Category: bullets & links.

bullets & links. wild cards. writing.

New blog entry at Wild Cards World

In other Wild Cards news, there’s a new post on the Wild Cards World blog, this one by Michael Cassutt: “Word-building in Wild Cards” (yes, you read that correctly.)

I’ve talked about writing for Wild Cards before (most extensively in this post from a while back), but one thing I only touched on in that post is something that’s probably the biggest benefit to having joined the consortium, at least to me.

Not only is it a ton of fun to play in a superhero sandbox that’s so different from what I usually do, but the sheer amount of talent present in the consortium forces me to really bring my A-game. I consider the stories I’ve written for Wild Cards among the very best stuff I’ve written so far, and I hope that trend continues because it teaches me to broaden my horizons and flex muscles that I don’t necessarily use enough on a regular basis.

 

bullets & links. love death+robots.

Online sources for the LD+R stories

Andrew Liptak at The Verge has a handy post up that lists the online sources for most of the short stories serving as material for Love Death+Robots.

In related news, I’ll never get tired of seeing Samira Wiley as Lt. Colby, the pilot of Lucky 13 in the Netflix version. Yes, the original character in the short story is Halley, but they had to make a few minor changes for reasons. Just trust me on that one.

ltcolby

Regarding Shape-shifters, I want to let the veterans know that I am well aware of the fact that it has Marines address other Marines as “soldiers” (which they’d never do in real life; a Marine is a Marine and not a soldier.) But I guess they kept that bit because of the “dog soldiers” pejorative. In the original short story, Decker and Sobieski are Army, members of the 300th Special Operations Company (Lycanthrope), and the script writer for the show changed them over to the Corps without also changing the Army-specific terms in the story.

The two other goofs I noticed were Decker and Sobieski addressing the Master Sergeant as “sergeant”, and the Marines wearing their sleeves rolled while in the field. Both are details only few people outside of the Corps would notice, but every Marine would.) Rest assured that I know the differences. Regardless, it’s a kick-ass adaptation of the short story, and it’s really growing on me more and more the more I watch it. It’s even motivating me to pick up Decker’s universe again and go ahead with the series I had in mind for him. (The story was supposed to be part of his backstory.)

I’m super pleased with the way everything turned out, and the fan response has been phenomenal. Interestingly, “Shape-shifters” has tended to be either among peoples’ very favorite episodes, or all the way at the bottom of their lists. “Lucky 13” is either well-reviewed, or somewhere in the middle of the list, so Shape-shifters is the more polarizing one. (One of the viewers who hated it said it looked like bad Twilight fan fiction, which did amuse me.)

 

books. bullets & links. wild cards.

Low Chicago

Today, Tor.com is featuring a long excerpt from LOW CHICAGO, the Wild Cards novel out in June. The stripey fellow on the featured image is my Wild Cards joker-ace Khan, and he appears in the excerpt (which is the interstitial for the novel, written by John Joseph Miller.)

It’s time-travel story, so you can probably guess from Khan’s attire in which period of Chicago history he finds himself after the events in the excerpt. I hope you give the novel a shot when it’s out because I really liked writing that particular novella, and I think it turned out pretty well.

(LOW CHICAGO will be released on June 12.)

bullets & links. frontlines. in the news. military life.

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.

art. books. bullets & links. NACDC. writing.

on the NACDC, a frontlines fan group.

The official fan group of the Frontlines series, the North American Commonwealth Defense Corps, was founded at Manticon this year. There’ll be a fan group meeting at this year’s Honorcon, and a member who’s a very talented graphic designer made up a recruitment poster style ad for the convention program. It’s so well done that I wanted to share it with you.

(And if you’re in Raleigh and/or at Honorcon in October, swing by and check it out! There’s also a Facebook page for the fan group and an official web page.)

Color_NoBleed [273656]

books. bullets & links. capitalism. shameless self-promotion.

terms of enlistment on storybundle.

TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, the first volume in the Frontlines series, is part of the current StoryBundle (called “Starward Bound”), along with novels by a whole bunch of other excellent writers. The price point to get the bonus novels (of which TERMS is one) is $15, which will get you eight new Skiffy novels on your e-reader.

Note: The copy of TERMS included in the Starward Bound bundle is the only legally available e-book version of this novel without DRM, so if you’ve wanted to load that baby up on a non-Amazon e-reader, this is the one to get. 

