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.

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cJg9BqH62g

My Book Country story actually goes back to when I was a teenager.  My father works at Random House, currently as a divisional sales manager, formerly as a sales representative in the Midwest.  I first met Colleen Lindsay, the Community Manager for Book Country, through my father and his work at Random House.

Since I started getting really serious about writing, I looked her up again and started following her social media efforts.  We ran into one another at my first BEA in 2009, and stayed in touch here and there since.

Going into Book Country, I was already a little of an insider, with a personal connection to one of the staff. I also made an effort to stop by the Book Country booth each day during Book Expo last year, to chat and have a break from work but also to meet everyone and make connections.

In my first few months on Book Country, I tried to be very active, starting a lot of discussions and trying to post widely. I found myself gravitating to the ‘getting an agent’ portion of the discussions, since I was neck-deep in querying for Shield & Crocus.

I think that being a beta user, being active at the beginning, and focusing my efforts in one area all helped my exposure to other users. I also agreed to do an interview with Dana Kaye, Book Country’s publicist, as a part of their efforts to get regional media attention for Book Country and their authors. That interview hasn’t lead to any other media hits, but it was good practice for me and showed my investment in Book Country – I really believe in what they’re trying to do, and I think we’re already seeing the results it can bring, with fellow betafish (beta user) Kerry Schaefer getting a two-book deal with Berkeley: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/kerry-schafer-lands-book-countrys-first-deal_b45120

The first project I posted was my New Weird Superhero novel Shield & Crocus, which I’ve had on the market for a year and a half or so, querying agents.

Last December, after finishing the first draft of Geekomancy, I decided to put the whole revision process on Book Country, uploading the first five chapters of my initial draft and intending to update it as I went.  It’d give me a larger feedback community during the revisions, and it seemed like a cool thing to try.

There are two big things that I think helped draw attention to Geekomancy in specific. The first was when the Book Country Editorial Coordinator, Danielle Poiesz, followed my book — I know at least I will scour her ‘following’ list to get a sense of what projects might be worth reading, so I bet others do as well.

The other one was that one user, after reading and reviewing Geekomancy, went onto a thread of ‘recommend other people’s projects on Book Country’ thread and gave a strong recommendation.

I can’t be sure what factors exactly lead the editors to look at my project in specific, but those are what I can point to as possibilities, for anyone playing at home and considering participating in Book Country themselves. I had fairly positive thoughts about it before this last run of excitement, since it can be helpful to get reviews from people you don’t know, some of the discussions are enlightening, and the staff brings in professionals to do articles and twitter chats on a regular basis.

This week, I got not one but two manuscript requests for Geekomancy, both from editors at major houses.  They’d found the first five chapters of the rough draft that I’d posted on Book Country (totaling about 17K words) and asked to see the rest.  I was floored, and sent each notes that I was happy to submit the full manuscript but that it was quite rough and I was in the middle of revisions.  Each of them opted to read the as-is version rather than waiting for revisions (as I offered to submit more polished versions later).

That has gotten a lot of attention from my writer friends, and several have asked to hear more about Book Country, hence this post.  If you have any other questions about Book Country I’d be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

RJ Blain, another Book Country betafish, posted a really good beginner’s guide to Book Country, which I will shamelessly link to now: http://rebeccablain.com/2011/12/14/on-book-country-user-guide-information/

Last week, while I was in NYC for sales conferences, I stole away time and finished the first draft of my novel, Geekomancy.  I’ve been working on it off and on since Thanksgiving 2010, though it originally started as a weekend’s diversion during the break, a ‘this is a fun little idea so I’ll play with it a bit and then put it away’ to while away the weekend and get some perspective on my ‘real’ project, Children of Bladecraft, a YA fantasy novel which I will return to after Geekomancy is on the market.

The problem was, it was far too fun to write.  For Geekomancy, I got to take my years of working at a game store, my time as a barista, and a young lifetime of geeky references and genre-mashing ideas and put them into one place to go crazy.  It was at times the easiest and most difficult novel yet for me (fifth started, fourth completed), as I pushed myself to make it fun but also hit the emotional notes as hard as I could for the characters.

I’m very excited to get it in front of some discerning readers and get feedback on how to make my revisions as efficient as possible.  I’d love to get the book on the market by the end of 2012, which is a much faster development cycle than I had for Shield & Crocus.  I wrote S&C over one year, from 2007-2008, but have done at least one major revision a year since then, including this year, and it’s been on the market for about 18 months.  I’ve put the project up on the writing community Book Country (www.bookcountry.com), as well as submitting it to the novel contest in my online writing group (www.codexwriters.com).  I’ve had a very productive year in 2011, despite big seasonal chunks of no-writing thanks to work.

Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be focusing on my short fiction, returning to the pieces I wrote this summer for the Clarion West Write-a-Thon.  I need to revise one piece, finish another, and finish expanding the third, which tried its best to be flash fiction but will end up being a 3-4K short story.  One day I will write a functional flash piece, I swear.

I’m also hoping to hear back from one or both of the agents who currently have the fulls of Shield & Crocus, and maybe even the editor who has it as well (though that was sent off about three weeks later than to the agents).

Part of my ‘finished the novel’ celebration is that I’m reading Urban Fantasy again.  I try not to read the subgenre that I’m writing while I’m in a first draft, so as to avoid too direct of an influence from work.  But in the time I’ve been writing Geekomancy, there’s been a pile of UF novels that I’ve stacked up to read once my brain wasn’t in First Draft Mode.  Right now I’m enjoying Seanan McGuire’s A Local Habitation, and I am going to do my best to plow through the Dresden Files before I dive fully into revisions on Geekomancy.

My writerly theme for this year seems to have been Building Momentum, and I hope that it leads to a 2012 of Things Happening (Big and/or Small).

