Category: frontlines.

books. contests and giveaways. frontlines.

Centers of Gravity signed paperback giveaway

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Here they are: ten fresh copies of Centers of Gravity, ready to be signed and mailed to their new owners. And the best part is that YOU, YES YOU, could be one of those new owners!

The rules are as before: leave a comment on this blog entry to throw your hat into the ring. I will leave the comments open until next Sunday, August 28, 12:00 noon. My magic random numbers generator will then spit out ten winning numbers. I’ll count the comments, and if your entry matches one of the numbers, you win one of these paperbacks. I’ll announce the winners on Sunday afternoon with further instructions for claiming your copy.

As always, I’ll spring for the shipping, and the contest is free to anyone in the world as long as your address can be found by your country’s postal service. (Sorry, not paying for helicopter delivery to your off-the-grid mountaintop retreat on the South Island of New Zealand or something.)

Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

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Frontlines #8 now has physical form

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I got my author copies for CENTERS OF GRAVITY today, which means I’m about to do the customary give-away this weekend. Ten signed copies will go out to readers anywhere in the world FREE OF CHARGE. And all will be decided fair and square by random number generator.

I’ll post the giveaway this weekend and let it run for a week as always. The odds to beat are usually pretty good, so check back this weekend if you want a good chance to snag a free signed copy. (That said, I will never advise you against ordering a Kindle or paper copy even if you win a signed freebie, because good sales numbers make my publisher happy, which means I get to keep writing these novels.)

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Centers of Gravity cover reveal

 

I am pleased to be able to show you the cover for CENTERS OF GRAVITY, Frontlines #8, which will be out on August 30. I think it may just be the best-looking Frontlines cover yet, although they’ve all been really great.

The book is available for pre-order in Kindle, paperback, and Audible formats. Pre-orders make my publisher happy, which in turn helps me to keep making up stuff for a living, so if you have a mind to read the eighth Frontlines book anyway and See How It All Turns Out, consider pre-ordering it and then seeing it appear on your Kindle (or your doorstep) in August 30 AS IF BY MAGIC.


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Endings and beginnings

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I always love being able to type those two words at the end of a draft, but it was both exhilarating and bitter-sweet to do it on this one. Nine years, eight novels, and almost a million words later, it’s not just the end of a single novel but the capstone on a storyline that started a long time ago in a writing workshop on Martha’s Vineyard. What a ride it’s been since then.

It’s not the last you’ll read of the Frontlines universe. But there’ll be new voices and new perspectives, and they’ll tell different tales. This particular one has come to its conclusion for now.

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Frontlines 8, now with title!

Earlier this month, I started work on Frontlines #8. If I stick to my schedule (and so far I am), the draft should be complete by the end of July. I can’t give you a precise publication date for a novel that isn’t complete and turned in yet, obviously. But if all goes as planned, the novel should be out in the first half of next year, probably around April or May.

Oh, and Frontlines #8 has a title now. The novel will be called CENTERS OF GRAVITY.

Until then, the third novel in the Palladium Wars series, CITADEL, will be released on August 10. Things are coming to a boil in the Gaia system, and if you’re looking for a bunch of military SF action mixed in with your space opera, CITADEL has plenty of it.

Speaking of release dates: the official LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS anthology is available now. It contains all the short stories and scripts that were the basis for the first season, including my own LUCKY 13 and SHAPE-SHIFTERS. (Sadly, I am not on the list of contributors for LD+R Season 2, but I am fine with letting some of the other kids have a turn on that swing set, so to speak.)

In other news: the weather is gorgeous, all denizens of Castle Frostbite have had their Pfizer shots, and it looks like we will be able to safely get together with friends and family in the second half of the year. I’ve booked a week-long get-together with some of my close friends (who will also be fully vaccinated), and I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to hanging out with people in person again. Thank you, science.

 

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ORDERS OF BATTLE release day

 

Today is the day! After almost two years, there’s a new Frontlines novel out. ORDERS OF BATTLE is the seventh volume in the series and picks up a few years after the last book. Things have calmed down a bit for humanity after POINTS OF IMPACT, but the Lankies are still out there, and someone higher up in the chain of command has decided that now’s the time to go looking for them.

ORDERS OF BATTLE is available on the Kindle and in paperback form today. (The Audible audiobook will be delayed until February–see my previous post on that for details.) I hope you pick it up in whichever format you prefer, then read it and maybe leave a review or recommend it to friends. And most importantly, I hope you enjoy returning to the Frontlines universe with Andrew Grayson and his podhead comrades.

