It took a little while, but the set is complete. That’s the commemorative shadow box I got from my publisher for selling over 100,000 copies of POINTS OF IMPACT. That means every single Frontlines novel has sold in excess of 100k.
I’ll bask in the completeness of those stats as long as I can, but ORDERS OF BATTLE, Frontlines #7, will come out in December and promptly ruin that streak for a while. But complaining about that would be tacky and gauche, because in the grand scheme of things, getting one’s sales feng shui messed up is a pretty trivial concern.
Thank you to everyone who has bought and read POINTS OF IMPACT, and I hope you get back on the ride for ORDERS OF BATTLE, because I think it will be worth your while.
I got word that CHAINS OF COMMAND is nominated for the 2018 Best Book Award in Poland. From what I know, that’s the Polish equivalent of the Goodreads Awards and the largest book award in Poland, so that’s pretty cool.
I’m feeling very warmly about Poland. My Polish publisher was the first foreign house to buy the rights to all six Frontlines books, and the Fabryka Słow covers are the best-looking of all the editions. And my favorite video game of all time, The Witcher 3, was made by a Polish software developer, CD Projekt. That’s a lot of positive associations they’ve managed to rack up in my book.
(Also, in a strange twist of fate, both my and the wife’s paternal grandmothers came from the same town in Poland, now called Elblag. When they lived there in the early 20th century, it was East Prussia, so they weren’t Polish, but they both had Polish last names.)
Thanks, Polish readers, for liking the Frontlines series so much! And if there’s ever a Polish equivalent of ComicCon, I’d love to come over for a visit.
All right. Fine. After some feedback from fans and colleagues, I have reconsidered my stance on award posts. Even though it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, here’s my own award eligibility post.
In 2018, I had two published works that are eligible.
First, POINTS OF IMPACT, book 6 in the Frontlines series, came out in January and is therefore eligible in the Best Novel category for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Second, my Wild Cards novella STRIPES was published in our mosaic novel LOW CHICAGO in July and is therefore eligible in the Best Novella category.
And lastly, the FRONTLINES series as a whole is eligible in the Best Series category for the Hugo Award (not the Nebula because there’s no Best Series category there.)
You have to be a member of Dublin Worldcon 2019 or San Jose Worldcon 2018 to nominate works for the 2019 Hugos; only members of Dublin 2019 get to vote on the final ballot. And you have to be an active or associate member of SFWA to nominate works for the 2019 Nebulas or vote on the final ballot.
If you find that any of my mentioned works merit nomination, feel free to put them forward for the shortlist when you make your choices this year. BUT YOU DON’T GOTTA. That is all.
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.
Today is the last day for Hugo nominations for Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. If you’re a member of Worldcon 74 (MidAmericon II) or Worldcon 75, and you haven’t yet finalized your ballot, now’s the time.
And I won’t engage in self-pimpage for the Frontlines stuff, but if you’re still nominating, I’d urge you to consider WILD CARDS as a nominee for the new Best Series Hugo. It’s been going on for so long, and so many great stories have been contributed to by so many talented people, that it absolutely deserves to be on the shortlist. (The nominees for Best Series must be an ongoing series of at least three volumes of at least 240,000 words total by the end of 2016, of which one volume was published in 2016. Wild Cards’ word and volume count more than qualifies, and there was a 2016 release, HIGH STAKES.)
NEWSFLASH: I did not win the Dragon Award for Best Military SF Novel. David Weber did, and congratulations to him. Congratulations also to Larry Correia, whose SON OF THE BLACK SWORD won the award for Best Fantasy Novel.
(I didn’t expect to beat David on votes because he has a lot more fans and a lot more books out than I do, and I am but an egg in the genre.)
But it was fun and an honor just to be nominated, and I want to thank everyone who voted for CHAINS OF COMMAND and got it onto the shortlist. I wasn’t at DragonCon because I promised the wife I’d take September off from traveling, but my friend Melissa F. Olson graciously agreed to accept for me in the unlikely event of my win. I don’t know who’s more relieved now—Melissa because she didn’t have to walk up to the podium and make an acceptance speech…or me because Melissa didn’t have a chance to get creative with that acceptance speech.
