Marko Kloos's Blog

CORVUS is out today!

 

Today is the release day for CORVUS, the second book in the Frontlines: Evolution series!

When colonial refugee-turned-soldier Alex Archer is stranded on a hostile planet with her unit, she has to draw on her experiences growing up on an occupied world to keep her little band of survivors alive.

CORVUS is available here in Kindle, paperback, and Audible formats.

Buy, read, enjoy, leave a review if you enjoyed, tell your friends, tell them to tell their friends. Heck, just approach people on the street and hold out the paperback. Say “Is good book. You read. You read now.”

Busy, busy, busy

The draft for CYGNUS, third book in the Frontlines: Evolution series is due to my publisher this month, so I’ll be busy with that one until I turn it in. When I am in deadline mode, I don’t have much bandwidth for anything else, so if you have sent me an email in the last few weeks (or plan to do so in the next few weeks), remember that I am bad at quick replies on the best of days, so bear with me until this manuscript is on the way to my editor.

After that, I’ll be finishing ECLIPSE, the fifth and final book (for now) in the Palladium Wars series. Since 47North declined to continue the series, I’ll be publishing ECLIPSE myself through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). For those of you waiting for the book (and I hope that’s a lot of folks), that means it will be available not too long after I’ve finished the draft and edited it with my partner in crime. I aimed to have it ready later this summer, but the way the calendar is progressing, it will be out in the fall instead. I’ll be sure to make it worth the wait–it’s shaping up to be a very good novel.

Now the world just needs to stop falling apart for a little while. I thought my cortisol levels were high in 2020 and 2021, but all of this 2025 business is making the pandemic stress feel trivial by comparison. When I write, I need to tune out the world so I can get into my zone, but this world keeps refusing to let itself get tuned out…

 

Echoes of Silence on Transfer Orbit

Over at Transfer Orbit, Andrew Liptak is saying some nice things about Frontlines in general and ECHOES OF SILENCE, which is in his list of 14 books to check out in July.

I buy more books from Andrew’s excellent curated lists than any other source of reviews or recommendations. If you are looking for a good source of SF/F genre news and book reviews, Transfer Orbit is well worth a subscription.

The not-so-little novella is chugging right along in the Kindle store as more Frontlines fans are discovering its existence. Of course, I already got a one-star review from someone who didn’t know what was going on because they failed to read the author’s note in the product description. I mean, I just put it in there in prominent bold font instead of making it a singing, dancing, unkillable pop-up warning, so that’s probably on me.

Echoes of Silence is out today

Listen up, Frontlines fans: Echoes of Silence, a Frontlines novella, is now available in Kindle and paperback formats.

(Edited to add: the paperback version is currently under review but should show up as available for purchase on the product page at some point today.)

When special operations Major Andrew Grayson and NACS Washington disappear without a trace during a clandestine mission to the Capella system, his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Halley, is left reeling. With Andrew’s whereabouts unknown, she settles in for a long and agonizing wait as their lives together are put on hold.

This is Halley’s personal journal, started shortly after Andrew’s disappearance. It chronicles the highs and lows of her life without him as the silence of his absence stretches out over months and then years. The journal that begins as a reluctantly obeyed order from her military therapist becomes Halley’s sounding board for her joys and fears, a record of all the big and small events that shape her life as she waits for Andrew to come home.

Author’s Note: Echoes of Silence is told in epistolary format. This is a collection of Halley’s diary entries that cover the timespan of the Frontlines novels Orders of Battle and Centers of Gravity. To understand the references in this novella and to avoid spoilers, it’s recommended to have read Orders of Battle (Frontlines #7) and Centers of Gravity (Frontlines #8) first.

This one was in the works for quite a while, and it ended up one humdinger of a novella at almost 40,000 words. Halley’s thoughts and musings during Andrew’s long absence include a fair bit of new information about the Lankies that expands on some of Andrew and Elin Vandenberg’s discoveries in Orders of Battle and Centers of Gravity. In the reading order, that makes Echoes of Silence Frontlines 8.5.

If that sounds like your cup of favorite hot breakfast beverage, you can pick up your very own copy right now, for less than the price of half an hour of city parking!

The last bag I’ll ever own

My wife recently surprised me with a new laptop bag she had commissioned as a custom job, using my old German military backpack that had been gathering dust in the garage as raw material for the project.

I’ve always been picky about bags, and most of them tend to fall down in at least one category between material, layout, size, craftmanship, or durability. This one is the first that ticks all the boxes for me. It’s the perfect size, just big enough for a 14″ laptop. The internal layout is exactly as I would have designed it, the stitching and detail work are superb, and the material (being from a military backpack) is ridiculously sturdy. They even used one of the backpack straps as the carry strap, repurposed one of the outside gear pockets as an accessory pouch, and used one of the original buckle straps for the laptop compartment. And to top it all off, they sewed on a velcro strip, reattached my old name tape, and took the flag rondel off my old field cap and put it on the messenger bag.

