I just got a box of ARCs for BALLISTIC, the second novel in the Palladium Wars series. Still massively digging the cover, which was apparently the first shot the cover artist took at the concept. I looked at it and said, “I’m good with that.” The Palladium Wars series is different from Frontlines by intent….
Category: writing.
Frontlines #7 is done
I was planning to go to Detroit for ConFusion this past weekend, but the draft for the seventh Frontlines book, ORDERS OF BATTLE, wasn’t quite done yet. Work comes before fun because fun don’t pay the bills, so I sucked it up and cancelled the trip altogether just before the weekend. It turned out to…
Keeping it simple
One of the perks of the writing profession is that it has virtually no hardware requirements. My friends in the 3D animation or video and photography fields have to spend money on powerful rigs with lots of fast storage, but I work with text. Everything I’ve ever written, a dozen novels and as many…
My creative balance for the decade
According to the Intertubes, that is my creative output for the 2010s. Seven novels, two Wild Cards novellas and one novelette, and three short stories. Their tally is missing one short story, “On the Use of Shape-Shifters in Warfare”, which was used for LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS this year. I’ve also written two more novels…
Wild Cards covers
I asked for the high-resolution artwork for the covers to my Wild Cards stories because I wanted to have them printed and mounted for the office wall. That’s John Picacio’s work on the left (for the novelette “How To Move Spheres And Influence People” on Tor.com), and Michael Komarck on the right (for the novella…
Non-Euclidean geometry, fall edition
When I need to let my brain’s background processes figure out a story element or untie a knot in a chapter, I take a walk in the place you see pictured above. It never fails to work. In other news, I just turned in the edits for BALLISTIC, second in the Palladium Wars series,…
Running a few Sharpies dry
Sitting down this afternoon to sign a bunch of bookplates for hardcovers of AFTERSHOCKS. I am signing these instead of the actual books because the alternative would be to ship me the hardcovers. Those come about 25 to a box, and I have to do 1,800 signatures, so they’d have to send 72 boxes of…
Dispatch from the desk
The most enjoyable words for a writer to read are “Pay To The Order Of…”, and the most enjoyable words for a writer to put down on the page are “THE END”. I’ve been quiet on here because I’ve spent the last few weeks finishing BALLISTIC, the second book in the Palladium Wars series. But…
Interview with the local newspaper
My local newspaper, the Valley News, interviewed me a few days ago, and you can read the whole thing here. It’s a very good piece that stays true to the facts, and I enjoyed sitting for the questions (with journalist Sarah Earle) and the pictures (with photographer Rick Russell) very much.
When characters take the wheel
I have a blog post up on the Wild Cards blog, in which I talk about the relationship between character and plot, and attempt an answer to the question of which is more important to a good narrative. I’ve been a member of the consortium since late 2015, and since then, I’ve turned out two…