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Low Chicago is out! Tigers with Tommy guns!

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Today is release day for LOW CHICAGO, the twenty-fifth Wild Cards volume, which means today is my second book release day of 2018 because I have a novella in that book. The novella is called “Stripes” and features my joker-ace Khan (the half-tiger dude on the cover). He’s shunted back in time to 1920s Chicago where he gets to rewrite a bit of Roaring Twenties history in the only way a 300-pound mob bruiser can: with claws and fists and Tommy guns.

LOW CHICAGO is a stand-alone novel in the Wild Cards universe. While it features characters that have appeared in other volumes, it’s a mosaic novel with a self-contained narrative. You can jump in and read it without any prior knowledge of the Wild Cards universe, and I’d be super happy if you did because that means I’ll get to write more Wild Cards stuff in the future.

The other contributors to LOW CHICAGO are Melinda Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Saladin Ahmed, Christopher Rowe, John Jos. Miller, Paul Cornell, and Mary Anne Mohanraj. All of them are amazing writers, so chances are good you’ll get your money’s worth out of the book. If you decide to pick it up, let me know what you think in the comments!

 

 

 

Update from the word mines

Posted on by Marko Kloos

I haven’t posted anything lately because I am still at work finishing the current novel. It still has a provisional title, but the series it kicks off has a name now: THE PALLADIUM WARS.

(It’s military SF, but the scope is a little wider than Frontlines because it’s written from multiple points of view, so if that kind of narrative is your cup of tea, you’ll probably like it. At least I hope so, because the sales of the first book will determine the future of the series, and I really like the world I cooked up for THE PALLADIUM WARS.) More on that later when I’ve turned in the book and we have concrete plans for the publication date.

Oh, and if you’re interested in getting into the Wild Cards universe and don’t know where to start: Macmillan has a special on the three books of the Fort Freak triad, which is a good jumping-in point. All three books together are $21 and change, and they’re available from all the major ebook retailers.

The latest (current) triad is called the American Triad: Mississippi Roll (published in December 2017), Low Chicago (out in June this year, and featuring my novella STRIPES), and Texas Hold’Em (out in October.) Gritty and fun superhero stuff, fun characters written by a group of super-talented writers, and now in development for TV…so get on board and become a fan before everyone jumps on that bandwagon once it becomes the next GoT. (And I hope it will do just that, because I want to see Khan tear off some faces in a live-action TV show.)

 

Points of Impact is out TO-DAY.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

It’s January 9th today, which means that POINTS OF IMPACT is now out on Kindle, in paperback, and in Audible audiobook format (read once again by the amazing Luke Daniels). If you pre-ordered the book, it should show up on your Kindle or in your Audible library AT THIS VERY MOMENT AS IF BY MAGIC, or in your physical mailbox whenever your delivery guy comes around.

I hope you enjoy the sixth installment of Andrew Grayson’s story. POINTS OF IMPACT picks up two years after the events of FIELDS OF FIRE, and Andrew is still fighting the long fight, trying to pry the Lankies loose from what’s left of Mars, where troops and equipment get ground down at an alarming rate because neither people nor machines were designed for years of constant combat deployments under harsh conditions. (If that sounds familiar somehow, it’s probably a total coincidence.)

Enjoy your preorder, or pick up a fresh copy, and don’t mind me while I sit in a corner over here today and engage in the traditional ritual of anxiously refreshing the Amazon page every thirty seconds…

Six days to Points of Impact, and a Frontlines Kindle sale

Posted on by Marko Kloos

POINTS OF IMPACT was picked by the Amazon Books editors to be a featured “Best Books of the Month” selection for January. It will be released officially on January 9, which is in…uh, six days already. Yikes.

But that’s not all, friends and neighbors. Over at Crazy Jeff’s Electronic Book Emporium (a.k.a. the Kindle store), the other five books of the Frontlines series are on sale for $1.99 each for the entire month of January. That’s five books for ten bucks total, which means that if someone wanted to buy the whole series on Kindle, they’d be out only $14.94 this month.

Tell your friends and family, tell your car mechanic, tell that weird guy on the street corner who yells at passing bikes. THEY’RE GOOD BOOKS, BRENT.

Kindles, and stuff to put on them

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Andrew Liptak over at The Verge included Frontlines in a list of thirteen sci-fi series starters to fill up that new Kindle you got for Christmas. I’m in some really lofty company there, along with James S.A. Corey, Ann Leckie, Linda Nagata, John Scalzi, and N.K. Jemisin.

