command keys, which means you’re always one modifier key short when you use a Model M with a Mac.)

Until now, I haven’t really come across a good up-to-date replacement for the Model M. I’ve tried a bunch of mechanical keyboards made for gaming, but they’re a bit too bulky and specialized, and not really made with lots of heavy typing in mind. They have lots of superfluous features and usually take up about as much desk space as a family-sized pizza. The ones I found that were less frilly didn’t quite have the right feel to the keys. None of them had a clean design and the satisfying clicky action of the old Model M.

And then I found this one:

WP 20140708 14 39 47 Pro

Typist Nirvana, now in glossy piano black.

That’s the Das Keyboard, specifically the Professional Model S for the Mac. They also make a PC version, and a stealth model with no lettering on the keycaps for you touch-typist show-offs.

Yeah, it’s pretty pricy, but for a writer, it’s the main interface with the PC and by far the hardest-used part of the whole system. It makes no sense to save on this particular part of the machine.

The Das Keyboard has Cherry MX Blue key switches, not the expensive-to-make buckling springs of the original model M, but they have the same sort of satisfying clicky sound and tactile feedback. 

Typing on this thing is an absolute pleasure, it looks good, and it works with any system that has USB ports. There are two USB ports on the side for thumb drives and mouse dongles and such, and it’s refreshingly Spartan in design—no neon lights, rows of Macro keys, volume wheels, or built-in laser projector and weather station. Just a glossy black chassis with the standard key layout, and that’s it. 

It’s not a gaming keyboard, and it has no other frills. (The key caps aren’t even illuminated, which seems to be a standard feature on high-end keyboards these days.) The Cherry MX Blue switches are not quite as noisy as the buckling springs on the Model M, but they still make enough of a racket that you’ll keep your spouse or roommate up if you use the keyboard anywhere near the bedroom. But for hard typing, there’s nothing better on the market right now. Plus, you know, it has a German article in front of “keyboard” which automatically imbues it with Teutonic engineering mojo.

If you type a lot, and you can’t stand the shitty $10 that came with your computer (or the $50 picture-of-a-keyboard they ship with macs these days), do your hands a favor and look into one of these. They’re the closest you’ll get to the old Model M clicky monsters without requiring any adapter voodoo or eBay adventures. The Das Keyboard Professional Model S gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from the Munchkin Wrangler Gear Whore Labs.

family. friends. travel. writing.

hey, look. it’s july already.

Wow, will you look at that calendar? Seems like we’re a week into July already. 

I’m still writing on the third Frontlines novel, which was TECHNICALLY DUE LAST MONTH. Erm. Let us not speak of this right now and continue on to other subjects. (I’ll be done soon, I promise.)

Team Munchkin Wrangler just got back from a  two-week trip to see the in-laws in North Carolina. The new Dogevan performed splendidly. Lots of storage and cargo space for all the clothes and gifts we ferried south, a built-in entertainment system to keep the kids happy on the 16-hour drive south, a built-in GPS system to keep me from having to rig my iPad up on the dash, and 280 ponies under the hood to gallop up a highway on-ramp and merge into fast-moving traffic without breaking a sweat. And the driver’s seat in the new van has electrically adjustable lumbar support, which is the berries for comfort.

The trip went well, but the environment at my in-laws wasn’t exactly conducive to productivity, to put it mildly. I got a fair bit written, but not nearly as much as I had hoped, so now I’m back on crunch time schedule at home so I can get this thing finished ASAP. 

Readercon is coming up next weekend, which is my main Nerd Social of the year. I get to see my friends and hang out with fellow SF/F folks. There is drinking and hanging out, attending readings and panels, and going out to the now-traditional greasy spoon breakfasts and barbecue dinners together. If you’re going to be at Readercon and you see me around, feel free to walk up and say hello. I promise I won’t try to hand-sell you any books or anything.