Kane Gilmour

Holy Hannah! Four months have gone by since I last posted here on the blog. In my defense, a lot has happened. First, my daughter, Moira Dawn Gilmour, was born on January 11^th, and against my will, I delivered her. Well, I was pretty happy about it, but I had delivered my son in 2004, and I was supposed to be taking care of him while our awesome midwife handled things upstairs, but things went far too quickly and she didn’t make it to the house on time. Oh well. Didn’t drop this one either so I’m two for two. Mother and daughter are both doing fine.

RESURRECT is Out!

RESURRECT has been doing well with e-book sales, and I’ve even had some print sales too. The book has received some great blurbs from fellow authors and some great reviews—about half of them from people I don’t know, so that’s alright. E. Bard did a great review of the book on the ThrillReads and Reviews blog and it also appeared on the Thrillers Rock Twitter blog. The amazing Kent Holloway, publisher and author of THE DJINN, also performed a lengthy interview with me on his blog. Thanks Kent!

Hardcover

I’ve had some requests for a hardcover edition of RESURRECT, and naturally, I’d like my own copy as well. I’m going to try to put one together, and I’ll announce it here when it’s ready. It will likely have a few sample chapters from the next full-length Jason Quinn novel and an interview with yours truly. It might have a Jason Quinn short story too (depends if I can come up with a reasonable idea and if I can fit it into my suddenly busy writing schedule—more on that later). Reader Shannon Marshall suggested I include maps and diagrams—something I had always imagined for the book if I had it published by a New York publisher in hardcover. As it turns out, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get that done if I had gone through a traditional publisher anyway. I hope to implement Shannon’s suggestion too. If the experience goes well, I’ll be doing all my books in hardcover first.

CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE is Out!

The novella I did with Jeremy Robinson for his Jack Sigler / Chess Team series, CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE, is out and has been doing well. I’ve gotten some nice feedback on it, and I’m pleased to say that many of Jeremy’s readers picked up the book, and then picked up RESURRECT too. As it turned out, Deep Blue was the 7^th Chesspocalypse novella, being released after CALLSIGN: KING – BOOK 2 – UNDERWORLD, co-authored with Sean Ellis. Edited by yours truly, UNDERWORLD was a great ride and if you haven’t sampled it yet, you should snag it. Which brings me to the next point.

CALLSIGN: KING – BOOK 3 – BLACKOUT is out!

The third KING book, CALLSIGN: KING – BOOK 3 – BLACKOUT again co-authored by Jeremy Robinson and Sean Ellis, passed my editing desk and is now out. The story is pretty great. I think taken together, all three KING books form a pretty fantastic tale. So be sure to pick it up for more blazing King action and adventure.

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Warbirds of Mars Update

Along with the writing and editing I’ve been doing, I’m also writing the Warbirds of Mars web-comic, which was created by and is drawn by, my good pal Scott P. ‘Doc’ Vaughn. We’ve been getting some nice response regarding the series, about a Martian invasion of Earth in the latter years of WWII. Stop by and check out the story (and also the excellent ‘radio’ episode podcast that Doc did with some pals). Print versions of the web-comic can be nabbed at IndyPlanet and we’ve also got some pretty sweet Warbirds t-shirts at our swag link. Doc and I are also planning a prose anthology of Warbirds of Mars short stories. Right now, we’ve got some great folks that have agreed to write tales for us, but I won’t name any names until we see the stories. Suffice it to say, you’ll know many of the names. Doc is working on a Hunter Noir origin novella for the project, and I’ll be doing a story with Mr. Mask set in pre-war Japan. More info on this one later in the year.

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NEW PULP EXPLOSION!

