conventions. friends. travel.

Emerald City Comic Con after-action report

This past weekend, Robin and I went to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. My publisher, 47North, is an Amazon Publishing imprint, so they’re based in Seattle, which meant I finally got to visit the Mothership and meet most of the rest of the APub team.

The Doppler building, where Amazon Publishing is housed, is FULL OF DOGGOS. It’s a dog-friendly building, and it seems like every third or fourth employee brings a dog to work. We were hanging out in the lobby for a bit at the start of the business day, and the stream of Good Boys And Girls coming in with their owners was a cheery and relaxing sight. If I had to work in a corporate environment, a corporate headquarters with lots of dogs in it would be my top pick.

Oh, and the view from the office isn’t bad either:

Then there are the Spheres, which are the most Science Fiction-looking piece of architecture I’ve ever seen. We didn’t have the time to check them out on the inside, though.

I was on two panels at Emerald City Comic Con. One was a pop culture throw-down with fellow authors Chuck Wendig, Django Wexler, Cherie Priest, Amy Bartol, and Kevin Hearne. Chuck, Amy, and Cherie are friends (Cherie is a fellow Wild Cards writer, Amy is a fellow APub author, and I’ve known Chuck online and in meatspace for years), and it was great to meet Django and Kevin. My wife is a big fan of his Iron Druid books, which are narrated by the same guy who does my Frontlines books, the awesome Luke Daniels. She was thrilled when he came over to her and introduced himself before the panel.

The second panel was about world-building for magical and futuristic worlds, where I sat in with fellow APub authors Emily King, Charlie Holmberg, Amy Bartol, J.D.Horn, Robert Cargill, and Jeff Wheeler. Both panels were extremely well attended and a lot of fun, and I am happy to say that while I didn’t win the pair of fuzzy shark slippers for the victor of the throwdown (that honor went to Chuck Wendig because he got to answer ALL THE STAR WARS TRIVIA), I managed to avoid ownership of the Jar-Jar Binks mask that was the last-place prize.

I did two signings, and there were quite a few fans showing up to get their books defaced, but my signing line wasn’t nearly as busy as those of the guys to either side of me (Chuck Wendig and Kevin Hearne), and all three of us put together probably didn’t sign as many books as Patrick Rothfuss or Terry Brooks did. Here’s Kevin and Chuck at work:

The thing I enjoy most about cons other than meeting fans is getting together with my friends and colleagues in the business. We go months or sometimes years without meeting in real life, but when we do, it’s always like we just saw each other at a con a week ago. The SF/F genre is so small and familial that it feels there are no more than two degrees of separation between any of the writers working in the field. If you don’t know the writer in question, you are friends with someone who does. (I may have said the sentence “How do YOU know each other?” in astonishment more than once last weekend.) My field of work is full of awesome people, and that’s part of what makes this writing thing the best job in the world.

There was only a single negative thing that happened on this otherwise excellent weekend trip, and that was the loss of my iPad Pro, which I left in the seat pocket of the plane to Seattle. I remotely activated Lost Mode and filled out the online lost property form with Delta, but I’m not terribly hopeful. Lesson learned, I suppose. Next time I’ll take the 10-pound Alienware with the 17″ screen, which won’t get lost in between the safety card and the in-flight menu because it won’t fit into the seat pocket. As a side effect, I only had my phone all weekend, but it was kind of nice to be mostly unplugged for a few days.

Now it’s back to work–I have a novel to finish that I meant to complete before ECCC (and the face-to-face meetings with my publisher). Thankfully, they didn’t lock me up in the secret author dungeon in the basement for blowing my deadline…

friends. wild cards.

Evernight

There’s a new Wild Cards story up at tor.com, “Evernight” by Victor Milán. 

This is a bitter-sweet thing because Victor Milán passed away yesterday.

I understand that Victor was practically the father of Wild Cards (he’s the one who gave George R.R. Martin the RPG Superworld for his birthday, which inspired George to start Wild Cards.) I did not get to meet Victor because I only joined the Wild Cards consortium two years ago and haven’t had many chances to meet everybody in real life (it’s a huge group, and a lot of its members live out west, where I am not), and now I’m sad that I won’t get a chance to know him in person. I have a copy of Victor’s book The Dinosaur Lords on my Kindle, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. Now I’ll have to bump it to the top of the reading list.

It’s a strange thing, the human condition…it can make you feel kinship with people you’ve never met, and sorrow at the news of their passing even though you’ve never talked to them.

 

castle frostbite. horseless carriages.

The night the minivan died

So I accidentally killed a perfectly good Dodge Grand Caravan that was only three and a half years old and had 44,000 miles on the odometer. The details shall remain undisclosed, but there was no injury or body damage involved.

