BFGCon Schedule

This weekend, I’m headed to BFGCon, a regional games conference in Frederick, MD. I’m presenting on a few panels, but will otherwise just be hanging out and taking in the gaming goodness.

Friday

1300 – 1400 Turning Games into Art – A panel discussion

Ben Walker
Jess Comstock
Michael R. Underwood
Sarah Zeiter

Saturday

1430 – 1530 Next Level Worldbuilding — A presentation by me with lots of time for Q&A

Michael R. Underwood

Sunday

1300 – 1400 Social Justice Gaming – A panel discussion

Dan Layman-Kennedy
Jess Comstock
Michael R. Underwood
Daniel Laughlin

D&D – Wayfinders, Drama Systems, and Me

I’ve been thinking a lot about D&D and tabletop RPGs, not just in general, but for some specific reasons that will become clear pretty soon (/tease). Here are some of these thoughts, prompted by a new release from Wizards of the Coast re: D&D.

This week, the Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron arrived on the PDF storefronts. The guide is a living document-slash-Early Access-type-dealie unofficial supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (5e), bringing the world of Eberron back to the game. Eberron was created by Keith Baker (who you might also know as the creator of Gloom) for the D&D 3rd edition setting contest. I remember entering the contest with negligible hopes, and I was exactly right – didn’t make it past the first round. Alas, the email address I used is long gone so I don’t have a record of it, and only remember the vague details (it was vaguely Deadlands-inspired and was focused on like the power of the land and artifacts, I think?). I’ve gotten better at keeping track of my ideas, thankfully.

Drama Systems

When Eberron came out, it was remarkable (to me) for applying a Drama Die-style mechanic to D&D – Action Points. Action Points could be used to make a roll more likely to succeed or to activate class abilities, etc. This was meant to represent the pulp adventure tone of Eberron, which was more cinematic than the default 3e D&D tone.

Around fifteen years later, this re-introduction of Eberron comes with a new mechanic, again cribbed from and/or reminiscent of something happening elsewhere in the RPG design world – Environmental Elements.

This mechanic is, IMO, straight-up a D&D version of Situation Aspects from FATE Core.

This type of mechanic, where drawing upon the established details of a scene in your action (We said there’s a chandelier, so I’m going to jump up and swing on it to get over the guards so we can flank them) grants a mechanical bonus, is a fabulous tool. In the Wayfinder’s Guide, it grants advantage. The version from FATE allows for an extra aspect bonus (the game is built on creating and using aspects for bonuses).

Newer story/indie games talk about ‘Fictional Positioning’ and ‘Fiction-First Play’, which are both ways of focusing the play and judgment of mechanical advantages on the specifics of the scene in a way that enhances visually evocative play. Rather than thinking about what you want the rules to do for you, this style says “what does the fiction say right now, and what do you want to happen in the story?” and then asks “how can the rules help you make that come alive or resolve a dangerous or contested situation?”

As in, very much a way of playing RPGs that I like. I like cool rules, I like utility powers and mechanics that express theme and let players show mastery and achieve extraordinary results. But a lot of why I like those things because they let me drive the story forward in interesting ways.

When I cracked open the Wayfinder’s Guide, one of the questions I had was “how will this version of Eberron convey the pulp adventure tone the world is known for?” In 3e, it was action points. Here, Environmental Elements — and maybe more! I’ve just started reading. Action Dice do not make a return, though as this is a work-in-progress, who knows what will come down the road. And really, I don’t think it’d be too hard to just port Action Dice over to your D&D 5e game. Especially if you want to focus on the high-adventure/pulp heroics tone.

The Lineage of Chainmail

5e is (IMO) the most playable, most accessible edition of D&D yet, even though it is still very firmly tied to its lineage as a spin-off from a miniatures war game (Chainmail). I like some crunch (by crunch I mean more detailed and interconnected mechanical systems) – in 3.X and 5e D&D I like classes like Rogue, Bard, and Inquisitor that have some interesting inter-connected systems and utility powers, especially when it expresses an interesting character theme. But even though it’s more accessible, 5e D&D still has big spell lists, massive numbers of systemic interactions that need to be considered at every step of the way in a big, dramatic fight. And for me, it still has the Superhero Crossover problem of “Did you have the right plan for this?” where in order to keep combat moving, you have to reach such a high level of internalization of tons of different spells and effects and interactions and countermeasures so that you can declare your action and resolve it very quickly.

