Today is the beginning of Darrington Press’ Daggerheart open beta playtest! <link href=”https://www.daggerheart.com/>” replace=”” to=””/>https://www.daggerheart.com/>
And, with the release of these materials, I can now say that I have been consulting for Darrington Press as a designer on the game! It’s been so hard keeping this under wraps, especially since it represents a big development in my game design career.
2022 – self-published The Only Logical Solution is Hijinx (one-page RPG), working on the Genrenauts RPG 2023 – working on the Genrenauts RPG, short consulting job on Candela Obscura 2024 – multi-month contract as a game designer on Daggerheart
It’s been an amazing experience working with the Daggerheart team, and I’ve had the chance to apply and refine my game design skills and delighted in how much my existing writing skills apply over to the world of ttrpgs.
If you’ve been curious about Daggerheart, or if you like the story-forward kinds of ttrpgs I talk about and tend to GM, I’d strongly encourage you to take a look at these playtest documents and give the game a try. You can get started with this video made by the Critical Role/Darrington Press team and tonight (Tuesday) there will be a live one-shot of Daggerheart at twitch.tv/criticalrole.
I haven’t posted here in a while, so I wanted to provide a short update for folks that don’t visit my Patreon, which is updated much more frequently.
Since May of last year, I’ve been much more active in ttrpg game design. I was a design consultant and provided additional writing for the Darrington Press game Candela Obscura, a supernatural investigation game using their Illuminated Worlds system. I did more consulting from October through February, but the NDA means I can’t talk about it until it’s out in the world. But rest assured that once I am allowed to talk about it, you won’t be able to get me to stop. 😛
In other news, I stepped down from being a co-host of Speculate in January, after helping make the show for many years. In my last year co-hosting, our show Valloward, which I produced and GMed, was an official selection at five web festivals, including the New Jersey Web Festival, currently the premiere festival for actual play. You can read more on my departure from Speculate here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-news-from-96627620
The Pitman Sculpture, an Apocalypse Keys miniseries, is the last show we completed while I was still a co-host. You can listen to the complete miniseries at speculatesf.com now or on your podcast app of choice.
Today marks the return of my debut novel Geekomancy to the bookstore shelves in a new edition, with gorgeous new art.
The new edition is available in ebook and paperback forms from major booksellers. You can also request it from your local library or special order from a friendly local bookstore! The completed Ree Reyes series will be returning this summer/fall. Celebromancy returns in July, Attack the Geek in August, and then Hexomancy in September!
Ree Reyes’s life was easier when all she had to worry about was scraping together tips from her gig as a barista and comicshop minion to pursue her ambitions as a screenwriter.
When a scruffy-looking guy storms into the shop looking for a comic like his life depends on it, Ree writes it off as just another day in the land of the geeks. Until a gigantic “BOOM!” echoes from the alley a minute later, and Ree follows the rabbit hole down into her town’s magical flip-side. Here, astral cowboy hackers fight trolls, rubber-suited werewolves, and elegant Gothic Lolita witches while wielding nostalgia-powered props.
Ree joins Eastwood (aka Scruffy Guy), investigating a mysterious string of teen suicides as she tries to recover from her own drag-your-heart-through-jagged-glass breakup. But as she digs deeper, Ree discovers Eastwood may not be the knight-in-cardboard armor she thought. Will Ree be able to stop the suicides, save Eastwood from himself, and somehow keep her job?
If you’re not already familiar with Geekomancy, here’s what people have said about it over the years:
“Geekomancy is a glorious blender of genres, like a sweet candy shell filled with pop culture and high heroism. Absolutely stellar.”
Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of the October Daye and Wayward Children series
“Magic in geekery, mysticism in celebrities, the Ree Reyes series by Mike Underwood is a celebration of everything that makes being a geek cool. Can’t wait to read what he has in store next.”
Stephen Blackmoore, author of Dead Things
“If Buffy hooked up with Doctor Who while on board the Serenity, this book would be their lovechild. In other words, Geekomancy is full of epic win.”
Marie Lu, author of the Legend trilogy
“If you took wish-fulfillment, ground it into a powder, and shot twice the recommended dosage into your eye socket, the result would look a lot like Geekomancy. I want to live in this world, where all the books and shows and movies and games I love are a source of power, not only in psychological terms, — which they already are — but practical, villain-pounding ones.”
