Announcing ANNIHILATION ARIA

I’ve been alluding to a [REDACTED NOVEL] for some time now, and I can finally drop the brackets and tell everyone what’s up!

My next novel is a space opera called ANNIHILATION ARIA, and it’s coming May 5th, 2020 from Parvus Press!

On Monday, Parvus tweeted this:

 

and this:

 

 

Which may or include zoomed-in sections of a soon-to-be-revealed cover. Who could say? 😉

Here’s the official announcement.

There will be more news about ANNIHILATION ARIA soon, from art to endorsements to some travel plans and more! This novel has been a long time coming, serving as a back-burner project for several years as I was wrapping up Season One of Genrenauts and as I was developing and writing Born to the Blade with the team and Serial Box.

 

Story World Dossier #1 – Western

This is the first in a series of essays prompted as stretch goals for the Genrenauts Season One Kickstarter, re-published here so non-backers can read them.

The Shootout Solution – Western

My first memories are of living in Texas. As most Americans know, Texas isn’t the South, it’s Texas. Texas’ regional identity is closely tied to the American narrative of the Western and the Cowboy. It’s the state of the Alamo and the Ranger, of wide open spaces. It’s a state defined by an assertion of singular independence. Living in Texas as a very young child, there’s little wonder that Westerns would stick with me, even though I’ve lived most of my life in cities and suburbs, seldom out in the country.

The first inklings of a fascination with Westerns, the ones that framed my expectations as a child came from the works of legendary author Louis L’Amour. For what felt like two years, L’Amour’s books on tape (aka old-school audiobooks) were my bedtime tales. I didn’t retain the details of the individual plots very well, nodding off before the sixty minute side of the tape was complete, but what I did absorb was the aesthetic and the feel of the genre—the archetypes, the common stories: the lawman vs. the bandits, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the reluctant killer who has to take up the gun again to protect the town/their lover/etc., the lone hero struggling through the desert, the loyal deputy, the schoolmarm, and so on.

These days, Westerns mostly show up in hybrid form, combined with other genres—weird Western, Western SF, Western romance, etc. The familiarity of that genre brings recognizable but interesting contrasts with other genres, or uses other genres to invigorate the tale types and archetypes of the Western.

Which is exactly what I set out to do. By starting the series with Westerns — a genre with what I see as very stable genre expectations — I could use that baseline to give me room for complexity in other aspects, like characterization and the overall setup of the series.

But while tropes and structures of Westerns are pretty familiar, especially to an American audience, I had to figure out the practicalities of telling a post-modern Western without continuing the genre’s history of sexism and racism (not that I wanted to write that kind of story to begin with).

For inspiration, I turned to my favorite, loving parody of the Western genre—Blazing Saddles. The film tackles the racism of the period/genre, challenging expectations of what a Western hero acts like as well as what they look like with Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart. The film shows the emotional consequences of being a gunfighter with Gene Wilder’s character Jim, but doesn’t then delve into the darkness, it brings the character back into the light. Madeline Kahn’s Lili Von Schtupp is a brilliant, self-motivated send-up/remix of dance hall Marlene Dietrich, and in the finale, the film’s zaniness rises to such a level that it doesn’t just break through the fourth wall, it knocks the whole thing down, the fight spilling out into the world around the production of the film. Blazing Saddles isn’t perfect, especially in terms of its homophobic punchlines and Native nations representation, but I could learn from its lessons and build on them.

First off, I wanted to make sure that women and people of color played important roles in the story. I had a leg up there with my main cast, but I wanted the Western characters to show the diversity of the period of history that inspired the genre. And I also wanted to play with the tale types themselves, since Genrenauts is all about finding broken stories and getting them back on track. I decided to focus on the “who gets to be a hero” aspect of Westerns, providing some alternatives and exploring heroic motivation with different leading characters. The series required a balance between historically-accurate representation (most cowboys were Latinx and/or black, not white) and what is accurate to the genre – where cowboys of color are largely erased, instead spotlighting white heroes.

So much of genre is how each one comes with expectations—the common stories, the expected plot twists, the aesthetic checkboxes many readers bring to a story, looking for a fresh take on familiar stories. In Westerns, I knew readers would be looking for gunfights, shady saloons, working girls, dastardly black hats, rugged white hats, and sullied but strong anti-heroes caught in the middle.

