gadgetry.

More Tik-Toks

Someone asked about the rest of the collection in comments, so here you go.

It’s a modest collection of nice-but-not-outrageous watches as far as price goes. The whole case is worth less than a single basic Omega or Rolex. Not that I would mind owning a Seamaster or a Submariner, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to spend five or ten grand on a watch. (My answer may change if someone ever gives me a truck full of cash for movie rights or something.)

Top row, left to right: Mondaine Quartz Classic, Orient Defender, Island Watch Aviator, and a Borel that’s a high quality Swiss Datejust homage.

Bottom row, left to right: Orient Mako, Junkers G-38 GMT, Arctos/GPW Titanium Einsatzuhr, and a Phoibos Proteus with a meteorite dial.

The oldest watch in that case is the two-tone Borel on the top right, which I got as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law about 15 years ago. The youngest one is the Phoibos on the bottom right, which I bought with some of the Netflix money from my Love Death + Robots contributions.

Not pictured are the half dozen Casios I keep in my nightstand drawer…several G-Shocks, two Edifices, and a few fun cheapies that are great as beater watches. Those don’t go into a watch case because that would be silly, and also because I don’t want to buy another watch case. I never thought I’d even fill that 8-slot one, but it turns out that once you get bitten by the horology bug, you tend to accumulate more.

gadgetry.

Posting a TikTok

Eight years ago, when Terms of Enlistment started selling a lot of copies, this $45 Casio Duro was the first “extravagant” purchase I made with some of the first windfall royalties.

Fast-forward to 2021, eight years and ten novels later, and I own a lot more watches, but I still wear this one a lot. It’s a reminder that I don’t need to spend a bunch of money to take pleasure in something, and that once upon a time, spending $45 on something I didn’t strictly need was a frivolous luxury.

(It’s also a damn good watch in its own right and easily the best sub-$100 dive watch on the market. It’s tough, unpretentious, accurate, and reliable, all properties worthy of emulation.)

 

audible. books.

ORDERS OF BATTLE is out on audio

The delayed audiobook version of ORDERS OF BATTLE was released yesterday, and it’s now available via Amazon/Audible.

The new narrator is Eric G. Dove. As I have mentioned before, the delay in production was due to the unexpected passing of Angelo DiLoreto, who was scheduled to narrate the book originally. As most of you will probably understand, that sort of thing can’t be fixed on the spot.

fountain pens. writing.

Cellulose backups

These are the original handwritten drafts for “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare” (which ended up in Love Death + Robots on Netflix as ‘Shapeshifters”), and “Ink and Blood”, which was my first published short story ever. It seems that the stories of mine I like best all started out on paper and came out of a fountain pen.

Funny thing: I went through one of my old notebooks today to search for notes and story ideas I had written down years ago, and came across an unfinished short story I can’t remember writing. It’s in my handwriting, so I obviously did, but I don’t have any memory of it at all. It’s called “Pirates of Shiraz”, and it starts with a group of friends doing a VR bombing run in a WWII multiplayer online game in their guild’s B-17 called Springfield Sally. The pilot has to bail on the group for a few minutes because the baby’s crying in real life in her crib. He puts the plane on autopilot right as German fighters come in, and the guild members tell him that they’ll make him pay the repair bill if the plane goes down. I don’t know where I was going with the story, but it started out pretty well.

If I finished that one now and put it out into the world, people would probably say that it’s a Ready Player One pastiche. (That old notebook is from 2010, so the story fragment was written long before RP1 came out.) This was definitely the weirdest moment I’ve had while going through old notes. That’s why I keep all the notebooks I fill…you never know what you’re going to forget in the future.

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

Release date for CITADEL

There’s a new release date for CITADEL, the third book in the Palladium Wars series. It will be released in all the usual formats on August 10.

Last year, I was on a two-novels-a-year pace, but then 2020 happened and it all went to hell. But this year has been absolutely fine for me so far as far as writing goes–the blanket of cortisol has lifted, and I am confident I’ll be able to get back to that pace this year and write two novels before the end of 2021. With the time needed for production, however, that means the next Frontlines novel will most likely not be out until early next year. I do intend to release a Frontlines novella or two in the meantime, however, so 2021 won’t be totally Frontlines-free.

CITADEL will be my tenth published novel. That’s not a terrible pace considering the first two only came out in 2013. (I had written TERMS OF ENLISTMENT already, of course, and I was halfway done with LINES OF DEPARTURE already, so it’s really more like eight and a half novels in eight years.) I don’t know if that makes me “prolific”–I certainly feel like a lazy bum compared to writers like Brandon Sanderson–but I am happy with my ability to turn out steady work, and I’ll be happier still when I can get out two books a year instead of just one.

castle frostbite.

Countryside Internets

This is the current connectivity situation at Castle Frostbite: 100mbit fiber with 25Mbit upstream. That’s not gigabit fiber, but it’s absolutely workable, even with two teenagers in the house and about 30 devices on the WiFi at all times.

We live out in the country, but we have the luck to have picked a town that got wired for subsidized fiber half a decade after we moved here. But that’s the luck of the draw when you move into the countryside. Before fiber got here, we were on 1.5Mbit DSL for a few years, and before that….well, satellite was “Internet” of sorts, but it was slow and had 1,000ms latency, and a 200MB/day data cap. 100mbit fiber isn’t “downtown Seoul” speed, but it’s plenty fast even in the age of 4k HD streaming video.

In other news, we made it into 2021. And the first week of the new year sure has given 2020 a run for its money, hasn’t it? But I am done with the developmental edits for CITADEL this week, and then it’s on to other things, like Frontlines #8. 2021 will be better than 2020, because I won’t give it a choice.

writing.

Crawling toward the finish line

Science Fiction grandmaster James Gunn has died.

My career isn’t old enough for me to have met many of the old grandmasters of science fiction because most of them are no longer around. I did get to meet James Gunn at ConStellation in Lincoln, NE in 2017, where I was the Author Guest of Honor and he was the Grandmaster Guest of Honor. I also got to meet Dr. Ben Bova a few years ago when we did a panel at the Air Force Academy together with a few other writers. Dr. Bova died last month.

I know that numbers are completely arbitrary and that a new year on a calendar has no meaning except for symbolism, but I really am looking forward to seeing 2020 end. It seems like the constant onslaught of bad news and outrage has, as my agent put it, draped a blanket of cortisol over all of us. I am starting the last week of the year with novel edits that are due on the 31st, and finishing a novelette that I owe someone (and that is ridiculously overdue.) But it will all be done by the time the new year rolls around, and even if that number flipping is just a symbolic change, it’s as good a marker as any to hit the mental reset button and start to crawl out from under that cortisol blanket.

I hope you have a lovely holiday season. Stay safe, stay healthy, and let’s shank this year in the back with glee.

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

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.

audible. books. frontlines.

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.