Pluto was never not a planet
My friend John Scalzi was kind enough to let me borrow his blog today, where I talk a little about the central idea behind Aftershocks.
In related news, I have been informed by reliable sources that I can claim the first use of the term “giraffe-adjacent” on Whatever. May it stand to future historians as one of my greatest achievements.
AFTERSHOCKS, the first book in my new SF series called “The Palladium Wars”, is out today!
It’s available on Amazon in Kindle, Audible, trade paperback, and hardcover forms. And if you are a Prime member in the US, the Kindle version is available to you free to read for the month of July as part of the Prime Reading program.
(If you are a Prime member and you pre-ordered the Kindle version already, don’t get too upset about not getting to read it for free like those late-to-the-party Prime Reading bandwagon jumpers. I get royalties from the pre-sales, so I’ll be able to write more books, and you get to keep the Kindle book even if you maxed out your Prime Reading borrowing library because you own it for good.)
I am about to turn in the second novel, called BALLISTIC, which is scheduled to be released in June of next year. And for those of you who kept asking on Twitter and via email: there will be another Frontlines novel, I will be writing it between now and the end of the year, and it will be out next year as well. In the meantime, I am writing on a Frontlines novella to be released in a few weeks, and there will be at least one more Frontlines story out on the Kindle after that before the next novel comes out.
The novella I am currently writing has been a great way to get my head back into the Frontlines universe after spending a year and a half with the characters in the Palladium Wars system. I hope you’ll enjoy what’s coming in the next year.
Sorry for the delay, but I had to stay mostly offline this past weekend and yesterday because I was away on SECRET BUSINESS, so I didn’t get around to spinning up the old Random Numbers Generator and let Mr. Computer pick 10 entries out of the hat until this morning.
Here are the winners (with email addresses partially anonymized):
Dave Baker (SpXXXXX@sswidepot.com)
Sonja (sonjaXXXXXX@hotmail.com)
Stephanie Belser (sXXXXXXX@peoplepc.com)
JD (JdXXXXXXX@t-online.de)
Stray (shcXXXX@gmail.com)
Acidjunk (aciXXXXX@gmail.com)
Heather S (hsXXXX@vt.edu)
Guido (guido@XXXXrie.com)
mpeterke (mpXXXXXX@gmail.com)
William (williamdXXXXXX@gmail.com)
Congratulations! If you just found your name on the list, please send me an email to frontlines@markokloos.com and let me know where to send your free copy of AFTERSHOCKS. Please also tell me whether you want your copy signed, signed and personalized, or left blank.
The AFTERSHOCKS giveaway is now closed. Later today, I’ll pull ten numbers out of a hat and match them with their respective comments, and then I’ll post the winners here for all to see. (If you find yourself on the winning list, email me at frontlines@markokloos.com with a mailing address.)
Also, AFTERSHOCKS is one of the Amazon First Reads books on Amazon.co.uk this month. If you are a UK-based Prime member, you get to download AFTERSHOCKS for free all month, which means that you get to read it a few weeks before everyone else (it comes out in the US on July 1.)
US readers, I don’t have a way for you to get your hands on an early copy (other than the giveaway that just ended), but there are more news in the pipeline regarding the July launch, so stay tuned.
I just got my author copies for AFTERSHOCKS, so let’s have ourselves a little giveaway! Everybody likes giveaways, right? They have layers. Like a parfait.
Anyway, I am going to give away TEN signed trade paperback copies of Aftershocks. Because the Goodreads giveaway is limited to US residents, and because I like my international fans, I will make this giveaway available to ANYONE IN THE WORLD. If you put your name into the hat and end up winning, I will ship the book to you regardless of your place of residence, as long as it’s a.) on this planet, and b.) somehow reachable by some sort of postal or package service. No personal hand-deliveries!
TO PARTICIPATE:
Leave a comment on this post stating that you would like a copy. I will keep comments open until 5pm EST on Friday, May 31. Then I will employ a random number generator to pick ten winners based on the number on their comment, and post the results the next day, June 1, with instructions for receiving your giveaway copy. I will cover all shipping regardless of destination.
