new hampshah. politics. writing.

Almost there, and not a day too soon

There’s an ADHD phenomenon called “anticipatory paralysis” that goes like this:

You have a dental appointment or important Zoom call scheduled at 3pm. No big deal, right? That’s in the middle of the afternoon. You can get lots of work done until then.

Only the ADHD brain doesn’t work that way. It anticipates the scheduled interruption to the point that you can’t focus on the work at hand because you know you’re going to have to stop what you’re doing and tend to that other thing no matter how focused you are on the first thing. The entire day up to the appointment is basically shot because your brain chemistry puts you in a holding pattern until then.

Turns out an election is basically the super-sized version of anticipatory paralysis when you’re running for office. Here’s this thing you agreed to do that will take five months to resolve, and the result will determine your schedule for the next two years! Good luck with that creative brain work, pal!

That said, the day is at hand tomorrow, and by Wednesday morning, I will know what the next few years bring. And then my brain will hopefully take the parking brakes off and I can finish the several projects I’m behind on…

Running for public office has been an interesting experience. I’ve had to leave my comfort zone in many ways, but I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve met more people in my home town and the other towns in the district in the last five months than I’ve met in the almost 20 years since we moved here. A lot of good, smart, and motivated folks have been doing a ton of work in support of my candidacy. It’s been motivating and humbling, and that alone has made the time and effort worth it to me, no matter which way the election turns out tomorrow.

And once the dust settles on Wednesday, it’s back to work at full throttle. I have two books to get out for you all before the beginning of the legislative session in January. To those of you who have sent messages of support or even contributed to my campaign–thank you very much for your confidence in me. And everyone who’s waiting for ECLIPSE or the draft of the Super-Secret New Project–sorry for the slow progress, but I hope you can agree that the delay was for a worthy cause. I’ll write the books no matter what, but this was my shot to jump in when I could to help improve things, at least on the local and state levels.

(If you’d like to get a glimpse of what Candidate Marko is like on the campaign trail, here’s a recent interview with me on Steve Marchand’s podcast where we talk about my candidacy, what I can bring to the State House, and the district I’m running to represent. I also talk a bit about writer brain and the public/private aspects of being a political candidate.)

See you on the other side of tomorrow–and if you’re a resident of Grafton-18, I hope you vote for me when you’re in that booth!

books.

Signed books update II

The response to my signed author copy offer has been a lot more robust than I had expected, which is great because the bookshelves are almost cleared.

(If you have ordered a book from me as of, say, last week and haven’t received it yet, let me know at marko.kloos@gmail.com, and I’ll check into it.)

There is some stock left! The current stash is down to the following:

Citadel hardcover (6)

Ballistic paperback (5)

Citadel paperback (4)

Descent paperback (8)

Points of Impact paperback (4)

Chains of Command paperback (7)

I also got half a dozen more Aftershocks paperbacks in, so someone could make themselves a lovely unofficial boxed set with all four of the released Palladium Wars books in paperback if they were so inclined.

Let me know via email if you want to lay claim to any of those. As before, signed paperbacks are $15 shipped, and hardcovers are $25, via PayPal or Venmo.

books.

Signed books update

The response to my offer of signed author copies was a lot more robust than I had anticipated, but everyone who ordered books should either have them already or receive them soon.

I still have copies of all the listed books with the exception of Centers of Gravity, which proved very popular. In addition, I have a few extras of Terms of Enlistment as well. If you are late to the party and still want to claim a signed book, let me know via email and we’ll sort it out.

books. bullets & links.

Fantasy/SF giveaway

Fellow 47North author Jeff Wheeler is running a Fantasy/SciFi giveaway this month, and one of the books in the bunch is a signed copy of SCORPIO, book #1 in the Frontlines: Evolution series.

If you want to put your name in the hat, here’s the link:

https://kingsumo.com/g/mpjkxvm/fantasy-sci-fi-giveaway

Another shot at a signed book, this one totally FREE OF CHARGE…but subject to the favor of the RNG gods. Good luck!

books. bullets & links. shameless self-promotion.

August Kindle sale happening right meow

Amazon has put (almost) the entire Frontlines, Frontlines: Evolution, and Palladium Wars series on sale at the Kindle store for the month of August. If you don’t have the whole set on Kindle yet, now’s the time to strike!

The Frontlines series:

Terms of Enlistment is $1.99.

Lines of Departure is $4.99 (inexplicably the only book in the sequence not on sale, but strange are the ways of the Big A.)

Angles of Attack is $2.49.

Chains of Command is $2.49.

Fields of Fire is $2.49.

Points of Impact is $2.99.

Orders of Battle is $2.99.

Centers of Gravity is $2.99.

The Frontlines: Evolution series:

Scorpio is $2.49.

Corvus is $2.49.

Cygnus will be out on December 8 at the full $4.99 price, but you can preorder it if you haven’t done so already–lots of preorders make my publisher happy and let me write more books!

The Palladium Wars series:

Aftershocks is $2.49.

