I arrived back from Los Angeles late Friday night and the book gods decided to welcome me home with a care package Saturday. To wit:
The Daedalus Incident in mass-market paperback!
The cover quote is from the Tor.com review way back when, and they put the Library Journal snippet on the back. It’s the same cover art — courtesy of Sparth — with a similar but pared back design. There’s also a nice callout to MAJESTIC-12 on the back cover, because, spoiler alert… Continue reading
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That’s right — less than two weeks to go before The Daedalus Incident returns to bookstores in a shiny new package.
It’s always nice to have a book come out, even one that’s already been out. I see the mass-market paperback release of The Daedalus Incident on March 15 — and its sequels in May and July, respectively — as a great chance for folks to give the books a try at a lower cost. And it’s also nifty to let folks get a sneak peek at MJ-12: Inception before it comes out in hardcover in September.
And for the record, each of the Daedalus novels will have a different MJ-12: Inception excerpt — plenty of opportunities to check out the first of the MAJESTIC-12 series of paranormal Cold War spy-fi novels. Because, dammit, I’m all about value.
If you want to get your hands on Daedalus now, you could slide on over to Amazon, where the mass-market paperback is already available for $7.99. And the Kindle edition is now selling for $7.59. I don’t know when or whether other ebook sellers will drop the price, so tell your friends to move fast if they’re Kindle readers.
As for other print retailers, we still expect them to go with the March 15 release. And as always, I would encourage you to head over to your local bookstore and buy it there, or go online and get it from folks like Borderlands Books or Mysterious Galaxy. Independent bookstores rock.
Finally, I would point out that Operation: DAEDALUS remains in full effect, so if you want to win a copy of the mass-market paperback and an advance reader copy of MJ-12: Inception when the latter becomes available, use your social media powers to spread the word about The Daedalus Incident and the new release. Each time you post to Facebook, or Tweet or Pin or whatever, you’re automatically entered to win. Post early, post often. And you get multiple entries if you leave a review of the book on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, etc. — wherever folks buy or review books.
Don’t worry about pinging me about your entries — I’m watching and searching and will compile the entries myself. The random number generator will do the rest.
As always, my thanks to all the readers who have made the Daedalus trilogy a success, and to those who are actively introducing the books to new readers. You all rock, and I hope MJ-12: Inception will be up your alley as well.
#SFWApro
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There’s much ado of late about Hugo Awards and other such things, and while it’d certainly be lovely to have a bit of shine on my mantle — though I would need to purchase a mantle to hold it — I’d rather take this opportunity to talk about some very well deserving individuals for your consideration in the editorial categories.
Yes, these are editors I’ve worked with. Each one of them has contributed both to the quality of my work as well as my ever-ongoing education as a writer. They are also lovely humans, which goes a very long way with me.
Editor, Short Form
I had the distinct pleasure of working with three different editors this year on my short fiction, and I find each one of them deserving of whatever laurels can be bestowed upon them.
Alex Shvartsman, UFO Publishing: I worked with Alex on “Confessions of an Interplanetary Art Fraud” for Unidentified Funny Objects 4. The story was accepted but certainly needed work, and Alex really helped me kick it up a notch or six. He’s a great editor who gets humor, which is a lot harder to write than it may seem.
Ross Lockhart, Word Horde: I remember thinking about submitting to Ross’ Tales of Jack the Ripper a few years ago, but found it hard to “go there” in terms of horror. Cthulhu Fhtagn! was much more up my alley, and my “On a Kansas Plain” was included in the anthology in August. Ross’ anthologies are always among the best in the genre. Give them a read.
Chris Carey, Paizo: “Crisis of Faith” was a bucket-list win for me, having grown up with D&D and owing so much to the multi-sided dice. Chris really helped me capture the nuances of Pathfinder and made the story so much fun to read in the end. I would write about clerics of beer gods any day if Chris was editing.