But then I see another problem on top of that. To keep tactical combat moving, you have to be concise and optimized. In my experience, it’s common for big combats to last 90 minutes or longer, and that’s with players and the GM keeping things moving. But what *I* want most from a fight is emotional stakes and cool description – the baseline mechanics of D&D don’t help me with that – unless the DM decides my description is cool enough to earn Advantage (more on that later)

Slowing a fight down to convey how your character feels or to do a flashback or to give a cool description of your action, even a 15-30 second description…it still slows the fight down. And the system is already set up for combat to be a slog. So as a player I end up getting self-conscious about balancing optimized, efficient play with my own play agenda of expressing my character’s emotional landscape and/or being a co-cinematographer and describing a cool action.

The Advantages/Disadvantages of Advantage/Disadvantage

D&D 5e has Advantage/Disadvantage, which is an *excellent* system. (In brief – normally in D&D you roll one 20-sided die and add a number to see if you rolled high enough to do the Thing. With Advantage, you roll 2 dice and take the better result. With Disadvantage, you roll 2 dice and take the lower result) But in my own games and the games I hear people talk about, Advantage and Disadvantage are criminally under-used. My friend Andy Romine said this about Advantage/Disadvantage:

I love the idea of Advantage/Disadvantage, but my experience has been just that — the DM “grants it.” Kind of a one-way street…Nothing stopping PCs from asking for Advantage (“Hey, I see that chandelier…”) but the game’s action economy doesn’t seem organically set up for this.

That’s the thing – Advantage/Disadvantage feels more like it rests on top of the core system instead of being as fully integrated into the system – mostly because the major way that you get either is a Guess Culture thing. You can describe an action hoping for advantage, you can ask for it, but it’s still all by fiat. The Inspiration system isn’t enough, IMO.

And beyond that, I’m not sure the D&D materials do a good enough job of communicating to the DM how powerful a tool Advantage/Disadvantage is. Even though other parts of D&D talk about Advantage/Disadvantage, it still mostly comes from DM fiat. If more things in D&D just straight-up gave you Advantage/Disadvantage, from class abilities to spells, etc. it would feel more like a critical part of the game, and I think it’d do a better job of helping the player avoid the famous whiffs where the d20 conspires against an awesome idea/action/etc. and then it just…fizzles.

But now, Environmental Elements takes a *huge* step toward making Advantage feel like a central part of the D&D system.

New Moves, New Opportunities

And here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about for D&D. One of the things that I love about the Powered by the Apocalypse lineage of games (Apocalypse World, Dungeon World) is the way they approach information-gathering. In those games, when you want to investigate a scene or get information from someone, it falls under one of several ‘Moves’ (attacking is a move. Trying to intimidate someone falls into another move. It’s a cool approach. Go read Apocalypse World). With these moves, you roll and then get to pick from a list of questions. If you roll poorly, you get fewer questions, and maybe you take a consequence but still get some information.

I’ve been thinking about running a game that I’d call D&D but would really be drawing heavily on the systems of games like Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, and FATE Core. I’d use the faction rules and downtime rules and progress clocks from Blades in the Dark, and I’d adapt the information-gathering moves from Apocalypse World/Dungeon World

It’d got a little something like this.

“When you analyze a situation, Roll Perception. For every 5 points of your result, you get to ask one question:

What is the biggest threat?
What is my way in/out?
What happened here?
Are there hidden threats I should know about?”

And then like maybe you get an extra question if you also accept a consequence/suffer a cost/etc.

Example – “You can get a better look and one more question if you scramble to the top of the tree and expose your position to the giant crows.”

None of this is new in the Powered by the Apocalypse lineage. But it’s a huge departure for the ‘make the DC or fail’ setup of D&D, even in 5e. But even that small change is liberating for me as a player and as a DM because it is less of a binary state. It’s more tangible, more focused. If I only get one question, I can prioritize. And if I want to push for more information, I have the permission to push and the cost/benefit is spelled out and systematized.

And what I think I can do here is to hybridize D&D. I can start players with the familiar trappings or the familiar shell of the D&D-style adventure fantasy, but hack the game by changing come of the cogs and gears in the system with others that I like better, and to add some after-market attachments (faction rep, downtime action, clocks) to provide more tools to make D&D into the kind of game I want to be playing. I could also just run something like Dungeon World, and I think I will, but the idea of trying to make D&D into the version of the game that I want is very appealing.