There’s great comfort in the familiar, in being just one step ahead or behind your heroes, seeing the twist coming or being caught unawares. I wanted to play with expectations in The Shootout Solution, giving readers the familiar with one hand and throwing curveballs with the other. Since my Western town was intentionally generic, I turned that aesthetic checklist into a feature wherever possible, using my POV lead to talk about all the places where this Western was like any other Western. And perhaps even more importantly, I gave her an attitude toward it—she relished the back-lot sound-studio feeling of the town.

One lesson I learned writing the Ree Reyes series was that pop culture references are more resonant when they matter to the character—the POV character’s passion or snark provides an emotional access point for the reader. Therefore, Leah Tang, my lead, needed to have a perspective on the bizarrely familiar world of Western World. On top of caring about the story she and the team were trying to put back on course.

And then, against that backdrop of generic tropes and Leah’s responses, I designed the episodes guest stars to stand out—a sensitive aspirant chef who is truly a reluctant hero, and his highly capable sister, with secrets of her own. These characters let me make my points about the genre’s failings, its lies by omission, and more.

Something I’m not satisfied with from the first episode is the inclusion of native nations characters. Westerns usually demonize and stereotype native peoples, so I wanted to make sure to avoid that bad impulse but to also show some native peoples, to not erase them. I don’t think I did the best job of balancing that. While I did have central Mexicanx characters, there are very few native characters in the story, just in the crowd scenes. The story in The Shootout Solution is very tightly focused, but that’s not an excuse. It’s something I’d need myself to push and do better with if/when I return to the Western World in Genrenauts.

The Shootout Solution was just my first foray into genre exploration via storytelling in the Genrenauts series, but looking back on my youth, on decades of Westerns, remixed, deconstructed, or played straight, it’s not surprising that it’s where I’d want to turn to launch the series. There’s plenty left to say about the Western and what its endurance as a narrative tradition says about American conceptions of our own past, about America’s horrendous treatment of native nations peoples (among others), the use of violence, and our self-defining narrative of how the country was born. The Shootout Solution’s heroes rode off into the sunset, but there will always be another town, another crisis, another time when people wield power and spill blood in dusty streets or wide-angle shots of the dusty countryside.

And I’m not alone in playing with the genre. Logan drew upon the tradition with an explicit shout-out to Shane and Westworld tackling the tropes and archetypes of Westerns in a different kind of science fiction setting. This old genre can learn some new tricks as new creators bring their perspectives to the contested Old West.

“All The Nations of the Sky”

Born to the Blade S1 cover art - by Will Staehle
The flames of war burn bright, and options are growing thin.

The only way out for the Warders of the Circle is forward.

Today’s release “All the Nations of the Sky” by yours truly completes Born to the Blade season one!

I’ve learned SO MUCH about writing, storytelling, and business from this series, and am so grateful to my co-writers Cassandra Khaw, Malka Older, and Marie Brennan. They brought so much to the series and I have learned a lot about storytelling from each of them. I’m grateful to @serialboxpub for taking a chance on this series, for bringing the team on-board to help make new moves in storytelling, to meet readers where they are in their busy lives, commuting, sneaking in bits of reading time here and there, and so on.

I’m so honored that the series has connected with readers and that I’ve had the chance to push myself as a storyteller. Having reviewers covering the series week after week has been an utter delight.

In working on projects since BORN TO THE BLADE, I can already see the improvements to my craft – in characterization, worldbuilding, action scenes, and sentence-level craft. It’s been a lot of hard work and even more excitement, wonder, and joy.

So thank you to everyone who has been reading the series, to everyone that reviewed an episode or the season or talked about it with friends. The future of Born to the Blade now comes down to word of mouth and continuing to spread and earn new readers.

If you want to see what happens next for Kris, Michiko, Ojo, and everyone else, keep talking about the series with your friends!

