Category Archives: geek

Geekomancy Bookstore Events

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I’m very happy to have three bookstore events scheduled so far, where I’ll be doing readings, signings, trivia contests, and more.

“But Mike, this is an eBook? How will you sign copies for people?” you might ask. I know I did. But I think I’ve got a pretty good solution cooked up. My tablet lets me take snapshots of pictures and then draw on them with a stylus, so I can create images of the Geekomancy cover, sign them to readers, and then send them by email. It’s not quite the same as a signed paper book, but I think it’s pretty cool. I have also made up book plates (aka business cards), which I can sign with a sharpie. I will also sign other things, as requested (character sheets, RPG books, T-Shirts, etc.) because hey, why not?

The Official Book Launch Party will be on Saturday July 21st, at my friendly local Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Bloomington, IN. I’m very happy that the Bloomington B&N is hosting the launch party, since I used to work at the store, and my time as a barista and bookseller was the start of my career in publishing. I’ll be doing a reading, signing (see above), and hosting a geek trivia contest and a Geeky T-Shirt contest.

I’m also very honored that a couple of my independent bookstore friends will be hosting me for events during my traveling season for work this summer.

 

Here’s the current list of events!

 

July 13th, 7:00 PM at CoffeeTree Books in Morehead, KY. Postponed for now. Stay tuned for details.

July 17th, 7:00 PM at McLean and Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, MI.

July 21st, 6:00 PM at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Bloomington, IN. Facebook page for the event is here.

In Praise of Tabletop

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I’ve been enjoying the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel, especially the Sword & Laser video show, but today, I want to talk about the awesome that is Tabletop.

I’ve been a gamer nearly all of my life, but I became a Gamer at the tender age of nine, when classmates at school invited me to play D&D with them. My first character was a Barbarian with a Dune Buggy, and it was all downhill from there.

Like many geeks of my generation, large portions of my teen years were spent in front of dining room tables, consoles, and PCs, playing games of all types: video, board, collectible card, strategy, miniatures, and so on.

Wil Wheaton had a distinctively different upbringing than I did, having been a child star and all, but this thing we have in common: a great love for tabletop games. Wheaton brings this love to Tabletop, a web series where he invites friends and colleagues to hang out and play board games, card games, and strategy games. Wheaton has taken up a role of advocacy for these games, touting their ability to train critical thinking, strategy, teamwork, and to strengthen social connections. But rather than doing it in a Suzanne Somers “Please adopt this hungry d12. Just a quarter a day can help it get the crayons it needs to have clearly defined numbers…” kind of way, more a “this is really fun, let me give you the jist and then we will show you!”

The gameplay shown in Tabletop is intentionally heightened, as the players are clearly ‘ON’ in terms of giving a performance to maximize watchability, but it is usually not a huge stretch from an animated game between good friends.

One of the benefits of the show for me (and I hope many others) is the chance to introduce loved ones to the joy of tabletop games. I’ve bought several of the games featured (at my friendly local game store, of course), and shared them with my girlfriend, who is very gracious about sharing my passions, and whom I hope to turn to the Dork side of the Force (at least a little, if she wants).

I’ve embedded the first episode here to give a sense of the show.

What are some of your favorite tabletop games? Anything you think would be especially good for the show?

Blurb 2: The Geekening

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I’m honored to have three blurbs from fellow authors and advance readers of GEEKOMANCY , which we’ll get to use for the initial release of the book (including one on the book’s cover, perchance).

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

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

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

 

Now back to doing my authorial happy dance. We’re less than one month out from GEEKOMANCY’s release, and I am reaching the stage of excited where it requires deliberate effort to calm down at times. I’m also hard at work on the sequel, so that there can be another adventure with Ree Reyes to share with readers next year.

Gamer Girl/Country Boy — Geek and Sundry music video

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One of this week’s offerings from the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel is a music video for a song called “Gamer Girl, Country Boy” by Felicia Day and Jason Charles Miller.

Watching the video, in addition to being amused, I found myself thinking that this would probably become a theme for the GEEKOMANCY readers who ship Ree and Eastwood (of which I know there are more than one).

