Coincidentally, I’m appearing twice out in the world today, supporting the Crits for Water fundraiser and with an interview over at a fellow author’s blog.
Crits for Water — http://critsforwater.katbrauer.com/2012/05/04/raffle-critique-of-a-query-by-author-michael-r-underwood/
AmyBeth Inverness — http://amybethinverness.com/2012/05/03/interview-with-michael-r-underwood/
Since line edits are now done, I’ve updated the excerpt of Geekomancy over on Book Country. If you’d like a taste of Ree’s story, head over to read the first two chapters.
http://www.bookcountry.com/Books/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=123793
Kind folks that they are, they have also posted a story about the cover reveal. http://www.bookcountry.com/Industry/Article.aspx?articleId=130507
If you write or read SF/F, Book Country is a great place to check out some undiscovered talent, talk about craft, business, and genre, get your work critiqued — and maybe even discovered!
Geekomancy has gone off to my editor, and any day now the next round (line edits) will arrive. In the meantime, I’ve been plotting and planning and thinkerating about the sequel. I’ve never written a sequel before, so I have a whole new set of challenges and opportunities.
Since Geekomnancy was originally a distraction from my ‘real’ project, the stress level when I started writing was very low. I was just taking a fun break to try out an idea. Now I have a deadline, established continuity, series ambitions, and so on.
What I usually do (as in, what I’ve done for the last four novel starts) is to think and outline and ponder characters and plot, throwing it all into a mental pile. When that mental pile of ideas and characters got too high, it would tumble into a wave of writing, and I’d ride that wave to get the first draft started.
The pile is building, and I’m trying to push myself to make the second book even more fun, more exciting than the first one, to build on what I’ve done while also finding something new to show readers, while keeping myself from stressing out too much (ala “oh crap Sophomore slump and I have way less time to write this book and what if the first one was a total fluke!”).
All in all, this time around, I’m feeling less like preparation is building up a mountain of ideas and more that it’s strapping on gear to prepare for my first skydive.
The light is green, I’m standing in the open door of the plane, the wind rushing in, lapping at my fingers.
Nothing left to do but let go and dive. Also, I should probably avoid that turbine.
It is with utmost excitement that I bring you today’s blog post.
I’ve been given the go-ahead for two big stages of Geekomancy‘s journey to publication.
Awesome thing the first — Check out the cover to Geekomancy!
Cover art by Trish Cramblet, Design by Min Choi
There she is folks, Geekomancy‘s own Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes aka Ree! I’m blown away by the awesome of this cover, both in the depiction of Ree and the very cool design for the title.
Awesome thing the second: Geekomancy has pages on Amazon, BN.com, and Simon & Schuster! The actual pubdate is July 10th, not the 3rd as is noted there. The update is still making its way through channels.
http://www.amazon.com/Geekomancy-ebook/dp/B007SNRRP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334238281&sr=8-1
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/geekomancy?keyword=geekomancy&store=allproducts
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Geekomancy/Michael-R-Underwood/9781451698138
I also show it available in iBooks/iTunes.
I’m stoked to announce that I’ve signed with Jon Cassir of Creative Artists Agency to represent GEEKOMANCY for film/tv rights. Jon really gets the novel, and he has lots of great ideas on how to pitch the project.
This is the first in many long steps on the road to Hollywood, but it’s a step! After this, the next step would be getting a production company to request an option, which is basically ‘dibs’ — if a company has an option, no one else is allowed to purchase rights to the work. This gives the production company the time to put together a package to get support for moving forward. There are many more steps after that, but that’s where we are.
As part of launching her YouTube channel GeekandSundry, Felicia Day and her production team made a video with the cast of The Guild called I’m the One That’s Cool:
Watching the video, which I think adds to the story of the song, rather than just giving a video and audio version, I thought of some of the other Geek Anthems that we’ve seen in the last few years.
As someone who Grew Up Geek, I find it really touching to see folks making these anthems about being happy with who you are and being passionate about your hobbies.
And lo, my first interview as an author!
http://lsmurphy.com/2012/03/27/5-questions-with-michael-r-underwood/
The link blow is a personal essay from a Star Trek fan, giving her astute thoughts and experiences on cosplay at conventions and fan communities. Check it out, and then I have some thoughts to add after hers:
http://sakurasaurus.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/the-girl-geek-community-is-hidden-ever-wondered-why/
I’ve spent a lot of time in geek communities of various types. I practically grew up in a game store, and I’ve been to my fair share of conventions, mostly game conventions like GenCon and Origins, as well as SF/F conventions such as World Fantasy, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts and the WisCon Feminist SF Con.
