wild cards. writing.

This post brought to you by the Superhero Writers Union.

I love writing for Wild Cards. It’s an amazingly detailed world that has been expanded by thirty-plus writers over thirty years, and it’s a ton of fun to be a part of that. I mean, I get to make up my own super-powered characters and then let them loose in a playground that has been constantly expanded and improved for three decades. And the Wild Cards consortium is just stacked with super-nice and super-talented people.

That said, there’s one thing that annoys me about being a Wild Cards writer, and that’s entitled Game of Thrones fans.

Every time GRRM posts something on social media about Wild Cards, it takes about five seconds before someone responds with a dismissive one-liner that totally shits on whatever it is he’s trying to promote or announce. And it’s always a variation of the same boring, unoriginal garbage. Finish Winds of Winter. Nobody cares about Wild Cards. WHERE’S THE BOOK, GEORGE? NOT BUYING ANYTHING FROM YOU UNTIL YOU FINISH WINDS OF WINTER. Etcetera, etcetera. Yawn.

GRRM is the editor of Wild Cards (along with Melinda Snodgrass). He edits the books, he doesn’t write them. They are written by the members of the Wild Cards consortium. It’s a total dick move to dismiss out of hand the talents and work of the writers just because you think that the editor of the book ought to be spending all his time on that other book, the one you think you’re entitled to receive. (Never mind that “nobody cares about Wild Cards” is flat-out wrong. Our signings and panels are always busy, and the longest signing line I’ve ever sat for was a Wild Cards signing. The series has picked up a lot of fans in thirty years, and I highly suspect that it wouldn’t be thirty years old–or getting developed into a TV series AS I TYPE THIS–if nobody cared about it.)

I’m pretty proud of my Wild Cards contributions. I think they are some of the best stories I’ve written so far. And it makes me cranky whenever we try to do Wild Cards promo, and some whining garage dweller comes along and dismisses the whole thing with prejudice because OMG GRRM SPENT HIS TIME ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN WINDS OF WINTER. It annoys me, and when I am annoyed, I start adding names to my Go Fuck Yourself list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

A wild blog post appears!

I’ve nuked Facebook again, and this time for good–I deleted my account instead of just deactivating it. I’d love to claim that it was solely because of the privacy and ethics concerns. They certainly played a role, but the truth is that Facebook was sapping too much of my attention and time, and those are my only finite resources. There was also the realization that I posted on Facebook quite a bit, and that every time I did, I was providing them completely free of charge with content to draw clicks and attention. In a productive day, I only have so many words to wring out of my brain, and I’d rather channel them into work that lets me get paid. So: Facebook is gone, and Twitter is on probation. And to protect my writing time, I’ll only reply to emails sparingly, so don’t be offended if you get a delayed reply or none at all.

Oh, and happy 2019, everyone. 2018 managed the rare feat of both zooming by in a blink and feeling like it went on forever. I don’t know what 2019 will bring as far as politics and world events go, but my own goal is to spend less time on social media and news, and more time on writing stories. It’s better for my mental health and my bank account. I don’t know about you, but I can’t weather another year like this last one. Doing creative work in 2018 felt like dragging a piano across a gravel road with nothing but dental floss.

The first novel in my new series “The Palladium Wars” is titled “Aftershocks”, and it will be out on July 1. I am currently busy with Palladium Wars #2 and a new Frontlines novella, as well as several Wild Cards short stories and novelettes. (At least I think the Frontlines story will end up a novella, but those things mutate into full-blown novels sometimes.) People keep asking when a new Frontlines will be out, and the answer is: it depends. My plan is to have a new novella out by early spring, and then a full novel toward the end of the year.

Stay tuned for more while I take a broom to this blog and sweep the dust out of the corners.

 

wild cards.

Coming up Aces

I wrote a blog post about the difficulty of creating compelling superheroes and villains in a world with an established canon spanning 70 years, where hundreds of aces and jokers have already been put on the page by dozens of other writers.

You can read the blog entry over at the Wild Cards blog.

gadgetry.

A (potentially annoying) ode to the Surface Go.

My MacBook Pro died on the plane to WorldCon while I was halfway through the trip to San Francisco. I rebooted it to finish a software installation, and it plain refused to come back to life. I’ve been using Macs for twenty years, so I know all the tricks to reset the PRAM and the SMC and all the nerd stuff you usually do as a first-level tech support protocol, but nothing worked, so it had to be hardware-related.

