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.
It seems that it’s July already, which means that 2020 is officially halfway over. Let’s hope that the first half of the year wasn’t just a warm-up.
Things are going pretty okay here at the Castle Frostbite Magic Novel Factory. We are still doing the social distancing thing and have been keeping to ourselves since March, and from the encouraging COVID-19 numbers for NH, the vast majority of New Hampshirites (yes, that’s the official term) have done the same. I go out once a week for groceries, we wear masks in public, and playdates/hang-outs with friends are still a no-go. International travel will not be a thing for us in the foreseeable future, which means I won’t be able to see my German family and friends in person this year. But that’s why we have Zoom and Skype and WhatsApp, and those are cheaper than airplane tickets anyway.
I do find it a little harder to concentrate on the work due to all the background anxiety from COVID-19 and the general political situation, but like a smart person once said–the difference between an amateur and a professional is that the pro shows up for work every day regardless of mood. I am on schedule to turn in CITADEL, the third novel in the Palladium Wars series, by the end of July. Then I have a Wild Cards and a Frontlines novelette on my calendar for August and September, and the last three months of this year are blocked off for writing Frontlines #8, to be delivered at the end of December. (I can’t give you a release date for that because I haven’t even started it yet, but if I turn it in on time, I am guessing it will be an end-of-year release for 2021.)
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of my ditching of social media, and I can honestly say that it has been a massive improvement for my productivity and my overall mental state. I can’t even imagine the anxiety levels I’d feel if I still spent a good part of my day cycling through the noise on Twitter and Facebook.
That’s what’s going on here at the Castle—work, work, work, and keeping my head above water in this dumpster fire of a year. Hope you’re all staying safe and sane out there. Wear your masks, keep your distance, and be kind to each other, because there’s more than enough angry noise out there already.
Most of the winners of the give-away have sent me their info to receive the books. I still need Ghost Rider 6, Bobby Williams, and Johanna to check their email and reply to the message they received.
(I sent it to the email you used to register your comments, so if that one isn’t set up to get actual mail, leave me a comment here.)
There were exactly 100 entries for the giveaway, with three duplicate entries, and I have 10 books up for grabs, so your chances were slightly better than 1:10.
Here are the winners, as picked by random number generator on numbergenerator.org:
Scott Welch
Ghost Rider 6
Martin Disch
Harry Caudwell
Justin Bell
Elizabeth Rogers
Bobby Williams
Sonja Thiede
Johanna
Jordan A. Brown
Congratulations! If you are on the list, you will receive an email sent to the address on your comment registration. Reply to it to claim your book.
On the occasion of the BALLISTIC release today, Andrew Liptak has a fairly lengthy interview with me up on his reading list. I talk about Frontlines and Palladium Wars and a bunch of other things, so if you want to have some nuts-and-bolts insight on both series and get an idea what ORDERS OF BATTLE, Frontlines #7, will be about, head on over and check it out.
Today is release day for BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series.
You can obtain this fine product over at Amazon, where operators are standing by to take your money for the Kindle, trade paperback, hardcover, or audiobook versions. Heck, buy them all and complete the set!
For the BALLISTIC giveaway, I have decided to bump the number of books up from 5 to 10, and I will keep the contest going for the rest of the day. Leave your entry comment on the original post for the giveaway if you want to be included, but be aware that the cut-off time is midnight Pacific time, and I won’t include any entries submitted after that point. Tomorrow morning, I will let the computer draw ten names out of the hat and post the winners. (One entry per person, please…no stuffing the entry box.)
This marks my eighth published novel, and number nine is coming in December. For the rest of the day, I will now follow the time-honored tradition of Obsessively Refreshing The Product Page To Check Sales Rank…
I’ve turned in my most recent two novels in the span of six months (BALLISTIC in August of last year and ORDERS OF BATTLE in January of this year), and while doubling one’s output is on the whole a good thing, it can also have some unintended effects.
One of those effects is that I’ve outpaced the schedule of Luke Daniels, the excellent and highly popular narrator of the Frontlines series and the first book of the Palladium Wars. Luke is very good at what he does, and because he is so good, his schedule is very, very packed. Therefore, 47North has had to switch artists to avoid holding up both series by a year or more. BALLISTIC isn’t voiced by Luke Daniels, and the upcoming Frontlines novel ORDERS OF BATTLE won’t be done by Luke either. The new narrator is Angelo Di Loreto.
I love Luke’s work on Frontlines and Aftershocks, and I know that a lot of you really love it too because I get frequent comments on the quality of the Audible narration. I know that this may be a disappointment to those who have come to associate Luke’s voice with Andrew Grayson. But that’s one of the realities of the publishing world. A recent commenter took me to task for not writing my books faster, but the production schedule involves more than just me turning in a draft and then someone slapping it on the Kindle store a few days later. There are many people who have a hand in the publication: the lead editor, the developmental editor, the copyeditors, the cover artist, and so on. And the audiobook production isn’t the smallest item on that list because they have to slot in a narrator and plan for studio time, then produce physical media for the CD and MP3 versions…you get the idea. This is a team sport, not a one-man show, and very little of it is up to me except for turning in finished manuscripts. Whenever something alters the flow–like, say, the writer retooling their work flow and doubling their output schedule–it sometimes has unpredictable knock-on effects.
Luke leaves some pretty big shoes to fill for the further narration of both series, but we really liked Angelo Di Loreto’s narrative style and voice, and I believe he will be a great fit. (You can check out his prior work here.)
Changing narrators in the middle of a series isn’t ideal, but the only other option would have been to clone Luke and bring the clone up to speed, and my editor was pretty firm that this would have blown the production budget for the next decade or so…
BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series, will be out in a little less than two weeks. I just got my author copies in, so I figured I’d do a little giveaway.
Leave a comment on this post if you’d like a signed trade paperback of BALLISTIC. I’ll leave the post open until release day, which is Tuesday, May 26. On May 26, I will let the computer pick five entries out of the hat, and I will send those five people a signed paperback. This giveaway is open to anyone in the world, and I’ll cover the shipping.