I was surprised and honored a month or so ago when an editor and writer at one of the companies putting out New Pulp content, contacted me to compliment my work on Warbirds and invite me to submit some prose stories. I have to admit that I really hadn’t known that for the last several years, there’s been a revival in the great old Pulp era stories, with many companies like Altus Press reprinting them, and other companies like Airship 27 producing all new stories featuring many of the characters from the Pulp days that have now fallen into public domain. But man, am I glad my attention was called to this New Pulp (as it’s being called) explosion. I very quickly found some great reprint books (Ki-Gor, the Purple Scar, and the Green Lama) and I’ve been snatching up the New Pulp stories also. I never read any of the reprints of Doc Savage or The Shadow growing up, but I knew friends that were into those characters. I had a working knowledge of the Pulp era and its connection to an era I know more intimately—that of comic books—but I had never really read any of the old stuff. I’m thrilled that this new landscape of publishing (with public domain and print on demand) has made it possible for those with a love of that era to reinvigorate it. If I can work it into my schedule, I hope to join in, and take that editor up on his offer. In the meanwhile, I’ll be reading up on all I can from the old and the new.

RAGNAROK!

So what’s up with my writing schedule being so crowded? It’s because I got an offer from the fabulous Jeremy Robinson to co-author the next full-length novel in his Jack Sigler / Chess Team series. The book is now formally titled RAGNAROK (a reference to the Norse mythological story of the end of the world). Unfortunately, Jeremy’s originally planned release date of the story has been pushed back until October 2012, but the wait will be worth it. The book will now be released by Seven Realms Publishing, and it will be available in bookstores, and wherever books are sold. It’s available for pre-order now at Amazon. This book is Book 4 in the series, coming after PULSE, INSTINCT, and THRESHOLD. The Chesspocalypse novellas all fall between THRESHOLD and RAGNAROK. The cover for RAGNAROK, by Jeremy, is a beautiful thing to behold. I expound upon the way the collaboration works in the interview with Kent, mentioned above. But Robinson fans should rest assured that the book will be full of the same kinds of action, adventure, and antics that the previous three books contained. Whereas Deep Blue was really my story with Jeremy tweaking it in places (to make it more Chess Team appropriate), RAGNAROK is more a case of me constructing the framework and Jeremy will have firm control over how it comes out. We’ve had a great time plotting the story and now the writing is underway. I’ll write up the first draft, and then Jeremy will edit and add description and dialogue as he sees fit. We are both pretty excited to bring you the next chapter in this series.

MONSTER KINGDOM and TROUBLE Update

The result of taking the offer to work on RAGNAROK though, is that my writing schedule has had to change. There’s an actual deadline for it if we want to have appropriate press and reviews in place before the book goes live in October. So it’s coming first. That has meant pushing poor TROUBLE back again (the concept is from 2006!) and also pushing back MONSTER KINGDOM, which I mentioned in the Kent interview as well. Once my part of RAGNAROK is off my plate, I’ll be turning my attention to getting MONSTER KINGDOM done, as well as completing the next full length Jason Quinn novel, FROZEN, which I’ve also already begun. MK dates back to November 2010, when I was going to write it for a NaNoWriMo book. Unfortunately, between freelance work, family stuff, and the push to get RESURRECT out there, MK has been pushed back and back. But this May, it gets finished. TROUBLE will have to wait for later in the year. (That MK art isn’t the final cover art yet, but it’s getting there.)

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Appearance in Phoenix (of all places!)

I’ll be at the Phoenix Comicon from May 23 to May 27^th. Doc and I will have a table to hawk our wares. You’ll find print copies of Warbirds of Mars, t-shirts, prints of Doc’s artwork, and signed copies of RESURRECT and CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE for sale. If you’re in the Southwest, stop by and say hi.

2012 is going to be a great year, and if the world doesn’t end (stupid Mayans!) then it will certainly be on the brink of it in the fiction I’ll be bringing to legions of readers. Stick around. Great things are coming.

-Kane

Today we’ve got one of the final Chesspocalypse interviews, featuring, well…me. Stan Tremblay of Variance Publishing and FindTheAxis.com, the master of formatting on the Chesspocalypse books and other works by Jeremy Robinson (as well as on my own thriller, RESURRECT), and the inspiration for the mighty character of Rook, is here today to ask the questions while I answer them for a change.