I had some work to do in San Jose, and all I had with me other than a dead MacBook Pro was my iPhone, but that doesn’t cut it for a lot of the stuff I have to do on a computer. So I sucked up the local California 9%+ sales tax and bought a Surface Go at a local Best Buy to let me get some of that needed work done before getting home.

I’ve been effusive about the little thing on social media, but after a few weeks of ownership, I can only reiterate what I said about it so far: it’s a near-perfect travel computer. I already have a Surface Pro and a Surface Laptop for various uses, so I am well familiar with the Surface line of products, and I think that Microsoft has hit an absolute home run with the Surface Go.

Its biggest selling point is that it’s a full-fledged Windows 10 computer that’s almost exactly the same size and weight of a standard iPad. I’ve tried to use the iPad Pro as a travel work machine, but while it’s very powerful–and a fantastic content consumption device–it’s not deserving of the Pro moniker when it comes to creative work. Its biggest drawbacks are the operating system (a souped-up mobile OS without robust file management), and a lack of mouse support. If you’re a writer, and you’ve ever tried to copy and paste text just with your finger on that touch screen, you know what I am talking about.)

The Surface Go has the same portable convenience, but it offers full mouse and keyboard support. Moreover, the Type Cover peripheral is excellent, especially for a device with a mere 10″ screen diagonal. The Type Cover for the Surface Go has a backlit keyboard that manages to be eminently usable despite its smaller size compared to its bigger brother, the Surface Pro, and the glass trackpad is closer to the Apple trackpads than any Windows machine I’ve used.

The rest of the hardware doesn’t feel like a budget compromise over the Surface Pro either. The Surface Go is made out of the same magnesium, it has the same excellent build quality, and the kickstand (the killer feature of the Surface tablet line as far as I am concerned) is the same as on the new Surface Pro, with infinite adjustability.

The Surface Go also has a SDHC expansion slot, a USB-C port which lets you recharge the device from a power bank on the go, and compatibility with the great Surface Pen for on-screen inking. (I’m telling you that if Apple put out a device like this, the Cupertino faithful would hail it as design genius, the Second Coming of Jobs.)

If it has any shortcomings, it’s the short-ish battery life compared to an iPad or Surface Pro, but that’s completely ameliorated by the fact that you can just top it off from a USB-C battery pack on the road. Some people have also commented on the processing power because the Surface Go has a Pentium Gold chip instead of a Core chip like the more expensive models, but I am here to tell you that the Pentium Gold is plenty fast for the stuff I do with this device, which is writing novels in Scrivener and Word, browsing the web, and checking email on the road. This is not a rig for playing World of Warcraft or Fortnite (although it can play them at low settings), so I won’t hold that against the Surface Go.

What is the Surface Go in the end? It’s a tiny, iPad-sized Windows 10 machine that runs full-fat Windows apps and fits into any bag that can hold a regular iPad, and that’s a major accomplishment on Microsoft’s part. I use it all the time now whenever I am away from my full-sized desktop, and I think the kids are going to get the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop as hand-me-downs. If you are looking for a writing rig that fits into the smallest of bags while still giving you full Windows 10 desktop OS power, this little device is pretty much king of the hill right now.

awards. friends. travel. wild cards.

Conned out

I am back home, and very tired.

Two weeks ago, I did Worldcon, which was super fun. Then I ended up being nominated for a Dragon Award for Best Military SF/Fantasy novel, so I let my friend Melissa F. Olson guilt me into going to Atlanta for DragonCon on short notice. I thought that almost two weeks since Worldcon would be enough rest to be able to tacke a DragonCon weekend, especially since I didn’t have any panels.

Reader, I was SO VERY WRONG.

I was fine on Friday, so-so on Saturday, and on Sunday my social battery and energy level were both in the red and blinking. DragoCon is a crazy, big, loud affair (word has it there were over 90,000 attendees), and those kind of cons, while fun, tend to wear me down much faster than the smaller literary-minded ones. I will say that downtown Atlanta is a big party during DragonCon, and that the cosplay in particular was off-the-charts excellent.

I did not win, by the way…just like my first Dragon nomination in 2016, I lost to David Weber, so I guess it’s a tradition now.

Now I’m back home and finishing some projects I’ve had cooking for a while (a Wild Cards and a Frontlines novella), and then I’m off to work on the next novel, which I hope to finish by the end of the year…or at least by the end of the winter, which will probably start to descent on us here in NH by the end of next month. We’ve had snow as early as my birthday in late October, although it usually doesn’t really start in earnest until December.

