books. shameless self-promotion. travel. writing.

ConFusion schedule.

I’ll be at ConFusion in Detroit next weekend. If you’re going to be there, here’s where you can find me:

 

Friday 9:00:00 PM Who Threw Away My Monster Compendium

When was the last time a zeitgeist novel had a bugbear or a cockatrice? How long is it since someone fought a giant, flesh-eating beast instead of pikeman? Where did all the monsters go? With quest plots out of fashion, deus ex machina ditched, treasure-hunting too economically dull, and stories about ethics, is the monster still relevant in today’s fiction?

Saturday 4:00:00 PM Power Armor and Rail Guns: The Science of Future Wars

Military technology in science fiction settings: Who wore the powersuit better?

 

Saturday 6:00:00 PM The Fallacy of Commercial Fiction

Literary culture often derides the idea of commercial work, suggesting that marketability signals a lack of refinement. What exactly is commercial fiction and why is it snubbed? Furthermore, are science fiction, fantasy, and horror equally burdened by this dichotomy?

 

Outside of the panels, I’ll be hanging out with old friends and making new ones, so if you see me there, feel free to come up and say hi. I’ll also be at the Autograph Session on Saturday, and my awesome publisher is sending a box of TERMS OF ENLISTMENT paperbacks to the event hotel to give away as promo freebies. I am not above using bribes to make sure people show up for the signing, so if you want to snag a free signed coy, SHOW UP. I’ll hand out the freebie copies until they’re gone. (Of course, I’ll also sign stuff you bring with you.)

If you’re going to ConFusion: see you in Detroit next week!

art. books. capitalism. shameless self-promotion. writing.

dispatch from the frontlines graphic novel front.

Here’s something extremely cool: the provisional cover for Issue #1 of the Frontlines: Requiem series of graphic novels, due out by Jet City Comics this spring. I just got the green light to be able to share this with you all.

Frontlines_cover_CLR_FINAL_editR2

Frontlines: Requiem will be a tie-in of sorts. It tells the story of a different character in the Frontlines universe, someone you haven’t met yet. The protagonist is Colonel Soraya Yamin, an NAC starship commander in her Forties and mother of two. The story takes place during the events in Angles of Attack, and it will provide a lot of backstory to the series. In particular, it shows what’s going on back on and around Earth while Andrew is gallivanting around in space. There will be four issues, and the artists are Ivan Brandon and Paul Erskine.

That’s all I can tell you right now, but I’ll post updates as soon as there’s a page for pre-orders via ComiXology and/or other sources.

 

books. travel. writing.

2016 already?

I’ve been an awful blogger in 2015.

I’m pretty active on Twitter and Facebook, but I use them mostly to stay in touch with friends and family (Facebook), and dash off one -liners and short thoughts as they pop into my head during the day (Twitter). But the long form requires one to actually sit down, open an editor, and think about content and structure and stuff, and that comes perilously close to work. Alas, there are readers out there who don’t do Twitter, and my private Facebook account is limited to real-life friends and family, so I suppose I should get more regular with the updates on the blog again.

2015 was great. I don’t have a thing to complain about—the curve of professional good fortune that bent sharply upward in early 2013 has been going on that trajectory ever since. Angles of Attack came out in April and earned out its advance on Day One on the strength of pre-orders alone, which is a feat I would love to repeat with Chains of Command when it comes out this April. I did more work-related travel than ever before: San Antonio in May, Europe in June, Readercon in July, Worldcon in August, NY ComicCon and Honorcon in October, World Fantasy Con in November. And it looks like this year will be just as busy, if not more so.

Right now the calendar has ConFusion in it later this month, so I’ll get to see more of Detroit than just the airport for once. I’ll be Guest of Honor at Manticon in Minneapolis in May, and I’ll be going to Europe again in June when the third Frontlines book comes out in German. I never miss Readercon in July, and I’d like to do Worldcon again this year, and then there’s NYCC again, and so on.