I’m super happy with the end result, and I’ve retired all my other (store-bought) bags. The custom material and detail work makes this a unique one-off, and I believe this is the first time this company used that particular bag pattern, so there’s no other bag like it out there.

The company my wife approached with this commission is R.Riveter, for those of you who are curious. They’re based in North Carolina and employ military spouses for their bag collection. This isn’t a paid pitch–my wife paid full fare for their work. They make mostly handbags and other bag patterns oriented towards women, but they’re thinking about making that messenger bag a regular item. I thought I should give them a shout-out because of the excellent work they did on this bag.

Here are some pictures:

My wife had them make her a bag out of the same material, which also turned out very well.

 

 

Echoes of Silence progress

If you’ve paid attention to the progress bars on the right, you may have noticed that the projected goal for Echoes of Silence, the Halley novella, keeps getting revised as I update the word count. That’s because it’s turning out a lot longer and more detailed than I had anticipated. (I know, your hearts are BROKEN at the thought.)

We should have it in the bag some time this month, though, unless it decides to get a mind of its own and grow into novel status.

This is a new thing for me in both format and execution–it’s a novella in epistolary format, told from Halley’s perspective during Andrew’s long absence in ORDERS OF BATTLE and CENTERS OF GRAVITY, and I have a co-author this time around. I hope you’ll give it a spin once it’s finished because it fills in a lot of the events that happened off-camera while Andrew and the crew of NACS Washington were gallivanting about the dark system around the rogue planet somewhere in the Aquila constellation.

Bookshelf tour, July 2025

The house has bookshelves everywhere, but the one in my office is kind of like the RAM to their SSD, the stuff I want to have close at hand for reference or as my next entertainment.

The top shelf holds all of my books, including the ones to which I have contributed over the years (that would be the Wild Cards novels, the Love Death + Robots anthology, and the Unidentified Funny Objects volume.)

The middle shelf is my current TBR pile, plus a few quick reference books and stuff I want to read again.

The bottom shelf is for books from writer friends as well as some signed copies.

(There’s another shelf below that for large-format books and my Holy Scripture–the Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side compendiums. And the top shelf is filled with the positively unwise amount of A5-sized notebooks I stocked up on just in case the manufacturer suddenly stops producing them.)

CORVUS giveaway winners

All right, the Random Number Gods have spoken. The winners are:

Jacob MoorePatrick Ryan StoreyChris/chriskidd22Ryan BeckKris StacksBen WiechmanBrian H.Brenda J. CromwellJim FosterEmily HenryMarla McOmberEric Hembree

You may have noticed that the list of names is twelve strong instead of ten. That’s because I decided at the last minute to make it an even dozen this time.

If your name is on this list, please send me an email to marko.kloos@gmail.com with your current U.S. or Canadian shipping address. I’d like to get those books on the way this week, so a prompt reply would be appreciated (and helps you get the book into your hands faster.)

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you for playing to all those who replied. It’s always nice to see the excitement for a new release.

 

CORVUS giveaway is now closed

The CORVUS giveaway is now closed. I’ll spin up the ol’ random number generator and let the dice pick ten winners this morning. Stand by and watch this space to see if you are one of the Chosen!

CORVUS giveaway begins right meow

All right, friends and neighbors—I’m giving away ten copies of CORVUS, the second installment of the Frontlines: Evolution series. The book is due out for release on August 19th, so whoever wins an early copy will get to read it a few weeks early.

You know the general rules—leave a comment on this post declaring your desire to receive a copy, and I’ll close the comments and pull ten name out of the hat via random number generator next Sunday, June 29th, noon EST. 

Winners will receive a copy of CORVUS, shipped at my expense. As I’ve mentioned in the last post, there’s a change in eligibility this time. As much as it sucks, I have to limit participation to US and Canadian addresses  because of the current tariff fuckery which makes sending international shipments a crapshoot as far as customs duties are concerned. I hate having to limit the pool of readers who can score a free copy, but things are what they are right now.

(As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve also had to eat the cost for some books whose recipients declined to pay the customs fees assessed by their home countries’ revenue services, which sucks doubly for me because I’m out the cost of the book and the international shipping. That is super uncool and ruins the fun for everyone.)

Anyway, the contest is now open. If you want to put your name in the hat for a free copy of CORVUS and you have a shipping address in the US or Canada, leave a comment below to be entered in the giveaway. Winners will be announced after noon EST on Sunday, June 29th.