My favorite reads this year were the Broken Earth trilogy books by N.K. Jemisin, and the Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey (fellow Wild Cards writers Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham). The Expanse is just a rollicking good military-ish SF opus (although more Firefly than Battlestar Galactica as far as military detail goes), and the Broken Earth books are an eclectic and original post-apocalyptic melange of fantasy and SF that is very much its own thing.

With the sixth Frontlines novel out in two weeks, the series stands at over 600,000 words. If I wrote epic fantasy like George R.R. Martin or Brandon Sanderson, that would be maybe two books instead of six, so keep that in mind when you hear people bitching about release spans between books.

Speaking of Kindles and such, here’s my Christmas purchase this year:

That’s a Kindle Oasis 2, the new waterproof model with the 7″ e-ink display. I had the original Oasis, but surrendered it to Robin pretty much as soon as it arrived because it’s far more suitable for one-handed reading than her old Paperwhite. The new one is heavier than the old model, but the extra screen real estate is great, and it doesn’t need an add-on battery cover to get decent battery life anymore.

I find that I read far more on a dedicated e-ink device than on a tablet. My attention span does not get taxed with notifications and alerts, and there’s no way to check email or Twitter on a Paperwhite or Oasis. And it’s much easier on the eyes than a backlit tablet screen.

 

It was the night before the night before Christmas

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Those are my author copies of POINTS OF IMPACT. They just arrived on the Big Brown Truck of Happiness yesterday. This is the culmination of my productive output in 2017, which has been a super difficult year for getting creative work done.

POINTS OF IMPACT, the sixth book in the Frontlines series, will be out on January 9 in Kindle, paperback, and Audible formats. Order early, order often! (And yes, pre-orders are good for writers because good pre-order numbers impress publishers and make it more likely for them to want more books in the series.)

That’s the series so far in publication order. I did get to have input regarding the covers, and I like that we managed to have a distinctive color for every book. I think they look pretty sweet all together on the shelf like that.

2018 will be a good year for me as far as published works are concerned. POINTS OF IMPACT will be out in January. In March, Voyager UK will publish our British-themed Wild Cards volume KNAVES OVER QUEENS, which features a Wild Cards novella written by me. In June, Tor Books will publish LOW CHICAGO, the second book in the Wild Cards “American triad”, containing my novella STRIPES. I’m pretty proud of that one and think it’s one of the best things I’ve written so far. (The first book of the American triad is MISSISSIPPI ROLL, which is out from Tor Books this month. I don’t have a story in that one, but my friends and esteemed fellow Wild Cards rogues Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Carrie Vaughn, David D. Levine, and Cherie Priest do.)

And chances are good that I’ll have another military SF novel out with 47North before the end of the year. That one will not be a Frontlines book, but the first one in a new series. (Does that mean Frontlines is finished, you ask? Absolutely not. I just felt that it was time to have another playground to explore new ideas and characters so I am not in the same poor guy’s head all the time.) I think I’ve cooked up a really cool world and some kick-ass characters, and I hope you’ll like them. But more on that front later…

 

 

 

 

It’s Fields of Fire release day!

Posted on by Marko Kloos

FIELDS OF FIRE, the fifth book in the Frontlines series, is out today on Kindle, in paperback, and as an Audible audiobook (read by the excellent and talented Luke Daniels). You can get it here in all three formats.

Pro tip: All the other Frontlines books are still only $1 each on the Kindle, but that sale ends today, so if you want to stock up (or gift the books to someone else), today is your last day to score four for the price of one.

I like the way Fields of Fire turned out, and my beta readers and editors were very happy with it. In this book, Andrew and his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms finally try to pry Mars away from the Lankies. They have a good plan, some great new hardware, and a bunch of freshly-trained troops to throw into the battle. But everyone who served knows that battle plans never survive first contact with the enemy…and the Lankies may have their own surprises in store for the combined forces of Earth.

Go grab a book in your favorite format if you are so inclined. And if you liked it, consider leaving an Amazon or Audible review. It sells more books and makes my publisher happy, which means I get to write more books.

Anyway, now I have to get back to my traditional pursuits on Book Launch Day: stress-eating and obsessively refreshing the Amazon rankings page…

frontlines kindle sale.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

Oh, hey–it’s February. That means the release of FIELDS OF FIRE is just a few weeks away.

Crazy Jeff over at the Electronic Books Emporium has discounted all four books of the Frontlines series so far to a dollar each on the Kindle. If you still need to complete your set, or you want to get a friend hooked on some Space Kablooie, this would be a good time to do so. Because FOUR DOLLARS for the whole series! That’s cheaper than a Happy Meal, with far less sodium and without the crummy toy that usually ends up under the seat in the minivan anyway.

 

terms of enlistment on storybundle.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

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.

frontlines kindle sale.

Posted on by Marko Kloos

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!