Ballistic is $2.49.

Citadel is $2.49.

Descent is $2.49.

Eclipse is currently in progress and will be available on the Kindle and as paperback via KDP, but I don’t have a pre-order page for you yet. Stay tuned for news on the release in Q4.

Go fill up that Kindle, make the set complete, and bring joy to yourself, me, and my mortgage holder!

books.

Assorted signed and personalized books for sale

Every time a new novel of mine is released, I get a box of author copies for my personal use from the publisher. I usually do giveaways with those, but there’s always a surplus, and what’s left after giveaways and handouts to friends and family gets put on the shelf.

Friends, the shelves are full and I am drowning in author copies.

To clear the shelves, I’m offering signed and personalized copies. To get a signed book from me usually involves coming to an event where I’m present and getting it signed in person, or winning one when I do my release giveaways, so I figured this may be a good opportunity for readers to get their hands on one without having to travel to a convention or take one’s chances with the Random Number Generator.

I have the following books in stock:

Ballistic (Palladium Wars #2) hardcover with jacket (11)

Citadel (Palladium Wars #3) hardcover with jacket (12)

Descent (Palladium Wars #4) paperback (11)

Scorpio (Frontlines:Evolution #1) paperback (11)

Corvus (Frontlines: Evolution #2) paperback (6)

Centers of Gravity (Frontlines #8) paperback (5)

Ballistic (Palladium Wars #2) paperback (8)

Citadel (Palladium Wars #3) paperback (7)

Points of Impact (Frontlines #6) paperback (11)

If you want to get one or more of those books signed, personalized, and shipped to you, send me an email at marko.kloos@gmail.com to check if it’s still in stock and how you want it personalized.

Paperbacks are all $15, hardcovers are $25. Shipping is included to the continental US. I’m willing to ship internationally if you’re willing to pay for your own shipping but be aware that the book may cost as much (or more) to ship than the price for the book itself. (To European countries, first class international mail via USPS usually runs $20-25, not including whatever import levies your home country may charge.)

I’m set up to take PayPal and Venmo at the same email address–please check whether the book and format you want is still available before you send payment, though. All other questions, send me an email. I also have several of the Frontlines and Palladium Wars books available in audio CD and MP3 disc formats from Audible, so check with me if you still roll old-school like that and would like to buy one of the physical audiobooks.

 

bullets & links. new hampshah. worthy causes. writing.

Various mid-summer odds and ends, and an announcement

Lots of things are going on at Castle Frostbite at the moment, so please forgive my lack of recent updates. I’ll endeavor to make the blog updates more frequent from now on.

First, a quick writing update: ECLIPSE, book #5 in the Palladium Wars series, is 3/4 done at this point but currently on the slow burner because I have a contracted novel due next month that hopped to the front of the queue. (This will be a stand-alone SF novel with 47North, working title COHORT.) Both of those novels will be done by the end of the summer. COHORT will go off to the editor when it’s done for the usual round of developmental end copyedits, and I’ll share a release date as soon as it’s turned in and I have word back on the production schedule but expect it at some point in mid-2027.

ECLIPSE will be out as soon as Robin and I have edited it, but that won’t take forever because I’ve been working on that novel for a while and it has gone through what my friend John Scalzi calls “fractal edits”. Each chapter so far has seen multiple editing passes and revisions, so by the time the last chapter is in the bag, the novel isn’t a draft anymore but a mostly finished product. You should see it available for sale before the end of the year because it’ll be self-published (47North declined to commit to the last book of the series), and I am not tied to anyone else’s schedule for this one.

On a completely different subject: I’ve been asked to run for local office, and after some deliberation and discussions with the family, we decided that helping to improve the local communities and the state as a whole is a worthy cause if I have a chance to move the needle a little. I am running for the New Hampshire State House in November, as the Democratic candidate for the Grafton-18 district, which covers several towns in southern Grafton County: Enfield, Canaan, Grafton, Bridgewater, Alexandria, Bristol, Orange, Dorchester, Groton, and Hebron. It’s not really a paid position–NH’s state representatives get the princely salary of $200 for a two-year term–so it’s a volunteer community service job more than anything else. Because of that, state politics are dominated by people who are either retired or wealthy enough to afford spending several days per week in Concord on their own time and dime. New Hampshire has always had an independent streak and a strong libertarian bent, but in recent years, my home state has taken a political course that leads us in the wrong direction, and I want to help reverse it and maybe break up the one-party trifecta we have going on right now.

Everybody wants to see things change and stuff get done, but few people have the desire or the time to take part in bringing that about. I didn’t have a good excuse to say no, so I figured I should run if I could.

If you want to check out my campaign and maybe toss in a few bucks to support it, you can find it here: Marko Kloos for New Hampshire, State Representative.

(And if you live in the Grafton-18 floterial House district, come out and say hi during campaign season when I am out and about at the various Old Home Days and community events in the county. I’d love to hear your opinion on how our state is run and what could be done to improve things in our towns.)