Editor, Long Form
Cory Allyn, Night Shade Books: This post was actually inspired by a conversation I had yesterday with Cory on MJ-12: Inception. We’ve done three novels together now, and Cory has made each of them far better than they were when I handed them in. He has a great way of pulling me out of the weeds and helping me see the story landscape from on high. Ideas and improvements just flow right out of me when we’re working on stuff. He edited The Venusian Gambit last year, and not only did a great job of it, but was incredibly supportive and encouraging at a time when I really needed it. Plus, he and Jason Katzman have really done a bang-up job reviving Night Shade. Just a great person to work with.
Ross Lockhart, Word Horde: No, I didn’t do a novel with Ross this year, though he was my editor for The Daedalus Incident and taught me so much in the short time we worked together. I’m including him because of his work with Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, an excellent novel that, like The Daedalus Incident in 2013, was a SF/F Debut of the Month at Library Journal when it came out this year. Word Horde keeps putting out great books under Ross’ leadership and editorial purview. He’s one of the best editors out there, small-press or large.
So there you go. I would encourage you to check out all their books — not just the ones with me in ’em — and give them some consideration for a shiny rocket ship. If they don’t have mantles, we’ll do a Kickstarter or something.
#SFWApro
Filed under Books, Geek, Publishing, Writing
I’m back from the wilds of the Adirondack Mountains and once again ensconced in the day-to-day. We had a great time, and I even managed some intermediate trails on Gore Mountain (I’m typically a green-circle skier, so this was a nice thing for me). Took a bit of a spill on an icy patch and pulled a muscle in my chest, which has made for less-than-optimal sleeping, but it’s healing up. On the bright side, I sampled many fine beers and hung out with my family and other lovely people. Overall, it was a win.
And now that I’m back, I wanted to point out a few things:
After a short delay, The Gravity of the Affair is now free on Amazon as well as Google Play, iTunes and Kobo. (Due to arcane policies, it remains 99 cents at Barnes & Noble.) We’re going to keep it free for a while as part of a ploy to get people to check out the Daedalus series in paperback. So if you haven’t read it yet, please to enjoy!
I’m very OK with Barnes & Noble of late, despite the whole not-free thing, because The Daedalus Incident is on its list of “Alternate Realities – Alternate History” best sellers. And in some seriously fine company, too.
And hey, speaking of The Daedalus Incident, it’s on track for a March 15 release in mass-market paperback! And it’ll have the first chapter of MJ-12: Inception tucked in the back. The Enceladus Crisis follows in May, and The Venusian Gambit arrives in July, and they’ll both have different MJ-12: Inception excerpts as well. Collect them all, as they say.
Operation: DAEDALUS is still a going concern, and I’m excited to see all the love out there. As a reminder, if you leave reviews for The Daedalus Incident and/or use your social media superpowers to talk up the impending release, you’re entered to win a signed copy of the paperback and a preview copy of MJ-12: Inception. The more you review/post, the greater the odds of winning.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding material to MJ-12.net for your enjoyment. As you may know, MAJESTIC-12 is the conspiracy theory surrounding the government’s involvement in capturing aliens and using their technology. My take in the MAJESTIC-12 spy-fi thrillers will be…very different. But pretty darn fun.
I also want to point out that Geeky Giving has released its first story bundle! You get four great short stories and novelettes for the low price of $5, which goes toward neurological research. I urge you to check it out and donate. My novelette, “Mind Flight,” is in the March bundle, so get ready for that, too.
Finally, I did a guest post over at kt literary, my literary agency, as part of its “Peace, Love, Books” series. In it, I talk about unexpected joys of having fans. Because, to my very great surprise and delight, I have some fans. And they’re all awesome.
And that’s it for now. I’m working on MJ-12: Inception edits and outlining MJ-12: Shadows, which coming out around autumn 2017. Next week, I go to Los Angeles for the day job and will likely have some killer ramen and excellent tacos. It’s good to keep busy, right?