A while back, I applied to a D&D designer position – and one of the things I pitched in that application was the idea of a D&D Accelerated (inspired by FATE Accelerated, a version of FATE Core). This hacking of D&D process would basically be me designing D&D Accelerated through exploratory play, which is not a bad approach, IMO.

But mostly, I am excited to be playing more tabletop games and to draw joy and inspiration from the game texts, sourcebooks, and more. Look for more gaming news from me soon. 🙂

Solipsism and Celebrities

  • The 80s saw, for example: Call of Cthulhu (81), Paranoia (84), Ars Magica (87), d6 Star Wars (87), Cyberpunk 2013 (88), Shadowrun (89).
  • The 90s brings the World of Darkness, Torg, Amber, Underground, Blue Planet, 7th Sea, Aberrant
  • In the 2000s you get the Forge/Story Games movement (Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc.), D&D 3.0, the OGL, etc.
  • And in the 2010s we have Apocalypse World and Powered by the Apocalypse games, RPG Kickstarters, Tons of anniversary editions of old RPGs (WoD 20th anniversary editions, 7th Sea 2.0, etc.), Pathfinder’s rise, D&D 5e, Critical Role, Roll20, etc.

Where’s the stagnation in there? I see mechanical innovation, troupe play, bridging across to other genre influences, acting techniques, roleplay theory, scene framing, etc.. And that was just a short thread overview of a way more complicated and nuanced tradition.

It’s okay to say “I got bored with RPGs, but since video games have become so much their own thing, I got excited about RPGs again.”

It’s also sensible to say that technological innovation with streaming and podcasts enabled RPGs to become an outward-facing art form and that Podcasts of Acquisitions, Inc. PAX events, and streaming games like Critical Role turned small group experiences into shared experiences. Yeah, for sure. You don’t get The Adventure Zone or Friends at the Table being A Thing without the rise of podcasts.

Roll20, Skype, & other systems let people re-connect with childhood friends to play across a continent or play w/people they’ve never met. *Raises hand* That’s me. Playing a Roll20 D&D game with old SCA friends and their friends.

There was this trend in confessional gamer memoirs in the 2000s where the white male gamer waxes rhapsodic about loving RPGs as a kid, about how it was this secret only he and his friends knew about and appreciated. But then he “discovered” girls, went to college, and/or “grew up” and cast RPGs aside, only to re-discover his love for them later, returning not just with nostalgia, but with renewed appreciation. Harmon’s bit seems like this, but probably across a different life path. It’s okay to have left and come back, but RPGS were always here.

WoD (World of DarknesS) and esp. Mind’s Eye Theater enabled women to claim space in RPGing that had been largely denied. Women & people from other marginalized populations/identities have always played RPGs, but World of Darkness and its LARPs were a major vector by which even more people got into RPGs, continuing to shift the balance away from the straight white male perceived monolith.

Yes, this is a golden age of RPGing, but it’s not because of video games. Video games & Tabletop RPGs have evolved in tandem, borrowing back and forth from one another, but tabletop is not a symbiote thriving only because of video games.

Do better, Dan Harmon. Like it or not, you’re seen as a major name in RPGs now because of HarmonQuest. Do right by the community people see you as representing. You need to roll better on your Save vs. Be That Guy.

P.S. Shout-out to SF writer John Appel for strong contributions to this original twitter thread.

Birthday Reflections

It feels weird to have a birthday and focus on joy with the current political climate, but the concert I went to last night was 100% what I needed. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Pulse events present orchestral music in a fresh, accessible way, and last night they played alongside Lake Street Dive.

I listened to classical pieces (new and old) that I’d never heard and got to lose myself in the richly textured performances. Next was Lake Street Dive themselves, a band of classically-trained performers who have found solid success in popular music, thanks to technical skill, great songwriting, and a lead singer with a truly singular voice. This set was far more rocking than the festival show I saw several years ago as they were starting to break out. It brought me so much joy to see them pack and captivate a 2,000+ person room.

And then, after 100 minutes of amazing music performing each on their own, the BSO and Lake Street Dive combined for a short set of LSD’s songs with 20 performers on stage. Lake Street Dive’s music is already textured and dense, and with 5x as many instruments, the magnified effect was transcendent.

But it wasn’t just the music that made the night. Before the show, there were local food vendors and local performers, like a mini indoor festival.Food, drinks, and then unforgettable music.

