Even 2020 can’t manage to make a big dent in my enjoyment of the fall here in northern New England. This year has been an awful, cortisol-swaddled slog, but that just makes it more important that we carve our own little pleasures out of it whenever we can. For me, one of those pleasures is sitting in a garden recliner with a cup of coffee on a cool, sunny morning and watching the dogs race each other through the leaves. In a week or two, I’ll have to put away the fire pit and stage the snow shovels, but not just yet. I want to squeeze a few more mornings like today’s out of this season.
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.
Check it out if you want to hear me talk for close to an hour and give no fewer than three involuntary sales pitches for various aspects of Uncle Jeff’s Book and Trinket Emporium.
I was on the shortlist for the Dragon Award in the military SF category, but alas–I didn’t win. That honor went to Savage Wars by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole, so congratulations to them. (Congratulations also to my friend John Scalzi, who won the Dragon Award for Best SF Novel with The Last Emperox.)
I’m still at work on CITADEL while trying to stay on top of the rest of my commitments and keeping my head above water. 2020 sure turned out to be a peach of a year.(I want to apologize to 2016 for having called it the WORST YEAR EVER. Sorry, 2016…I was young and naive.)
In a recent podcast interview, I was asked whether I still write my first drafts longhand. The answer I gave was that the last five or six novels were all written on the computer. (I use Scrivener for putting together my drafts, in case some of you are curious, although I am dabbling with a new app called Ulysses right now, which is a sort of streamlined version of Scrivener that syncs much better between Apple devices.)
I still write longhand all the time—I take pages and pages of notes for the draft in progress, I plot out storylines and chapters, and I put together a bible of sorts for every series that gets more material added to it with every book. Longhand writing is an essential part of my creative process because I think better with a pen in my hand, and I enjoy the act of putting ink to paper. But with two novels per year, I can’t afford to have the indulgence slow me down, and the fact is that it would take me twice as long to write a draft if I did it longhand first because it would have to be transcribed into the computer.
There’s always the option of hiring someone to do the transcription part for me, but that would remove a valuable part from the act, which is the on-the-fly revision I do when I do the transcription myself. What ends up on the PC is a second draft already because I edit the material as I type it up. It makes for better, more streamlined writing in the end. One day, when I don’t have to get out two books a year, I’ll go back to hand-writing my first drafts again. But for now, it’s a choice of a more enjoyable process that yields one novel a year, or a slightly less fun one that gets out two novels a year, and I think most readers would prefer that I stick with Option B for now.
AFTERSHOCKS made the Dragon Awards shortlist in the Military SF category this year. Thanks to whoever voted to get it onto the shortlist! I’ve been nominated before, but I’ve never taken one of those cool trophies home. DragonCon and the awards are virtual this year just like every other con, so I won’t be going to Atlanta in person. But it’s lovely to be making the list, particularly because the Dragon Awards are 100% fan-voted.
On that note, the final vote is open to the public (no DragonCon membership necessary), so anyone can register and cast a ballot. If you have a mind to look at the entries on the shortlist and decide you want to put in a vote for your favorite, here’s the link.
I contributed the novella “Probationary” to this volume, featuring an alternate history version of the Falklands conflict told from the perspective of a rookie British ace, Rory Campbell a.k.a. “Archimedes”. (It’s a war story, so there are lots of battle scenes.)
The other stories in KNAVES OVER QUEENS were written by Paul Cornell, Mark Lawrence, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Emma Newman, Peter Newman, Peadar Ó Guilín, Melinda Snodgrass, Caroline Spector, and Charles Stross. It’s a stand-alone volume full of British-centric stories, and while it helps to know the Wild Cards universe, you don’t need to have read all the books in the series to make sense of this one.
Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering….But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great boom.At that sound the bent shape of the king sprang suddenly erect. Tall and proud he seemed again; and rising in his stirrups he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before:
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains. Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and the darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.
This is half a mile from our house. I go for a stroll down there quite often and set up a little folding outdoor chair to write in the fresh air (and away from WiFi/LTE.)
Other people pay money to come here on vacation, and we get to have this any time we want. I won’t get to see many of my friends and family in person this year, but if you have to stay socially distant, this place is far from the worst for that.