#SFWApro
Filed under Books, Charity, Publishing, Writing
The funny thing is, we’re still working on the edits to MJ-12: Inception. Regardless, you can now add the first MAJESTIC-12 thriller to your Goodreads “want to read” pile and, if you’re feeling particularly inspired, get your Amazon pre-order in today.
I know, right? I’m mostly just bemused to find these pages so early. But hey, feel free to make use of them.
I should note that the Sept. 6, 2016, release date is correct but should be treated as tentative this far out. I definitely feel like we’ll make that with plenty of room to spare, but Night Shade Books could move that around if the need arises on its end.
And no, there’s no cover yet. I did receive this little logo here, which is cool. But I’ve seen the full cover drafts and, man, let me tell you, it’s going to be amazing. Just a great old-school thriller cover with some neat paranormal elements to it.
Meanwhile, I’ll be tinkering with MJ-12.net in the coming days and weeks. Right now, it’s very much a placeholder, but I’m hoping to add some content that will get folks excited about seeing super-powered espionage agents duke it out during the Cold War. Be sure to look out for excerpts of MJ-12: Inception in the Daedalus trilogy mass-market paperbacks this spring and summer, too.
#SFWApro
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The new paperback cover! Click to embiggen!
It’s hard to believe that The Daedalus Incident first set sail back in August of 2013, and it’s been a heck of a journey. Best part of all — it’s not over yet!
I’m super excited to report that Night Shade Books is re-releasing the trilogy — The Daedalus Incident, The Enceladus Crisis and The Venusian Gambit — in mass-market paperback this year. For those not wholly conversant in publisher-speak, the books will come out in the smaller paperback format you’ve seen at the bookstore.
But wait, there’s more. Each paperback will have an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming MJ-12: Inception, the paranormal Cold War spy-fi novel that’s kicking off the MAJESTIC-12 series this September. And yes, that’s a different excerpt for each paperback title, for added genre-blending goodness.
I’m stoked about this because it’ll give folks another opportunity to explore the Known Worlds of the Daedalus trilogy — and a cheaper opportunity at that — while also hopefully getting people excited about MJ-12: Inception too.
Here’s how it’ll work:
Back cover with MJ-12 teaser! Click to enlargenate!
The Daedalus Incident is coming out mid-March, with The Enceladus Crisis coming in mid-May and The Venusian Gambit finishing up in July. It looks like we’re going for a $7.99 list price, but I don’t know how Amazon or others will ultimately list it. (Here’s Daedalus, Enceladus and Gambit on Amazon — expect those release dates to change slightly. I’ll be posting more sales links as I find them.)
I expect the price of the e-books to be adjusted as well, though I can’t say for certain because there’s some serious dark alchemy that goes into e-book pricing that I just don’t grasp. I also expect that if you’ve already purchased the e-books for the trilogy, you’ll be able to re-download the books after the paperback launch to get your hands on the MJ-12: Inception excerpts. I honestly can’t say how this affects Audible prices, but since a lot of that is on a subscription model anyway, I don’t know how much of an impact you’ll see there.
We’ve tweaked the covers for each book, though the stellar artwork by Sparth (Daedalus) and Lauren Saint-Onge (Enceladus and Gambit) will remain completely intact, because they are awesome in every way. We thought about including bonus materials based on the trilogy, but most of that material has already been featured on the blog and elsewhere; we ultimately decided that the MJ-12: Inception teasers would be a lot more fresh and fun.
And since we’re effectively reducing the price of the Daedalus trilogy, I thought I’d do the same with The Gravity of the Affair, the tie-in novella we produced back in December 2013. I mean, it’s not horribly expensive now at $2.99, but I’m going to go ahead and make it free, starting in mid-February. (Mostly free, I should add — B&N won’t let you drop it below 99 cents for some reason, but most other book vendors allow for freebies. Again, dark alchemy!)