But that wasn’t the end.

After, we got to go backstage.

The friend whose +1 I was knows one of the bandmates, and so we got to meet and chat with each of them. I found out that the guitarist and the guest keyboardist are both SF/F fans, so we talked science fiction, the differences between prose and music, writing across media traveling for work.

The whole night was a magnificent, life-affirming event that reminded me of the power of the arts. I’ve spent so much time these last few months on the day-to-day short-term resistance – calling, sharing info, etc. All important stuff. But to keep from burning out, I need to resist through art as well as the day-to-day. To celebrate & remember what we’re fighting for.

So the birthday gift I need to give myself is permission to rotate off the front lines and make art. I’ll still make my calls, but the last few months have been utterly exhausting, reacting to every new indignity and making dozens of calls per week to rouse my reps to action. I’ve been recovering from surgery, which has kept me from the protests, but I’ve been no less active for it.

It would be easy to focus entirely on art, but I want to fight the short-term and on the cultural level. As with many things, balance. So that’s my goal for this year. To find and maintain a balance. To live fully without burning out or hiding behind my privilege.

Kameron Hurley, a brilliant fiction writer and one of the sharpest, clearest voices in SF/F, has talked about her strategy for getting through the Trump era – she talks about how she imagines herself 30~ years from now, looking back on who she was and what she did to get through all of this. And then she tries to figure out what it will take to get through to that future.

What we do right now will be remembered. Not just personally, but by our families, our friends, our neighbors, and by the world. Most of us would prefer to live in peaceful times, to never know a massive upheaval. But that is not the world we live in.

So this year, I will fight, I will live, I will laugh, I will love. I will make art and phone calls, I will go to conventions and to rallies. I will geek out with my friends about comics and share information about executive orders or legislation.

This push for balance is not some revolutionary new idea – activists and civil rights advocates have had to find this balance throughout history. I’m just a bit late to the game, like many of us are. But we’re in this together, and there are people who have been fighting the good fights for many years, people we can support and learn from.

So if you need permission to take a break, like I did, this is me giving you permission. As the resistance shifts from the rage of the inauguration and the flurry of horrendous initial actions to the sustained opposition and campaigning for run-offs/special elections this year and the big races in 2018, we’ll all need to take care of ourselves and one another to make it through this.

Because we can do this. The DJT White House and the GOP have abandoned their duty to the American people, but we’re still here, we have the numbers and the tools to protect the vulnerable, and if we can survive to 2018 with elections about as fair as we had in 2016 (noting that the 2016 elections had major problems in voter suppression, gerrymandering, and voter intimidation), the resistance can win, and can hold DJT accountable where the GOP won’t.

Off to NerdCon!

NerdCon: Stories

As this post goes, live, I am on my way to Minneapolis, MN for NerdCon: Stories, a two-day celebration of the power of storytelling (October 14-15th). I’m honored to be a Featured Guest for the con. I’ll be on a gaming panel, reprising my How To Hand-Sell Your Book presentation, and reading during a showcase event. You can check out my full programming schedule for the con here.

I’ll also be running a booth at the con all weekend with my friend Jay Swanson. If you’re coming to the con, please swing by (#817) and say hello! I will have a limited # of the paperback omnibus editions of Genrenauts: The Complete Season One Collection, as well as other books.

Here’s a quick guide to where you can find Jay and my booth during the con:

 

NerdCon booth directions

 

As a special bonus, the Ree Reyes novels (speaking of Nerds + stories) are still on discount through this weekend!

Amazon * B&N Nook * Kobo * iTunes

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NerdCon: Stories Schedule

NerdCon: Stories

 

Hello, all!

I’m very excited to be a Featured Guest at NerdCon: Stories in Minneapolis, MN this October 14-15th. NerdCon: Stories is a new convention (in its 2nd year) celebrating stories and the power of storytelling. I couldn’t imagine a convention more up my alley if I started it myself. I heard great things about the con from several friends, and was eager to be a part of NerdCon: Stories this year.

The schedule for the con is up for all to peruse.

And here’s where you can find me during the show:

 

Saturday, October 15th:

11:00 AM – Room 101A – How To Hand-Sell Your Book

Author and publishing professional Mike Underwood shares lessons from seven years of hand-selling books to readers, booksellers, and sales reps.  Learn how to put your work into a market context, showcase what makes it special, and connect with readers when selling at conventions, festivals, and more.