Marie Brennan, award winning author of A Natural History of Dragons
“Modern, sleek, and whip-smart, Geekomancy is a wonderful blend of geek and pop culture — you’ll find yourself grinning knowingly at least every other page. And Ree is the perfect protagonist to navigate Geekomancy’s world — geek enough to hold her own, yet human enough for me to be deeply invested in her struggles. I can’t wait to read the next one!”
Cassie Alexander, author of Nightshifted
“Underwood’s Geek Fu is strong-and he’s not afraid to use it. Geekomancy is fun, fresh and full of geek culture references that will have you LOLing to the very last page. This book is one hundred percent pure awesomesauce and totally FTW.”
Mari Mancusi, award winning author of The Blood Coven Vampire series
Born to the Blade, the magic swordplay + diplomacy series I created for Realm and co-wrote with Marie Brennan, Cassandra Khaw, and Malka Older, is now available on all podcast platforms!
When it was released, it was only available to buy or to subscribers at Realm (formerly Serial Box), but now the series is being released as a weekly podcast to listen for free (supported by ads).
I’m very proud of the work we did on Born to the Blade and I’m excited for this chance for it to find a new audience thanks to a very low barrier to entry for listeners. Two episodes are live right now, with new episodes coming every Friday.
You can find Born to the Blade on Apple Podcasts here and (hopefully) by title on all other podcast platforms!
Here’s the first chapter as an excerpt to whet your appetite!
And if you’ve already read Annihilation Aria, please consider writing a short, honest review at your retailer of choice and/or Goodreads! Reviews help readers decide which books are and aren’t for them and makes it more likely that Aria will find readers that will enjoy it. 🙂
Annihilation Aria has been out in the world for one week now, and it’s been a fabulous whirlwind. I started writing Aria in the spring of 2015, and worked on it on and off for several years before making the final revisions and selling it in 2018.
The book’s road to publication has been longer than most (the longest for me being Shield & Crocus, which started as a short story at Clarion West in 2007 and published as a novel in 2014). I’m so glad to have the book out in the world, and especially to have something fun and diverting and hopeful to offer during this ludicrous hurricane of a year.
Annihilation Aria is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Kobo, Apple, Indiebound, and wherever else books are sold. The audiobook edition (digital audio, CD, and mp3 CD) will release this Friday the 31st.
Here’s a quick roundup of all of the activity from the last week. There was a lot, and it’s easy to miss things given how hectic life is right now for a lot of people.
And as a reminder – if you’ve already read the book, please consider writing a short, honest review at your retailer of choice (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.). Reviews help readers decide whether a book is right for them and allow the book to better find its way into the hands of the folx that will most enjoy it!
Thanks to everyone that has bought, read, tweeted about, and/or Annihilation Aria already – you helped make this last week an amazing and exciting time, and I’m very eager to see the book continue to make its way in the world.
Pre-order your copy from your favorite local bookstore or via Bookshop.org and support indie bookstores, who could especially use the help given how many are still closed to in-store browsing or only doing mail-order.
If you pre-order, not only will you get the book as soon as possible, you’ll also help tell bookstores that there is more demand for a book, which then tells the distributor and the publisher that there is more demand, which means that they are more likely to be able to put additional resources into promoting the book.
My promotional efforts have already started to ramp up, with guest posts, podcast appearances, and more. Here’s a quick round-up of what I’ve been up to lately:
In the next few weeks, I’ll have a lot more, including AMAs at two different subreddits, panel appearances this weekend for JulyCon, running a Scum & Villainy actual play miniseries, guest posts around the SFF blog-o-sphere, and more. This is my first book release since 2016, so I am trying to pull out all of the stops, even with the weirdness of launching a book during a global pandemic.
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.
I’m very excited (like hovering over my chair excited) because today is a big landmark in my writing career. Today marks the result of countless hours of writing, planning, and promotion, as Genrenauts: The Complete Season One Collection releases to the world.
If you’re coming here through random happenstance and haven’t about Genrenauts, it’s like Leverage meets Redshirts, where a group travels to dimensions based on narrative genres (like Fantasy, Western, Romantic Comedy, etc.) to find and fix broken stories. It’s set up like a TV series with a new adventure every episode, arranged in seasons with an overarching plot. This new book collects the first season in one volume.
Writing this series has let me really dig in and explore what makes stories tick, why we tell certain types of stories, and what I love about different genres.
I’m eager to bring Genrenauts to new readers by collecting all six episodes from Season One in this single volume, sold at a big discount compared to buying each episode individually.
