Michael G. Munz

The official website of Seattle sci-fi/fantasy author and geek Michael G. Munz

Michael’s Farscape Re-watch! (spoilers)

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Farscape is one of my favorite shows, hands-down. I’ve never seen anything on TV quite like it. It boasts incredible production values (with a few exceptions), complex characters who bleed, writers and actors who care, and the ability to turn regular sci-fi concepts on their ear. It also features some of the most amazingly expressive puppets that allow the show to go far beyond Star Trek’s usual wrinkly-forehead alien selection (no offense to Star Trek, but its strengths are elsewhere).

After recently running into this article on Tor.com where Emily Asher-Perrin calls it “one of the greatest science fiction series ever created,” I realized that it’s been a few years since I actually sat down and watched it. So, inspired by a rewatch thread of Babylon 5 on RPG.net, I’m going to attempt to do so and take you all along for the (possibly rambling and long-winded) ride. I’ll be rating on a purely subjective 5-star scale, including my favorite quote(s) of the episode at the start, and the final dialogue line at the end. So, without further ado, can I get a “HELL, YEAH?!”

Season 1:
Episode 7: “PK Tech Girl”
Episode 8: “That Old Black Magic”
Episode 9: “DNA Mad Scientist”
Episode 10: “They’ve Got A Secret” 
Episode 11: “Till the Blood Runs Clear”
Episode 12: “Rhapsody in Blue”
Episode 13: “The Flax”
Episode 14: “Jeremiah Crichton”
Episode 15: “Durka Returns” 
Episode 16: “A Human Reaction”
Episode 17: “Through the Looking Glass”
Episode 18: “A Bug’s Life”
Episode 19: “Nerve”
Episode 20: “The Hidden Memory”
Episode 21: “Bone to Be Wild”
Episode 22: “Family Ties” 

Season 2:

Episode 1: “Mind the Baby”
Episode 2: “Vitas Mortis” 
Episode 3: “Taking the Stone” 
Episode 4: “Crackers Don’t Matter”
Episode 5: “The Way We Weren’t”
Episode 6: “Picture If You Will” 
Episode 7: “Home on the Remains” 
Episode 8: “Dream A Little Dream” 
Episode 9: “Out of Their Minds” 
Episode 10: “My Three Crichtons”
Episode 11: “Look at the Princess, Part I”
Episode 12: “Look at the Princess, Part II”
Episode 13: “Look at the Princess, Part III”
Episode 14: “Beware of Dog”
Episode 15: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Episode 16: “The Locket”
Episode 17: “The Ugly Truth”
Episode 18: “A Clockwork Nebari”
Episode 19: “Liars, Guns, and Money, Part 1”
Episode 20: “Liars, Guns, and Money, Part 2”
Episode 21: “Liars, Guns, and Money, Part 3”
Episode 22: “Die Me, Dichotomy” 

Season 3:

Episode 1: “Season of Death”
Episode 2: “Suns and Lovers”
Episodes 3 & 4: “Self-Inflicted Wounds”
Episode 5: “…Different Destinations”
Episode 6: “Eat Me”
Episode 7: “Thanks for Sharing”
Episode 8: “Green Eyed Monster”
Episode 9: “Losing Time”

Aliens: The Broadway Musical

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“It’d be hard to get tickets, because they mostly sell out every night. Mostly.”

I recently got into a Twitter conversation with Jessica Mills ‏(@geekyjessica) about the concept of making a Broadway musical out of James Cameron’s Aliens.

Song titles were tossed about between us:

“Game Over”
“She Don’t Like The Cornbread Either”
“They Mostly Come Out At Night”
“Half-Bishop, Full-Knight”
“Love And A Grenade Launcher”
“Two Mouths Means Twice the Kissing”
“Face-Hugger Shuffle”
“Shut Up, Hicks”

West Side Story-inspired lyrics (courtesy of yours truly):
“We’ve landed on LV-four-two-six!
We brought along Hudson and Cor-‘pral Hicks!
Let’s all watch Bishop do his knife trick!
Carter Burke is a co-loss-al dick!”