That was my last con appearance this year. Apologies to everyone who messaged me to maybe get together at DragonCon…my social dance card was too full, and the place was too big and complicated to navigate in a hurry to squeeze in a lot of coffee or lunch meetings, especially with the lines everywhere. My next con will probably be ConFusion in Detroit in late January…if I end up finishing the new book by then, that is.

In closing, have some snapshots from WorldCon and DragonCon:

The lobby of one of the four DragonCon hotels, the Marriott, on Saturday night.
The view from the executive floor of the Marriott Marquis, 47 floors up.
Downtown Atlanta from my hotel room window.
DragonCon street traffic. Lots of cosplay.
ATL in the late PM.
Downtown ATL from above.
The view up from the Marriott lobby.
George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Losers’ Party.
The Hugo Awards ceremony.
That’s me, sitting on a panel next to Larry “Ringworld” Niven.
The view from the podium. Standing room only.
Our Wild Cards panel, with Mary Anne Mohanraj, GRRM, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Levine in the picture.
Wild Cards panel, sitting with Mary Anne and George.
A tiny slice of the Wild Cards signing line.
Con hotel in San Jose.
Obligatory view from the hotel window.
Another view from the hotel window, overlooking the San Jose Museum of Art and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph.
These don’t grow in New Hampshire.
Uncategorized

My WorldCon schedule

I just received my (hopefully) final con schedule, so I figured I’d share it here for the people who are going to be attending and want to come see me and/or the other panelists and participants.

Of course, I’ll also be on the floor and at the bars and parties all weekend long when I am not scheduled for anything else, so there’s a good chance you’ll see me around.

Tor: Wild Cards Signing

Format: Autographs

18 Aug 2018, Saturday 10:00 – 12:00, Autographing (San Jose Convention Center)

The long awaited reprint of Wild Cards VIII: One Eyed Jacks is August 28th.  But you have an opportunity to get a copy while at Worldcon and to get autographs from many of the authors.  This is a special group signing. 

 

Copies of the trade paperback will be available from Borderlands Books, in the Dealer’s area.   

The authors will ONLY be signing Wild Cards books.  

 

 

George R. R. Martin, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Marko Kloos, Caroline Spector, Walter Jon Williams, Saladin Ahmed

Wild Cards: An Ongoing Shared Universe

Format: Panel

18 Aug 2018, Saturday 12:00 – 13:00, 210G (San Jose Convention Center)

Who knew when Wild Cards was released in 1987 that it would grow to over 2 dozen books and still be going strong over 30 years later.  

The latest installments are Texas Hold ‘Em and Knaves Over Queens.  The eighth book, One-Eyed Jacks, is being reprinted and released during the convention.

Join the creators and authors for this discussion about how it all started, and where it’s going to be going.

 

 

Kevin Andrew Murphy (M), George R. R. Martin, Marko Kloos, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Mary Anne Mohanraj

Sciencing the Heck out of Exposition

Format: Panel

19 Aug 2018, Sunday 14:00 – 15:00, 212D (San Jose Convention Center)

One of the joys of hard science-fiction is the science itself. Sometimes you can gloss over the details of exactly how doubly uniparental inheritance of mitochondrialDNA works, and sometimes you need people to know about the package in the sperm’s tail. Sometimes the rocket just launches, and sometimes you need the reader to understand the details of orbital mechanics. In this panel, our hard SF authors will go over the ins and outs of handling exposition. For science!

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (M), Nancy Kress, Larry Niven, Catherine Asaro, Marko Kloos

 

 

travel. wild cards. writing.

You wake up one morning, and half the year is gone.

There must be a glitch in the Matrix, because there is absolutely no way that Worldcon is a week from Thursday already.

<is handed note from off-screen>

I have just been informed by my producer that Worldcon is indeed a week from Thursday already. 

I spent the first half of 2018 writing the first novel in the new series 47North is about to launch. In June I switched my brain to cool-down mode, and then I spent most of July editing the manuscript to hammer it into shape. Then we took a family trip down south to see the in-laws in Tennessee, and now we’re smack in the middle of August already, and I have to fly out to California next week.