The Starward Bound StoryBundle will only be up for the month of August, so you must Act! Now! if you want a DRM-free copy of TERMS.

books. bullets & links. capitalism. shameless self-promotion.

frontlines kindle sale.

The first three books in the Frontlines series, which are (chronologically) TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, LINES OF DEPARTURE, and ANGLES OF ATTACK, are currently on sale in the Kindle store for a measly $1.99 a pop. If you’ve been wanting to check out the series, here’s your chance to pick up the first three books for under six bucks total. Why, that’s less than the twenty-ounce cup of foam-topped caffeine sludge you pick up on the way to work every morning!

 

books. bullets & links. capitalism. writing.

The first issue of Frontlines: Requiem now has a product page on Amazon, where you can pre-order it if you are so inclined:

And if you’d like to preview some of the content, Fanboy Comics has one up on their page:

http://fanboycomics.net/index.php/fanboy-scoop/item/6232

I’m very excited about this project and happy with the way it turned out. I came up with the storyline, Ivan Brandon wrote the script, Gary Erskine did the artwork, and Yel Zamor did the colors. 

It’s never quite possible to fully translate a story from a written medium to a visual one and have 100% fidelity because you have various artists bringing in their own visions and ideas. But Requiem is very, very close to the way that world looks in my head. It’s a great addition to the Frontlines universe, not just because it tells a new story from a different character’s point of view and shows that every faction in the story has its own motivations and reasons for what they do, but also because it finally gives readers concrete visual references. (“What do the Lankies look like? Will there be Lankies in the graphic novels?” is a question I get frequently. Yes, there will be, and the reveal is pretty bad-ass.) You will see SI troopers in armor, NAC capital ships, Lanky seed ships…and yes, finally the big, bad Lankies.

So that’s coming out in may, which is great timing, because CHAINS OF COMMAND is coming out in April, so you’ll be able to get your hands on new Frontlines stuff two months in a row. And having seen the finished issue #1 of REQUIEM, I can tell you that you’re in for a ride.

 

books. bullets & links. capitalism. shameless self-promotion.

“angles of attack” giveaway.

There’s an Angles of Attack giveaway at Goodreads right now. If you’d like to put in your name for a free copy, you should head on over there and do the thing with the click and the stuff. The giveaway runs until April 21st, which is the official release day of Angles of Attack:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/131610-angles-of-attack

I get a box of author copies as is customary with most book contracts, and the one for Angles of Attack arrived yesterday:

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I don’t care how many books I’ll write in the future—opening that box and looking at the printed version for the first time is never going to get old. I feel like nerdy George McFly at the end of Back to the Future every time. You know, that scene where he gets his author copies of “A Match Made In Space”?

Mmisrpf

I’m still extremely busy writing “Chains of Command”, Frontlines #4, so you can all get it on your Kindles and eye-pods and eight-tracks and what-not before Christmas. It’s shaping up to be a really fun ride, and I think you’ll enjoy it. It is my personal opinion that Angles of Attack is the best Frontlines yet, and that Chains of Command may turn out even better. But I am, of course, heavily biased.

books. bullets & links. capitalism. friends. writing.

the novels of chang.

Chang Terhune is a good friend of mine.

We met for the first time back at Viable Paradise XII in 2008. He is one of the many talented writers in the VPXII alumni group that are also fine human beings and fabulously fun to hang out with. Because he’s practically a local (Castle Frostbite is in west-central NH, Casa Chang is in coastal southern Maine), we have been meeting up again at practically every SF/F convention since 2008. They say you don’t really know a man until you’ve gotten him drunk on chocolate martinis, and by that measure I KNOW CHANG VERY WELL INDEED.

Anyway, Brother Chang is a fellow SF writer, and he has decided to follow me down the self-publishing path I walked with some success before the magical 47North spaceship beamed me up. To that end, I want to direct your gaze toward his author page on Lulu, where he is offering up his three SF novels: HARVESTMAN, THE ASTROGATRIX, and AUGUSTA, MOTHER OF SALT. (HARVESTMAN is also available on Amazon here.)

So if your fancy new futuristic word tablet is out of new stuff to put on it, and you dig straight-up SF, consider supporting a deserving new author who is also a really nice guy EVEN IF HE CAN’T HOLD HIS CHOCOLATE MARTINIS. (Not a euphemism.)