art. books. writing.

what I done wrote in 2016.

Since all the Kool Kidz(tm) are doing it, I guess I will have to list my finished projects for 2016 as well. It’s a short list, so don’t get up and make tea.

I wrote FIELDS OF FIRE, the fifth novel in the Frontlines series, and a novella for a future book in the Wild Cards universe, due to be out in the next year or two (I hope). The novella is called STRIPES, and it will be part of the Wild Cards book called LOW CHICAGO.

I didn’t write any short fiction in 2016, although I’d like to go back to that particular format in 2017, and it looks like I may have a good excuse to do so. I’m also trying to increase my production schedule–there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to finish at least two full novels a year from here on out, and Frontlines #6 (POINTS OF IMPACT) is well on the way to completion. If I don’t blow my deadline, you may get your hands on that novel in 2017 as well. There are also other things in the works for next year I can’t yet talk about, but you’ll be SUITABLY AWED when I announce them.

So there–that’s how I justified my existence in 2016. Wasn’t super-prolific, but wasn’t bad either. There’s a lot of middle ground between Harper Lee and James Patterson when it comes to writing pace.

Uncategorized

deployed military personnel, LISTEN UP!

Hey, you!

Are you a reader of the Frontlines series?

Are you serving in the United States Armed Forces?

Are you currently deployed overseas?

If you can answer all three of those questions in the affirmative, SOUND OFF and send me an email to frontlines@markokloos.com. If you can send me a few words about you (keeping OPSEC, of course–insert “size of your unit” joke here) and give me an APO/FPO address, I will enter you in a new…contest? Quest? Thing? …that I am starting on December 1.

From December 1 on out, I will pull an entry out of the mailbox on every first of the month and send that unit a little care package to provide some entertainment in the field.

I’ll post periodic updates on this…contest. Quest. Thing. And I really do need to think of a better name for it.

Uncategorized

fields of fire ARC contest.

So there’s this thing called an ARC (Advance Reader Copy), which is an uncorrected bound proof copy of a novel meant for reviewers and other folks who may want to get their hands on a book before its release date. I got ARCs for CHAINS OF COMMAND, and my publisher tells me that we’re doing paperback ARCs for FIELDS OF FIRE.

Sooooo–here’s your shot at reading the fifth Frontlines novel quite a bit ahead of the official release date.

I have worked a reference to the movie ALIENS into every single Frontlines book so far. It could be a chapter heading, or a line of verbatim dialogue, for example. Once I get my hands on them, I will send a signed and personalized ARC of FIELDS OF FIRE to the first person who comments on this thread and lists all four ALIENS references from Frontlines 1-4 correctly.

books. NACDC. writing.

NACDC flags, now in real life.

Here’s the first batch of flag patches made up by the NAC Defense Corps fan group for cosplay. The designer, Marc Gerst, came up with a super-clean flag design: two colors, and appropriate simple heraldry for the national NAC flag and the different branches of the NACDC.  Clockwise from top left, they are: NAC national flag, the Homeworld Defense flag, the Spaceborne Infantry flag, and the Fleet flag.

It’s pretty cool to see what the fan group has already cooked up, and how excited people are about the Frontlines world and the possibilities for cosplay.

20161101_153839312_ios

books. conventions. travel.

back from honorcon, and some award braggery.

I just got back from Honorcon yesterday, where a lovely surprise was waiting for me during the awards ceremony for the inaugural Rampant Manticore awards.

Not only did I get the Best Military SF Novel award (for ANGLES OF ATTACK), but I also managed to win the H. Beam Piper Memorial Award. These are doubly meaningful and special because they are fan-voted awards (the membership of Honorcon and Manticon voted on the Rampant Manticore), and the awards themselves are just plain cool-looking. They are little engraved glass books, and they are quite heavy for their size. Luckily, TSA didn’t have an issue with them in my carry-on, so they made it home safe and sound in my hand luggage.

Thank you again for your hospitality and your votes, Manticon and Honorcon attendees, and thank you to TRMN (the Royal Manticoran Navy, the official Honorverse fan group) for having me as a guest at both cons.

Also: congratulations to Larry Correia (who won Best Fantasy Novel for “Son of the Black Sword”), Linda Nagata (who won Best Fantasy Short Story for “The Way Home”), and all the other winners.

img_059290

 

art. books. shameless self-promotion.

cover reveal for fields of fire.

Frontlines #5, FIELDS OF FIRE, now has a cover. Want to see? SURE YOU DO.

81tf-6zll

Pretty cool, eh? It’s the most explodey cover yet, which is cool because it also has the most explosions of any Frontlines book so far.

FIELDS OF FIRE will be out on February 28, by the way. Tell your friends, and tell them to tell their friends, and so on.

shameless self-promotion. travel. writing.

what i’ll be doing with the rest of 2016.

I just returned from the Viable Paradise writing workshop’s 20-year reunion on Martha’s Vineyard. It was nice to catch up with old friends and meet VPers from other years, and the weather was ideal for some extended sightseeing drives around the Vineyard. Of course, I didn’t get too much writing done between all the socializing and panels, so this week I’m going to have to do word count penance.