BONUS: new readers can get the entire first season for just $1.99 at serialbox.com/redeem with the code SUMMER18

Confusion 2018

This weekend I will be returning to Confusion, which is a great con to kick off the year. Here’s my programming schedule!
Friday
1pm – Isle Royale
Co-Writing For Fun and Profit
4pm – Isle Royale
Collaborating With Your Copyeditor
5pm – Interlochen
World-building Culture Beyond Aesthetics
Saturday
12pm – Keweenaw
Reading: Merrie Haskell, Michael R. Underwood, Mishell Baker
4pm – St. Clair
Autograph Session (4 PM)
Come meet your favorite authors, artists and musicians and have them sign things! (Please limit your signing requests to 3 items per person.)
5pm – Keweenaw
Disney Rules Genre Film
If you’ll be at the con, please feel free to say hello! When I’m not on programming, I’ll be hanging around in the common areas.

The Data Disruption launch

The new Genrenauts story is here!

Cyberpunk is one of my very favorite genres. Movies like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner were formative for me growing up, as well as The Matrix. I played the hell out of Netrunner card game growing up, as well as Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020. In school, I got to take a SF/F class from a professor whose specialty is cyberpunk.

I was a bit young to read Cyberpunk when it was first emerging in film and fiction. But as a Millennial/Gen Y/Oregon Trail generation kid, I grew up in an ever-more Cyberpunk world, with global communications technology, global mega-corps, consolidation, ever-more-impressive medical and technological breakthroughs, automation, rising corporate influence on government, and so on. It’d be pretty easy for me to argue that Cyberpunk is the genre most reflective of the world I’ve known growing up. It’s given me many of the tools I use to see and analyze the world, in terms of the social impact of technology, how labor, corporations, and politics intersect, and humanist questions about androids, robots, and so on.

Also, it’s got cool fight scenes.

So it’s little surprise that the majority of my non-novella short fiction is cyberpunk. “Kachikachi Yama” and “Can You Tell Me How To Get to Paprika Place” are both cyberpunk stories, though their focuses are very distinct. Cyberpunk aesthetics show up in the Ree Reyes series as well, especially in Hexomancy.

Acknowledgments 

I want to thank John Appel, Devan Barlow, Beth Cato, and A.F. Grappin for their great beta reader feedback on this story. Richard Shealy’s copy edit helped me say what I want to say with clarity. Thanks also to Sean Glenn for keeping the visual style of Genrenauts going with his cover design, and to Meg White Underwood for being my first reader and final proofer, as well as a marvelous brainstorming buddy. And once again, thanks to everyone who backed, promoted, and otherwise supported the Genrenauts Season One Kickstarter.

So without further ado, here’s The Data Disruption! It’s free on all ebook platforms. Check below for more information about the story.

Amazon * Barnes & Noble * iTunes
GumroadKobo

The Data Disruption cover. Design by Sean Glenn

Design by Sean Glenn

 

When Stories Break, You Send in the Genrenauts!

The Genrenauts are a group of story experts who travel to parallel worlds. Each is the home of a narrative genre—Science Fiction or Romance, Fantasy or Western—populated by archetypal characters and constantly playing out familiar stories.

The Genrenauts’ mission: find and fix broken stories. If they fail, the ripples from the story worlds will cause havoc and devastation on their home world.

In the world of Cyberpunk, D-Source, a noted hacker, has disappeared, leaving his team’s storyline to grind to a halt. Angstrom King leads the Genrenauts on a mission to find out what happened to D-Source and how to get the cyberpunks back in the action.

World-spanning megacorporations…suspicious mercenaries living on the edge…lethal computer programs designed to tear your mind to shreds…the Genrenauts will face all these and more to get the story back on track—before it’s too late.

A short story in the world of Genrenauts (a finalist for the r/Fantasy “Stabby” Award for Best Serialized Fiction.)

Those links again:
Amazon * Barnes & Noble * iTunes
GumroadKobo

A Very Geekomancy Christmas

Hello, all!

Here’s a special present from me to you – a short fluffy return to the world of Ree Reyes and the Geekomancers.

 

“A Very Geekomancy Christmas”

By Michael R. Underwood

Most days, Rhiannon Anna-Maria (aka Ree) Reyes (Strength 10, Dexterity 14, Stamina 13, Will 18, IQ 16, Charisma 15 – Geek 7 / Barista 3 / Screenwriter 3 / Gamer Girl 2 / Geekomancer 3) slept in. Since she lived a co-running-a-magic-game-slash-bar-while-protecting-the-city-as-a-magical-superhero life, which came with late nights as standard. That meant sleeping in whenever possible. Though there were a lot of days where she’d be woken by some magical alarm Drake had posted around the city, or when her dad would call early about something weird or wonderful, claiming to have forgotten that yes, Pearson was still three hours behind Indiana.

