Category: books.

books. frontlines. writing.

Frontlines #7 cover

That’s the cover for ORDERS OF BATTLE, seventh book in the Frontlines series. As with all Frontlines covers, it features spaceships…but as with all Frontlines covers, the art doesn’t necessarily correspond to any specific event in the book, so don’t try to divinate plot points or anything.

What I can tell you about ORDERS OF BATTLE is that it takes place a few years after the events of the last Frontlines novel, POINTS OF IMPACT, and that it follows Andrew Grayson on the next chapter of his life and career in the war against the Lankies. Without giving away too much, I can say that those of you who want to know just what the hell the Lankies are and where they originated should get your money’s worth out of this book and the ones which are to follow.

(Yes, that means there’s a Frontlines #8 in the works.)

ORDERS OF BATTLE will be released on December 8, 2020. I know the product page doesn’t show an Audible book, but that’s most likely because it’s still in production. (The Audible versions need to be narrated, which means the production calendar has to allow for the schedule of the narrator.) But this will be my ninth published novel with 47North, and all of the previous ones have had Audible versions on release day, so I have no reason to believe this one will be different.

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Isolation update

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We are safely isolating here at Castle Frostbite and doing what we do most of the time anyway, which is to cook food and eat snacks and play games. The kids have been in an online charter school for a year now, so not much has changed around here other than the fact that I still can’t find toilet paper at our usual grocery store.

Life and work continue as we wait out this current craziness. I am busy with CITADEL, third novel in the Palladium Wars series. Number 2, called BALLISTIC, is going to be released next month, and I hope you give it a read because I think it turned out very well. Booklist had some nice things to say about it: “Fans of The Expanse series will enjoy this engaging and fast-moving combination of corporate machinations, police procedural, and interstellar naval combat.” And while we’re on the subject of reviews, LOCUS gave AFTERSHOCKS a very nice review in their April 2020 issue, calling it “a great start to what should be a fun, thought-provoking series.” 

I hope you’re all doing well in your respective isolation headquarters. Maybe one day we’ll have conventions and bar-hopping again, but I have a feeling it won’t be this year. Alas, that will make the company of our friends ever so much sweeter and the overpriced hotel cocktails ever so much tastier.

books. capitalism. frontlines. shameless self-promotion. the palladium wars. wild cards. writing.

Release date for Frontlines #7

ORDERS OF BATTLE, the seventh novel in the Frontlines series, will be released on December 8. There’s now a product page up on Amazon, where you can pre-order the book on Kindle, in paperback format, or as an Audible book:

There’s no cover art yet as the book is still in production, but that will be added as soon as the cover is final.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the product page for BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series, due to be released on May 26:

And there’s a third release this year! This one is my Wild Cards novelette titled BERLIN IS NEVER BERLIN, due out from Tor.com on May 6:

Not a bad year for new releases, I’d say. And I am hard at work to make sure that things will keep coming at this pace.

 

books. frontlines. writing.

Frontlines #7 is done

I was planning to go to Detroit for ConFusion this past weekend, but the draft for the seventh Frontlines book, ORDERS OF BATTLE, wasn’t quite done yet. Work comes before fun because fun don’t pay the bills, so I sucked it up and cancelled the trip altogether just before the weekend.

It turned out to be a good decision in more than one way because I came down with a stomach bug over the weekend, and a winter storm moved in that would have made the 1,200-mile round trip a bit of an ordeal, so I am glad it panned out the way it did even if I was moping a bit on Friday that I wouldn’t get to hang out with friends.

But all’s well–I turned in the book on Monday morning, and my editor has assured me that it will make a 2020 release. I’m guessing it will be out in November or December. (The book needs to be proofread, put into print, get read for an Audible version, have a cover designed, and so on. The schedules of dozens of people have to be in sync, so you can’t just slap a draft onto your editor’s desk and expect to see the book out a month later.)

Now I get to start planning the two novels I’ll be writing this year while I wait for the first round of edits to come back. I do have some Frontlines novellas in the works to fill in the gap between now and the release of ORDERS OF BATTLE, so I should have something for you soon to tide you over.

 

 

books. bullets & links. capitalism. shameless self-promotion. the palladium wars.

Pub date change for BALLISTIC

I’ve been informed that BALLISTIC, second novel of the Palladium Wars series, has been moved up in the schedule for a publication date of May 26, 2020.

If you’d like to pre-order it, you can do so via this link. BALLISTIC will be available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and Audible formats. (Lots of pre-orders will make my publisher happy, which means an increased chance there will be more Frontlines and Palladium Wars novels past 2020. Just sayin’.)

 

 

books. writing.

My creative balance for the decade

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According to the Intertubes, that is my creative output for the 2010s. 

Seven novels, two Wild Cards novellas and one novelette, and three short stories. Their tally is missing one short story, “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare”, which was used for LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS this year. I’ve also written two more novels this year that won’t be out until 2020, so I’ve managed to write nine novels in the 2010s. And Jet City Comics did a four-issue Frontlines graphic novel called REQUIEM, which is also missing from the list.

