Author Archives: Michael R. Underwood

Genrenauts update

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Hi everyone! I want to take a minute to talk about what’s next for Genrenauts.

Genrenauts Combined

I’ve been very happy to partner with Tor.com Publishing for the first two Genrenauts novellas – The Shootout Solution and The Absconded Ambassador. We’ve also got “There Will Always Be a Max,” a Genrenauts short story, coming April 6th for free on Tor.com.

There Will Always Be a Max cover (by Goñi Montes)

But honestly, I’m champing at the bit to get these stories out to readers. Genrenauts was designed to feel like a weekly TV show or a radio serial, and I want to increase the speed of release to fit that feel. In discussions with Lee Harris, my editor at Tor.com, I realized that they weren’t in a position to publish four more Genrenauts novellas in 2016 in order to get the whole season out this year, so we agreed that I’d go ahead and publish the rest of the season myself. They have been and remain very supportive of the series, which is great.

All six episodes of Season One are written. Episode 3 is already in copy-edits, and Episode 4 is with my developmental editor. I’m looking to have Episode 3 ready to publish by the end of April.

 

Here’s a preview of what’s coming in the rest of the season:

Episode 3 – The Cupid Reconciliation – Mallery returns to active duty and sparks fly as the team tracks down a story breach in the Rom-Com region.

Episode 4 – The Substitute Sleuth – A scouting mission becomes a scramble to solve a pair of nested mysteries in the Police Procedural region of Crime World.

Episode 5 & 6 – The Failed Fellowship – A two-part season finale where the team travels to Traditional Fantasy-land. Instead of overthrowing the dark lord, the prophesied hero dies before his moment of triumph, and now the Genrenauts have to find a new MacGuffin to defeat the Night-Lord before his arcane power brings about an eternal night of terror.

 

So that’s what’s coming for Leah and the team. And here’s how we’re going to get there.

The cost of publishing these novellas on my own, to the same standard as Tor.com Publishing has set, will be high. Therefore, I’ve decided to run a Kickstarter campaign to fund a Complete Season One Collection, including Episodes 1-6 and special extras. I’m shooting to launch the Kickstarter in May. And if it funds, there will be ebook and paperback editions of the complete first season. And with stretch goals, possibly even audiobooks for Episodes 3-6. The very flexible contract terms with Tor.com Publishing explicitly allow me to publish this collected edition, and I’m really excited to bring it to life.

I’ll have more information for you about the Kickstarter before it launches, but what I’d love to hear now is this: what extras would you like to see in the campaign? Character dossiers, Genrenauts patches, side mission short stories, playing cards, T-shirts? Your input will help me decide how to make the Kickstarter as awesome as possible.

And if you want to continue supporting Genrenauts right now, the best things to do include:

  • Buying the books.
  • Talking about the series to your book-reading friends.
  • Reviewing the books on retailers and/or Goodreads.
  • Lending the books to people you think might like them.

I’m very grateful for your support on the series so far. I’m really excited for what Episodes 3 and beyond will bring for the series, and to put years of studying indie/self-publishing into practice for myself.

 

Ebook pricing Storify and the Cult of the Debut

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Today just before lunch, I saw this story on Publishers Weekly. Which reminded me of other reports like this one from the New York Times. But there’s a lot to *why* these reported print #s are likely dropping, and a lot these reports leave out. Which is where this discussion started.

I’d also like to say a bit more about the Cult of the Debut. This is a huge thing in publishing. Authors, Agents, Publishers, Reviewers, Booksellers, nearly everyone in publishing is culpable here. We all participate in the Cult of the Debut. The shiny new author, the undiscovered gem, the instant phenomenon new voice that will Revolutionize Publishing, so on and so on. Houses get into huge bidding wars over debuts they think will be the Next Big Thing, spending millions and millions of dollars on an unproven author.

And as authors, we get so worked up about The Big Debut. We see our colleagues getting six, seven figure deals out of the gate, and we despair, thinking we’ll never have the career they’re going to have. We fetishize the Big Debut as the One True Path to writing success? When in reality, a lot of those big debuts fail, and a lot of authors that do end up becoming bestsellers do so by building an audience over time.

VE Schwab just hit the NYT list with A Gathering of Shadows, the second book in a series, and her ninth book overall. She built an audience over six years, bringing her YA audience to her adult series. She has put the work in over time, alongside her publisher, to make this success happen. Stories like Schwab’s are far more achievable, far smarter of a strategy (even with the extraordinary circumstances of her film and TV deals, which are impressive and laudable in their own right), in my opinion, than throwing big stacks of money at debuts and hoping to win the lottery. Schwab has proven her work to be a good investment, has fostered a strong fan base, and now she is reaping the rewards. This is how to succeed without the Cult of the Debut.