New fiction this year includes Chains of Command in April for sure, and very likely the first of a series of tie-in Frontlines graphic novels around the same time. If I get Frontlines #5 (Fields of Fire) finished reasonably on schedule, you’ll probably see that one this year as well, which would make 2016 the first year in which you’ll see two Frontlines novels.

2016: More fiction, more travel, mmmmmmmmaybe more blogging. We’ll see how things go.

art. books. capitalism. writing.

chains of command, the shocking cover reveal!

Hey, boys and girls—do you want to see the kick-ass cover for Frontlines #4, CHAINS OF COMMAND, due out on April 19th? OF COURSE YOU DO.

CoC-cover

Pretty sweet, huh?

I like all the covers, of course, but I have a particular fondness for the first one, TERMS OF ENLISTMENT. That said, this one may just be the best cover yet. It’s very dynamic in a Star Wars: battlefront sort of way. What do you think?

art. books. capitalism. shameless self-promotion. writing.

frontlines: the…graphic novel?

Frontlines #4 (Chains of Command) will be out in April, and I am hard at work to see to it that Frontlines #5 (Fields of Fire) will be out in 2016 as well. 

HOWEVER….there are other things in the works that may be of interest to you, and I hear that I am now free to share them.

First, Audible/Briliance Audio has purchased the audio rights to my Frontlines short story LUCKY THIRTEEN, and the novella, MEASURES OF ABSOLUTION. The audio versions should be out at some point next year as well, and I’ll let you know when we have a definite date of release.

The second order of the day is something pretty cool indeed:

Jet City Comics is going to release a series of graphic novels in the Frontlines universe. They will be called FRONTLINES: REQUIEM, and provide you with some interesting backstory about the events on and around Earth between ANGLES OF ATTACK and CHAINS OF COMMAND. There will be four issues and an omnibus graphic novel at the end that contains all four issues, and Jet City Comics is working to get the first issue out and into your hands by the time CHAINS OF COMMAND comes out in April. 

There will be Frontlines graphic novels! Is this cool, or what? I’m still a little beside myself over this. It’s not just a fun way to tell more stories in the Frontlines universe, but it’s also an amazing chance to show that world and some of its characters in a different, more visual medium. I can’t wait for the first issue to come out.

books. friends. movies. shameless self-promotion. travel.

gooder reads.

Hey, look at that! ANGLES OF ATTACK made the semifinals in the science fiction category of the Goodreads Choice Awards. Thanks to all of you who voted for Space Kablooie #3. And feel free to vote for it some more!

I spent the weekend at World Fantasy Con in Saratoga Springs, NY. I didn’t bother with a con membership, and mostly spent time with old friends. I did walk the ballroom floor on Friday night when all the writers had their tables set up for signings, and got to say hello and introduce myself to Joe Haldeman, which was a thrill. (Another awesome thing was realizing just how many of the writers present were friends of mine.) The weekend was basically all drinking, eating, chatting, and watching movies. I brought my PS4 to the hotel suite to stream movies from it, and we got a little zapped and watched three movies in a row on Saturday night–and that was after I took the opportunity to see the new Bond movie at the theater in the afternoon.

Writing is a rather solitary pursuit, so it’s always fun to get out of the house and meet up with friends who do the same thing you’re doing, and who understand what it’s like. I’ve made the best of friends as a genre writer–we enjoy each others’ company, are happy for each others’ successes, and glad to commiserate over the bumpy stuff. Friendship: it truly IS magic!

Now I’m back to work on Frontlines #5 (FIELDS OF FIRE), which will keep me busy for the rest of the year and possibly a bit into the new one. If all goes well, it will be out in 2016 as well, which means you’ll get to spend your shekels on TWO Frontlines novels next year. (And you may want to keep some of your tooth fairy change back for some other Frontlines-related spending opportunities. But more of that later, when I am at liberty to…. divulge.)

 

 

books.

signed books: an experiment.