GenCon and Origins were really the ones that had the kind of environment that the blog writer (Sakurasaurus, perhaps? There is no specific name given on the post from a cursory look, but I also don’t want to do even the tiniest bit of erasure) describes, with prevalent cosplay.
When I was growing up, it seemed like there weren’t many women in my corner of the geek world. I can’t rightly say how many women were around and active in their own communities, choosing not to participate in the circles I was in for the reasons Sakurasaurus gives, or for other reasons. I saw and experienced a fair amount of exclusiveness by members of the circles I was in, but always tried to do what I could to be a sane and not-creepy person when moving in geek circles that had women in them.
Some of this sentiment made it into Geekomancy in comedy form, since I don’t know of a more effective mode of cultural critique than comedy. I could write a scathing essay about the sometimes appaling behavior by some men in some fan communties, but far more people are likely to listen to me if I can use a comedy frame, one that holds up that bad behavior as something to critique while getting a laugh.
The comedy frame isn’t to downplay the importance of the issue, for me, it’s to emphasize it. I don’t have the experience of being a female fan, but I can write from what I’ve seen happen and what I hear from female friends and their experiences. I try to support efforts towards inclusiveness and awesome feminism in fandom, and I hope that Geekomancy will do some of that work, while giving folks a good laugh and a compelling story.
I’ve been invited to participate as a featured author in the 2012 Debut Author Challenge at The Qwillery.
I followed the DAC a bit last year, and have had author friends featured last year and more folks featured this year. I’m excited to participate in this conversation, sharing thoughts about Geekomancy, writing, and whatever else comes up. My presence there is currently slight, since I don’t have a cover or locked-in pubdate for the book. But as that info comes in and I get approval to unleash it on the world, you’ll find it there as well as in all of my other social media presences.
This week, in addition to flailing in excitement over the deal, I’ve been thinking about possibilities for the second book in the Geekomancy series. Adam and I will be talking this coming week, and I’m very excited to chat about future possibilities for the series — I’ve never written a sequel before, so it’s going to be a great challenge to take the same core concept and fun characters which caught so much attention with Geekomancy and take it up to the next level, with new characters, new stories, and new geeky jokes and references.
Holy Career Launcher, blog readers! This year has been fantastic, and will only get better.
I’ve had to sit on this news for a couple of days for the official announcement to go out, but I have gotten the high sign and now I am using this, my little patch of the internet, to shout to the world about my first novel sale!
Behold, the official announcement (from Publisher’s Marketplace):
Michael Underwood’s GEEKOMANCY, discovered at the Book Country website and pitched as Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets Clerks, to Adam Wilson at Pocket Star, in a two-book deal, in a nice deal, for publication in 2012, by Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency (World).
This has all happened over several weeks, but it feels both shorter and longer. Back at the end of January, Adam Wilson, of Pocket Books, sent me an email saying he’d read an excerpt of GEEKOMANCY on Book Country and saw from my blog that I had a completed draft, so could he see it?
At that point, I was reminded of Ghostbusters. If someone asks if you’re a god, you say yes. If an editor asks to see your manuscript, you say yes. There may be actual reasons to say no to an editor, but I didn’t have any good ones. I sent the manuscript along with a note that I was still in revisions and could send a more polished version later, if he preferred. Adam said he’d read the as-is version, and in a little over a week, he wrote back and wanted to schedule a phone call.
This is my first book deal, but I’ve been in and around publishing long enough to know that if an editor wants to talk to you on the phone, it’s probably a really really good thing. I’d had a novel go all the way to editorial meeting and get shot down, and I didn’t even get a phone call for that.
Sure enough, Adam had loved the book and wanted to buy it, as well as sequels, if I was interested. I knew that having an offer in hand, I could then go and search for an agent and get responses on the double, and since I am a very firm believer in the benefits of having a literary agent, I asked Adam for time to do just that. He graciously agreed, and I began what I dubbed the Lightning Round Agent Search. I queried over a dozen agents, some recommended by my dad’s friends at Random House, some recommended by other publishing-biz friends. I spent about two weeks sending out manuscripts and collecting rejection letters as well as talking with the agents who were interested. The result of that search is spelled out in my last post, signing with Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency.
And then…more waiting. Sara and Adam hashed out the details, and here we are.
Finally, because I made a promise, I give you a dramatic interpretation of my emotional mindscape when the deal was sealed: