Marko Kloos's Blog, page 8

Worst criminal ever

 

I don’t think I need to hire an investigator to find the identity of the culprit who stole a handful of animal crackers from the low table next to the recliner.

Insta-tired

Dinky of House Doo, first of her name.

 

I still have an Instagram account, but it has been getting increasingly annoying to be served with stuff that has no connection to my friend feed, things that Facebook/Meta thinks I should see. Every time I check Instagram these days, I see two or three posts from friends, a long string of some of the dumbest, low-effort garbage from accounts I don’t know, and several friend notifications from obvious catfishing accounts or crypto bots. It used to be kind of fun, and now it’s not. I’ll keep the account on life support but I think I’ll post more stuff here instead, where there’s no algorithm using my content to sell ads.

Achtung! Kein Kinderlakritz!

“An acquired taste is an appreciation for something unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it. It is the opposite of innate taste, which is the appreciation for things that are enjoyable by most persons without prior exposure to them.”  –Wikipedia

I explained the concept of acquired taste to my kids as flavors that you generally have to grow up with to find them appealing. Salmiak is a great example of acquired taste. It’s licorice (which in itself is a polarizing taste–people tend to either love it or absolutely hate it), but not the sweet form you can find in grocery stores everywhere. Salmiak licorice cranks the flavor dial up to 19 because it is flavored with ammonia salt (ammonium chloride), which gives it an extremely intense astringent taste.

Salmiak is only common in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and northern Germany. It’s pretty much impossible to find outside of those areas. People who love salmiak flavor almost invariably grew up with it, and I’ve never met anyone that liked it who wasn’t from one of those countries. Everyone else usually finds it disgusting. In Germany, salmiak licorice has to be labeled “Erwachsenenlakritz-Kein Kinderlakritz” (“Adult Liquorice – Not Children’s Liquorice”). Even my son, who’s the only other person in the house that likes licorice, will not touch the salmiak licorice. It’s pretty much the only candy I can buy for myself and just leave sitting out in the kitchen somewhere because I know it’s in no danger of being pilfered by teenagers in search of a snack.

The little baggies in the picture are salmiak-flavored Fisherman’s Friend menthol drops. I usually carry one of those with me when I am out of the house in the winter because let me tell you, that ammonia salt in combination with menthol will clear your sinuses right up. My daughter came down with COVID a few weeks ago, but nobody else in the house got it. I know it’s likely because she was mostly isolated in her room and we’re fully vaccinated and boostered with the new bivalent shots, but I’d like to think that the virus didn’t find a foothold in my nasal passages because it smelled the ammonia salt from the salmiak and went all, “Nope, nope, nope. I’m out.”

 

An end-of-year update

Today is the winter solstice, which means the year is pretty much in the bag, so I figured I should do an update because all the cool kids are doing a 2022 recap.

It was a mixed bag of a year for me. I am currently working on getting the next novel out of the door and to my editor by the end of the year. That puts me about six months behind according to the schedule I had set for myself at the beginning of the year. The current novel is the first in a spin-off Frontlines series, and I had planned to turn the draft in by the end of June. That obviously didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, chief among which are “2022” and “OMG LIFE”. I’ve had a rough time with my creative output this year, and while things are progressing again, it feels like my brain is working at about 1/2 the speed it was operating at before the world started going to hell in early 2020.

Remember when I posted about 2020 being really rough for creative work? Yeah. 2022 was even worse for me for some reason. Reading the posts and updates of my writer friends and colleagues on various social media platforms, it looks like I wasn’t the only writer who had a difficult time this year, and that fact is a bit of a comfort because it means it’s not just my stupid brain that was refusing to cooperate. Turns out it’s very hard to shut out the world and make up a new one in your head when the actual world is catching fire all around you every day.

As far as release dates go, I can’t make any accurate predictions because there are many moving parts for my editor to coordinate after I turn in this draft (and the next one.) If I had to guess, I’d say the new novel will be out in the second half of next year.

I hope you all had a less stressful 2022 than I did, and I really hope that 2023 will be less interesting times, in the Chinese proverb meaning of the phrase. I am not telling the new year to “bring it on”, because that’s just asking for it at this point. I’ll just keep putting down words until the work is done, enjoy the company of friends and family, and tune out of the news and social media as much as feasible.

Happy holidays! May Santa (or the loot-conveying mythical figure of your choice) bring you everything you want and need, and may the new year find you healthy and at peace.

