Hi all,

Here’s some big professional news: I will be departing Angry Robot at the end of March. AR’s parent company Watkins Media has decided to consolidate the sales group and my position is going away.

Robot Retrospective

I’ve been the North American Sales & Marketing Manager for Angry Robot for about five and a half years. I interviewed for the job the weekend before my debut novel hit the digital shelves in July of 2012. The job saw my then-girlfriend and me moving to Queens so I could work in the main office. We shortly moved down to Maryland for her job, but thankfully, I was able to keep working for Angry Robot – it’s just as easy to hop on Skype from Maryland as NYC, and getting up to the Big Apple isn’t too hard from Baltimore. Since then, I’ve taken on more and more at AR and learned a lot about art direction, editorial, strategy, and more. I’m very grateful to Marc, Penny, Nick, Phil, and everyone I’ve worked with at Watkins/Osprey/Angry Robot.

But for a couple of years now, I’ve been running myself a bit ragged – trying to do right by Angry Robot and the company’s authors AND pursue my own writing career with writing, self-publishing, and promotion AND participate in two podcasts AND maintain a healthy home life AND pursue hobbies/interests outside of writing. It’s been hard to do everything, just like it’s hard for so many people to do everything they want.

Since before I sold Geekomancy (really, before I sold my first short story), my professional identity in publishing has been this Author/Professional two-in-one. I’ve gotten used to switching hats, to speaking from multiple positionalities. My view on the industry was always about using one perspective to inform the other.

And now my day job is going to be Author. I’ll be working primarily for myself. I’ve been looking at a variety of options moving forward – including some consulting work that might let me continue to apply my skills beyond working an author. But mostly, I want to write more.

What’s Next?

My wife makes pretty good money in her job and is very supportive of my writing career, so this isn’t at all a Panic Stations kind of situation. I’m focusing on the opportunities this presents – now I’ll be able to spend time working on new projects – comics, non-fiction writing, etc. I’ve been meaning to break ground on Genrenauts Season Two for some time, but I have been prioritizing the space opera novel since my agent and I want to find it a home with a good SF/F trade publisher.

Obligatory Plugs

We’re also less than a month (!) from the launch of Born to the Blade. Serial Box has been a great publishing partner and writing with Marie, Cassandra, and Malka is a dream come true. Be sure to subscribe to the first season or pre-order the pilot for free.

I just turned 35 last month, making this an even clearer delineation of “okay, new life chapter coming up.”

So come April, you should expect to see more and different things from me. I won’t be traveling nearly as much in the short term, but I am looking to find other ways of putting coolness out into the world while also getting more writing done. I’ll probably be more chatty on my blog and on social media, and maybe trying out some cool stuff like restarting my Twitch stream, launching a Patreon/Drip, that kind of cool stuff. I’m eager to see what life looks like when I can direct my full attention toward my own work with Born to the Blade, Genrenauts, and more.

Onward, to new awesomeness!