The Joy of WisCon

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This weekend I had the absolute pleasure of attending WisCon, a feminist science fiction convention in Madison, WI. Last year was my first WisCon, and I knew very early into the con that I’d be coming back. WisCon has a strong academic thread as well as a clear social justice orientation, in addition to being a SF/F writing convention. Plus, Madison is a great city, the hotel is in the middle of a great cluster of restaurants downtown, and I have local friends to visit.

This year I had even more fun than the first time. I’ve been to a number of conventions over the years, and it always takes me a few hours to rev up, but once I get going, I’m in full extrovert geek mode, happy to meet new people and wax geeky.

I had the chance to participate in programming this year, thanks to the quick work of the convention committee and the generosity of the Exotic Worlds group: Bradley P. Beaulieu, Holly McDowell, Derek Silver, and LaShawn M. Wanak. I read from chapter two of Geekomancy, and was very happy that the time I spent on preparation paid off.

Since I’ve been performing nearly my whole life, between choir, dance, and various RPGs (tabletop and LARP), I do my best to make sure that my public readings are performances, with notable value added. If I just read what is written, I wouldn’t be adding anything new. But since I have that experience, and love a crowd, I try to use those skills and inclinations as a benefit. Word on the street is that there are far fewer book tours these days in U.S. publishing, where only a small handful of authors for each publisher are supported with funds for in-person tours across the country. By developing my reading performance skills now, I can try to make a reputation as an entertaining reader…and if that leads to

The reading went very well, I think, since I was happy with it and I got good feedback over the weekend from folks that were there.

This was also my first convention after selling Geekomancy and sequel, so it was all fresh and new to be a bona fide author, with a novel coming very very soon. I had a great time talking about Geekomancy but tried not to toot my horn too often or too loudly. No one wants to listen to the writer that turns every conversation into an extended commercial for their books. I love the conversations that pipe up at conventions, from craft to life, tips to tales of publishing mishaps small and large. Conventions are where I go to bask in the awesome of the SF/F community, who are some of my favorite people in the world.

Even as I was leaving, I started yearning for the next WisCon. Each convention has its own flavor, its own feel, and it can change from year to year (especially conventions that change locations each year, like the World Fantasy Convention). But WisCon was and will likely remain one of my absolute favorites.

World Fantasy 2011

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I got back from World Fantasy late last night.

This was the fourth WFC that I’ve been to, and the third in a row, following San Jose and Colombus.  This year the con was in San Diego, which was pretty good for temperature, but it was dry as hell (maybe not hell, but dryer than the midwest).

This World Fantasy was a big one for me: I performed my first two fiction readings at a convention, with a personal reading and participating in a group reading.  I also pitched Shield & Crocus to a couple of editors and spent good time talking and brainstorming with client publishers Night Shade Books, Prime Books, and ChiZine Publications.

Reading:

My reading was in the first programming slot on Thursday (3pm) which turned out to be great, since many of my friends/colleagues from the Codex Writers Group were in attendance, as well as some personal friends (Scat Hardcore in the house!).  I rehearsed last weekend and got feedback from my brilliant girlfriend Meg, and was prepared to bring the awesome.  I read most of the first chapter of Shield & Crocus, since I’d just finished the big revision, had it fresh in my brain, and wanted to push the novel to help with things like pitching to agents/editors and such.

Thanks to practice, and my years of training as a performer (gamer, dancer, singer, sales rep), it went marvelously.  I had sound effects and robot voices.  I realized just after banging the wall behind me that maybe the people on the other side of the wall might be disturbed, but no one complained and it had a great effect on my audience.  I’m very happy with that as the first of many public readings in my career.  The group reading went well also, though I had barely 5 minutes due to a scheduling mishap.  There I read from “Last Tango in Gamma Sector,” and didn’t have enough time to get to the emotional breakup scene, but the audience seemed to be amused by the awesomeness of tango-piloted starships.

Social:

Each year, socialization gets easier for me at WFC, since my circles of friends and acquaintances grow after every convention.  Most delightful was seeing my friends from Bloomington, the Scat Hardcore crew who have scattered to the four winds, off to the Bay Area, Delaware, and the Big Apple.  The five of us had dinner on Saturday, and it was lovely.  Second best was continuing to hang with the Codex Writers posse, meeting new people and re-connecting with others.