But today was Christmas, and on Christmas, there was a damned good reason to wake up early. The earlier she woke up, the longer she could make the day in order to stuff in as much joy and love and peace as she could manage. Because on the 26th it’d be back to the magic and mayhem.

Ree snuck out of bed, leaving Drake snoring under the covers, muttering formulae in his sleep. She tip-toed through their apartment (lovingly dubbed “The Shithole,”), which was done up with lights and tinsel and the best in gaudy seasonal decorations that money could buy from the Dollar Store and use for years and years until they became a fire hazard. Sandra had outdone herself with the tree, decorated not just with Ree’s geeky ornaments but with papercraft snowflakes, houses, and more.

Approaching the tree, Ree smelled coffee. Glorious coffee.

Already used to waking up at six each day for her office job, Sandra Wilson (Strength 15, Dexterity 13, Stamina 13, Will 12, IQ 13, Charisma 13 – Geek 3 / Scholar 3 / Professional 3 / Dancer 1 / Teacher 1 / Waitress 1 / Chef 1) leaned against the kitchen counter, holding a steaming mug.

“Merry Christmas,” Sandra said at a whisper. She slid to the side and gestured to an empty Grognard’s Grog & Games mug, over-sized for maximum caffeination.

“Merry Christmas,” Ree answered. She picked up the coffee pot and poured herself a massive cup. “Darren up?”

She nodded. “He’s been writing for an hour.” Sandra’s boyfriend’s dissertation was due on the first day of the semester, and he had only just now started his bibliography. So his and Sandra’s holiday had turned into a series of writing dates. Shopping and writing, wrapping presents and writing, baking and writing.

“He is going to stop long enough for you to shower him with food and presents, right?”

“That’s what he promised,” Sandra said. “Drake still out?”

“And deconstructing the principle of special relativity in his sleep, from the sound of it.”

Ree and Sandra chatted for several minutes over coffee as color returned to Ree’s world thanks to the power of java. It’d be the first of many cups today, but not out of necessity for fighting back-alley monsters or tromping through the sewers after homicidal gnomes, but because she could. And the lack of urgency made the drink all that much sweeter.

***

An hour later, Drake had emerged from slumber and Darren finished his writing quota for the day. Anya and Priya arrived with armfuls of presents and food, and the six of them crowded around the tree on couches and tables and the expandable ottoman that Drake had made Priya for ease of crafting anywhere and everywhere.

Anya gestured to the tree, present-lust in her eyes. “Presents first! I’m tired of waiting to find out what’s in that huge box,” she said, pointing to a box Drake had secreted away the morning before. Anya Rustova (Strength 7, Dexterity 12, Stamina 16, Will 15, IQ 16, Charisma 15 – Musician 5 / Geek 2 / Scholar 4 / Opera Diva 3) wore a gloriously gaudy Christmas sweater in green and red and gold, her one fashion concession to the season.

“Can we eat first? I might have been up late finishing this coat. You know, hypothetically.” Priya Tharakan (Strength 8, Dexterity 13, Stamina 12, Will 16, IQ 17, Charisma 15 – Geek 3 / Professional 3 / Seamstress 4 / Steampunk 4 / Goth 2) had gone all-out, sporting a green leather Christmas elf costume, complete with a jingling sonar bell on her felted hat.

“I’ve got enough food to feed an army, and unlike the presents, this stuff will get cold,” Sandra said.

“Let’s do both,” Ree said, taking charge like she was back at Grognard’s and directing traffic. “Drake, you and Anya divvy up presents, Darren and I will serve food. Priya, can you take notes for thank you cards?”

“Certainly.” Priya whipped out her tablet, which she carried in a gear-laden carrying case, which she dubbed the “Portable Babbage Engine” model. It had become the most popular non-clothing design on her shop, copies shipping across the country and around the world. Her business was so bustling she’d hired an assistant-slash-apprentice to help with the leather-work.

