This is where you can read some of the fiction I’ve written over the last few years. Works in progress and older stuff will be made available as I finish them and/or clean them up for public consumption.
You may download any of these files free of charge, for your personal, non-commercial use. You may also distribute them freely to friends and relatives if you think they’d like to read them. In fact, I encourage you to do so. It only takes one reader to know an editor or agent looking for new talent, and if this kind of distribution gets me the exposure necessary to find a traditional publishing home for my work, then it was well worth the exercise.
So feel free to share amongst each other, but please do not publicly re-post this material anywhere, for any purpose, without prior permission. If in doubt, ask–you can email me at marko.kloos@gmail.com.
That’s the fine print…now here’s the merchandise. I’ll update this page as I add new material, so check back on occasion.
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Blood and Ink
(Fantasy/4,000 words)
A short story that takes place in an alternate version of 1890 Germany. Published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies in July of 2011.
Blood and Ink at Beneath Ceaseless Skies
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A Bettered Life
(Literary Fiction/99,000 words)
Will Liebkind won the Nobel Prize for Literature ten years ago, and he’s had a case of writer’s block ever since. His brother Bob is a prolific writer of pulp and sex. They’ve been like cat and mouse since adolescence, but when events force Will to move in his brother’s orbit for a while, life changes in unexpected ways.
Author’s Notes:
What kind of sibling rivalry could you get out of a pair of writer brothers–one who’s reached the zenith of the craft with a Nobel Prize, and one who writes nothing but pulp? What if the pulp-writing brother is actually the happier of the two?
I wrote this novel from December 2006 to January 2008. The main character of Will popped into my head when I was having a conversation with my wife one day, and I wrote most of the first chapter that night.
This is the entire novel. Being the second novel I ever finished, I consider it a trunk novel–basically a practice piece. It turned out a pretty decent read, I think…even if there are no starships getting blown up in it.
Word .doc (800kb)
Adobe PDF (2.4MB)
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Terms of Enlistment
(Military Science Fiction/118,000 words)
Twenty-year-old welfare citizen Andrew Grayson enlists in the armed forces of the North American Commonwealth. The service is highly selective, because millions of young people are eager for a way to escape crime, overpopulation, and flavorless Basic Nutritional Allowance rations. Andrew is assigned to the Territorial Army, which serves as a martial police force against lesser-developed nations on Earth—and against the mass of discontented citizens in the welfare cities of the North American Commonwealth itself. As Andrew starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or angry welfare rats with rifles.
Author’s Notes:
What if you lived in the 22nd century version of a public housing project? What if the only food you ever got to eat was made from genetic soy and recycled human waste? What if your only ticket out of that place required you to learn how to use a weapon—and maybe use it against your former friends and neighbors?
This is the first chapter of Terms of Enlistment, the MilSF novel I am currently shopping around. I wrote this novel from July 2008 to June 2009. The follow-up novels will be called Lines of Departure and Angles of Attack.
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Lucky Thirteen
(Military Science Fiction/5,500 words)
The story of 1st Lt. Halley’s first own drop ship command, and how she earned her Distinguished Flying Cross.
Author’s Notes:
This is a short story in the same universe as Terms of Enlistment. I wrote it as backstory for one of the main characters.