Luckily, the insurance covered the total loss, so I was able to go out and source a new ride. After having owned two minivans in a row, I had come to the conclusion that while the extra space was nice to have, we didn’t really need the hauling capacity because 99% of the time, I drove around by myself in that big, empty 4,500-pound box. So I downsized considerably:

It’s a Jeep Renegade Trailhawk, the off-road trim of the smallest crossover Jeep currently makes. Robin drives one of the new Jeep Cherokees, and we’ve both been very impressed with that car over the last two years, so I figured I’d get myself a Jeep too. This is their subcompact model, which shares a platform with the Fiat 500X (and like the Fiat, it’s made in Italy.) But unlike the 500X, the little Renegade has some serious off-road chops, especially in the Trailhawk trim. Their 4WD system is excellent, and this little thing is better in the snow than any car I’ve owned before, including the Subaru. And it’s an absolute hoot to bomb around town with this. The short wheelbase and high seating position makes it feel like driving a zippy little buggy.

Now to apply for the right vanity plate for this car. TONKA is already taken, alas. Maybe RUBRDUKY?

fountain pens. writing.

Analog manuscript

Found these again while straightening out the office bookshelf:

That’s the handwritten manuscript for LINES OF DEPARTURE. The finished version filled two 192-page large (A4) sized Piccadilly notebooks. And because I am a pen nerd, I remember which pens I used (Pelikan 205 and Lamy 2000, both with EF nibs), and the ink (Noodler’s Bulletproof Black).

The first drafts of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and LINES OF DEPARTURE were written by hand and then typed into Scrivener. I like doing that because what ends up on the computer is a word-for-word revision that has been edited on the fly. And because I am a pen nerd, I like the tactile feeling of nib on paper. It’s also immensely satisfying to have an original handwritten manuscript on the shelf when you’re done.

These days, I still use longhand for world-building, notes, and shorter fiction, but the novels are going straight into the computer (still via Scrivener) because it saves time and doesn’t hold up the schedule. I’ll go back to longhand-first for the military fantasy novel I am planning to write later this year because it seems appropriate (it’s the Ink and Blood world from my short story in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, only rolled out onto a much larger canvas).

If you want to keep your handwritten stuff around, don’t skimp on the notebook. The Piccadillys I used were Moleskine knock-offs (bought at Borders on the cheap at the time because I was poor), and their binding and cover lamination didn’t hold up well over the years. Then again, those went with me everywhere for over a year, so maybe the Moleskine wouldn’t have fared any better.

 

books. frontlines. writing.

Continuity errors in POINTS OF IMPACT

POINTS OF IMPACT is out and doing well. As always, some oopsies made it through the entire editorial process past a dozen sets of eyeballs. And as always, I started getting Tweets and emails about continuity bloopers not 24 hours after the book hit the virtual shelves. Thanks to all to took the time to write and point them out. I shall now address them so they’re all in one spot for easy future reference.

MINOR SPOILERS FOR “POINTS OF IMPACT” FOLLOW:

Read More “Continuity errors in POINTS OF IMPACT”

books. capitalism. shameless self-promotion.

Points of Impact is out TO-DAY.

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…

art. books. shameless self-promotion. wicked sharp. wild cards. writing.

Low Chicago

So I have something pretty wicked to show you today.

Remember how I mentioned that my first Wild Cards novella in the U.S. will be out in June as part of a novel called LOW CHICAGO?

Well, the final cover of LOW CHICAGO is in, and it’s freaking glorious. Not just because it’s cool by itself, which it definitely is…but because the cover character is mine. He’s called Khan, and he’s the protagonist of the novella “Stripes”, which is part of that book. This is the first Wild Cards character I got to create, and he’s probably the most fun to write of all the fictional people who sit around in the fiction casting office in my brain. He’s a joker-ace, which means that his Wild Cards mutation makes him look inhuman but also gives him great powers. What kind of mutation, you ask? Well, let me show you the cover:

That is a pretty beastly cover, I think. (Pun intended.) The artwork was done by Michael Komarck.

LOW CHICAGO will be out on July 16th, and the other stories in the volume were written by John Jos. Miller, Saladin Ahmed, Paul Cornell, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Christopher Rowe, and Melinda M. Snodgrass. It’s part of what we call the American Triad, but it’s a stand-alone volume, so you don’t have to have read the entire series to know what’s going on in this one. 

books. capitalism. shameless self-promotion.

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

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.

castle frostbite. family. food and drink.

The Spirits of Christmas

Robin gave me a neat holiday gift this year: an advent calendar of cocktails. Each day, she handed me a little numbered and labeled bag with ingredients and a recipe for a different holiday-themed cocktail. If you’ve been following my instagram feed, I’ve documented most of them there.

The one in the picture above was the last little baggie on Christmas Day, Santa’s Whiskey Flip. It’s made with honey bourbon, brandy, calvados, and peach schnapps.

My favorite of the bunch was the Signal Fire, though. It’s basically a Manhattan with a bit of maple syrup and peaty Scotch instead of bourbon. A little sweet, bitter, and smoky all at the same time. I’ll be adding that one to the permanent repertoire in the Castle Frostbite bar.

That was a gift that took weeks of logistics and footwork for Robin, researching recipes and buying and stashing all the ingredients in secret. It was a lot of fun to try out a new cocktail together every night. Of all the Christmas gifts I’ve ever received, that was by far the most involved and thoughtful one.

 

books. capitalism. gadgetry. technology. writing.

Kindles, and stuff to put on them

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.