Marko Kloos's Blog, page 19

AFTERSHOCKS giveaway winners

Sorry for the delay, but I had to stay mostly offline this past weekend and yesterday because I was away on SECRET BUSINESS, so I didn’t get around to spinning up the old Random Numbers Generator and let Mr. Computer pick 10 entries out of the hat until this morning.

Here are the winners (with email addresses partially anonymized):

Dave Baker (SpXXXXX@sswidepot.com)

Sonja (sonjaXXXXXX@hotmail.com)

Stephanie Belser (sXXXXXXX@peoplepc.com)

JD (JdXXXXXXX@t-online.de)

Stray (shcXXXX@gmail.com)

Acidjunk (aciXXXXX@gmail.com)

Heather S (hsXXXX@vt.edu)

Guido (guido@XXXXrie.com)

mpeterke (mpXXXXXX@gmail.com)

William (williamdXXXXXX@gmail.com)

Congratulations! If you just found your name on the list, please send me an email to frontlines@markokloos.com and let me know where to send your free copy of AFTERSHOCKS. Please also tell me whether you want your copy signed, signed and personalized, or left blank.

 

Various AFTERSHOCKS items

The AFTERSHOCKS giveaway is now closed. Later today, I’ll pull ten numbers out of a hat and match them with their respective comments, and then I’ll post the winners here for all to see. (If you find yourself on the winning list, email me at frontlines@markokloos.com with a mailing address.)

Also, AFTERSHOCKS is one of the Amazon First Reads books on Amazon.co.uk this month. If you are a UK-based Prime member, you get to download AFTERSHOCKS for free all month, which means that you get to read it a few weeks before everyone else (it comes out in the US on July 1.)

US readers, I don’t have a way for you to get your hands on an early copy (other than the giveaway that just ended), but there are more news in the pipeline regarding the July launch, so stay tuned.

AFTERSHOCKS Paperback Giveaway

 

I just got my author copies for AFTERSHOCKS, so let’s have ourselves a little giveaway! Everybody likes giveaways, right? They have layers. Like a parfait.

Anyway, I am going to give away TEN signed trade paperback copies of Aftershocks. Because the Goodreads giveaway is limited to US residents, and because I like my international fans, I will make this giveaway available to ANYONE IN THE WORLD. If you put your name into the hat and end up winning, I will ship the book to you regardless of your place of residence, as long as it’s a.) on this planet, and b.) somehow reachable by some sort of postal or package service. No personal hand-deliveries!

TO PARTICIPATE:

Leave a comment on this post stating that you would like a copy. I will keep comments open until 5pm EST on Friday, May 31. Then I will employ a random number generator to pick ten winners based on the number on their comment, and post the results the next day, June 1, with instructions for receiving your giveaway copy. I will cover all shipping regardless of destination.

 

Lucky 13 Deconstructed

Sony Pictures Imageworks, the VFX house that did LUCKY 13 for Love Death + Robots, put up a really cool YouTube video deconstructing the graphics work that went into the episode. I continue to love everything about the LD+R adaptations.

Aftershocks giveaway on Goodreads

AFTERSHOCKS, the first novel in my new series THE PALLADIUM WARS, will be out on July 1. My publisher, 47North, is giving away 100 ebook copies via Goodreads, and if you live in the U.S., you can throw your hat into that ring from May 31 until June 30:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Interplanetary strife! Corporate intrigue! Ancient grudges! Shadowy conspiracies! Firefights and space battles! And yours for the low, low price of FREE…if you manage to snag one of the 100 copies they’re giving away.

“Shape-shifters” and favorite werewolf designs

The Love Death + Robots crew has put up short YouTube videos highlighting the animation in the various segments. The one for “Shape-shifters” is here:

(CONTENT WARNING: Gore)

It’s a pretty awesome werewolf design, all in all, and the fight scene is just knock-down, drag-out violent.

I love werewolf movies, and one of my writing goals is to do a variation on the lycanthrope theme that goes against most common tropes. One day, maybe…when I have time to switch my brain from SF to urban or dark/horror fantasy for a while.

My favorite werewolf design from a movie is still this, though:

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That’s the wicked “hound from hell” design for AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, a movie that also still gets my vote for Best Transformation scene. The fact that it was all done with practical effects in 1981 and still holds up speaks to the genius of Rick Baker, who won the very first Best Make-up Academy Award for his work on that movie.

I generally dislike CGI werewolves because most of them are too fake-looking or Uncanny Valley when they’re inserted in live-action. It’s only in recent years that CGI has gotten good enough to do a convincing werewolf. (Number 2 on my list are the creepy-looking werewolves in DOG SOLDIERS, which–surprise–are also practical effects and costumes.) But when they’re CGI wolves in an all-CGI film like Shape-shifters, they can work very well indeed.