Finally, I’m going to launch a contest where you can get your hands on a signed copy of The Daedalus Incident paperback and an early galley or ARC of MJ-12: Inception. Still working through the details at the moment, but it’ll involve you lovely people spreading the word about these fine books through social media and leaving reviews and whatnot. Expect more on that by early next week.
It’s great to see these books getting out there once more, and that’s largely due to all the wonderful people who’ve read and enjoyed them over the past couple years. My thanks to you, dear readers, for being so very, very awesome.
Sail on!
#SFWApro
Filed under Books, Publishing
The new series comes out this year!
I think everyone should be well and truly recovered from the holidays and such, so I figured it was a good time to let you know what you can expect out of me in the coming year, words-wise. And it’s going to be pretty cool.
Obviously, the Big Thing™ will be the release of MJ-12: Inception in September. This is the very first volume in the MAJESTIC-12 series of fantastical Cold War spy thrillers, because that kind of genre-blending is how I roll.
Now, the conspiracy theory states that MAJESTIC-12 is a cabal of government honchos hiding proof of extraterrestrial life from the general populace in order to leverage alien technology on behalf of the United States military. I’m taking that historical theory and running with it, but in very, very different directions. So you’ll see a lot of action and adventure, some truly fantastical elements, a decent dollop of mystery and suspense, and a couple of big question marks in MJ-12: Inception that’ll hopefully have you coming back for more.
So that’s out in September in hardcover. Where do things stand with it now? Continue reading
I’ve told the story, more than a few times, about how fantastic literary agent Sara Megibow made “the call” and notified me that The Daedalus Incident had found a home at Night Shade Books. It was my 40th birthday, right on the very day in fact. And with that five-minute call, I had a second career in the making.
So what did I do? Did I call my boss, laugh hysterically into the phone and give my notice in between streams of profanity? Did I then proceed to throw my files in the hallway and jam the copier for no good reason on my way out the door, where fame and glory awaited?
Uhhh…no. I celebrated by calling my wife, telling some friends around the office, and then got back to work. At least until it was time for cake. (For a time, my team at work celebrated everybody’s birthdays with cake. Because cake.) And then I told the team and basked in some congratulations — and cake — until I had to go back and finish my work.
Glamorous, no? Totes. The cake was fantastic.
Robert Jackson Bennett — a fantastic writer of novels and tweeter of profane non-sequiturs that invariably make me laugh — recently wrote a blog post offering some advice to writers who want to make a living off writing. It was, in my estimation, very good advice indeed — so much so that some of Robert’s readers asked him if he had any advice for older writers interested in making the leap. Since Robert has yet to encounter middle age (and damn his youthful visage), he didn’t have much.
So that’s where I come in, marshalling the gray in my beard in an attempt to approximate some kind of wisdom. Continue reading
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There are days when I still can’t quite believe that all this good authory stuff is happening. But it is, and apparently I’m not half-bad at it. And as it happened, 2015 was my most authory year yet.
Authory is totally a word. Back off, man…I’m a writer.
The following is a recap of the stuff that got published over the last year, and if there’s something that you haven’t read that piques your interest, by all means I’d encourage you to check it out. I suppose this is also my “awards consideration” post, and if you felt that anything below warranted that sort of recognition, then that’s pretty amazing and awesome. (Note: Don’t put me on a slate, no matter what the slate’s for. Just don’t. Thanks.)
The Venusian Gambit: The Daedalus trilogy wrapped up in May with The Venusian Gambit, which got a starred review from Publishers Weekly and lots of love from lots of people. The reception this trilogy has received has been hugely encouraging to me as I’ve plotted my next steps as a burgeoning author. It’s been nearly a year since I wrote the last words of this series, but I know Weatherby and Jain will be with me for a very long time indeed.
“Crisis of Faith,” Pathfinder Tales: My first published short fiction of the year was the four-part Web series “Crisis of Faith” for the folks at Paizo, publishers of the Pathfinder RPG. Doing a Dungeons & Dragons-style piece was quite a lot of fun, and something of a bucket-list item for me. Plus, the story centers on a priest of the setting’s god of beer. So of course I had to write it. You can check it out for free at the link.