“Hosts go first,” Drake said, setting the massive box on Ree’s chair, then depositing a long rectangular box at Sandra’s spot on the couch. It was heavy. Like, What the Hell Is In Here and Is it Going to Explode? heavy.

Ree speculated as to the box’s contents as she returned to the kitchen to grab the rest of the food. She emerged with three plates full of scrambled eggs, sausage links, re-heated pasteles from last night’s Nochebuena dinner, and Sandra’s picture-perfect hash browns, all stacked on her straight arm, using Veteran Server Skills. Sandra followed with a tray full of drinks – mimosas and lambics from Grognard’s new line.

Drake Winters (Strength 12, Dexterity 15, Stamina 14, Will 15, IQ 16, Charisma 15 – Inventor 6 / Gentleman 2 / Steampunk 7 / Fae-Touched 3) accepted a plate and sidled up next to her, preparing to bask in her appreciation. Drake was a thoughtful gift-giver, but most times, it seemed like he got as much joy out of the giving as Ree got out of the receiving. It was a pretty handy arrangement, especially since Ree took about as much joy figuring out weird and wonderful gifts to give him.

They were still an odd couple par excellence, Ree all hyper-modern and esoterically geeky, Drake all propriety and otherworldly tech magic, but they’d found the tools they needed to work with one another’s faults and foibles, which meant that real fights were infrequent, short, and just about always ended with laughter. And other fun things.

Ree sized up the box, lifting it (which took some effort). “Is the shakey-shakey kind of box?”

Drake’s instant look of horror was hilarious, even if Ree knew she shouldn’t torture him so. “Please no. You’ve repeatedly said that you have renter’s insurance, but it’d hardly be fun to spend the day in a hotel after the resulting fire.”

“No shaking, got it.” Ree set the box down and proceeded to tear the wrapping to shreds, revealing a carved wooden box.

“It’s a box. Presumably with a thing in it.”

“Did you carve that?” Priya asked.

“I did, in fact. Berian Balsam, procured a few months ago at the Midnight Market. It is quite sturdy and might serve well as a container for any magical implements you wished to store at Grognard’s. Though the true present lies within.”

Ree beamed, and opened the box with a flourish.

Inside was a chrome-and-brass contraption that looked like a cross between a chemistry set, a wand, and a fireplace poker.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “What is it?”

Drake smiled. “It is a phlogistonic flat iron. Calibrated to drastically reduce the time necessary to achieve the desired straightness of hair. Its heat is only transferrable to hair, so there should be no random burns. However, the preservation of forces means that the central chamber it’s attached to does get very hot, and should only ever be used with the chamber properly secured.”

It was bizarre, but thoughtful. And incredibly useful, considering the awesome burn she’d given herself on her ear trying to flat-iron her hair for a super-fancy dinner out with her mom two weeks previous. “It’s awesome, thank you.” She leaned in and kissed the man-out-of-time, who looked like he was the cat that had caught the canary in an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine.

Darren got Sandra fancy paper for her newfound papercraft hobby, and then the rest of the crew tore through a round of presents. For Priya, heavy needles for her leatherwork (from Sandra). Anya got a new scarf (enchanted to let her mimic voices), a present from Ree and Drake, part of their ongoing experiments in combining Ree’s geekomancy and Drake’s Fae-powered magical engineering. Darren got capacitive touch gloves from Sandra.

“So you can keep reading even if we get another ridiculous winter like last year,” Sandra said. The same winter of the blizzard and Lachesis, the second of Lucretia’s Fate Witch sisters, who’d tried to kill Eastwood. In the end, Eastwood had sacrificed himself to save them all, mostly Branwen, aka Sionnan Reyes, Ree’s mom.

Who was due to arrive in about an hour. Ree had invited her to join them for Christmas first thing, but Sionnan wanted Ree to keep her traditions, “to let the younger generation keep your fun without an old lady around to embarrass everyone.”

Ree had argued that there would be no embarrassment, but she also guessed that the play might be for her mom’s sake as much as anyone else’s. Sionnan’d had a long, hard time, imprisoned by the Thrice-Retconned Duke of Pwn, and was still getting back into the swing of the whole Living Around People and Not Demons thing.

And finally, Drake opened Ree’s present, which she’d made with her mother’s help. Drake produced a pair of rubber gloves. But not thick, clumsy rubber gloves. These were doe-skin thin, fitted perfectly.

