Category: frontlines.

books. contests and giveaways. frontlines.

Goodreads giveaway for Orders of Battle

There’s a Goodreads giveaway going on for 100 Kindle copies of Orders of Battle, the seventh novel in the Frontlines series. The giveaway will end on December 7, and the book will be released December 8, so you have 21 days if you want to put your name into the goblet and see if you get lucky. Right now there are ~400 entries for those 100 books, so your current chance is 1 in 4-ish, which isn’t bad.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/314501-orders-of-battle

Work status: I am still holed up at the Castle and finishing CITADEL, book 3 in the Palladium Wars. I’ll be turning it in this week–finally–and then it’s on to the next Frontlines book (which doesn’t have a title yet,) and some more Frontlines stories and novellas. As always, stay tuned for more as I try to find my pre-pandemic productivity mojo again and boost it to Brandon Sanderson-esque levels…

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It’s like getting a gold record

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.

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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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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.

 

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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.

 

 

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Wild Cards interview and convention schedule for 2020

The official Wild Cards page has an interview with me that’s probably the most detailed and in-depth one I’ve given so far.

In other news, work on Frontlines #7 (“Orders of Battle”) is progressing very well, and things are still on track for a completed draft by the end of December. I don’t want to promise too much, but my publisher thinks they’ll be able to slot it into the 2020 release schedule if I manage to turn it in on time. So far, so good.

I am filling out my convention dance card for 2020, and it looks like I may be able to do a few more cons than I managed this year. Right now I am tentatively confirmed for ConFusion in Detroit (which is in January), and Emerald City Comic Con in March. I’ll also be at Readercon in Boston just like every year.

The 2020 Worldcon is in New Zealand, and we’re still in the planning stage on that one. Right now I’d say the chance is about 50/50 that we’ll be able to go, but there are a few other things that need to align to make all the lights go to green. Worldcons tend to be expensive, but the flight halfway around the globe adds another layer of cash to that bill because there’s no way I’m doing a 16-hour flight in coach.

 

 

 

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“A love story between a pilot and her drop ship”

Here’s a short YouTube clip featuring the making of the “Lucky 13” episode of Love Death & Robots on Netflix, narrated by the director Jerome Chen, and featuring lead actor Samira Wiley.

The day may come when I get tired of watching LUCKY 13 and SHAPESHIFTERS on Netflix, but it is not this day.

 

 

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Non-Euclidean geometry, fall edition

 

When I need to let my brain’s background processes figure out a story element or untie a knot in a chapter, I take a walk in the place you see pictured above. It never fails to work.

In other news, I just turned in the edits for BALLISTIC, second in the Palladium Wars series, and I think it turned out very well. In fact, it may just be the fastest-paced plot I’ve ever managed to squeeze between the front and back covers.

Next on the production schedule is Frontlines #7, which will take me the rest of the year to finish. The title of the seventh Frontlines novel is ORDERS OF BATTLE.

 

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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.

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Veterans and mental health

Part of what I have tried to accomplish with Frontlines is breaking out of the typical military SF mold a little bit when it comes to depicting soldier mindsets. With the sixth book in particular, I wanted to address the endless wars we tend to fight lately, and their effects on the minds of the men and women we ask to fight those wars. I’m not just talking about PTSD, which is very much on the radar of the non-military public lately because of its prevalence among combat veterans. What I also wanted to show is the difference between the military and civilian worlds, and the alienation and anxiety this difference can cause in combat soldiers, who have to do a radical adaptation from one mindset and environment to a completely different one, mostly without assistance or mental preparation.

This article at the Social Health blog, “Military betrayal, civilian isolation”  addresses the problem in fascinating detail. It’s a year and a half old, but still very much relevant, and it’s incisive and thought-provoking. Long story short: PTSD is a problem, but the mental stress experienced by veterans is much more multi-layered.