Some people do debut right onto the NYT list. My agency-mate Jason M. Hough did with his novel The Darwin Elevator, but that happened because he busted his ass writing all three books in the trilogy so they could be released back-to-back-to-back, so his publisher had all the ammunition in the world to push the book hard. And then? It hit the NYT list probably in no small part to getting a very strong NPR on-air review during drive-time. But there’s no way to guarantee that kind of buzz or support. You make your bets, you give books everything you’ve got, and you pray. Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes, a big advance is the last advance you’ll ever see.

Me? I’m a career slugger so far. I do the work, I write pretty quickly, and I promote the ever-loving crap out of my work by being active online and at conventions. I refine my process, I look at what in my list is working and what isn’t, and I try to focus on writing to where my existing readers are – the pop-culture-savvy action/adventure kind of story.

A lot of writers carve out solid careers for themselves without ever hitting a Bestseller list, without ever getting a major award. They write, they make smart choices about what books to write when, and they find good publishing partners. They develop their careers deliberately, thoughtfully, and by making good bets. Publishers can and often do this, too. But publishers are still frequently distracted by the Cult of the Debut.

And this focus on debuts goes all the way down – Big Debuts get the budget, so they get the support. Which means they get more ARCs, more ads, more events. They get more time during presentations to buyers and librarians, which means they get more exposure to readers and reviewers. All the while, career writers, the long-term proven creators, just hammer out incrementally stronger books, trying to build their audiences organically because they’re not the New Hotness anymore.

We can all do better. Debuts are fun, and it’s exciting to be the person to spread the news about a brand-new author, but there’s a lot to be said for the experience and honed skill of a veteran writer. That’s what I’m hoping to become. It’s not as sexy a role, but it’s far more realistic.

My latest book is The Absconded Ambassador, Episode 2 of the Genrenauts series. The Genrenauts are a group of storytellers that travel to dimensions informed by fiction genres to find and fix broken stories in order to protect their home world.

The Absconded Ambassador

The Genrenauts Life

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Life right now is pretty Genrenauts-tastic. I’m working on final edits for Episode 3, Ep. 4 is off for edits soon, etc.

And “There Will Always be a Max,” a Genrenauts short, is coming to Tor.com on April 6th.

There Will Always Be a Max cover (by Goñi Montes)

Which means, with the release of THE ABSCONDED AMBASSADOR very fresh in my mind, I have some things to say and people to thank, which I did largely on Twitter, but will repeat here:

The Absconded Ambassador is dedicated to Dave Robison, an OG (Original Genrenaut), for helping me develop the core premise of the series at a critical juncture, and for his ongoing contributions to the genre in fostering community and helping writers develop their voice and craft.

I lift a Neon Space Drink (TM) to my editor Lee Harris, who took a chance on the series and helped me bring this vision into the world.

I’m also very grateful to Irene Gallo, Christine Foltzer, and Peter Lutjen for creating the cover design and series style for Genrenauts, reflecting the genre love and playfulness of the series.

My Copy-Editor, Amanda Hong, kept the alien species consistent, made sure I kept the timeline clear,  and in general polished the book to look better than it had been before.

Katharine Duckett has done a fantastic job spreading the word about the series and helping me get it into the hands of people far and wide. Thanks also to Mordicai Knode and Carl Engle-Laird for their assistance along the way.

I am so delighted to be a part of the Tor.com Publishing experiment, and the campaign to show that #NovellasAreTheNewNovel.

And speaking of #NovellasAreTheNewNovel, Matt Wallace has been a great supporter of the series, for which I am very grateful. Thanks, brother.

My agent Sara Megibow is the Opener of Doors, the Herald of Awesomeness, always there to help me plow throw when things get rough.

Every book I write is a love letter to the stories that have inspired me, and a suggestion of how we can move forward. As an Ex-Academic, most of my books so far have been my way of taking what I have to say about the genre and the world and putting it into story form. Never has this been more the case than in Genrenauts. I’m really excited about the characters of this series and what they have to say.

Writing Genrenauts has already helped me stretch my skills and learn to write more thoughtfully, more energetically, and more flexibly. (That ONE SECRET FOR WRITING SUCCESS everyone asks about? It’s actually lat stretches. Keep that between you and me.)