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Stan Tremblay: Considering it’s your blog, there is no need to say thanks to you for joining us, but thanks to you for allowing me to be emcee for the evening! Knowing that you’ve been working with Jeremy Robinson doing the editing for his self-published releases for some time now, what’s the back-story between you two?

Kane Gilmour: No, no, thank you, Stan, for interviewing me! I had picked up PULSE when it came out and I loved it. Then I started reading Jeremy’s backlist books. When he announced he was putting BENEATH out as an e-book, I balked and harassed him over e-mail for a hardcover to go with my collection. We struck up an online conversation and when he was looking for Beta readers for his first horror book under the Jeremy Bishop name, TORMENT, I volunteered. I had noticed that the editing on PULSE was weak in places, and I had seen that the editing on some of his previous thrillers was weaker—but I had expected that because I knew he had self published them (back in the days when that was a whole lot harder than it is now).

When I read TORMENT, I loved it, but I told him bluntly that the editing was pretty bad. I was hoping he had passed me a pre-edited copy. As it turned out, it had already been looked at but it still needed another pass. Jeremy needed someone that wouldn’t charge him a fortune and could turn the project around in a week. My day job is as a technical editor, so I offered, and I guess he liked what he saw. He then passed me THE LAST HUNTER – DESCENT. Over the process of those two books, we got to talking and I pushed him to get a short story collection together. After INSOMNIA, I took a crack at re-editing a few of his earlier thrillers: BENEATH, THE DIDYMUS CONTINGENCY, and RAISING THE PAST. Somewhere along the line, I became his regular editor, I guess. It was pretty organic. I never took it for granted that I was the guy—I just thought “Ah, another project. Cool.” Meanwhile, I was working on finishing edits on RESURRECT, and Jeremy kindly beta read for me, and on the strength of that (and my knowledge of his works and his style), offered me CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE.

The funny thing is that online, we’ve known each other over a year, and we e-mail probably every day, but I’ve only met him face-to-face one time.

Stan Tremblay: Now that you’ve written for the Chesspocalypse series in CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE, do you feel any more vested in the series versus previously doing edits only?

Kane Gilmour: That’s a tricky question. I suppose the answer is yes, but as a reader, I felt very invested in the series first. As I got to know Jeremy, I became a champion for his work, and as his editor I became heavily invested in protecting his work and making him look as good as I can. In addition to copy edit stuff, I’m always quick to point out if a character is acting out of character—whether that character is written by a co-author or even by Jeremy himself. I see it as part of my job to look after the continuity of the series (or even a single book) as much as I can. When you bring other authors into the mix, you get new and interesting ideas, but sometimes a line of dialogue is wrong, or an action is inconsistent or whatever (and I was just as guilty of this on CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE). So I think I became more invested in the Jack Sigler / Chess Team series as I began to edit the Chesspocalypse books with CALLSIGN: QUEEN. I wasn’t expecting to get to work on Deep Blue, but the experience was a whole lot of fun. I’m not sure if I’m any more protective of the characters than I was—although maybe a bit with Matt Carrack, who I brought in. Now watch…now that I’ve said that, Jeremy will kill him in RAGNAROK!

Stan Tremblay: While each character has their own gripping way with the mind’s eye, who is your favorite character of the series (and no, this isn’t a test *wink-wink, nudge-nudge* ROOK *cough*)?

Kane Gilmour: I really don’t have one. That’s weird, but it’s true. I think the team works best as a team. As a reader, I enjoyed each of the Chesspocalypse books and their focus on each character, but I think what I like best about the series is the balance to the team and the way they interact. So while I love to see Rook in his scenes as he blows things up and uses creative language, I also like seeing Knight behind a sniper rifle and Bishop powering into a situation, while Queen slices throats and King kicks down doors and fires 9 mm rounds wearing an Elvis t-shirt and jeans. Oh yeah, and there’s this cool character named Deep Blue that might be seeing some more action in RAGNAROK.