In related news: I will be at Worldcon in San Jose. There’s a Wild Cards mass signing scheduled for Saturday, August 18 in the Dealers’ Room from 10am to noon. Bring your Wild Cards books, and you’ll be able to get them signed by a whole squad of writers. Consortium members in attendance will be Melinda Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Caroline Spector, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Bob Wayne, David D. Levine, George R.R. Martin, and that Marko Kloos fellow. I think we’re also doing a Wild Cards panel on Sunday, but the programming is still a bit in the air, so you may want to check the official program if you want to attend that panel.

Other than that, I’ll be mostly hanging out with friends, which is what I usually do at cons. If you happen to see me at the convention center or at the bar somewhere (a likely scenario), do come up and say hello. Worldcon is my main annual socializing event, and it’s always great to meet new people.

Let’s just hope that the fault lines stay quiet while I spend a long weekend right between the Hayward and the San Andreas. (Well, maybe a little earthquake would be cool.)


books. wild cards.

A winner is you!

I plugged the number of comments into a random number picker, which has determined that Bryan Porter is the winner of the Knaves Over Queens hardcover. Congratulations, Bryan! Please email me at frontlines@markokloos.com to let me know where to send it, and whether you want it now or (with more signatures) after Worldcon.

Thanks for playing, everyone. I may do more of these on a regular basis.

books. wild cards.

Knaves Over Queens contest

I am currently sweating in my office in 90-degree weather, which apparently will last all through next week, and working on a new Frontlines novella while I wait for my edit notes for the PALLADIUM WARS novel.

I recently received the contributor copies for the UK/AU versions of LOW CHICAGO and KNAVES OVER QUEENS. One copy goes on my personal brag shelf, but I got two of each, so I thought it might be cool to give one away to a Wild Cards fan. KNAVES OVER QUEENS isn’t going to be out in the US until next year, so other than ordering a copy via Amazon.co.uk, you won’t be able to get your hands on this hardcover in the US just yet.

So here’s your chance. The rules are as follows:

Leave one (1) comment at the bottom of this blog post stating you want a shot at an early hardcover of KNAVES OVER QUEENS. Comments left on Facebook or Twitter will not count, only comments on this blog post.

I will leave the comments open through the end of the weekend. At 0800 Eastern Standard Time on Monday morning, I will close the comments and use a random number generator to pick a winner from the comments.

The winner will receive a signed hardcover copy of KNAVES OVER QUEENS. If the winner so chooses, I will hang on to the book until Worldcon in San Jose and see if I can get Melinda Snodgrass, George R.R. Martin, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Caroline Spector to sign it as well. (We’re doing a Wild Cards signing at Worldcon 76, so chances are probably pretty good.) Or I can sign it by myself and send it on its way on Tuesday morning–your call if you win.

Contest is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. I’ll cover the postage.

 

fountain pens. writing.

At work again (and some pen & paper neepery)

Break’s over, and while I am waiting for the edit notes for the first PALLADIUM WARS novel, I am busy working on several different projects, one of which is a new Frontlines novella that I hope to have finished by the end of the month. Then there’s more Wild Cards stuff, and it looks like I’ll finally have some time to get started in earnest on the novel in the Ink & Blood world I’ve been threatening to write for years now. That one has had the benefit of stewing in its own juices for all this time, which means I’ve had a lot of time for world-building. I’ve said to Robin that my elevator pitch for this one is “Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones by way of the Brothers Grimm”, and I think that’s not even a joke.

For the new work, I’ve taken to fully drafting in longhand again instead of just dashing off a chapter here and there, and it’s lovely and relaxing. I do think the slower pace of handwriting makes for tighter writing, or maybe that just comes from the word-by-word revision you have to do when you type everything into the computer. What ends up in Scrivener or Word is already a second draft, and I can definitely tell the difference.

I used to be a Moleskine fan, but for someone who writes a lot and drags his notebooks everywhere, the binding on Moleskines does not age well. I have some battered notebooks on the shelf containing the handwritten draft of LINES OF DEPARTURE, and you can definitely tell they’ve been opened and closed dozens of times every day for the better part of a year.

My new notebook love is Black ‘n Red. They’re spiral-bound, with extremely robust polymer covers, and the paper is the best fountain pen-friendly notebook paper I’ve found. It’s smooth and thick, and it absolutely will not show bleed-through, not even with a broad-leaning medium nib and a wet ink. I used to dislike spiral bindings because you can’t write well on the left-hand page (the verso) without your hand running up against the spiral spine. The simple solution for me is to write only on the recto (the right-hand page), and flip the notebook upside down when I’ve reached the last page, which turns the old verso into the recto. (It also looks cool when you change colors for the upside-down recto.)