12:30 PM – Room 101 BCHI – Storytelling in Tabletop Games

Role-playing and other tabletop games are a fantastic catalyst for collaborative storytelling. Creating narrative frameworks and game rules that allow players to have enough control over both story and interaction can be a tricky business. How do game designers do this, and what makes a game truly great?

3:30 PM – Saturday Afternoon Variety Show

Hosted by Paul & Storm

Featuring:

  • A rapid-fire Q&A with Chris Rathjen, Eileen Cook, Joe DeGeorge, Jonathan Ying, Karen Hallion, Kevin MacLeod, Nalo Hopkinson, and Paolo Bacigalupi
  • A talk by Sara Benincasa
  • Daniel José Older and Nalo Hopkinson in conversation
  • Ms. Pacman vs the Patriarchy – a talk by Paul DeGeorge
  • A reading by Michael R. Underwood
  • A lip sync battle with Blue Delliquanti, John Scalzi, Paul Sabourin, Matt Young, Mikki Kendall, and Darin Ross
  • A talk by John Green

 

I’m very excited to reprise and further refine my How To Hand-Sell Your Book presentation, which I’ve given at the Nebula Conference and GenCon.  The other programming looks fabulous, as well. Other than this official programming, you can find me in the Expo Hall all weekend! I’m sharing a booth with fellow author Jay Swanson (check out his cool real-time fantasy blog Into The Nanten). And if all goes as planned, I will have paperback copies of the Genrenauts Season One Omnibus!

You can register for NerdCon: Stories here.

Hope to see you there!

My Hamilton Reaction Post

Or: We Got to be in the Room Where it Happened

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So yeah, that happened.

Meg and I visited NYC over the weekend to celebrate my birthday and to take a short vacation. We visited old haunts, explored the vast halls of the Met, and played the Hamilton lottery, just in case.

We lost on Friday, twice on Saturday, but then on Sunday, emerging from the subway as we made our way to Caracas for lunch, Meg looked at her phone and said, in a surprisingly calm voice, “I won.”

I managed to not scream and shout with joy in the corner market where we stopped to buy tickets. There was dancing, however. And it’s really good we decided to hit lunch when we did, since we had a mere 11 minutes to spare when Meg got the lottery notification.

The first thing I noticed walking into the theater itself is that the Richard Rogers is not a large theater. It holds 1,319, but it looks much smaller.

The stage set up is modular and mobile, with rotating floor sections and moving stage fixtures and a balcony in the background:

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Since we had lottery tickets, we were in the front row, on the right hand side of the center section. This meant that we were looking up at the performance the whole time, which helped create a sense of epic wonder – that these performers were larger than life, as was their story.

Because it was a Sunday matinee, the title role was played by Javier Muñoz, rather than Lin-Manuel Miranda. Since I’ve listened to the show’s OST many times, having that major difference helped make the live show a wholly distinct experience. Muñoz’s performance is a bit more Broadway than Manuel-Miranda’s, stronger in the singing and a bit less fluent in the rapping.

Leslie Odom, Jr. is AMAZING as Aaron Burr. I’d already been really impressed by his work as Burr in the few videos I’ve seen and in the OST, but seeing him in person, the passion and polish in his performance totally blew me away. Daveed Diggs as Lafayette/Jefferson is even more hilarious than I’d imagined – Diggs fills moments and elevates scenes with his reactions and fantastic physical comedy. Also worth calling out for delight is Jonathan Groff’s King George, who uses a full range of comedic tools to make his numbers and scenes laugh-out-loud funny, including participating in “The Reynolds Pamphlet,” which I hadn’t realized was part of the show – he dances around the stage celebrating Hamilton’s self-destructive move, along with Jefferson and company.

And if there is any justice, Phillipa Soo will have a long and celebrated career in Broadway, because DAMN she is brilliant. The Schuyler Sisters (Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, and Renee Elise Goldsberry) have great rapport, and their number is incredibly fun.

Even having heard the soundtrack several times, the performances moved me to tears twice in act one, and three times in act two.

