Category: writing.

books. writing.

SCORPIO release date change

Some readers have noticed that the release date for SCORPIO has been moved out to January 1, 2024.

There’s a reason for that change, one that I can’t reveal just yet. But I can tell you that good things are happening behind the scenes that will make the new date make sense once I am allowed to disclose them.

Edited to add: if you are a reviewer, book blogger, YouTuber, editor, book club, or someone who otherwise talks up books and makes recommendations, hit me up at marko dot kloos at gmail dot com. I have a number of ARCs (advance reader copies) left over after Readercon, and I can hook you up with one while my supply lasts.

writing.

11JUL23

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

 

–Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

 

books. digital housekeeping. the palladium wars. writing.

Work in progress status update

The edits for SCORPIO are done, and I’ve started work on DESCENT, Palladium Wars #4. My plan is to turn in the draft by the end of July for a release in the first half of next year.

I installed a progress bar widget for WordPress, so now you can all follow along as I write the draft. The progress bar is in the sidebar to the right, on top of all the other widgets, and I’ll update it daily with the current word count.

books. frontlines. writing.

Terms of Enlistment is 10

 

Put on your party hats, because we have a birthday to celebrate. TERMS OF ENLISTMENT is ten years old this month. I brought it out in March 2013, and 47North bought it (and the second Frontlines novel, LINES OF DEPARTURE) in May of that year. Thanks to everyone who has ever bought this book and its sequels, but special thanks go out to those of you who took a chance on a self-published work from an unknown name when I put this novel out on Kindle Direct with the hopes of maybe selling a few hundred copies. It sold rather a lot more than that, which is why I had an agent and a publishing contract less than two months later.

Whenever I read through it these days, I can very much tell that it’s a first novel, but I am also positively surprised by how well it has managed to hold up, so I must have gotten that one mostly right. It certainly changed everything for me–I became a full-time writer that year, and the royalties for my books have been paying the bills since then.

Ten years…. don’t they go by in the blink of an eye. Now let’s see what the next ten years will bring.

 

 

books. frontlines. writing.

My two favorite words to write

This is the part of the novel that the reader hates to read and the writer loves to write. Whenever I type those two words, it’s like a permission slip for my brain to let go of something that has occupied it every day for the better part of a year.

I just turned in the completed draft for SCORPIO, the first novel in a new Frontlines spin-off series. I don’t have an exact release date yet, but it will most likely be toward the end of this year.

Now I’m going to engage in my usual post-draft brain rinse where I work through a backlog of shows and play games for a week or two, and then I’ll reset the office for the new project and get back to work. Next on the docket is Palladium Wars #4, which will be called DESCENT.

2022 wasn’t a great year for me as far as output goes. Starting a new series always takes more time and energy than continuing in an existing world with established characters, and I underestimated how long it would take my brain to turn the idea I had into a cohesive whole. But I think I managed it, and you’ll be able to judge for yourselves when the book comes out later this year.

mental health. writing.

An end-of-year update

Today is the winter solstice, which means the year is pretty much in the bag, so I figured I should do an update because all the cool kids are doing a 2022 recap.

It was a mixed bag of a year for me. I am currently working on getting the next novel out of the door and to my editor by the end of the year. That puts me about six months behind according to the schedule I had set for myself at the beginning of the year. The current novel is the first in a spin-off Frontlines series, and I had planned to turn the draft in by the end of June. That obviously didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, chief among which are “2022” and “OMG LIFE”. I’ve had a rough time with my creative output this year, and while things are progressing again, it feels like my brain is working at about 1/2 the speed it was operating at before the world started going to hell in early 2020.

Remember when I posted about 2020 being really rough for creative work? Yeah. 2022 was even worse for me for some reason. Reading the posts and updates of my writer friends and colleagues on various social media platforms, it looks like I wasn’t the only writer who had a difficult time this year, and that fact is a bit of a comfort because it means it’s not just my stupid brain that was refusing to cooperate. Turns out it’s very hard to shut out the world and make up a new one in your head when the actual world is catching fire all around you every day.

As far as release dates go, I can’t make any accurate predictions because there are many moving parts for my editor to coordinate after I turn in this draft (and the next one.) If I had to guess, I’d say the new novel will be out in the second half of next year.

I hope you all had a less stressful 2022 than I did, and I really hope that 2023 will be less interesting times, in the Chinese proverb meaning of the phrase. I am not telling the new year to “bring it on”, because that’s just asking for it at this point. I’ll just keep putting down words until the work is done, enjoy the company of friends and family, and tune out of the news and social media as much as feasible.

Happy holidays! May Santa (or the loot-conveying mythical figure of your choice) bring you everything you want and need, and may the new year find you healthy and at peace.

 

books. frontlines. writing.

Frontlines #8 now has physical form

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I got my author copies for CENTERS OF GRAVITY today, which means I’m about to do the customary give-away this weekend. Ten signed copies will go out to readers anywhere in the world FREE OF CHARGE. And all will be decided fair and square by random number generator.

I’ll post the giveaway this weekend and let it run for a week as always. The odds to beat are usually pretty good, so check back this weekend if you want a good chance to snag a free signed copy. (That said, I will never advise you against ordering a Kindle or paper copy even if you win a signed freebie, because good sales numbers make my publisher happy, which means I get to keep writing these novels.)

castle frostbite. family. new hampshah. parenting. writing.

Gone fishin’

Girl Child likes to fish, and this is a good time of the year for it, so I have been driving her to her various fishing spots all over town in the last few weeks. I usually sit in the car or my folding camping chair while she is fishing, and I’ve come to appreciate the alibi to do some writing out of the house and away from most connectivity. We go out for a few hours, and I usually come back with a bunch of words that were written without the buzz and ding of notifications or the distraction from the dogs alerting me to the FedEx guy coming up our driveway with CLEAR INTENT TO MURDER US ALL.

The kids are still in Summer Vacation Loafing Mode, and we’ve been out with them to do stuff and enjoy their company. Switching up my writing schedule and adapting it to our other activities is kind of a nice change. It reminds me of the time when they were little and I had to get my writing done while they were napping or playing on the swing set. It’s a good reminder that art supports life, not the other way around, as Stephen King says in “On Writing”. (That’s one of my favorite books about the philosophy of the craft, along with Philip Pullman’s “Daemon Voices” and Lawrence Block’s “Spider, Spin Me A Web”.) The kids will be adults and out of the house soon enough, and then I’ll have all the quiet office time I can stand. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy squeezing in a few hundred words here and there between hitting the good fishing spots, the burger place, and the rock shop where Girl Child likes to spend all her cash. 

 

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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…