Plans were made. A kickstarter campaign was proposed. It was thought that we could talk James Cameron into it by saying it would be done in 3D. And then Twitter user Starman Morrison ‏(@GeekyGeekyWays) had to go and nuke us from orbit: someone had already done it…

Ah, well. It would have been glorious.

“Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but I’ve been face-hugged, so kill me, maybe!”

A Shadow in the Flames: Available Free 6/10/13 – 6/13/13

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It’s official. The revised edition of A Shadow in the Flames will be available for download for free starting Monday, June 10th. The promotion is in effect until midnight on Thursday, June 13th. After that, it will return to the regular price of $2.99.

This is my first experience with publishing on Kindle, but if things go well, I’ll soon publish the (completed) sequel to A Shadow in the Flames, A Memory in the Black.

Don’t have a Kindle? You can still read Kindle books on a computer or mobile device with their free reading app.

I leave you with a review of the original edition, from an Amazon reader review by Wanda Phillips:
“I don’t know what I expected when I started this book. I think I was leery of a first novel, but within a few pages Munz had me hooked. The story is remarkably philosophical without being pedantic or rhetorical. The blending of perspective, a sort of speaking stick between characters gave you a chance to see each event, character, and situation from several sides. It was seamless.

The character at the true focus of the novel matures and grows over the course of the story (one of my favourite things, I love adventure and so on but I lose interest in characters that are so wooden they are left unaffected by the most mind-numbing events). The maturation of the primary character, starting from his sense of confusion and hope, to one where he stands not just on his own (another fantasy, the solo superhero), but as a member of a society that shares his values, his ideals, and gives shape to his imagination.

The characters least explored are the violent ones. In truth, no amount of justification in a character study allows me to see the value of violence. Munz treats his characters with a generous heart and even those characters from whom the human heart has been eviscerated, Munz treats with a strong, delicate touch. I felt for everyone in the novel (except, of course, the true evil master mind whose presence was rare and yet pervasive).

There was pretty much a bit of everything in this book, action, adventure, intelligence, thrills, chills, and romance. No book is complete without characters that don’t develop feelings for each other. It just wouldn’t ring true.

Munz hints at events more complex than those witnessed in the novel. He does this with the deft touch of a story teller, what is needed in the scene is seeded in the scenes before. He gives you enough to be pleasing, not so much that you need a score card in the book to track what is going on. Besides, who said we had to understand mad men and their ways?

Munz ties things up with an opening. Brilliant.”

Get it here!

In unrelated geek-news, last night I won a tribble by knowing the rest of the phrase, “Greetings, Starfighter. You have been chosen by the Star League to defend the Frontier against…” (It was “Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.” Yes, I know. There’s something terribly wrong with me that I remember that even after having not actually seen The Last Starfighter for over a decade…)

A Shadow in the Flames now on Kindle!

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As promised, the revised edition of A Shadow in the Flames is now available on Kindle! Note the snazzy, updated cover that includes the name of the series: The New Aeneid Cycle.

Northgate is a city in turmoil. Decaying, violent and corrupt, it is a common enough place in the mid twenty-first century, yet discoveries beneath the Moon’s surface have marked it with their first distant echoes.

Into Northgate has come Michael Flynn. Jobless and down to his last few dollars, Michael still dreams of making a positive difference of his own. Yet he has no family, no friends save for the freelancer known only as Diomedes, and tonight the apartment they share will burn to the ground.

When Diomedes becomes his mentor in a search for the arsonist responsible, Michael gets his chance to realize those dreams. But he must face dangers far more personal than fire if he is to succeed, for like a shadow in the flames, neither arsonist nor mentor may be what they appear.

And the ones who search the Moon will be watching him.

The current price is $2.99, but look for a free promotion to happen very soon. The great thing about the Kindle edition, besides the polished prose and correction of some typos from the print version, is that I can update it after you’ve gotten a copy. I plan to include a teaser excerpt from the sequel just as soon as I choose something that’s properly enticing.