What is your favorite werewolf design on the screen? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll check them out if I haven’t seen the movie/show in question yet.

New blog entry at Wild Cards World

In other Wild Cards news, there’s a new post on the Wild Cards World blog, this one by Michael Cassutt: “Word-building in Wild Cards” (yes, you read that correctly.)

I’ve talked about writing for Wild Cards before (most extensively in this post from a while back), but one thing I only touched on in that post is something that’s probably the biggest benefit to having joined the consortium, at least to me.

Not only is it a ton of fun to play in a superhero sandbox that’s so different from what I usually do, but the sheer amount of talent present in the consortium forces me to really bring my A-game. I consider the stories I’ve written for Wild Cards among the very best stuff I’ve written so far, and I hope that trend continues because it teaches me to broaden my horizons and flex muscles that I don’t necessarily use enough on a regular basis.

 

“How To Move Spheres And Influence People,” a new Wild Cards novelette

My Wild Cards novelette “How To Move Spheres And Influence People” is up at Tor.com today. It’s free to read, like all the stuff at Tor.com, so if you are inclined, I welcome you to check it out and let me know what you think.

“Spheres” kind of muscled its way into my writing schedule unbidden when the character of T.K. and the nature of her ace power just popped into my head one day. It was one of those rare and magic things where the story mostly writes itself. I am pretty happy with the way the story turned out, and I hope you will like it too.

The gorgeous cover art is by the inimitable John Picacio. (This story marks my first Picacio cover, so I get to check that off my bucket list today.)

 

Online sources for the LD+R stories

Andrew Liptak at The Verge has a handy post up that lists the online sources for most of the short stories serving as material for Love Death+Robots.

In related news, I’ll never get tired of seeing Samira Wiley as Lt. Colby, the pilot of Lucky 13 in the Netflix version. Yes, the original character in the short story is Halley, but they had to make a few minor changes for reasons. Just trust me on that one.

Regarding Shape-shifters, I want to let the veterans know that I am well aware of the fact that it has Marines address other Marines as “soldiers” (which they’d never do in real life; a Marine is a Marine and not a soldier.) But I guess they kept that bit because of the “dog soldiers” pejorative. In the original short story, Decker and Sobieski are Army, members of the 300th Special Operations Company (Lycanthrope), and the script writer for the show changed them over to the Corps without also changing the Army-specific terms in the story.

The two other goofs I noticed were Decker and Sobieski addressing the Master Sergeant as “sergeant”, and the Marines wearing their sleeves rolled while in the field. Both are details only few people outside of the Corps would notice, but every Marine would.) Rest assured that I know the differences. Regardless, it’s a kick-ass adaptation of the short story, and it’s really growing on me more and more the more I watch it. It’s even motivating me to pick up Decker’s universe again and go ahead with the series I had in mind for him. (The story was supposed to be part of his backstory.)

I’m super pleased with the way everything turned out, and the fan response has been phenomenal. Interestingly, “Shape-shifters” has tended to be either among peoples’ very favorite episodes, or all the way at the bottom of their lists. “Lucky 13” is either well-reviewed, or somewhere in the middle of the list, so Shape-shifters is the more polarizing one. (One of the viewers who hated it said it looked like bad Twilight fan fiction, which did amuse me.)

 

Writing with Ulysses.app

 

I’ve been a long-time Scrivener user for over a decade, but for the last year or so, I’ve been migrating my work to Ulysses more and more, and right now I think I am at the point where I’ll be using it exclusively.

Ulysses is a writing app like Scrivener, and it has much of the same functionality, but with a stripped-down and streamlined interface. I can do the same tasks in both apps, but I prefer Ulysses now for two major differences that make my workflow much easier.

The first is file management. Unlike Scrivener, Ulysses has its file management baked into the app. All my writing is always available in the left-hand navigation pane, and I can find everything I’ve ever written without having to leave the app or open a second window. With Scrivener, I still have to find the project’s .scriv file in the Finder and keep my own version control, but Ulysses does all of that for me.

The second is file synchronization. Ulysses syncs all content and changes seamlessly from the MacOS to the iOS apps via iCloud. If I make a change on the laptop, it shows up on the iPad’s and the iPhone’s Ulysses apps just a few seconds later. With Scrivener, I have to save my work to Dropbox and manually sync everything before I open a project on a different device. 

Ulysses is very much like a highly streamlined version of Scrivener with no interface fluff. It’s simple, powerful, has just the amount of features I need, and it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. The only drawback is that it’s a Mac/iOS-only app, so if you run Windows or Linux, you’re out of luck. (Some would say that the subscription-model pricing for Ulysses is a drawback as well, but I don’t mind paying a yearly subscription to ensure prompt updates and new features. I already do that with Office 365 anyway.)