Professional:

I wear two hats at World Fantasy:  Writer and Sales Rep.  Having the sales-side experience has been great for my ability to contribute to conversations and present myself as a publishing professional, since I have something that lets me stand out from other aspirant and neo-pro writers.  I met several folks on the Night Shade Books staff that I’d communicated with through email but hadn’t talked to in-person, which was great, since my gig on the sales side involves working with people in all departments of a publishing house: editorial, publicity, marketing, sales, and so on.  I also met the main editor for Prime Books, and chatted with the Prime folks on strategy and publishing trends.  I got to check in with the folks at ChiZine Publications as well, and am very excited for their upcoming titles as well as their World Fantasy Award nomination (they didn’t end up winning, but even a nomination is a big honor for any press).

The big win on the writer side was that I’d decided to try to find opportunities to pitch Shield & Crocus to editors, and managed to do so twice, each with presses that have put out work that I greatly admire.  I think either could be a good home for the novel, and I’m looking forward to their responses.

Write-a-Thon Week One

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As I previously mentioned, I’m participating in the Clarion West Write-a-Thon, which runs concurrently with the 2011 workshop in Seattle.

My first story for the Write-a-Thon is “Can You Tell Me How To Get…”, a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk muppet story.  Yeah, that’s right: muppets.

We’ve hit our participant goal, now we’re looking for sponsors to support one or more writers while we toil away for the next six weeks, sculpting awesome out of pure nothing, fueled by caffeine, madness, and whatever other sins the various writers use for inspiration.

Here’s a short teaser from the story-in-progress:

“Can you tell me how to get to Paprika Place?” Charlie would ask.  The ones that remembered him from their TV days would shake their heads politely.  They’d been viewers once, tuning in every afternoon to learn their letters and numbers.  The younger ones, or the ones whose parents had worked for The Mouse or CapeCo, who’d been forbidden to watch Bunco’s shows, they would just recoil from Fluffasaurus and run back to their houses.  Then the guards would come in their sharp black suits and sunglasses and ask him to move along.

Remember kids, don’t talk to strangers!

One Week With My HTC Flyer

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I’d been nibbling around the edges of the tablet world since late last year, trying to figure out when to get one, what to get, whether it’d be good to buy now or if I should wait…all of that.

While I have an iPhone and it works great, I’ve been less and less happy about Apple’s behavior with regards to their mobile devices and app store.  They’ve engaged in a fair bit of censorship, are trying to restrict third party’s ability to conduct commerce inside of apps used on their devices, and are very very protectionist of their devices, with crazy EULAs and such things.  They’re protecting their very valuable IPs, and trying make money, which is fine.  But I decided that if I could get a tablet and have it not be an iPad, while still doing the things I wanted it to, I’d be happy.

Here’s what I wanted out of a tablet:

