Category: wild cards.

wild cards. writing.

This post brought to you by the Superhero Writers Union.

I love writing for Wild Cards. It’s an amazingly detailed world that has been expanded by thirty-plus writers over thirty years, and it’s a ton of fun to be a part of that. I mean, I get to make up my own super-powered characters and then let them loose in a playground that has been constantly expanded and improved for three decades. And the Wild Cards consortium is just stacked with super-nice and super-talented people.

That said, there’s one thing that annoys me about being a Wild Cards writer, and that’s entitled Game of Thrones fans.

Every time GRRM posts something on social media about Wild Cards, it takes about five seconds before someone responds with a dismissive one-liner that totally shits on whatever it is he’s trying to promote or announce. And it’s always a variation of the same boring, unoriginal garbage. Finish Winds of Winter. Nobody cares about Wild Cards. WHERE’S THE BOOK, GEORGE? NOT BUYING ANYTHING FROM YOU UNTIL YOU FINISH WINDS OF WINTER. Etcetera, etcetera. Yawn.

GRRM is the editor of Wild Cards (along with Melinda Snodgrass). He edits the books, he doesn’t write them. They are written by the members of the Wild Cards consortium. It’s a total dick move to dismiss out of hand the talents and work of the writers just because you think that the editor of the book ought to be spending all his time on that other book, the one you think you’re entitled to receive. (Never mind that “nobody cares about Wild Cards” is flat-out wrong. Our signings and panels are always busy, and the longest signing line I’ve ever sat for was a Wild Cards signing. The series has picked up a lot of fans in thirty years, and I highly suspect that it wouldn’t be thirty years old–or getting developed into a TV series AS I TYPE THIS–if nobody cared about it.)

I’m pretty proud of my Wild Cards contributions. I think they are some of the best stories I’ve written so far. And it makes me cranky whenever we try to do Wild Cards promo, and some whining garage dweller comes along and dismisses the whole thing with prejudice because OMG GRRM SPENT HIS TIME ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN WINDS OF WINTER. It annoys me, and when I am annoyed, I start adding names to my Go Fuck Yourself list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

wild cards.

Coming up Aces

I wrote a blog post about the difficulty of creating compelling superheroes and villains in a world with an established canon spanning 70 years, where hundreds of aces and jokers have already been put on the page by dozens of other writers.

You can read the blog entry over at the Wild Cards blog.

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.
travel. wild cards. writing.

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

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

<is handed note from off-screen>

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.)


books. wild cards.

A winner is you!

I plugged the number of comments into a random number picker, which has determined that Bryan Porter is the winner of the Knaves Over Queens hardcover. Congratulations, Bryan! Please email me at frontlines@markokloos.com to let me know where to send it, and whether you want it now or (with more signatures) after Worldcon.

Thanks for playing, everyone. I may do more of these on a regular basis.

books. wild cards.

Knaves Over Queens contest

I am currently sweating in my office in 90-degree weather, which apparently will last all through next week, and working on a new Frontlines novella while I wait for my edit notes for the PALLADIUM WARS novel.

I recently received the contributor copies for the UK/AU versions of LOW CHICAGO and KNAVES OVER QUEENS. One copy goes on my personal brag shelf, but I got two of each, so I thought it might be cool to give one away to a Wild Cards fan. KNAVES OVER QUEENS isn’t going to be out in the US until next year, so other than ordering a copy via Amazon.co.uk, you won’t be able to get your hands on this hardcover in the US just yet.

So here’s your chance. The rules are as follows:

Leave one (1) comment at the bottom of this blog post stating you want a shot at an early hardcover of KNAVES OVER QUEENS. Comments left on Facebook or Twitter will not count, only comments on this blog post.

I will leave the comments open through the end of the weekend. At 0800 Eastern Standard Time on Monday morning, I will close the comments and use a random number generator to pick a winner from the comments.

The winner will receive a signed hardcover copy of KNAVES OVER QUEENS. If the winner so chooses, I will hang on to the book until Worldcon in San Jose and see if I can get Melinda Snodgrass, George R.R. Martin, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Caroline Spector to sign it as well. (We’re doing a Wild Cards signing at Worldcon 76, so chances are probably pretty good.) Or I can sign it by myself and send it on its way on Tuesday morning–your call if you win.

Contest is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. I’ll cover the postage.

 

books. capitalism. wild cards.