“These are remarkable!” Drake said. “They are non-conductive, I assume?”

Ree smiled. “Not just that, they’re also temperature-proof. Mom helped me with the enchantment, and Priya cut the material with the instruments we made. This way, you can do repairs in the field, work without a ground, and whatever else you can think up on the fly.”

“They’re fabulous, my love. Thank you.” Another kiss (chaste, because company), and they were back at the top of the gifting rounds, with a break for food.

There weren’t too many presents for each person, since even as a partner at Grongard’s, Ree wasn’t swimming in money any more than her other friends. The real gift was a day free of magical interruption, free from dark magic, and spent with the people she loved most in the world. Her mom would be over later, and then they’d all head down to Grognard’s for the Christmas Day Tournament & Banquet. Ree imagined Grognard in his festive apron, the one item he wore at work that wasn’t basic black.

A few minutes later, her phone lit up with a call.

Ree stood and walked over to the kitchen to talk.

“Merry Christmas, dad.”

And it was, in fact, Merry. The whole day.

That night, as Anya led a few of Grognard’s irregulars in some caroling while Ree’s Eldar (including Harlequins in Christmas colors) Ree reflected on the day, which had turned out even better than she’d imagined. She took pictures in her mind, and thought,

 

Dear Geeky Jeebus,

               Thank you for a real, honest-to-goodness break of a holiday. A+ navidad-ing. Would Christmas again.

 

“Hey Ree,” Grognard shouted from the bar, still wearing the festive apron, sporting a leather-clad but still jolly Santa. “Looks like we need to tap another keg!”

“On it!” Ree answered, humming a song and getting back to work.

THE END

Writers, Artists, and the ACA

There’s a call to action further down. If you’re already convinced that the ACA is important to keep, skip down for action steps.

A lot of people are talking about the GOP and the new Senate, Congress, and President-Elect’s likely actions on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as the ACA or Obamacare.

I personally used the PPACA exchanges to find a cheaper and higher-quality health insurance package for my 2015 health insurance, and I personally know dozens of writers and other freelancers who use the PPACA exchanges for health insurance. I’ve seen over a dozen direct accounts from writers/artists/freelancers that they’d be dead or back in terrible day jobs without the PPACA, due to the protections it offers against being denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions or for other reasons.

The PPACA is crucial in making it possible for many writers, artists, web designers, graphic designers, and many other freelancer able to work in their desired field full-time. We know that 20 million more people have health insurance because of the PPACA. That’s over 6%. 20 million people is greater than the population of the entire state of New York. That’s huge.

Gutting or repealing the ACA would have a massive impact on my field – SF/F prose, as well as comics, visual art, etc. The ACA has let more creatives and freelancers go full-time. If the ACA goes away, the best opportunity for full-time creatives to obtain healthcare for themselves and their families goes out the window.

Even if you don’t use ACA plans, please consider calling in support of the ACA to make sure that your favorite writer, your favorite artist or graphic designer, your favorite freelance pop culture writer, etc. will still have access to affordable health care. The ACA is not perfect, but so far, the GOP has done little more than spread lies about what the ACA does and promise to remove it and somehow give us something better. But without any details.

 

I’m not saying that the PPACA is perfect. It was the result of a lot of legislative fighting and compromise. But it’s done a lot of good, and we can build on it instead of throwing it all out and starting over or, possibly worse, trying to keep only part of it and throwing out the rest. The PPACA was designed to function because of the inter-dependent parts – the individual mandate brings people into pools so that the price of insuring high-risk people becomes more manageable for the companies and keeps costs down, etc. I’d prefer single-payer or other systems more like Canada or one of the other ally nations we have with very strong health care programs. But right now, we apparently have to fight tooth and nail to keep the imperfect but life-saving system we have.

Additionally, if you are a writer, artist, graphic designer, web designer, or other freelancer that uses the ACA plans, or someone who the ACA has personally assisted, I’d love to hear your story in the comments so other people can see just how much good it’s done.

ACTION STEPS – Copied over from material shared on FB/Twitter

If are a US person and you support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, please consider calling or writing your elected representatives in the Senate and the House. Here’s a contact sheet with info as well as suggested scripts.