Category: wild cards.

books. wild cards.

Knaves Over Queens

So there’s this new Wild Cards novel called KNAVES OVER QUEENS, and it has a cover and a release date for the UK edition:

It’ll be out on June 28 from Harper Collins Voyager UK, and it’s the first time a Wild Cards novel sees publication in the UK before the US. There’ll be a US edition too, of course, but UK booksellers will gladly ship to the US as well if you don’t want to wait another year or so for the Tor version to appear on shelves here.

For KNAVES OVER QUEENS, I came up with a new ace called Archimedes, and then sent him right off to war on his very first assignment. If you’ve been reading my blog, you can probably guess which war that is, considering it’s a British-themed book with British aces.

Here’s the promo text from the publisher:

“The return of the famous shared-world superhero books created and edited by George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire

For decades, George R.R. Martin – bestselling author of A Song of Ice and Fire – has collaborated with an ever-shifting ensemble of science fiction and fantasy icons to create the amazing Wild Cards universe.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Earth’s population was devastated by a terrifying alien virus. Those who survived were changed for ever. Some, known as Jokers, were cursed with bizarre mental and physical deformities; others, granted superhuman abilities, are known as Aces. Now the virus has reached Britain…

Queen Margaret rules over a country in which such legendary figures as Herne the Hunter, Spring-heeled Jack and Babh, the goddess of war, roam at will. Her Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill – gifted with extraordinary longevity – together with the Enigma ace – Alan Turing – set up a special organization named the Order of the Silver Helix. They will need all the wild cards they can find if they are to deal with the terrifying mutations thrown up by the virus.

KNAVES OVER QUEENS – the first ever Wild Cards novel set in the UK, and a perfect jumping-in point for readers new to this shared world – features a stunning collection of original stories from such luminaries of the world of science fiction and fantasy as Paul Cornell, Marko Kloos, Mark Lawrence, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Emma Newman, Peter Newman, Peadar O Guilin, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Caroline Spector and Charles Stross.”

June also marks the release of another Wild Cards novel in the US. That one is LOW CHICAGO, and I have a novella in that one as well, so June marks the first month in which I have two stories out. (Coincidentally, both are novellas, and almost the same word count in length.) I’ve never had a novella published–the Frontlines story MEASURES OF ABSOLUTION is technically a novelette at around 12,000 words–so this just doubles the awesome.

I know most of you are here for the military SF, but I have to tell you that I love working on Wild Cards stories, and I feel that the stuff I’m writing in that world is some of the best material I’ve ever written. I’ve done short stories, but I am primarily a novelist, and the constraints of the novelette/novella length of my Wild Cards contributions have made me much better at pacing and structure for the longer works as well. I hope you give the Wild Cards books a shot.

 

 

 

friends. wild cards.

Evernight

There’s a new Wild Cards story up at tor.com, “Evernight” by Victor Milán. 

This is a bitter-sweet thing because Victor Milán passed away yesterday.

I understand that Victor was practically the father of Wild Cards (he’s the one who gave George R.R. Martin the RPG Superworld for his birthday, which inspired George to start Wild Cards.) I did not get to meet Victor because I only joined the Wild Cards consortium two years ago and haven’t had many chances to meet everybody in real life (it’s a huge group, and a lot of its members live out west, where I am not), and now I’m sad that I won’t get a chance to know him in person. I have a copy of Victor’s book The Dinosaur Lords on my Kindle, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. Now I’ll have to bump it to the top of the reading list.

It’s a strange thing, the human condition…it can make you feel kinship with people you’ve never met, and sorrow at the news of their passing even though you’ve never talked to them.

 

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. 

books. capitalism. wild cards. writing.

It was the night before the night before Christmas

Those are my author copies of POINTS OF IMPACT. They just arrived on the Big Brown Truck of Happiness yesterday. This is the culmination of my productive output in 2017, which has been a super difficult year for getting creative work done.

POINTS OF IMPACT, the sixth book in the Frontlines series, will be out on January 9 in Kindle, paperback, and Audible formats. Order early, order often! (And yes, pre-orders are good for writers because good pre-order numbers impress publishers and make it more likely for them to want more books in the series.)

That’s the series so far in publication order. I did get to have input regarding the covers, and I like that we managed to have a distinctive color for every book. I think they look pretty sweet all together on the shelf like that.

2018 will be a good year for me as far as published works are concerned. POINTS OF IMPACT will be out in January. In March, Voyager UK will publish our British-themed Wild Cards volume KNAVES OVER QUEENS, which features a Wild Cards novella written by me. In June, Tor Books will publish LOW CHICAGO, the second book in the Wild Cards “American triad”, containing my novella STRIPES. I’m pretty proud of that one and think it’s one of the best things I’ve written so far. (The first book of the American triad is MISSISSIPPI ROLL, which is out from Tor Books this month. I don’t have a story in that one, but my friends and esteemed fellow Wild Cards rogues Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Carrie Vaughn, David D. Levine, and Cherie Priest do.)

And chances are good that I’ll have another military SF novel out with 47North before the end of the year. That one will not be a Frontlines book, but the first one in a new series. (Does that mean Frontlines is finished, you ask? Absolutely not. I just felt that it was time to have another playground to explore new ideas and characters so I am not in the same poor guy’s head all the time.) I think I’ve cooked up a really cool world and some kick-ass characters, and I hope you’ll like them. But more on that front later…

 

 

 

 

books. travel. wild cards. writing.

Emerging from the word mines

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

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.

 

books. wild cards.

wild cards I-V, now as ebooks.

The Wild Cards world is an alternate history universe created and edited by George R. R. Martin. It’s a gritty and grungy take on the superhero genre. I don’t usually play in other peoples’ creative playgrounds, but I absolutely could not refuse to be part of this one, because it’s SO MUCH FUN.

If you are unfamiliar with Wild Cards, but interested in checking out that world, Macmillan has released the first five Wild Cards books as an e-book collection. You can get it from Amazon for the Kindle here, or for all other electronic formats (Nook, Google Play, iBooks, Kobo, and eBooks.com) via the links on Macmillan‘s page.

travel. wild cards. writing.

door, ass, way out, etc.

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. wild cards. writing.

wild cards world.

Speaking of WILD CARDS–if you’re at all interested in this shared-universe series, you should check out the new Wild Cards World, which has information on all the characters, writers, and books of the Wild Cards universe.

I feel incredibly privileged to be a part of this project. There are a lot of awesome writers in the Wild Cards consortium, and the combined creative output over the last 29 years has been staggering in scope, quantity, and quality. If you’re into superheroes, but you like your world and storylines with some grit in it, check out the Wild Cards universe.

books. wild cards. writing.

low chicago.

George R.R.Martin announced on his Not A Blog that LOW CHICAGO, the 25th Wild Cards volume, has been sent off to the publisher, Tor. As I may have mentioned, oh, a hundred times or so, I have a novella in that volume. It’s called “Stripes”, and it features my character Khan, who is a very bad dude doing Very Bad Dude things.

I had a lot of fun writing Khan. He’s a great POV character, and his story is told in third person past tense, which is a nice change from the Frontlines narrative, which is told in first person present tense from behind young master Andrew Grayson’s eyes. It was a good change of pace, and I think the story is pretty good, but you’ll have to judge that for yourselves when LOW CHICAGO comes out. I’ll share the publication date in this spot as soon as we get word back from Tor.