  • Something that can play audio and video, with good playlist and sorting
  • Access to the burgeoning tablet/touchscreen video game market (as a player)
  • eBook reading capability (with a bigger screen than my little iPhone).
  • A larger storage capacity, so I could shift much of the mobile music burden from my phone (which burns down its battery very fast).
  • Something sturdy — since I travel a lot and can be rough on my tech.
  • A device that would work with a stylus, especially as handwriting recognition tech increases.
  • It must look cool and have an intuitive GUI, while still leaving me with a lot of control over the device.
I did a fair amount of scouting, looking at the iPad 2, the Motorola Xoom, as well as previews of the HP TouchPad and this thing called the HTC Flyer.  HTC’s reputation is mostly as a smartphone company, but their proprietary GUI (Graphic User Interfase) is very cool, and I saw that a WiFi 7″ tablet with stylus add-on was coming from Best Buy.
I picked mine up in NYC a little over a week ago, and am only now getting it into fighting shape, since I’ve been on the road since the 20th and hadn’t been able to spend serious time getting a handle on how best to use the Flyer.
First Impressions:
  • The real price of the Flyer is $580, because the stylus was broken out into an accessory.  This let Best Buy advertise the device at $500, when it really needs the stylus to do all of what it can do.  Kind of annoying, but that’s something to blame on Best Buy, not HTC.
  • The Flyer has a good heft to it, and feels fairly sturdy.
  • I’m still getting used to the HTC Sense version of Android, but it makes a bit more sense every day.  I have a lot more control and fiddly power with this than I would with an iPad.  And I like to fiddle.
  • AirSync and DoubleTwist are brilliant.
  • The crucial feature that makes the Flyer a great work asset is the fact that I can use the stylus to ‘write’ in my publishers’ catalog pdfs or order sheets, and save them/send them to myself.  This should be huge, and save a lot of paper.
  • I screwed up applying the ZAGG shield, and now I have to figure out if there’s a way to salvage it (there is dirt on the sticky side, so all sorts of flecks show on the screen) or if I just need to buy another one and get it professionally installed (which would be annoying, and waste the $$ I spent on the first shield).
  • My hope is that having the Flyer will let me drain my phone battery much less frequently when on the road, so I don’t have to re-charge while driving or risk shutdown.
  • More to come as I learn the ropes of this nifty, vote-my-politics-with-my-money device.

WisCon — Changing Science Fiction With Bake Sales

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This weekend, I became a member of the Secret Feminist Cabal, with insidious plans to take over the world and indoctrinate the masses…with Feminism.

I’d been hearing about the awesomeness of WisCon for years, from writer friends, scholar friends, and complete strangers.  I intended to go last year, but plans fell through.

This year, I made it a priority and finally reached the nerdy casual halls of the Concourse Hotel and Governor’s Club in Madison, WI.  I flew directly from having been in NYC for a week (working, including BEA), so I had a wicked-overpacked bag.  We had a six-hour delay getting out of LaGuardia, and I was very happy to have my various gadgets and some books on hand for distraction.

I could spend quite a long time talking about how awesome WisCon is, but I think I will start with a bullet point approach.

  • Starting off the convention with a writing workshop, getting great feedback on the opening of Shield & Crocus.
  • Getting to see friends from far away, catching up with @Teleidoplex, @futuransky, @DougHulick, @CassieY4, @creature57, @rachelswirsky and many others
  • A convention where the default level of discourse is high enough that when I ramble about the ideological implications of semiotic paradigms, people nod instead of making confused or annoyed faces
  • Bake Sales for Activism
  • A riotous auction filled with communitas
  • Great readings from brilliant writers.
  • Meeting several of my authors (for Night Shade Books and Prime Books)
  • Acquiring several books and only having to pay for two.
  • Discovering delicious food in downtown Madison, from tapas to pizza to Himalayan food
  • My awesome roommates @Keffy and EJ — we all worked excellently together and helped me have a Con Posse despite never having been to WisCon
  • Rar and Squee in various amounts across the weekend, with cutting critiques and effusive praise
WisCon has been going on for thirty-five years, and as such, has an incredible amount of history, in-jokes, and a lovingly-curated feel of inclusiveness, plurality of voice and perspective.  Unlike pretty much any other convention I’ve ever been to, the gender balance was possibly up to 2:1 women:men — making for a very different feel.
I’m excited to attend again next year, and I’d love to be able to do a reading (especially if I have more sales by then).  I think WisCon and World Fantasy are a great pairing of conventions for me, one more formal and ‘professional’, the other more informal and more academic.  If possible, I’d like to hit even more conventions, but that will come down to budgeting and time negotiation between the SCA and writing conventions.
Next post:  Week One with my HTC Flyer.

Re-Launch — Now “Geek Theory”

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I’ve decided to re-vise, re-name, and re-launch this blog as “Geek Theory.”

Since I’ve been focusing more on my fiction and my ambitions as a writer of speculative fiction, I’m re-branding this WordPress blog as my personal-professional blog, talking about writing, my life as an independent publishers’ book rep, and other fun things.  There will be far fewer reviews and essays, and they’ll be in a more personal tone, rather than my pop-academic tone from before.

First up — a summary post on the awesome that was WisCon 35.