Low Chicago is out! Tigers with Tommy guns!

Today is release day for LOW CHICAGO, the twenty-fifth Wild Cards volume, which means today is my second book release day of 2018 because I have a novella in that book. The novella is called “Stripes” and features my joker-ace Khan (the half-tiger dude on the cover). He’s shunted back in time to 1920s Chicago where he gets to rewrite a bit of Roaring Twenties history in the only way a 300-pound mob bruiser can: with claws and fists and Tommy guns.

LOW CHICAGO is a stand-alone novel in the Wild Cards universe. While it features characters that have appeared in other volumes, it’s a mosaic novel with a self-contained narrative. You can jump in and read it without any prior knowledge of the Wild Cards universe, and I’d be super happy if you did because that means I’ll get to write more Wild Cards stuff in the future.

The other contributors to LOW CHICAGO are Melinda Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Saladin Ahmed, Christopher Rowe, John Jos. Miller, Paul Cornell, and Mary Anne Mohanraj. All of them are amazing writers, so chances are good you’ll get your money’s worth out of the book. If you decide to pick it up, let me know what you think in the comments!

 

 

 

books. bullets & links. wild cards.

Low Chicago

Today, Tor.com is featuring a long excerpt from LOW CHICAGO, the Wild Cards novel out in June. The stripey fellow on the featured image is my Wild Cards joker-ace Khan, and he appears in the excerpt (which is the interstitial for the novel, written by John Joseph Miller.)

It’s time-travel story, so you can probably guess from Khan’s attire in which period of Chicago history he finds himself after the events in the excerpt. I hope you give the novel a shot when it’s out because I really liked writing that particular novella, and I think it turned out pretty well.

(LOW CHICAGO will be released on June 12.)

books. capitalism. wild cards.

Update from the word mines

I haven’t posted anything lately because I am still at work finishing the current novel. It still has a provisional title, but the series it kicks off has a name now: THE PALLADIUM WARS.

(It’s military SF, but the scope is a little wider than Frontlines because it’s written from multiple points of view, so if that kind of narrative is your cup of tea, you’ll probably like it. At least I hope so, because the sales of the first book will determine the future of the series, and I really like the world I cooked up for THE PALLADIUM WARS.) More on that later when I’ve turned in the book and we have concrete plans for the publication date.

Oh, and if you’re interested in getting into the Wild Cards universe and don’t know where to start: Macmillan has a special on the three books of the Fort Freak triad, which is a good jumping-in point. All three books together are $21 and change, and they’re available from all the major ebook retailers.

The latest (current) triad is called the American Triad: Mississippi Roll (published in December 2017), Low Chicago (out in June this year, and featuring my novella STRIPES), and Texas Hold’Em (out in October.) Gritty and fun superhero stuff, fun characters written by a group of super-talented writers, and now in development for TV…so get on board and become a fan before everyone jumps on that bandwagon once it becomes the next GoT. (And I hope it will do just that, because I want to see Khan tear off some faces in a live-action TV show.)

 

Uncategorized wild cards.

Texas Hold ‘Em

TEXAS HOLD ‘EM, the third book in the Wild Cards “American Triad” has a cover and a release date: 10/23/18.  I don’t have a story in that one, but it features work by fellow Wild Cards writers David Anthony Durham, Max Gladstone, Victor Milan, Diana Rowland, Walton Simons, Caroline Spector, and William F. Wu. The three books of the American Triad (MISSISSIPPI ROLL, LOW CHICAGO, and TEXAS HOLD ‘EM) are all stand-alone mosaic novels, as is the British WIld Cards volume KNAVES OVER QUEENS that’s going to be released in the UK in June. And both the American Triad books and the standalone UK volume are heavily featuring new Wild Cards characters written by the new additions to the Wild Cards consortium.

Look at Caroline Spector’s Amazing Bubbles on the cover! I can’t even be mad at her for cleaning Khan’s clock in the deathmatch we did at Woldcon 74 in Kansas City. Our fight was the first one up, so I was the first one to get dumped from the bracket. In Khan’s defense, the Amazing Bubbles was probably the worst possible opponent for him. She absorbs kinetic energy and turns it into energy bubbles, which are as dense as she wants them to be. And Khan is a bruiser whose tools are pretty much all in the “kinetic energy” department, so he didn’t last long against her. Such are the perils of being a one-trick pony.