I know that some people would like to have books signed, and I probably don’t go to nearly enough conventions and such just yet to sign in person for everyone who would like a signed and/or personalized copy.

Soooooo–here’s the new experimental plan. I don’t think there are so many of you out there that signing your stuff on the side would overwhelm me, but I won’t know until I find out one way or the other. I have very convenient post office access, and I figure I can sign a few books a day and mail them back to their owners without making too much of a dent in my schedule. (If it does, I may either discontinue the practice, try to partner up with a local bookstore for it, or hire an assistant.) But hey, let’s give it a try. It’s not like I’m Neil Gaiman or John Scalzi.

Until I post otherwise, you may send me Frontlines books to sign and/or personalize to the following address:

P.O.Box 9

Lyme, NH 03768

Don’t forget to include a self-addressed envelope with enough stamps for sending you the book back via USPS Media Mail. If you hand the book(s) to be shipped to your friendly postal clerk, they’ll weigh it for you and sell you the right amount of postage. If you want or need the book(s) returned more quickly than Media Mail, you can pony up for Priority, and I’ll try to get it back into the mail to you the day I sign the book(s).

If you live outside the United States, you can go to the usps.com website and calculate the USPS international return postage for a large envelope of your book’s weight and then PayPal me to marko.kloos@gmail.com, but I have to warn you ahead of time that this isn’t a super-cheap solution, and you may pay as much for the return postage as you paid for the book to begin with.

Please include a note indicating how you want me to sign the book(s)–just my signature, or any personalization, preferably all in legible block writing so I don’t ruin your book by signing it to the wrong name. I will send the book(s) back to you as soon as I can.

Again, this is a test run. I don’t expect this to generate a ton of extra work for me, and I’d like to offer a way to get personalized and signed books to people who don’t usually go to cons and such, so let’s give this a shot and see how it goes.

books. shameless self-promotion.

the 2015 goodreads choice awards and you.

It appears to my untrained eye that ANGLES OF ATTACK, the third Frontlines novel, made it into the opening round of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2015, science fiction category. That means a whole lot of readers thought it didn’t suck, which is a cool and pleasing thing.

In the wake of the ballot-related kerfuffle that happened earlier this year, I am extremely hesitant to throw out any recommendation or suggestion regarding votes, but if you have a Goodreads account and think that ANGLES is deserving of a vote, I would not oppose it in the least. And if you think one of the other fine novels in the SF category was better than ANGLES, you should totally vote for that, and I won’t mind in the least. There are some pretty good novels in that list, including stuff from John Scalzi, Ann Leckie, Neal Stephenson, and Paolo Bacigalupi, all kick-ass writers in their own right.

(Thanks to Chuck Wendig for pointing this out to me on Twitter.)

gadgetry. technology. the munchkin wrangler gear whore labs. writing.

it’s a tablet! it’s a laptop! it’s a dessert topping!

I have a severe case of technology ADD. When it comes to hardware, I sometimes impulse-buy shiny things just to try them out and see how they fit my workflow. Sometimes they look and work better on the store shelf or in the YouTube review than they do in actual real-world use, and sometimes they exceed even my rosy expectations.

Here, for example, are the two devices I’ve been using for work on the go. On the left is a 12″ MacBook, one of the new thin ones that came out this spring. On the right is the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft’s ambitious tablet that is marketed as a sort of hybrid device, a tablet that can also be a laptop replacement.

IMG_1564

I save all my work to two different cloud services, OneDrive and iCloud Drive, both of which are installed on both machines. Both devices are very close to each other in hardware specs, and they are marketed as competitors to each other. The MacBook has a CoreM CPU, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD for storage. The Surface Pro 3 has a Core i5, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD. The Mac runs MacOS X, the Surface runs Windows 10 Professional, both full desktop operating systems. They are both under two pounds in weight. (Without its type cover, the SP3 is quite a bit lighter.) Once you add in the SP3’s keyboard cover (which is really an essential add-on), they are similarly priced.