Stan Tremblay: Your own personal release, RESURRECT: A Jason Quinn Thriller, has hit electronic shelves after what you say was a long-awaited 11-year span from start to finish… what took so long? When can we expect book two?

Kane Gilmour: Well, I could make excuses and say I was traveling the world and living in India and Sri Lanka, gathering a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) and most of a PhD in Education. That I was getting married, having a kid, working full time jobs, and blah blah blah. That’s all true, but the real reason is I didn’t work on typing the book when I had spare time. I watched movies, read books, went hiking, and even started work on a few other books before I had finished RESURRECT. The problem was that I had been living with Jason Quinn in my head for years—and the plot of the story was all laid out in my mind. There was nothing new for me to discover there. I should have sat down and finished writing it around 2002, when I knew how it was going to turn out and after I had visited the Vatican for research. Instead, I did everything else. Finally, in the summer of 2010, I locked myself in a cabin in New Hampshire and pounded out the last third of the book. Then I procrastinated on editing it a bit, and I was completely done at the end of last year.

Then this year (2011) was lost to first trying to find some folks to beta read, and then I had an agent that was interested in the book for a while, so I sat on it waiting to hear back. I had been fence-sitting about Indie publishing versus Traditional publishing until about half way through the time when the agent had the book. I decided I’d prefer to go Indie, but I waited until the agent passed. Then it was full steam ahead to get the book released. As I type this, the print version of the book is still a few weeks away.

That all said, now that I’ve spent 11 years with Quinn and Johnson living in my skull and yukking it up, I feel like I need a creative break. I did CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE, and now I’m working on finishing up a mystery novel in the vein of Robert B. Parker and Gregory McDonald called TROUBLE. After that, I’ve got a YA paranormal adventure book called MONSTER KINGDOM that I want to get out. MK was meant to be my 2010 NaNoWriMo book—but instead I ended up editing TORMENT for Jeremy (no regrets). After MONSTER KINGDOM, I hope to set to work on FROZEN, the next Quinn book, around April. So it should be available around the Summer of 2012.

Stan Tremblay: You’ve had some amazing praise for RESURRECT, by being compared to one of the biggest book-branding entities of our generation in Clive Cussler. You’ve also been enveloped into the Robinson brand—essentially putting you half way up the mountain from day one, congrats—but realizing you still have half the mountain to climb, what sets you apart from other authors and makes people realize that you aren’t just a rehash of some old hat they’ve already read?

Kane Gilmour: Thanks, Stan. I’m hugely flattered by the praise, and three independent sources comparing me favorably to Clive Cussler is all a fledgling adventure author could ask for. But then, as you say, I’ve also been lucky enough to be associated with Jeremy Robinson and adopt some of his fans for my own work. I do feel like that association has helped me maybe more than half way up the mountain.

What I hope will take me the rest of the way is a desire to see some things in fiction that I haven’t seen yet, as an avid devourer of it. As a reader, I’m tired of Arab villains, hackneyed plots involving patriotic heroes taking down the CIA, hard-drinking FBI agents one step away from getting kicked out of the Bureau, or ‘action heroes’ that like to wear the same turtleneck and blazer that their authors wear. When I set out to write, it was to write what I would want to read, but I couldn’t because it wasn’t yet available.

I used to rock climb in Arizona, so I wanted to read about a climber, but there weren’t many books out there with a climber as a protagonist. I also tried to synthesize some of my knowledge from an undergraduate degree in Asian studies and a lifetime of living and traveling abroad. A lot of thriller writers include exotic locales in their work, but having been to most of my locations, I can often chuck in that rare detail or two that you wouldn’t find doing online research. I hope what that will all add up to for readers will be a series of books that breaks a few molds, introduces some fresh 21^st century heroes, and offers some unusual locations with authentic detail. And as a rabid fan of Jeremy and Matthew Reilly, I’ll be trying to top myself and them as far as the action goes. One of my first fans for RESURRECT said she thought there was almost too much action in it. I hope not, because the next one will have even more.