And the response so far has been very exciting. Here are some of the reviews for the series:

“This is fun…Readers will be looking forward to Leah and company’s next trip to a story world.”
–Library Journal

“It’s an entertaining enough concept, and the diverse cast of characters is a nice change of pace.”
–Publishers Weekly

“It’s storytelling as heroism, genre savviness as power. Endless fun.”
–Marie Brennan, World Fantasy Award-nominated author of A Natural History of Dragons

“A clever, exciting, and seriously fun twist on portal fantasy that sends a geeky stand-up comedian into the Wild West. Sign me up to be a Genrenaut, too!”
–Delilah S. Dawson, author of the Blud series, Hit, and Wake of Vultures, written as Lila Bowen

“My favorite new TV show of 2015 isn’t on TV, it’s in the pages of Mike Underwood’s Genrenauts. Deeply funny and creative, shrewdly insightful, and thrillingly paced, every pop culture diehard will want to keep living vicariously through the characters in this series.”
–Matt Wallace, author of the Slingers Saga and Envy of Angels.

“I have this sinking feeling that the Genrenauts series, with its raucous meta-commentary upon the stories of pop culture, is going to say important things that I might not be clever enough to catch the first time around because I’m too busy enjoying the books.”
–Howard Tayler, Hugo Award winner and creator of Schlock Mercenary

“…a rollicking exploration of western tropes, with hints of a larger conspiracy afoot. Underwood has plans for a lot more of these, and I can’t wait to read them.”
–Joel Cunningham, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

and for Episode 2,

“The second episode in Michael R. Underwood’s Genrenauts delivers on the promise of Episode 1, and demonstrates that his special alchemy of Leverage + The Librarians + Quantum Leap + Thursday Next (just my current guess at his secret recipe) has legs — and will hopefully go a long time.”
– Irresponsible Reader

“…it’s a heck of a lot of fun the way Galaxy Quest is: a little goofy, a little serious but not taking itself too seriously, and filled with a fondness for the source material that gives it weight without weighing down the story.”
–Samantha Holloway, New York Journal of Books

it offers a wonderfully creative premise: Fictional stories are really alternate universes in which problems bleed over into our would and cause calamities here.
–Leah Hansen, RT Reviews

In closing, I hope you’ll join Team Genrenauts and see where the story goes next.

The latest Genrenauts story is The Absconded Ambassador. Weird aliens, diplomatic wrangling, space dogfights, genre ruminations, and more:

The Absconded Ambassador

My Hamilton Reaction Post

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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

 

Birthday giveaway

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Hello, all!

Today is my 33rd birthday, and as has become my custom, that means it’s time for Hobbit Birthday, which involves me giving you presents. And this year is extra-Hobbit-y, since Frodo turns 33 in the start of The Lord of the Rings.

Please comment below with a favorite birthday memory to be entered to win the following prizes. Please also tell me if you’re in North America (for ease of shipping).

World-wide:

2x ebook copy of The Shootout Solution
1x ebook set of The Shootout Solution and The Absconded Ambassador

NA-only:

2x Signed & personalized paperback copy of The Shootout Solution.
1x Signed & personalized paperback set of The Shootout Solution and The Absconded Ambassador
1x signed ARC of Shield and Crocus

Genrenauts Combined

Please comment by 11:59PM EST today (the 24th) to enter, then keep an eye on this post tomorrow to see if you won!

Genrenauts: The Absconded Ambassador is here!

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Today, Genrenauts continues with The Absconded Ambassador!

The Absconded Ambassador

 

The reader response to Genrenauts has been fantastic so far, so I’m really excited to continue the series. If you haven’t read The Shootout Solution, you’ll definitely want to start there – the series is designed like a serial-episodic TV show – readers will have the best experience starting from the beginning and reading in order.

In The Absconded Ambassador, the team heads to SF world to help salvage an interstellar alliance on the verge of collapse. You’ll get diplomacy, dogfights in a spaceship graveyard, weird alien species, shout-outs to some of my favorite sci-fi TV shows, and more about the mysterious Roman de Jager.

You can get The Absconded Ambassador in three formats:

Ebook: iBooks * Kindle * Kobo * Nook

Paperback: Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Powell’s

Audio (coming on March 1st): Audible

Buying in the first week (or pre-ordering), is one of the absolute best ways to support a series you love.

Other great things you can do are to write reviews (Amazon, Goodreads, B&N), and, as always, talking about the book to your friends who like books.