Reminder:  these thoughts are only my own, and don’t intend to represent anyone else.

Guess who is #1 in this list?  My hometown, Bloomington, IN:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-unequal-cities-in-america-2011-10.

This is not just a New York issue, an Oakland issue, or a Big City Issue.  It’s everywhere, as evidenced by the reportedly 1000+ Occupy sites around the country and beyond.

For Bloomington, my best guess is that the town’s small population overall (in comparison to the other cities on the list) makes it easier for a small number of rich oligarchs to swing the numbers.  Between the coaching staff of the sports teams, the other IU bigwigs and the Real Estate moguls, they easily overpower the undergrads, grad students, underpaid staffers, service industry workers and those left behind by shrinking/fading industry in Bloomington.

More broadly: I’ve been following the Occupy Wall Street for a while now, almost since the beginning thanks the joys of getting your news from social media in addition to broadcast/cable news.  I totally support the Occupy movement in their efforts to draw attention to the economic, political, and legal inequity in the USA.

As a movement run mostly on consensus and non-heirarchical decision-making, it’s hard for OWS to show a unified face and singular list of demands.  There are as many frustrations and ideas as people involved, more even.  There are many things in this country I’d like to see changed, from campaign finance reform to lobby reform, sentencing equality, repealing the Bush tax cuts, and more.  But my list of things to fix is likely to be just slightly different from someone else’s, and because there is no One Leader of OWS, the heterogeneous opinions remain, making it harder to get across a clear message in the manner of a campaign platform.

It’s been interesting to watch OWS for many reasons, but one of the big ones is seeing consensus decision-making getting attention — I lived in a grad student Co-operative for two years, and we used a consensus system for all major house decisions, from our ‘shoes off’ policy to how to spend our food budget to how to assign tasks to housemates.  Consensus is a fantastic system if well-implemented, and if the people making the decisions are all committed to working together as a community.  At the end of the day, we all still lived together, saw one another every day, were friends and colleagues.  Trying to make consensus work with larger groups or with people who don’t know each other as well, who have the chance to easily opt-out without major consequence is likely to be more difficult.  I wish them the best of luck, and the whole process makes me remember my co-op time fondly.

Occupy has gotten a lot of attention over the last few weeks from major media outlets, even after a delay in picking up the stories.  The violent evictions of Occupy Oakland, Occupy Boston and now Zuccotti Park have only increased the profile of the Occupy activities, and exposed a number of what I perceive as abuses of power by police, conspiracy to suppress free speech and legal but objectionable use of the letter of the law to control the activists.  Legally, the private owners of Zuccotti Park have the right to change the rules of use of their property, and it isn’t a violation of the 1st Ammendment — the problem is that the seemingly public spaces are not actually public when the Powers-that-Be don’t want them to be — allowing Bloomberg to restrict how and where the Occupy Wall Street activists can practice their rights.

All protests, when they reach a certain level, are illegal.  They may be re-cast as necessary and just by the pen of history, but from the perspective of the law, many were illegal.  And when the law prevents you from making the point that you feel powerfully you need to make, you either accept that you will be arrested or you do everything you possibly can to stay within the bounds of the law.

Here are things that Occupy groups can do, and I hope they are already doing (among other things):

If they receive notice that they are not allowed to use certain seemingly public spaces, make specific petitions asking for permits for protests, asking for safe times and routes, keeping immaculate documentation so that they have evidence to show if denied permits and legal protections.  Turn the legal process into a protection — act within the law so unquestionably that no one can attempt to call you a criminal, and if you are evicted or harassed by police, you can press charges for wrongful arrest, assault, whatever is appropriate.  Now, of course, it’s damn hard to make any of that go if you’re being tear gasses, beaten with a club, or if the officer is evicting you at 1AM and covering up their face and badge.  Find out what the policies are in your locality for police accountability — are they required to give you their name and/or badge number?  What is the official channel for making a complaint about the conduct of an officer, either with the department or their municipal/county superiors?

OWS represents a whole cluster of frustrations, and the longer it goes on, the more I hope that it actually coalesces into a unified or vaguely-consistent set of calls for reform/action, so that the enthusiasm and energy of that frustration can be put into action.  I’m surprised that Democratic candidates haven’t thrown in more aggressively on the OWS side, though of course any of them who are already established are likely to have their own corporate sponsors and are already economically/ethically compromised.

One of the big things I want is for Democrats to grow a backbone.  I’m fine with compromise, in fact, our system is built on it — compromise and checks/balances.  But when compromise seems to mean giving up 95% of what you want on Every Single Thing, you’re doing it wrong.  When the people on the other side of the table consistently hold the process hostage through unprecedented uses of obstructionist tactics and economic extortion, you need to do something about it, even if that something is Ruthlessly hammering home that obstructionism every campaign season.  Things like “Candidate X’ held the U.S. economy hostage to secure tax cuts for the corporations who bankrolled their campaign.”  Things like that.  You don’t have to fight dirty to fight hard.  And there are clearly Dems who are doing it.  Folks like Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida or Candidate Elizabeth Warren, running for Senate in Massachusetts.  But when I saw Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) on The Daily Show, she completely failed (IMHO) to explain why the congressional Democrats have let the Republicans walk all over them in general.  And while I’m too far left for most all of them, the Democratic party is where my voice can best be presented in a way that has any chance of being heard — the current system is rigged against third party candidates, turning them into spoilers that, in practice, only tend to hurt the party closest to them by splitting votes.

The 2012 elections are only going to get more omnipresent in our national attention, I just hope that politicians listen to what the OWS groups have to say as well as the Tea Party and everyone else.  And that the Dems grow themselves some gonads and take to the mat instead of making unhappy sounds and rolling over.