 

The trusty Battlestar

This beast is five years old this month. I bought it in December of 2017, and it’s been a rock-solid workhorse ever since. When I configured it online, I picked all the top-shelf options, which is probably the reason for its longevity. (For the tech nerds, it’s an Alienware AW17R4 with a Core i7-7820HK, 32GB RAM, a GTX 1080, and a 120Hz QHD G-Sync panel with Tobii eye-tracking.) It’s built like a tank and weighs over ten pounds, so it’s less a “laptop” and more of a compact all-in-one you can move easily between rooms. But since it lives on a desk most of the time and hardly ever gets used out of my office, the weight and size aren’t a drawback. (If I want to take my work out of the house with me, I have much more portable devices for that.)

Because of the maxed-out hardware, the price was top-shelf as well–I think I shelled out $2,500 at the time. But I think that expense has paid off over the years because it hasn’t flinched at anything I’ve thrown at it, and it still plays everything I want to play. I guess I’ll keep using it until it either breaks or it can’t play the latest hotness in games at decent frame rates anymore, at which point I’ll semi-retire it or give it to one of the kids and replace it with another high-end gaming laptop that will last for half a decade. For now, it’s still trucking right along even after five years of daily use and more logged hours in Flight Simulator than I want to admit in public.

 

The Art of LD+R

Today is my birthday, so I’ll call this one a birthday gift because it arrived in the mail this afternoon. 

It’s called The Art of Love Death + Robots, and it showcases the artwork for all the episodes from the three seasons of LD+R on Netflix. My contributions to Season 1 were “Shape-shifters” and “Lucky 13”, as seen below. 

It was pretty wild to see the stories take shape on the screen and watch someone else’s interpretation of my work. (It’s mind-blowing that dozens of people worked on those animated episodes for six months or more, when each of those stories took me maybe a week or two to write.) And I could definitely get used to seeing my name in the credits.

 

Centers of Gravity is out today

Today’s the day: CENTERS OF GRAVITY, book 8 in the Frontlines series, is out and available for purchase today.

If you pre-ordered the book, you should find it in your mailbox, Audible library, or on your Kindle (or maybe all three, in which case GO YOU.)

This is (for now) the final of the Andrew Grayson books. Note that I am not saying it’s the final Frontlines book. There are more stories to be told in that universe, and you will find out more about that very soon. It’s almost certainly not the last time you get to come across Andrew and Halley.

Thank you for sticking with me and Andrew through nine years and eight books, and I hope you’ll stick around for what comes next. I promise to make it worth your while.

Centers of Gravity giveaway winners

All right, folks! The Centers of Gravity giveaway is now officially closed. With 298 eligible comments by the deadline, you all had roughly a 1-in-30 chance to win one of the signed copies.

I had the random number generator pick the ten winners, going by the order of comments on my WordPress control panel. They are:

 

Christopher Sheehy

Steven L. Cowan

Galen Brinn

Laura Taylor

hoggiesan

Alessandro Lorenzetto

Hannah Harris

Andreas Weinberger

Michelle Hartline

Chris Maka

 

Congratulations to the winners! Stand by for email instructions how to redeem your signed copy. (Hope you left a valid email address with your comment!)

Thank you all for playing, and I hope that you still pick up a Kindle copy even if you didn’t win the signed freebie.

Centers of Gravity signed paperback giveaway

Here they are: ten fresh copies of Centers of Gravity, ready to be signed and mailed to their new owners. And the best part is that YOU, YES YOU, could be one of those new owners!

The rules are as before: leave a comment on this blog entry to throw your hat into the ring. I will leave the comments open until next Sunday, August 28, 12:00 noon. My magic random numbers generator will then spit out ten winning numbers. I’ll count the comments, and if your entry matches one of the numbers, you win one of these paperbacks. I’ll announce the winners on Sunday afternoon with further instructions for claiming your copy.

As always, I’ll spring for the shipping, and the contest is free to anyone in the world as long as your address can be found by your country’s postal service. (Sorry, not paying for helicopter delivery to your off-the-grid mountaintop retreat on the South Island of New Zealand or something.)

Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Frontlines #8 now has physical form

I got my author copies for CENTERS OF GRAVITY today, which means I’m about to do the customary give-away this weekend. Ten signed copies will go out to readers anywhere in the world FREE OF CHARGE. And all will be decided fair and square by random number generator.

I’ll post the giveaway this weekend and let it run for a week as always. The odds to beat are usually pretty good, so check back this weekend if you want a good chance to snag a free signed copy. (That said, I will never advise you against ordering a Kindle or paper copy even if you win a signed freebie, because good sales numbers make my publisher happy, which means I get to keep writing these novels.)