Don’t have a Kindle? Read it on your computer, tablet, or phone with the free app…

A Shadow in the Flames: Revised Edition coming to Kindle

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As I mentioned in the previous entry, I have news regarding my first novel, A Shadow in the Flames: A newly revised edition is coming to Kindle, likely within the week.

When I first published ASITF in late 2007, it was to good reviews, but to say my writing has not matured in the time since would be a lie. I’ve opened the print version of ASITF a time or two over the past few years, read a passage or two, and found myself still wanting to make little tweaks to things that I once felt were just fine. I eventually stopped opening the print version, or, I confess, even mentioning it.

I retain the rights to ASITF, however, and lately I’ve been wanting to give people a less expensive way to read the book than the admittedly high-cost print-on-demand version. Kindle therefore feels like a perfect solution to this. The version of A Shadow in the Flames released on Kindle will be very much the same story. Characters have not changed. Plot elements have not changed. But things are now tweaked to fit the evolution of my writing style. It’s not a major overhaul, but nor is it simply a word changed every other paragraph.

And now it’s in electronic form!

The (U.S.) price will be $2.99, however I do plan to make it available for free for a brief period after release as well.

Another, perhaps more interesting element to this is the fact that I’m seriously considering making the sequel (previously titled Legacy of Memory, but now more likely to be called A Memory in the Black) available on Kindle as well. It’s been mostly complete for a number of years now, but its status as a sequel to a self-published novel meant I let it sit in the drawer rather than try to sell it. It does seem a shame to simply let it languish there forever, especially when people have asked me about a sequel. But I’ve yet to decide. If I do release it (which, I confess, is tempting), and it somehow goes viral, then I suppose I might even have to write a follow-up to that one, even though my main writing focus is with pitching A Memory of Dragons (yeah, so I have a thing for memory) and working on fleshing out a comedic fantasy novel that I plan to write next.

I’ll post more in this space when A Shadow in the Flames is actually on Kindle. I expect it won’t be more than a few days…

Re-Opening Geek Notes

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And so, like the butterfly, I emerge from my cocoon after a long period of absence with new wings, and yadda-yadda-yadda, whatever else metaphor you wanna stick in there…

I’ve let this place lapse for quite a while, though in truth I honestly hadn’t realized just how long it had been. While I’ve certainly had things to say, my writing efforts have been focused elsewhere. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Firstly, I’ll mention a little bit about what’s happened with the manuscript I’d been pitching when last blogged here, Murdering Zeus for Fun and Profit. I had some decent nibbles from agents and publishers (queries have resulted in requests for longer samples on numerous occasions, and one publisher requested the entire manuscript), but no good, hard bites yet. The main problem seems to be the book’s length, which is about 50K words longer than most publishers like to see from a new author. (Longer books cost more to print, and while there are plenty of books out there by established authors at 150K words or longer, publishers don’t like to spend the money printing such books if the writer doesn’t have an established base.) I haven’t given up completely–I’m still pitching it occasionally–but for now I’m focused on pitching the (shorter) book I’ve written in the meantime, which I’ll mention in a moment. I still love Murdering Zeus, though. I’m continually tempted to self-publish it and try to make it go viral in geek circles, but I can’t quite bring myself to let go of having it published in more traditional fashion just yet.

But yes, I’ve written a new book! It’s tentatively titled A Memory of Dragons, and the pitching process is (knock on wood) going well–or, at least, encouragingly. In December, an agent responded to a query letter with a request for a sample, and two weeks later asked for the full manuscript. I’m sorry to say the agent ultimately passed, but she did have a few constructive comments which I used to do a few revisions before I started pitching again. Just this past week, I had another agent ask to see my full manuscript! So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

But hey, I should mention just what it’s about, huh? Put simply, it’s a contemporary fantasy about a man who takes a pilgrimage to Britain to honor his dead girlfriend and encounters a pickpocket who claims to possess her stolen memories. There is, of course, more to it, but that’s all I’ll say about it for now. Unlike Murdering Zeus, it’s not a comedy, though it’s not without humor. Characters in the book visit a number of places across Britain that I’ve been lucky enough to visit myself (Worm’s Head, London, Cardiff, Conwy, and others), and it was fun to revisit those places in my mind as I wrote.