There’s only one trip left for 2016, and that’s Honorcon in Raleigh. I’m not on the official program, but I’ll be doing a few panels and gaming sessions. There will also be another meeting of the Frontlines fan club (yes, I have an official fan group now, which is still kind of mind-blowing). I’ve commissioned a tailor to make a prototype NAC Fleet shipboard uniform as seen in the Frontlines: Requiem graphic novel, and that one should be ready in time for me to show it off at Honorcon.

After Honorcon, I’m taking the rest of the year to finish Frontlines #6, which will be called POINTS OF IMPACT. (Frontlines #5, called FIELDS OF FIRE, will be out on February 28th, and can be pre-ordered already in all formats.)

The dance card for 2017 is already getting kind of full. I’ll be Guest of Honor at ConStellation 8 in Lincoln, NE from April 28-30. Then I’m going to Minnesota again as author guest at Manticon 2017 from May 26-28. And I’ve already reserved a hotel room for WorldCon 75, which will be in Helsinki, Finland from August 9-13. After that, I’ll probably throttle back on cons and other engagements for the rest of 2017 a bit, but there’s no telling yet what kind of stuff will hit the inbox between now and mid-2017, so we’ll see what happens.

Traveling and going to cons is a ton of fun, but it really dings my word count because I’m already easily distracted in my natural habitat, never mind a place where there’s stuff to see and people who want to talk to you. I just need to pace myself in a manner that won’t slow the writing output down too much.

And with that, I am back to work on Frontlines #6. It’s the middle of October, which is objectively proven to be the best of all months, and the weather outside is like a parting kiss from summer. I’ll leave you with a few shots from Martha’s Vineyard, which is about twice as pretty as my cell phone photography makes it look.

img_0518 img_0520 img_0521 img_0529 img_0530 img_0533 img_0535 img_0539 img_0546 img_0552 img_0553 img_0555 img_0558 img_0560 img_6959

technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs. writing.

the old ways and the new.

IMG 0373

 

This is a picture of long-handing it on an iPad Pro. It seems excessive and wasteful to use a $1,000 tablet as an electronic legal pad, but I’m very much digging the advantages it has over paper.

You don’t have to drag around multiple notebooks, you have an endless supply of paper of whatever kind you want, you have pen tips of all kinds and inks in all colors, and everything you write is automatically backed up via iCloud and shared with the MacBook Pro on my desk. When I am done with the drafting phase, I can either print out the longhand, or export it to PDF or DOCX to split-screen it next to Scrivener and transcribe everything. (My handwriting doesn’t play well with the handwriting recognition programs out there, and I enjoy the on-the-fly revision inherent in transcription anyway.)

The iPad Pro also does Scrivener now, so it has become a full-blown Swiss Army knife of productivity hardware. I can type in Scrivener or Word, longhand in Notability, make sketches in Notes or Paper, and then bring it all together in Scrivener on the laptop. 

Before I got the iPad Pro, I used the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for the same job, and it does it almost as well. The pen is almost as good as the Apple Pencil, and the new handwriting features in Windows 10 are great. I would not be heartbroken if I had to switch back to the SP3. But the iPad Pro has a bit of an edge if all the rest of your gear is Apple stuff too because everything integrates just a little better.

I still enjoy writing on proper, actual paper with nice pens, but there is something to be said for being able to carry around as many notebooks and pens or pencils as you want in a single pound-and-a-half folio case, and have the peace of mind of instant backups and digitization. But for the final assembly of the Novel-Length Textual Product, I still go to Scrivener on the Mac, which has been my main writing software since Book 1.

awards. books. conventions. friends. writing.

the dragon awards have been dragon-awarded.

NEWSFLASH: I did not win the Dragon Award for Best Military SF Novel. David Weber did, and congratulations to him. Congratulations also to Larry Correia, whose SON OF THE BLACK SWORD won the award for Best Fantasy Novel.

(I didn’t expect to beat David on votes because he has a lot more fans and a lot more books out than I do, and I am but an egg in the genre.)

But it was fun and an honor just to be nominated, and I want to thank everyone who voted for CHAINS OF COMMAND and got it onto the shortlist. I wasn’t at DragonCon because I promised the wife I’d take September off from traveling, but my friend Melissa F. Olson graciously agreed to accept for me in the unlikely event of my win. I don’t know who’s more relieved now—Melissa because she didn’t have to walk up to the podium and make an acceptance speech…or me because Melissa didn’t have a chance to get creative with that acceptance speech.

 

books. writing.

terms in polish.

I don’t know if they used stock art or commissioned this for the book, but the cover art for the Polish edition of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT is something else. It’s probably my favorite piece of cover art of all the versions of the book so far.

Here it is without the cover text:

13615479 10154319761358874 8609920925185146412 n

And here’s the cover with the text:

505372 352x500

Not bad, Polish publisher. Not bad at all.

(The Polish edition will be out this week, by the way.)