Other notes from seeing the full performance:

  • Muñoz and Odom Jr. do a great job of portraying the complicated friendship/rivalry/enmity between Hamilton and Burr. Muñoz’s Hamilton shows naked ambition and arrogance in key moments, showing how he alienates the people around him, including those in his closest confidence (Washington, Burr, and his own wife Eliza).
  • There’s much more b-boy and pop & lock in the ensemble’s dance pieces than I thought – it was really cool to see.
  • Jon Rua (an ensemble player and Hamilton understudy, who usually plays Charles Lee) has the most boss undercut I’ve seen. Like, seriously, Undercut Goals. He could be the rival-friend in a martial arts anime.
  • I got a T-Shirt. It’s the “Just Like My Country – Young, Scrappy, and Hungry” and it will be my new Writing Power-Up shirt.
  • If you buy drinks, they come in Hamilton cups. They’re cool, but they’e plastic. I would happily buy Hamilton pint glasses. Can you say strategic partnership with the Sam Adams Brewing Company?
  • OMG HAMILTON!

Of course, now I want to see the show again with Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I may be waiting quite a while. Even having seen the show, I still really want the original cast to do at least one weekend live-cast to movie theaters the way some operas have done. They could charge $25 a seat and make tens of millions in one weekend. The show has legit, Tumblr-level fandom, and a huge % of those fans cannot afford tickets and/or the cost to come to NYC to play the lottery, but are no less devoted. I’ll be interested to see how Miranda and the team continues to deal with the show’s phenomenon status.

Now, back to my regularly scheduled program of singing Hamilton songs to myself as I work.


 

Mike’s latest book is The Absconded Ambassador – Genrenauts Episode 2. Weird aliens, diplomatic wrangling, space dogfights, genre ruminations, and more:

The Absconded Ambassador

 

The Genrenauts Challenge: Round One!

Dear all,

We’re just two weeks away from the release of The Absconded Ambassador: Genrenauts Episode 2!

The Absconded Ambassador

 

And to help build excitement for the series, I’m kicking off a set of competitions.

Before Genrenauts launched, I recorded a series of videos with the fine folks at Tor.com about the series, including some videos inviting the viewer to step into the role of Genrenauts and create endings for broken stories.

 

First, watch the video:

Then go to the YouTube page for the video and post your proposed story fix. This doesn’t have to be fully written out, it can be a summary of how you would manipulate the existing story to create a new, satisfying ending.

Comment with your story patch by Monday, February 22nd, and you could win a set of signed and personalized Genrenauts paperbacks as well as a letter of welcome to the Genrenauts team, signed by team leader Angstrom King himself.

If you have any questions about the contest, comment below. DO NOT post your story patches here. They need to go on the YouTube page for the Sci-Fi challenge.

There will be other challenges later on, if this scenario doesn’t catch your interest. Stay tuned!

The Shootout Solution Promonado Round-up: Week 2

The Shootout Solution is here, and the glorious Promonado, distributing promotion and love and geekdom all across the internet, has reached Category V. You can catch up on last week’s Promonado if you haven’t done so.

First, I celebrated the release itself.

The Shootout Solution Final

 

Serial Box had me over to their blog for an interview.

I sent my mailing list subscribers the password to my development diaries for The Shootout Solution.

Books

Barnes & Noble’s SF/F Blog gave me space to talk about genre-aware stories.

B&N also included the book in its weekly round-up of SF/F releases, repeating the kind review from a couple of months back.

Book Riot Podcast All The Books! Included The Shootout Solution in its longlist of releases. I’m a big Book Riot fan, so this was a treat.

At Tor.com, I talk about Leah as a Stand-up hero, and the three tries it took to get her stand-up routine right.

I gave away some copies on my friend and Speculate Co-host Gregory A. Wilson’s Twitch channel.

I geeked out with the fine folks of the Grim Tidings Podcast.

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Stephen Geigen-Miller interviewed me for his Breaking In series.

Library Freaking Journal reviewed The Shootout Solution, prompting joyful flail.

Author Jay Swanson and I talked about genre for writing and marketing on his Creative Mines video podcast.

I rambled about work/writing balance and more with Mahvesh Murad on Midnight in Karachi.

Mary Robinette Kowal gave me space to talk about My Favorite Bit from The Shootout Solution.

And the Audiobook edition came out today – performed by one of the best audiobook performers of our time, Mary Robinette Kowal.

If you haven’t seen them, Tor.com has been posting fun Genrenauts adventure prompts on their YouTube page:

So, that’s the state of the Promonado! Remember, if you buy The Shootout Solution – Genrenauts Episode 1 before November 23rd, you can enter to win a signed galley of Episode 2 – The Absconded Ambassador.

Genrenauts Combined