“On a Kansas Plain,” Cthulhu Fhtagn!: Another big bucket-list piece, this time for Ross Lockhart’s Lovecraftian anthology for Word Horde. “On a Kansas Plain” is the story of what happens when one delves too deep into the shadowy cults waiting for the day when the Great Old One rises from the depths once more. I think this one is a little less weird than some of Lovecraft’s pulpy fiction, but it was still fun to revisit the Mythos.
“Confessions of an Interplanetary Art Fraud,” Unidentified Funny Objects 4: Yep, a horror story and a humor story in one year. This still amuses me to no end. In this one, an Earthling abducted by aliens at an early age grows up to find that his childhood drawings are the toast of the galactic art scene — until his muse ends up in Twinkie rehab and he steals cultural icons from another species to pass off as his own work. Hijinks ensue, as you might imagine.
A lot of people made all this stuff possible: awesome literary agent Sara Megibow, Night Shade Books editors Cory Allyn and Jason Katzman, Word Horde publisher Ross Lockhart, UFO4 publisher Alex Shvartsman, and Paizo editors Chris Carey and James L. Sutter. And then there’s my family, of couse, who continue to support and encourage me in this whole writing thing; none of this would be worth a darn without them.
And ultimately, all the folks who bought, read and enjoyed my work — none of this would be happening without your support. Thank you!
There will be more stuff in 2016, including an exclusive short story for Geeky Giving and the launch of the MAJESTIC-12 series with MJ-12: Inception in September. And…there’s a few other things that I’ll be telling you about in January, so stay tuned!
#SFWApro
Filed under Books, Publishing, Writing
I think I’ve exhausted myself of any and all Weighty Topics I care to address on the blog these days. (Note: There are many, many Weighty Topics to discuss in the world, generally speaking. What I choose to talk about here is an exceedingly thin slice of that.) So I figured I’d give you some updates on what’s going on with writing and such. The fun stuff.
First off, MJ-12: Inception remains with editor Cory Allyn in his Maine editing bunker. No word if there’s a moose involved. I haven’t received any emails with “WTF were you thinking” as the subject line, so I’m encouraged. The nice thing is, we’re still months away from release — building in some lag-time between The Venusian Gambit and MJ-12: Inception was a smart thing to do. Whatever I need to do, it won’t be a scramble to get it done. This is a good thing.
We’ve been doing some metadata and catalog stuff in the meantime, the kind of stuff you’ll see on Amazon pages, in publisher catalogs or on the back of ARCs. There’s also bits and pieces of business ponderings, and some neat opportunities to preview the first MAJESTIC-12 novel this spring, even beyond the planned build-out of MJ-12.net. More on that when it’s ready.
I’m also writing my short story for Geeky Giving, which is due in January but I’m hoping to finish by Christmas, if only to have the holidays off. Plus, Cory will emerge from the bunker any minute now with edits, and I wouldn’t mind having this story done before tackling the novel, lest I mix my neuroscience with my espionage.
And finally, there’s five days left on the Worldbuilders critique auction. Right now, that critique of 25,000 of your words is a steal. It won’t be cheap forever, since these things tend to ramp up at the end, but I imagine it’ll still be more reasonably priced than Pat Rothfuss’ critique, largely because I am not Pat Rothfuss. (However, I’m apparently pretty good at critiquing, if the kind words of past bidders are any indication.)
Remember, if you get priced out of the auction, you can still chip in $10 or more and be entered to win a critique by me, and others, as part of the WriMos for Worldbuilders lottery.
And that’s all I got. Family’s fine, day job is busy as usual leading up to the holidays. I clean the chicken coop on weekends and putter around with words when I can. It’s all good.
#SFWApro
Filed under Books, Charity, Publishing, Writing
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Michael J. Martinez 