Lastly, there’s also a little bit of news regarding my self-published novel, A Shadow in the Flames, but I’ll get to that in the next entry…

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The Legacy of Legacy of Memory

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Last month (give or take), I mentioned my decision to, for now, abandon any attempts at getting Legacy of Memory published and instead move on to focus on a new book entirely unrelated to either it or its self-published predecessor, A Shadow in the Flames. I’ll write a little more here about the new novel (Murdering Zeus for Fun and Profit, for which I just sent out the first agent query yesterday) in a future entry. For now I want to explain a little more about why Legacy of Memory will sit on the shelf, at least for the foreseeable future.

First, my thanks to those who have written asking when they could read a sequel to A Shadow in the Flames. It’s gratifying to know there are people out there who don’t otherwise know me from Adam’s housecat (whose name is Uriel, by the way) who have read the first book and are interested to know more about Michael, Felix, Gideon, and just what the heck is going to happen next.

The problem lies in A Shadow in the Flames being self-published. Yes, the publish-on-demand (POD) publisher I went through does screen books in order to elevate their offerings above other POD publishers, but self-publishing a fiction book still often carries about as much weight in the industry as a dead mule. I don’t necessarily think that’s unfair, either. (That said, I’ve received enough independent praise about ASITF to believe it’s a decent effort. I wish I’d known more when I made the decision to go POD with it and at least tried going directly to some small publishers who take unagented fiction rather than going for agents or nothing, but no matter.) The point is, I don’t want to self-publish again, and the chances of selling a second book in a series when the first book is so obscure are slim to none. My efforts are, unfortunately, better directed elsewhere.

Let me go back and say that I don’t entirely regret self-publishing ASITF. I had a great need to get the story “out there” and read by at least some segment of the public. Part of that need translated into continuing the story into a second (and then planned third) book. There was a danger of my contracting “sequelitis” (see an explanation of that term in this blog by Nathan Bransford (an agent for Curtis Brown, Ltd. with a very helpful publishing blog) and continuing to write further books that had little to no chance of being published in a more traditional fashion. Self-publishing gave me at least some feeling of closure, allowing me to set the story and characters from ASITF and LOM so that I could move on and write my third manuscript.

This is not to say I relish abandoning those earlier books. (Nor is “abandoning” completely final in this case, either. Perhaps in the future I can return to the series, though my thoughts on that are probably another blog entry waiting to be written.) It pains me to think that LOM, by my estimation a much better book than ASITF, will remain read by only a few folks for a while. Yet of some comfort is the fact that I know that I learned quite a bit in writing those first two manuscripts. My craft has improved. I’m quite proud of my latest work (and I confess I cringe a bit when I go back and look at those first two novels) and I would not have been able to do the job on manuscript three without having written one and two. I only wish I didn’t have to lose Michael, Felix, Caitlin, Marc, Marette, and Diomedes to a learning experience. …Wow, my characters have names that start with M a lot, don’t they? What’s up with that?

So, for the moment, Legacy of Memory remains on the shelf. Three people have read the entire thing (besides myself), and it may continue to be so for a while. I may release it electronically somehow, someday. I may hang onto it and find some way to polish it up a little more. (I looked at it again a short while ago. The beginning needs more work than I recognized previously.) Time will tell.

They say a writer’s first novel is a learning experience only, unlikely to see the light of day. That’s not something one likes to hear when while spending so much effort to create it. Two manuscripts down the line, though, I think it’s something I can accept.

And Murdering Zeus for Fun and Profit is a damned good novel. Okay, so I’m slightly biased. I’m also quite proud of it. More about that soon…