FIRST DISCLAIMER: No, it’s not going to hurt my writing schedule, and I am not trading the novelist job for a state house seat. As I’ve mentioned, it’s a largely unpaid volunteer position, and I a.) like my day job, and b.) still need to pay the mortgage and fill the fridge, so the novels will keep coming.

SECOND DISCLAIMER: You may not agree with my politics or the party for which I am running. And that’s your right in a democracy like ours! I just don’t want to read cranky comments about how you’re no longer going to read my books because of my political affiliation or opinions. If that’s the case, just go ahead and boycott me privately. No need to exit in a huff.

That’s it for me today, and now it’s back to work on COHORT, which has a looming deadline and much work to be done on it yet. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer!

(My team made this up as a way to memorize all the towns in Grafton-18. It’s not an official campaign graphic, but I figured I’d share it here just for fun.)

family. frontlines. frontlines: evolution the palladium wars.

May the first be what the fuck, where has the time gone

Looks like I blew right through April without a blog post. Whoops. (How are we almost halfway through the year already?)

We’ve had a death in the family, so the regular routine was thoroughly derailed for obvious reasons. It wasn’t a surprise–the family member was 81 and in failing health–but these things are never easy no matter how prepared you think you are.

We just got back from a week-long trip south to attend the celebration of life, and now I am back in the office and working on finishing ECLIPSE, Palladium Wars #5. I had aimed to have it done by the end of April, but life happens, and sometimes schedules get upended. But I’ve heeded the wise words of Stephen King, who said (in ON WRITING, his excellent treatise on the craft), that life isn’t a support system for art–it’s the other way around. If I need to step away from the keyboard for a bit to address important real-life events, that’s just the way it goes.

I’ll need a few weeks to edit ECLIPSE and get it ship-shape before I release it on KDP (to what I hope will be an enthusiastic reception and EXTREME sales numbers so my publisher can have proper regrets for dropping the series after Book #4), so expect that one in late June if all goes well.

Next up after that will be a new stand-alone for 47North with the working title of COHORT. I’ll let you know more about that one as soon as I can. As this is a 47North book, it will have a 2027 release date. In the meantime, please to be looking forward to the December release of CYGNUS, the third and final book in the Frontlines: Evolution series, and the best one of the whole lot as far as I’m concerned.

(That doesn’t mean I am done with Frontlines or its spin-off. Stand by for news on that subject soon-ish.)

books. digital housekeeping. the palladium wars. writing.

What, March already?

It appears that I have managed to leave this spot without updates for over four months, which is a long time even for a sporadic blogger like me. I’ve been busy with various writing projects, life outside of writing has required frequent tending, and most of my brain bandwidth has gone to addressing those requirements. 

That said, I think I need to curtail my already limited social media presence even further and return my focus to updating just one spot instead of spreading my public presence across four or five different ones. To that end (and because I have bills to pay like everyone else), I am considering moving my updates to Patreon. I’d still keep the general blog updates free, of course, but I’d be posting more regularly, and I’d have an outlet to release short fiction as subscriber exclusives before I put them on the Kindle for general consumption. There could even be a tier where folks can get signed books every now and then with their subscriptions, which would be a good way for me to distribute the author copies I’m drowning in every time a new book comes out.

(Long-time readers will know that I usually do the free book giveaways, but those have started to become unsustainable for various reasons—shipping is getting more expensive, shipments keep getting returned to me unclaimed, and international readers have on occasion refused to pay customs duties and left me sitting on a $20 personalized book I can’t reuse and $25 international shipping costs I’ve spent out of my own pocket.)

Anyway—what’s the general consensus on an All Things Marko Kloos Patreon with a free updates tier and some nice perks for paid subscriptions? And what kind of content would you want to see other than the exclusive short fiction first reads I already mentioned? Looking forward to your comments below.

As far as work goes, I am back on Palladium Wars #5, and that one will be finished this month come hell or high water, to be available at some point in April once it’s been edited, formatted, and hammered into shape for Kindle and paperback formats. I’m having to do an indie release because 47North didn’t want to continue the series and let me finish it, and nobody else is going to commit to the fifth book in a series if they don’t already have the other four in their stable. But as I am not willing to keep the readers hanging and leave a five-year-plus project unfinished, the fifth book will be finished and released before I get started on the next thing.

history.

Quote of the Day

“Es gibt drei Dinge, die sich nicht vereinen lassen: Intelligenz, Anständigkeit und Nationalsozialismus. Man kann intelligent und Nazi sein. Dann ist man nicht anständig. Man kann anständig und Nazi sein. Dann ist man nicht intelligent. Und man kann anständig und intelligent sein. Dann ist man kein Nazi.”

“There are three things that can’t be combined: intelligence, decency, and Nazism. One can be intelligent and a Nazi. Then one isn’t decent. One can be decent and a Nazi. Then one isn’t intelligent. And one can be decent and intelligent. Then one isn’t a Nazi.”

–Gerhard Bronner, Austrian composer