But, you don’t have to take my word that Episode 2 will be good! (You can, if you want. That’s fine, too.) Here are some early reviews to give you other perspectives:

 

“The second episode in Michael R. Underwood’s Genrenauts delivers on the promise of Episode 1, and demonstrates that his special alchemy of Leverage + The Librarians + Quantum Leap + Thursday Next (just my current guess at his secret recipe) has legs — and will hopefully go a long time.”
– Irresponsible Reader

“…it’s a heck of a lot of fun the way Galaxy Quest is: a little goofy, a little serious but not taking itself too seriously, and filled with a fondness for the source material that gives it weight without weighing down the story.”
-Samantha Holloway, New York Journal of Books

As with the previous installment, Mike uses his love of genre to spin a story that would feel right at home in a modern day episode of Star Trek, ramping up quickly, doing it’s thing, and then resolving. And just like later season DS9, we get a set of plot threads that we have to tune in next week to see the progression of.
-Alex von der Linden, Blackfish Reviews

“My Genre-loving friends, get ready… we’re out of the saddle and back in the Saddle, but this time we’ve got alien politics, burgeoning alliances, mystery, and enough fast-paced Pew-Pew action to make me think I was in a golden age rocket ship, and indeed, that’s the point.”
–Brad K. Horner

 

And coming on April 6th is “There Will Always Be a Max,” a Genrenauts short story. It will be available for free on Tor.com, and the ebook will be available for $.99.

There Will Always Be a Max cover (by Goñi Montes)

until then, happy reading!

The Genrenauts Challenge: Round One!

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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!

Cover Reveal – There Will Always Be a Max

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There was this movie last year, a few of my internet friends and I saw it. Decades-later sequel to an Australian action movie franchise from the guy who went directed Happy Feet. Maybe you heard of it. 😛

Mad Max: Fury Road hit me like a conversion experience. I came out of the film energized, challenged, and inspired. It totally changed how I watch action films, as well as a number of other lessons I’m still processing and trying to apply.

So, naturally, my mind went to “how can I channel this excitement into Genreneauts?” The result was “There Will Always Be a Max,” a short story in the Post-Apocalyptic region of Action world. And Lee Harris, my editor at Tor.com, decided to take it to be published on Tor.com. It’ll appear free on the website and will also be sold as an ebook.

 

And now it has a cover, by the brilliant Goñi Montes.

Here we go.

 

Wait for it…

 

Wait…

 

SEGA!

Ahem.

There Will Always Be a Max cover (by Goñi Montes)

Pardon me while I pick my jaw back off the floor.

“There Will Always Be a Max” is a short piece where Angstrom King, the leader of the team, heads to the Post-Apocalypse region to investigate a breach. He steps into the role of “The Max” to help a group whose story broke when their own hero bit the dust. I promise car chases, Molotov cocktails, and ruminations about post-apocalyptic heroes.

More coming soon. 🙂

Award Eligibility Post – 2015

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So – awards and award eligibility – some people hate eligibility posts, but this is my blog, so they can deal. 🙂

Here’s what I did in 2015, and how it would qualify in award categories – Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy Award, etc.

Best (Fantasy) Novel

Hexomancy cover

Hexomancy

The fourth story (third novel) in the Ree Reyes urban fantasy series, where fandom and love of SF/F is its own magic system. This is the novel I’m proudest of so far – I think it represents a leveling up across several craft elements, including capping off the first major story arc for the series.

 

Best Novella

The Shootout Solution cover

The Shootout Solution

Episode one of the Genrenauts series – about a group that travels to genre-informed dimensions to find and fix broken stories in order to protect their version of Earth. This kicks off the series which I hope to be writing for the next few years – it’s fun, its wacky, and it delivers both adventure and analysis of why and how we tell stories.

 

Fancast

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Skiffy & Fanty

 

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Speculate!

In 2015, I joined the cast of Speculate! while continuing to work with the Skiffy and Fanty Show, which was nominated for Best Fancast in 2014. Both are fantastic shows, and, in my opinion, fill different but important niches in the SF/F podcasting community.

 

Special Award – Best Professional (World Fantasy)

Michael R. Underwood – For work at Angry Robot

In my experience, Best Professional almost always goes to a Publisher or Editor, but there’s nothing that says that a Sales/Marketing Manager couldn’t be nominated and win. I worked closely on supporting every one of Angry Robot’s 2015 releases, including two Phillip K. Dick Award nominees, the Campbell Award winner, and more. A long shot, but worth mentioning, since this is my blog.

 

Fan Writer

Most of my non-fiction in 2015 was more professional than fannish, but I leave it to you, the voter, to decide what you like. Here are some of the best of the best from me in 2015: