Pluto was never not a planet
Author copies for DESCENT, the fourth book in the Palladium Wars series, have arrived at the Castle.
If you’re at all familiar with how things go around here, you know that this means another giveaway is imminent. I’ll start the traditional pre-release contest this weekend and run it for a week as always. (Don’t put your name in the hat already by commenting to that effect on this post; it won’t count.)
The contest prize books will be going out to the winners today. In this round, the international readers were particularly blessed by the random numbers gods. Of twelve books, only three are going to U.S. addresses. The rest are all international: one each to Germany, Finland, and Switzerland, and six(!) to addresses in the UK.
THE THINGS I DO FOR MY INTERNATIONAL READERS.
For a multitude of reasons, I wasn’t able to do my customary early giveaway for new release books until now. SCORPIO will be officially released on Monday, January 1st, so this won’t be an early look at the novel for anyone who gets a copy, but they’ll be signed and they’re ABSOLUTELY FREE to winners, so there’s that. If you want to snag a signed (and personalized upon request) copy of SCORPIO to put on your bookshelf next to all the other novels of mine you undoubtedly own, here’s your chance at last!
The rules are simple as always. Leave a comment on this post, and I’ll let the random number gods pick the winners from the comment pool next Saturday, January 6th, 1200h EST. I will ship the novels to the winners free of charge to anywhere in the world. This time, I’ll give away 12 copies. In the past, the entries have been in the 150-200 range, so 12 random picks constitute a 5% or better chance to win, which is way better than a lottery ticket.
Comments are open. One entry per reader, please, and be sure to register your comment with a valid email address because that’s how I’ll notify the winners.
Ready? GO.
It’s December 1st, which means I can share the reason why the official release date for SCORPIO was moved back a month and a half:
SCORPIO is an Amazon First Reads selection for the month of December. If you’re a Prime member, you can download one of the month’s First Reads offerings for free, so here’s your chance to grab a copy for your Kindelmaschine and get to read SCORPIO a month before its official release.
If you’re not a Prime member, you can buy the Kindle book at a discounted price of $1.99.
Amazon First Reads is only available to US-based customers, but you international readers aren’t going to be left out. I’ll do my usual giveaway of signed books this week, and I’ll give priority to international readers this time.
If you end up getting your copy of SCORPIO on Amazon First Reads this month, I hope you enjoy it. And if you leave a review after you’re done, it’ll keep my editor happy, which means they’ll be paying me to write more books, a win-win scenario for everyone.
The notoriously awards-shy Bundeswehr has started to issue these little badges to German veterans to give them a little something that confirms their status and lets them show their service. I got mine in the mail the other day. It’s not a military award for the uniform, just a lapel pin. The motif is the Iron Cross, the old military award of Germany and the official vehicle marker of Bundeswehr tanks and aircraft, overlaid with the Bundesadler, the Federal eagle. It’s a small gesture that didn’t cost them very much per individual, but it’s something, I suppose.
I got a little busier with my developmental edits for DESCENT than I had expected. I also took off a week to go out of town and visit a friend in Pittsburgh, so I didn’t make any progress on the novella. The edits are almost complete, so I’ve picked up the pen and got things moving again.
There’ll be news on SCORPIO soon, so stay tuned for that. I also have a box of author copies, so I guess it’s time for the traditional giveaway so some of you get signed copies for an early read (and I don’t drown in paperbacks at home.) I’ll get that underway this coming weekend.
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.
Happy WILD CARDS day!
I have a novelette featured in the latest Wild Cards anthology, titled PAIRING UP. It’s out today and available wherever books are sold:
The novelette is called “In The Forests of the Night”, and it features my Wild Cards character Khan, the joker-ace who’s half tiger. The theme of the anthology is, well, pairing up–as in romantic connections. You don’t need to have read prior Wild Cards books to enjoy this one because they’re all stand-alone stories.
Kirkus Reviews did a nice write-up of the book and said nice things about my story, including this nice little pull quote:
Featuring two memorable and downright cool fight scenes, this story has a fitting conclusion that makes it noteworthy.
Other featured writers in this anthology are Kevin Andrew Murphy, Christopher Rowe, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Bradley Denton, Walton Simons, Peter Newman, Gwenda Bond, and David Anthony Durham. It’s a fun collection of romantic superhero entanglements, which is a subject we don’t often touch in Wild Cards.
The ARCs for SCORPIO are in, which officially means it’s a real, actual book now.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the progress bar for DESCENT hasn’t moved a whole lot in the last two weeks. That’s because the whole family came down with COVID two weeks ago, and now that we have recovered, we are hosting family from abroad for a little while. Family visits always keep me extremely busy because I have to function as tour organizer, translator, interpreter, driver, and so on. But the bar is moving again, and I predict that the draft will still be done on schedule.
Lastly, I’ll be at Readercon in mid-July for a few days, so drop by and say hello if you’re going to be there as well. I’ll also have a bunch of these ARCs with me for reviewers and bloggers and so forth, so hit me up for one if you are such a person and you bump into me at Readercon…unless I see you first, in which case I’ll try to push an ARC on you.
I finally got my ducks in a row for the bookplates I promised, and they are on their way. Everyone who requested a bookplate for their misprinted copy of ODDMENTS will receive one in the mail soon.
I also changed the layout of the paperback to reduce the font size and clean up the formatting to make it less of a phone book in size. The new format saved about a hundred print pages. As an added benefit, fewer pages means lower cost, savings which I decided to pass on. The paperback version is now $12.99 instead of $14.99.
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.