December 6th, 2011. This book is finally available! Read on below the pic!

11 years after I started the book, it is now available on Amazon here. It should be up on B&N and Smashwords soon. Available in print in a few weeks.

Description:

In the 1850s, a madman proclaims himself the Son of God and raises an army, taking over half of China.

A century and a half later, his descendent and legions of devoted followers plan to take over more than just China.

When alpine engineer and mountaineer Jason Quinn, a man with a past mired in tragedy and violence, meets archeologist Dr. Eva Rayjek after a plane crash in the high Himalaya, neither of them are expecting wave after wave of Chinese assassins. Pursued to America, the frozen ice of the Gulf of Finland, and the heights of Hong Kong, Quinn and Eva connect her investigations with the machinations of charismatic shipping magnate and cathedral-builder, David Hong. As a scheme to obtain a private audience with the Pope at the Vatican comes to fruition, Hong’s fanatical followers are preparing for global warfare.

If Quinn fails to stop Hong’s plan, the entire Catholic Church just might crumble.

RESURRECT is the first book in a series featuring mountaineer Jason Quinn. It’s 96,000 words and fans of Matthew Reilly, Jeremy Robinson, James Rollins, and Clive Cussler will probably enjoy it a lot.

In fact, here’s what Jeremy Robinson, bestselling author of INSTINCT and THRESHOLD, had to say about the book:

“RESURRECT by Kane Gilmour is a smart, taut thriller
that takes the genre forged by Clive Cussler
and makes it fresh again. The combination of history,
conspiracy and explosive action
makes the book impossible to put down.
Highly recommended!”

High praise, indeed. The launch day was pretty busy, and I was inundated with congratulations, “Like”s, tweets, compliments, sand sales. Thanks to all that made the launch a success!

So, I actually had someone ask me about why I hadn’t mentioned this on my blog yet. It’s not top secret or anything, I just hadn’t had the time yet, and wanted to get the first three micro-interviews with the other Chesspocalypse authors up first. That’s right—other.

Jeremy Robinson, one of the coolest, hippest, most soft-spoken, and kindest authors out there, did me a supremely cool solid. He offered me the chance to write a novella of my own in the Chesspocalypse series. Well, actually, I suggested to him that he do a Deep Blue novella for the series, and he asked if I’d like to co-author. I was thrilled.

First and foremost, I’m a big fan of all the work Jeremy has done in the past and the great stuff he’s putting out now—as himself, as horror author Jeremy Bishop, and even as his humor book pen names of Kutyuso Deep and Ike Onsoomyu. I started e-mailing with him some time ago, and that turned into a beta-reading gig. That led to me doing some freelance editing for Jeremy, almost one year ago, for his works published by his Breakneck Media imprint. I think we’re at about 14 projects now, that I’ve worked with him on. It’s an absolute joy. He’s funny, witty, and probably the single best person I’ve ever known for accepting criticism. As an editor, I really couldn’t ask for more. I love to see him succeed, and I love to watch him grow and push himself as an author.

At the same time a year ago, I finished up the first draft of my first thriller RERSURRECT (to be released soon), and Jeremy has been a phenomenal mentor in all things publishing and self-publishing. When I asked him if he could turn me on to his beta readers, because I was having trouble finding people, he offered to read the book himself. When he finished it and loved it, he offered me a stellar blurb, which I’ll be revealing on this blog shortly. He introduced me to people in the industry, offered critical feedback on the story, and even showed me a barrel full of Photoshop tricks so I could put together the cover for RESURRECT, which again, I’ll be revealing on this blog shortly.

So after the man had given me so much (and given me a job!) already, I really wasn’t expecting to be given a shot at contributing to his awesome Chess Team universe. It was a double compliment. First, it meant that he thought I knew his stories and his style well enough that I could contribute to the series effectively. He was trusting me with his universe. It also spoke of how much he liked my writing in RESURRECT. In addition to giving me a chance to play with his characters, the offer to do the novella exposes me to all of his fans—right around the time I’m releasing my own work. A new author couldn’t hope for much more.