Now, I’m a big fan of Apple hardware, and their laptops are without a doubt the best laptops on the market. They are meticulously designed, aesthetically pleasing, extremely well put together, and running a pretty bomb-proof OS. But when it comes to overall flexibility in day-to-day use, the Surface Pro 3 has it all over the MacBook. It’s a tablet by format, but it’s full-power hardware running a desktop OS, essentially an Ultrabook in slate form. Click on the keyboard cover, and it becomes a laptop (albeit one with inferior keyboard and trackpad compared to the Mac’s.) Take off the keyboard, and you have a tablet, with the OS automatically reconfiguring itself for tablet optimization. It also has a touch screen, and there’s an active pressure-sensitive pen stylus that can be used to draw and write on the screen (and the Surface’s e-ink implementation and palm print detection are the best I’ve tried on any device.) And you can click it into its docking station and use it as a desktop system with external mouse and keyboard. For sheer flexibility–the ability to use it in whatever way fits your workflow best, and switch modes on the fly as needed–there’s simply nothing out there that comes close to touching the Surface Pro 3.

To be sure, the MacBook makes a better laptop than the SP3 in laptop mode. The kickstand requires more real estate on an airplane tray or desk than the base of the MacBook, the keyboard isn’t quite as stable or nice to type on, and using the SP3 directly on your lap isn’t as natural and stable as doing the same with the MacBook. But the MacBook can’t be used in tablet mode at all, and it has neither touch screen nor stylus. And as a tablet, the iPad makes a better one for media consumption because it’s lighter and has longer battery life, but the SP3 blows the iPad away when it comes to processing power and connectivity. (You can run Photoshop or Scrivener on this thing, and play some Diablo III or World of Warcraft when you’re done.)

Which one is more fun to use? As a laptop, the MacBook is really hard to beat, but that’s the only way you can use it. The fun with the SP3 comes from being able to do more with it. I can have it in its dock and use it as a desktop system. I can sit at the table with it in laptop mode, type away at an email, then pick it up and take off the keyboard as I hand the whole thing to Robin so she can read the reply. I can sketch or take handwritten notes on it as it’s propped up against the steering wheel while I wait for the kids to get out of school. Or I can sit in the recliner and read news or flip out the kickstand to get some more work done if I feel like it. They set out to design a tablet that can capably serve as the One Device That Does It All, and I have to say that after owning and using one for a good while, they are pretty damn close with the Surface Pro 3. It’s not going to be a solution for everyone, but I really enjoy using mine, and it works very well for me.

books. friends. travel. writing.

brief nycc 2015 weekend recap.

I spent last weekend at NY Comic Con in the Big Apple. As usual, it was a ton of fun, although the teeming mass of humanity that is the Javits Center at Comic Con is something I have to take in limited doses. I did a signing at the 47North booth, a panel with other writers including the sentient tarantula-filled meatbag known as Chuck Wendig, and some general milling about and saying hi to friends.

My publisher 47North threw a little mill & swill at an artisan cheese shop downtown, and we somehow ended up staying out until, oh, 2:30AM. Luckily, I had nothing on the schedule for Saturday other than touristy stuff. Robin had never been to NYC, so I played tour guide. We spent the day doing the tourist thing, and then went to have dinner and see a Broadway show (Sylvia with Matthew Broderick, at the Cort Theatre). We had a great time, and it was nice to do grown-up things for a few days without the kids in tow.

Here are a few snapshots from the NYCC weekend:

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Next up on the calendar is Honorcon in Raleigh, where I will be a featured author guest. (Honorcon is a military SF con centered on, but not limited to, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series.) After that, I’ll be at World Fantasy in Saratoga Springs in early November to hang out and do some barconning with old friends. After that, the schedule is mostly clear for the rest of the year, which is a good thing as I have another Frontlines novel to finish.

Onward into Friday! <saddles platypus>