That’s really not a bad record as far as productivity goes, and I especially like the regular numbers behind the novels, one per year since 2013. From 2020 on, the plan is to bring that number to two a year, so there should be three times as many entries on that page by the end of 2029….provided I don’t get hit by a bus or decide to hang up the keyboard and become a shepherd in New Zealand or something.

Overall, I really can’t complain about the 2010s, even if the second half of the decade has been a little strange and noisy. Since my career started taking off in 2013, I got to launch two SF series and sell over a million copies, see two of my short stories turned into Netflix material, and contribute a good number of words to the Wild Cards universe. I’ve also been able to travel a lot and make a bunch of new friends in my new professional field. If things keep going on this general trajectory, the 2020s should be a very good decade for me. We shall see.

I hope you all had a great holiday season, and I wish you a happy and prosperous 2020.

books. capitalism. the palladium wars.

BALLISTIC cover art

The Amazon product page for BALLISTIC, second novel in the Palladium Wars, now has a picture of the cover on it, so I guess it’s official:

I think it’s a gorgeous cover, and I love the art direction they’ve picked for the Palladium Wars novels so far.

books. writing.

Running a few Sharpies dry

Sitting down this afternoon to sign a bunch of bookplates for hardcovers of AFTERSHOCKS. I am signing these instead of the actual books because the alternative would be to ship me the hardcovers. Those come about 25 to a box, and I have to do 1,800 signatures, so they’d have to send 72 boxes of books to sign, about two pallets.

For those of you who wonder how you sign your name 1,800 times, I can tell you that it’s a little repetitive, and best done while watching Netflix or listening to a book on Audible. Also, you don’t sign the whole stack at once. You split it into smaller stacks that look manageable, and then take breaks in between stacks.

Also, I will tell you that after signing a few hundred bookplates in a row, I understand why famous people often modify their autograph into a quick and easy simplified sort of squiggle. I am not famous and I don’t have to sign any autographs outside of SF conventions and infrequent random requests, but if I had to sign my name hundreds of times in the course of a regular week, I’d have a super simple autograph too.

Some people know that I use fountain pens, but I don’t do bookplates in fountain pen ink. That’s because they usually don’t hold that sort of ink very well, which results in a smeared signature. This stack of bookplates will eat up at least two full fine-point Sharpies.

 

books. frontlines. the palladium wars. writing.

Dispatch from the desk

The most enjoyable words for a writer to read are “Pay To The Order Of…”, and the most enjoyable words for a writer to put down on the page are “THE END”.

I’ve been quiet on here because I’ve spent the last few weeks finishing BALLISTIC, the second book in the Palladium Wars series. But it’s turned in, and once the edits are done, it will make its way through the production line for its scheduled July 2020 release.

I took the holiday weekend off, but now I am back at my desk working on FRONTLINES #7. That’s right, friends and neighbors. It’s in the works, so you can stop emailing me to ask about it. (“Is there going to be a #7?” and “When is the next Frontlines coming out?” make up about 90% of the messages I receive from readers.)

For the release of AFTERSHOCKS, the PR team had me scheduled for a lot of radio interviews, and I find that I enjoy doing those a lot. They only take 15-30 minutes out of my day, and I can do them in my PJs if I want, so that’s easy to fit into the schedule.

Next up will be the Frontlines novella I’ve threatened to release for months now. It kept getting shunted to the back of the line by various other obligations, but now I’ll finally be able to finish it. It takes place concurrently with the events in Frontlines #6, “Points of Impact”, and centers on a character you haven’t met yet. As soon as that one is available for purchase, I’ll make an announcement here on the blog, probably in the next week or two.

books. bullets & links. shameless self-promotion.

An interview and a weekend trip

Here’s an interview with me over on Paul Semel’s blog, in which I talk about the ideas and motivations behind AFTERSHOCKS and the general world-building and setup of the Palladium Wars universe.

I spent part of the weekend in New York City, to have lunch with my editor and take the German nephew along so he could see the Big City. NYC in August is….not my favorite time and place in the world, I have to say. It’s hot, full of tourists (especially Midtown, which is where the visitors I bring along invariably want to go too), and we got there on trash day, which means the olfactory experience was spectacular. But it still has its charms, and some things about NYC will never get old for me. Like the view from the observation deck of the Empire State Building:

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And the building itself is beautiful, of course.

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There’s an Amazon Bookstore right across the street from the lobby entrance of the Empire State Building, so naturally I had to go check it out and get the rare pleasure of seeing one of my books on the shelf of a bookstore. (B&N and BAM won’t stock my books because 47North is an Amazon imprint, so I don’t usually see my name in a dead-tree store.)

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Another cool thing about browsing the SF/F section was seeing the names of lots of friends on the book covers. I get a kick out of that every time I go into a bookstore, even if it’s one where my stuff is not on the shelf. It’s fun to be able to put so many faces to names and be happy for their successes.