I’ve been sitting on this for a few weeks, but the deal is up, so now I can shout to the four corners:

Michael Underwood’s GEEKOMANCY and CELEBROMANCY, in which a heroine who works at a comic book shop uses magic drawn from the love of pop culture to defeat evil, to Steve Feldberg at Audible, in a nice deal, by Sara Megibow at Nelson Literary Agency.

That’s right, GEEKOMANCY and CELEBROMANCY will soon be transmissible directly to your ears thanks to the folks at Audible!

This deal is extra special for me since in my last job as a field sales rep, I spent so much time on the road that reading in paper or electronic form was hard. Instead, I consumed 1-3 books a month in audiobook, thanks to an Audible membership.

This means that if you have a commute, like to read books during your workout, or are planning a road trip, my novels will soon become even more accessible. Given that the books have been ebook only so far, this is a great chance for greater exposure.

*Happy author dance*

Last night, I finished up initial revisions and submitted Celebromancy (aka Geekomacy 2: Nerd Boogaloo) to my editor at Pocket Star. I’m excited to get his feedback and to make the book even more awesome so that you all can enjoy it this summer (7/15/2013!).

And for more awesomeness, noted SF/F reviewer Paul Weimer has reviewed Geekomancy for The Functional Nerds, a subsidiary/partner site to the Hugo-award-winning SF Signal. Hurray for review exposure!

http://functionalnerds.com/2012/12/book-review-geekomancy-by-michael-r-underwood/

Mark Lawrence (of Prince of Thorns fame) has started a campaign to support children’s charities, while offering a promotional opportunity to recognize donors.

He’s created a cover board (with the hope to eventually expand it to a huge mosaic) with each image linking to a retailer/author/publisher page. I’ve taken the plunge myself, and am very happy to support these charities and get some attention for Geekomancy as a side benefit.

You can see the page here to learn more (and see Geekomancy‘s cover off to the right of the amazing cover for Peter V. Brett’s The Daylight War:

http://www.themilliondollarbookshop.com/

While you’re at it, check out the other titles listed by great and generous authors. This board will hopefully grow and evolve, so keep an eye on the experiment as it grows!

After chatting with my editor, I got the clearance to announce the publication date for CELEBROMANCY, the sequel to GEEKOMANCY:

Set your calendars for 7/15/2013! That’s right, CELEBROMANCY will be out in time for SDCC 2013.

It may take some heroic efforts to get me to the con, though, since normal passes sold out before I even had a chance to have a chance to buy a pass. Such is the marvel and allure of SDCC.

I’m doing my first round of revisions right now, and I’m very excited to get this novel out into the world. Every time someone asked about a sequel, it was another log on the fire for me to writer better, write faster, and aim higher with the second novel.

And now back to work!

I’ve just confirmed an appearance at the Bergen Country SF association on Saturday, May 11th, 2013, thanks to an invite from Philip De Parto.

The website is here: https://sites.google.com/site/sfassnofbergencounty/home/about-the-s-f-a-b-c-f-a-q/-monthly-general-meeting.

While you’re there, check out their other guests, and if you’re in the NJ area, consider heading down to a meeting.

On Sunday, before Superstorm Sandy started to roll in, I managed to finish up the first draft of the sequel to Geekomancy, which clocked in just under 79K words.

There’s quite a bit of revision to be done, but it did what a first draft needs to do — I got the skeleton of the story in place, I met and got to know the new characters, figured out what is different in Ree’s life for book two, what her arc will be, and so on. I’m very excited for this novel, and I hope it will carry forward the things which connected strongly with readers in book one as well as adding in some new elements to develop the world.

My next task, along with ignoring the novel for a couple weeks so I can re-approach it with fresh eyes, is to work on some short stories that I’ve been neglecting due to the whole ‘novels under contract’ thing. I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo per say, but I’ll be plenty busy writing this month. And if things go really well, I’ll also be getting back to work on Metaphysical Fencing Academy (placeholder title), the YA fantasy I was working on when the idea for Geekomancy bushwhacked my brain.

Imagine how amazed I was when a Google Alert lead me to DeviantArt and the following piece of awesome fan art for Geekomancy:

Behold the awesomeness:

Fan art by Sarah aka “Shira-chan”

Big props to Shira-chan, the artist who brought this awesome piece to life. I especially love the attention to detail with the T-shirt quilt of convention shirts

It’s been just over a month since I started with Angry Robot Books as the North American Sales & Marketing Manager.

Here are some thoughts on the new job:

• The working environment is awesome. I liked my Wybel gig, but my co-workers at AR are much more My Kind of People. Everyone is in the genre fiction world, so my geekdom isn’t just an Outside Specialty that helps some of what I do, it’s a core facet of what I bring to the table.
• Having greater dispensation to read for work is very fun. With my last job, I had to read a little bit of everything, since we had dozens of client publishers. For AR, it’s all genre fiction, all the time. I’ve been devouring novels as fast as I can, in SF/F, YA, and Crime/Mystery, across our three imprints (Angry Robot, Strange Chemistry, and Exhibit A, respectively). As expected, I’m getting great use out of my Nexus 7, which has become my primary reading device for work.
• Working conventions is very hard work, but totally worth it. I attended WorldCon as an Angry Robot, and spent most of the show working the AR booth, reconnecting with my bookseller roots and meeting tons of people in order to send them away with big armfuls of books. 🙂
• Since AR is a smaller publisher, there is a lot of ‘everyone does everything.’ I’m learning about all aspects of the publishing world — P&L reports, acquisitions, ad buys, publicity best practices, title presentations, cover design, everything. It’s awesome. 🙂
• The gig has been great for my writing. Now that I have a more regular schedule, it’s easier to order my weekly and daily schedule and be consistent in my writing time. I’ve also had the chance to meet lots of AR/SC/ExA authors, and more writer friends means more people to brainstorm with, more people to cross-promote with, etc. Learning even more about the industry from the inside has made me a more appealing guest for podcasts/interviews/etc., since I can talk to the publisher side as well as the author side. The bonuses keep coming!
• There’s also been a fair amount of press about the appointment:

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1826#m17449

http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2012/09/people-88/

and the most recent issue of LOCUS.