So, I’m having a blast finishing up this story. We’ll have a story description up here and on Jeremy’s site once the book is done in a few weeks. For now, make with the clicky on that pic, and feast your peepers on that glorious cover artwork (also by Jeremy, if you are curious—he does all of his own covers except for those on his hardcovers from Thomas Dunne). If you are a Chess Team fan and you’ve wanted to see Tom Duncan, former President of the US and handler for the team, get into some action himself, CALLSIGN: DEEP BLUE is going to be the place!

[Note: I'm making some streamlining changes here on the site. Gonna be fewer pages overall and more posts here on the main page. Instead of maintaining a static Writing Page, I'm just going to drop updates in here from time to time. I've also done away with the inspriation page--I'll be placing reviews of things I like here in the main section as well.]

Writing Update:

Novels:

I completed Resurrect on 10 Aug 2010. I finished edits on 30 Dec 2010. The book is now with my First Reader. The book has been proofread and I’ll incorporate my First Reader’s feedback, then I’ll be sending it out to agents.

After Resurrect:

I’ve started work in earnest on the next book. It’s a YA paranormal adventure called Monster Kingdom. I plan to self-publish it as an e-book.

I have one other novel I hope to knock out (a Mystery) before I turn to Frozen, the sequel to Resurrect.

Short Stories:

I’ve completed a couple of short stories. “The Firmament of Night” and “The Wound in the Woods” are both a bit Lovecraftesque short horror tales. I’m still looking for a home for both.

Web Comics:

Warbirds of Mars is coming near the end of its first arc. Scott launched the website on 22 July, 2010. Feedback has been positive. He came up with the idea for what is now Week 9 and also for what is now Week 20. I’ve plotted out Week 24 is out now and Week 26 will wrap this first story arc. Scott expects to have a printed version of the comic ready for the Phoenix ComicCon in May. He’ll be there. I might be but it isn’t looking too good right now.

Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Time to fix that.

I started revising my first manuscript, for the thriller RESURRECT, a few days after I finished writing it. That would have put it around end of August 2010.

What I did was print out the book on paper. Then I read through with a red pen and marked up the whole thing. Probably the last time I’ll do it that way.

I got through about a quarter of the manuscript rapidly, and then life intervened. I had family visit. Then I fooled myself into thinking I would enter 2010’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) contest. Shortly after I started the contest (or in other words, about ten pages into my NaNoWriMo novel), I took on a side job that killed any chance of completing the contest.

I had read an advanced reader copy (ARC) for a new horror novel by Jeremy Bishop, called TORMENT. It led to a gig editing the manuscript and future editing work.

I’m now thinking of taking on more clients and have done several more books for action thriller author, Jeremy Robinson. I’m reading an ARC for Brett Battles’ new thriller, Little Girl Gone.

So anyway, by December 2010, I still hadn’t finished the red-pen edits of RESURRECT. So over the Christmas holidays, I pushed through to the end. Then I procrastinated a bit on entering the changes to my electronic file. Finally, I sat down and started. I worked through the night and after 22 hours, the work was done. Lesson learned? The work takes a lot less time than you think it will once you actually apply yourself to it.

December 30th, 2010, I felt like the book was really done. Almost ten years to the day that I started it in Denver.

I sent the book off to a trusted proofreader (my mom, who has been an eagle-eyed editor and thriller-reader for decades) and also sent the book off to my First Reader, who will hopefully be getting me some feedback on story flaws and technological gaffes in the coming week.

Next step for RESURRECT is for me to start querying agents on it.

Meanwhile, I’ve set my planned second novel (a mystery) aside, and I’m working to finish up the NaNoWriMo novel–a YA supernatural adventure tale called MONSTER KINGDOM, which I plan to self-publish directly to e-book, as soon as it is done.

So…any agents out there looking for the next big thriller? Feel free to save me the time and energy of sending out dozens of query letters and get in touch.

-Kane