AFTERSHOCKS, the first novel in my new series THE PALLADIUM WARS, will be out on July 1. My publisher, 47North, is giving away 100 ebook copies via Goodreads, and if you live in the U.S., you can throw your hat into that ring from May 31 until June 30:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/292827-aftershocks
Interplanetary strife! Corporate intrigue! Ancient grudges! Shadowy conspiracies! Firefights and space battles! And yours for the low, low price of FREE…if you manage to snag one of the 100 copies they’re giving away.
I’ve had more than a few people asking where they can read the two stories of mine that were used for the (amazingly done) episodes in Tim Miller and David Fincher’s “Love Death + Robots” on Netflix.
Episode 10 of Love Death + Robots, “Shape-shifters”, is based on my short story “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare”, which you can find here on Amazon in DRM-free Kindle format.
Episode 13 of Love, Death & Robots, “Lucky 13”, is based on my short story “Lucky Thirteen”, a story in the Frontlines universe. You can find it here on Amazon, in Kindle and Audible formats.
Lucky Thirteen has been out since the early days of Frontlines, and many readers have downloaded and read Halley’s rookie pilot story already.
“On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare” has never been published anywhere before today, but a lot of people have asked for an opportunity to get their hands on it, so I decided to make it available the same way I offered up Lucky Thirteen a few years back, via Kindle Direct. (The Kindle version is DRM-free and has lending enabled.)
Paula Guran at Locus Magazine reviewed KNAVES OVER QUEENS, our first UK-centered Wild Cards mosaic novel, and had some nice things to say about it.
KNAVES OVER QUEENS came out in the UK last year already, and it will be available in the US in August of this year. (That’s due to some release date shuffling and release precedence by the publisher.) If you want to get your US-based hands on it earlier than August, I hear that Amazon UK will gladly ship books to the US.
I have a novella in that volume, called PROBATIONARY. It tells the story of the first mission of newly minted British ace and Silver Helix member, Sub-Lieutenant Rory Campbell, who gets to assist the British armed forces in their mission to reclaim the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982. He has a very utilitarian and not-so-flashy talent–he can control directed EMP blasts. That makes him useful as a military asset, even if it won’t get him on the cover of SEXY ACES magazine.
Other novellas in the book were written by Emma Newman, Charlie Stross, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Caroline Spector, Paul Cornell, Peadar Ó Guilín, Mark Lawrence, Peter Newman, and Melinda Snodgrass. (The volume was edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass.)
It’s a fun book that’s a little off the beaten path for Wild Cards because it’s not US-centric. (On a related note, I had to take out one instance of a character saying “lock and load” because the editor at Harper Collins UK said it was an Americanism. I’ve done some research since then, and it turns out that the phrase originated with the British Army in the days of the flintlock rifle, so I WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL.)
Anyway, PROBATIONARY is a war story, and I tend to be pretty okay at writing those, so I think it turned out quite well. If you’re interested, pick up a copy of KNAVES OVER QUEENS from a UK bookseller online, or pre-order the US edition.
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.
Andrew Liptak at The Verge interviewed me about my new series, The Palladium Wars. I go a little bit into the world-building for the new story, and how my week at the Launch Pad astronomy workshop in 2017 helped to make the new series more scientifically grounded.
With the publication of the interview, the cover for AFTERSHOCKS, the first book in the series (out on July 1), is now public, so here it is in all its glory. It’s very different from any of the Frontlines covers in art style, which is intentional. Frontlines is a first-person story that’s limited to the scope of one point of view. Palladium Wars is a multi-POV narrative with a much bigger scope, and the cover is supposed to reflect that.
AFTERSHOCKS will be available in paperback, Kindle, and <drumroll> HARDCOVER. This is my first book to get the hardcover treatment. There will of course be an Audible version as well, and I am happy to report that it will be narrated by the awesomely talented Luke Daniels, who has been the voice for all the Frontlines novels so far.