• And not to be overlooked is the fact that I’M MOVING TO NEW YORK CITY! I visited NYC last week and signed on an apartment in Queens, which my girlfriend and I will be moving in to next month. It’s a nice and safe neighborhood, and the apartment is gorgeous, with lots of features in the building.

My cyborg overlords at Angry Robot Books are offering a great deal today: For every two Angry Robot eBooks you put in your cart from their Robot Trading Company, you’ll only be asked to pay for one.

More info here: http://therobotreader.com/

I would specifically recommend:

Blackbirds (Chuck Wendig): A visceral urban fantasy about a woman who can see the deaths of anyone she touches skin-to-skin. She gets some help from a trucker and sees his own death a month ahead — being tortured to death by someone looking for her. You can get Blackbirds and the sequel, Mockingbird, together for the price of one!

Zoo City (Lauren Beukes): Arthur C. Clarke-award winning South African urban fantasy about Zinzi December, who has a magical sloth on her back, a bad Nigerian Scamming habit, and who just took a missing persons case way over her head.

The Corpse-Rat King (Lee Battersby) – The first novel from Angry Robot to be picked out of the Open Door Submissions period last year, this is a darkly comic romp. ‘Corpse-rat’ Marius picks the dead clean of their finest possessions, but when he takes the crown of a dead king, the Dead come to honor him as their king, thinking him the deceased monarch. Now trapped between living and dead, Marius heads off on a mad quest to get the Dead a real king.

Seven Wonders (Adam Christopher) — Adam’s second novel with Angry Robot (the first being Empire State) features San Ventura, home of the world’s last super-villain (The Cowl) and last super-team (The Seven Wonders). When everyman Tony develops superpowers, he sets out to take down the Cowl once and for all. Except the Seven Wonders don’t want any help…Seven Wonders is reminiscent of Astro City or any of the neo-Silver Age re-imaginings of the supers milieu.

This weekend, I attended my first convention as an Angry Robot, which also happened to be my first WorldCon.

For those who don’t know, WorldCon is a traveling convention, meaning that it changes locations each year. Convetion organizers bid on the chance to host the convention. This year the con was held in Chicago as Chicon7, and it for me, it was both delightful and exhausting.

I spent most of the weekend working the Angry Robot Booth, selling brand new books such as Seven Wonders, Mockingbird, The Corpse-Rat King, and the first two books from our new YA imprint Strange Chemistry, Blackwood and Shift.

Working the booth was very tiring, but just as rewarding. I put my bookseller hat back on and spent hour after hour hand-selling our books to visitors and passers-by. Working the booth helped me learn the line much faster, and thanks to the help of our marvelous editors Lee Harris and Amanda Rutter, as well as a rotating guest-star cast of Angry Robot and Strange Chemistry authors, we had a great weekend of sales.

Team Angry Robot had several outings, including a bowling night at a bowling alley that was way more upscale than the ones I was used to, and a fabulously-attended author event at The Book Cellar.

Angry Robot authors Adam Christopher and Chuck Wendig read from their books Seven Wonders and Mockingbird, and Strange Chemistry authors Gwenda Bond and Kim Curran read from Blackwood and Shift. There was a fun Q&A including questions like “Who is your favorite angry robot?” as well as homemade cupcakes by a Strange Chemistry author.

Luckily, I also got away for a few panel sessions, including a fantastically fun panel on Old-Fashioned Storytelling, a fun fannish panel on the Game of Thrones TV show (made all the more awesome by a visit from actor Ron Donachie aka Ser Rodrik Cassel).

I was also on a panel for new writers, which interestingly turned into a ‘New writers helping even newer writers learn important things about the business’ panel, which I really enjoyed. It was great to be able to take the pains I’d gone through on writing query letters and pass on the lessons learned.

And on Monday, the last day, as most everyone wore the look of end-of-con-exhaustion, I did the midlist author thing of sitting at the autograph table with the hope that people would come by. And a couple did, but they were mostly people who already knew me. 🙂

The parties were great, the company was even better, and I was tremendously excited to get to meet many authors, readers, and other SF/F folk. One of the highlights of my weekend was the agency dinner which my fabulous agent Sara Megibow set up. Sara was coincidentally in town, so she gathered up Nelson Literary authors Betsy Dornbusch, Jason M. Hough, Shanna Swedson, Hugh Howey and myself for a lovely dinner. It was the first time I’d met Sara in person, and she is even more of a Publishing Faerie Godmother in person than I guessed from talking on the phone. The six of us had a great bit of shop talk and hanging out, though I’m sad I had to run off a bit early to get to a panel.

Another highlight for me was attending the Hugos. The Hugo is the most prestigious award in Science Fiction/Fantasy (some argue that the Nebula is its match, but for me, the Hugo is the big one). It was a chance to suit up and see the SF/F community celebrate excellence in and service to the community. John Scalzi was a fantastic toastmaster, and the love in the room was palatable. Or maybe that was just the body heat of more than a thousand people in one room at the same time. 🙂

I was completely bushed by the end of the con, but thankfully, I had great new music for the ride home (the Hugo-nominated Wicked Girls by Seanan McGuire and Hazardous Fiddle by Amy McNally).

Two days later, I am still recovering, but it was a world-class bit of fun, and I look forward to going again next year for WorldCon in San Antonio.