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ORDERS OF BATTLE audiobook delay

Some people have noticed and commented on the fact that the audiobook of Orders of Battle now shows a delay for the release. The Kindle and print versions will still be out on December 8, but the Audible version is delayed until February 9th.

There’s a good reason for the delay, and I wish Audible would communicate it to the readers so people don’t think it’s an arbitrary thing. As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I have outpaced Luke Daniels’ schedule, and while he was still able to record AFTERSHOCKS, we had to find a new narrator for BALLISTIC, Angelo DiLoreto.

Angelo was also scheduled to take over Frontlines and narrate ORDERS OF BATTLE. Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly in October, before he could finish recording the book. Because of Angelo’s untimely passing, Audible had to find new narrators for Frontlines and Palladium Wars. The new narrator for Frontlines, Eric G. Dove, had to get up to speed on the prior Frontlines recordings to carry on the fine work Luke Daniels did with the series. That’s the reason for the delay, and while it’s less than ideal for the audiobook to be trailing the print version by two months, I hope it’s clear that it was a necessary one.

I had the luck to get great narrator choices. While Eric Dove is taking over Frontlines, the future Palladium Wars books will be narrated by Korey Jackson, and I am pleased that I’ll have different narrators for the two series to keep them distinct and separate from each other.

I know Angelo enjoyed working on a science fiction series, which was a bit of a departure from his usual narrations, and he did a great job on BALLISTIC. According to his obituary, he was only 30 years old, which is much too early to leave this ride. He was an accomplished musician, and he narrated over 200 audiobooks, which is an amazing professional track record. My condolences and sympathies go out to Angelo’s family and friends.

 

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Paper trail

This row of paperbacks is my collected output for novels since 2013. That does not include the novel I just delivered, titled CITADEL, because that one obviously doesn’t exist yet in paper form. It also doesn’t represent my total output because I also managed to write four novellas and novelettes for Wild Cards (“Stripes” for our mosaic novel LOW CHICAGO, “Probationary” for KNAVES OVER QUEENS, and the stand-alone stories “How To Move Spheres And Influence People” and “Berlin is Never Berlin” for Tor.com.)

By the way, that’s the correct order of publication, for those of you just getting onto the Frontlines train. The first one is Terms of Enlistment, and the rest follow just as they are sorted in the picture. (The Palladium Wars order is super easy to figure out because the titles are in alphabetical sequence. I stole that trick from Sue Grafton.)

As much as 2020 is a near-total write-off, it’s also going to be my first year with more than one novel release. BALLISTIC, second novel in the Palladium Wars series, was released on May 26th, and ORDERS OF BATTLE, seventh novel in the Frontlines series, will be out on December 8th. (That’s only a little more than a week away! Holy carp.) I’m hoping to keep the two-a-year pace going from now on, but that’s only going to work if 2021 turns out better than the dumpster fire that was 2020.

 

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Giveaway winners

The random number generator has spoken, and the winners are:

rafael

Derek

Bryan Anderson

Joe Allen

Heather Jones

Tobias Westphal

Santeri Vidal

Gridley

Shane Spencer

Emily

 

Each of you will receive a signed copy of ORDERS OF BATTLE, shipped at my expense. If you find your name on the winners list, please check your email for instructions, and leave me a comment if you haven’t received an email from me by the end of today, Sunday the 29th.

Congratulations to all the winners!

 

contests and giveaways. frontlines.

Orders of Battle signed paperback giveaway

I received my author copies for ORDERS OF BATTLE yesterday, so it’s time to do what I usually do when I get a box of books: I give some of them away. It’s a cunning ploy to make me look nice and generous, when in reality I am just trying to keep my floors from collapsing. (Seriously, Orders of Battle is my 9th published book, and between the author copies, ARCs, and copies of foreign translations, that’s a lot of hardcovers and paperbacks to stash.)

The rules are the same as always: leave a comment on this post indicating that you want a signed paperback. I will keep this post open until next Friday, November 27th, and close the comments at 10:00am, then pick ten winners with a random number generator based on the order of entries.

As before, this contest is open to anyone in the world, and I will pay for the shipping to wherever you are if you win a copy. That’s to make up for Goodreads limiting their giveaway to US residents only.

Good luck!