Michael G. Munz

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

Presenting Chapter One of Zeus Is Dead!

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Presenting Chapter One of Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure!

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Grab it now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and elsewhere!

“The question of who killed Zeus is unimportant. Trouble neither us nor yourselves further with this. It is only for you to know that the gods of Olympus have returned.”

“’Cept I’d also add that it was me. Next question?”
                      —Hera and Ares (live press conference, June 18, 2009)

“Though none of them ever went into details publicly, it seems clear that the Olympian gods’ return was sparked by whatever happened to Zeus.”
                      —excerpt from The Gods Are Back and How It Affects Your 401(k)

Zeus watched his child stumble through a rain-drenched wilderness, the victim of a mudslide that had lamed an ankle and snatched a pack containing food, water, and a spectacularly nifty smartphone. The child winced with every step back to the trail, but did not stop. The king of the gods swelled with pride at his offspring’s courage even as his immortal heart broke: no aid could he ever give.

Long ago, it would have been simple for him to help. He could have stopped the rain, ordered Artemis to lead the child to safety, or even dispatched a full squadron of rescue helicopters. (Okay, so helicopters weren’t an option 3,000 years ago—save once, and that was a very special case—but he had used the other options a dozen times over.) Now, he could not risk even dropping a granola bar into the child’s pocket as encouragement. [Read more…]

Zeus Is Dead: Cover Reveal

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Big news! I’m excited!

Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure now has an official cover!

Subscribe to the mailing list and see it before anyone else!

Subscribe to the mailing list and see it before anyone else!

What’s that you say? What’s it look like? Well, to quote Bill Cosby quoting Noah: “I can’t tell you. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Well, okay, that’s just mean. I want to show you! I want to tell you! But I can’t. Not just yet. But soon!

Wednesday, June 11th, to be exact. At noon, Pacific Standard Time, we’ll reveal the front cover for my comedic contemporary fantasy set in a world where reality TV heroes kill harpies in northern California and the Greek gods have their own Twitter feeds.

But wait, there’s more! (You probably figured that out already, what with all the other text below this, huh?) Are you familiar with Goodreads, the fantasti-huge site for readers, book reviews, and general book-related awesomeness? (It’s like Facebook for books, but, ya know, good!) Well, if 40 people add Zeus Is Dead to their “to read” bookshelf by June 11th (click that link to to the book’s Goodreads page and click the “Want to Read” button), I’ll release online an exclusive chapter from the book!

I need your help to get the word out, so please tell your friends! Heck, tell your enemies! (And that woman you always see at the grocery store with whom you can’t think of a good way to start a conversation? Now you have a way!) Add the book to your to-read shelves! Why am I using so many exclamation points?! Because I’m excited!

By the way, here’s what author Jonathan Charles Bruce had to say about Zeus Is Dead after reading an advance copy:

Delivering us from a sea of endlessly morose and self-important supernatural fiction, Zeus Is Dead understands that Greek mythology is more than a little bit insane and—rather than ignore the unseemly aspects—embraces them with the appropriate level of snark and style. Munz’s tale echoes the bureaucratic insanity of Douglas Adam’s creations, the banter of Grant and Naylor’s Red Dwarf, and the grudging cynicism of Ben Croshaw in order to bring us a clever, hilarious tale of adventure and grudging heroism.

I guess what I’m saying is that unless you really like your supernatural fiction all mopey and dull, you’ll find something to love here.

I quite like the cover (designed by artist Greg Simanson at Booktrope Publishing). I can’t wait to show it to you!

Soon…

Top Ten Things We Learned from The Simpsons

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This has been roaming around my head lately, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to have some fun and post it, in no particular order: The Top Ten Things We Learned from The Simpsons…

  1. Never, EVER stop in the middle of a hoedown.
  2. The hole’s only natural enemy is the pile.
  3. You don’t win friends with salad.
  4. When the sign says “Do not feed the bears,” man, you’d better not feed the bears!
  5. Life is one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead.
  6. Weaseling out of things is what separates man from the animals.
    ‘Cept the weasel.
  7. Vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.
  8. A zebu is like an ox except it has a hump and a dewlap.
  9. You’ll have a bad impression of New York if you only focus on the pimps and the C.H.U.D.s.
  10. When a woman says nothing’s wrong, that means everything’s wrong. And when a woman says everything’s wrong, that means everything’s wrong. And when a woman says something isn’t funny, you’d better not laugh your ass off.

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Top 5 List: Potentially Awesome Crossovers

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Ooh, isn't that all fancy? Well? Isn't it?

Ooh, isn’t that all fancy?
Well? Isn’t it?

And the Earth has once again completed the number of rotations (divided by the amount of coffee I’ve had, multiplied by the Coefficient of Arbitrary Timing) required to bring you another geek-related Top 5 List! This time, there’s even an official-ish fancy logo over there on the right. Go ahead. Gaze upon it! …Okay, now come back over here.

Another difference this week: this one’s a little more visual than the others. Why? Basically I got an idea that made me grin, I pulled up Photoshop, and I couldn’t quite stop myself. (I’m far from a Photoshop expert, but I know enough to have fun. Click to embiggen most of them!) That’s right, today I present to you:

Top Five Potentially Awesome Crossovers

Obviously, these are only hypothetical. If any of these ever occurred in any official fashion, pigs are flying through a frozen-over hell. So without further ado, and in no particular order, we begin with… [Read more…]

Subscribe to Geek Notes, get free stuff!

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“I saw part of the newsletter he–“
“I seem to have subscribed.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the various boxes around my blog and website inviting you to subscribe or stay informed about geek stuff and my writing.  First of all, thanks to all of you who’ve already subscribed! For those of you who haven’t yet, I’m now pleased to offer this additional incentive:

Subscribe to the website mailing list now and get a FREE copy of my short story collection Mythed Connections: A Short Story Collection of Classical Myth in the Modern World!

Mythed Connections contains three stories written prior to when I began to write the upcoming, full-length novel Zeus is Dead. You might say it’s a spiritual prequel. (Go on, say it. There, wasn’t that fun?) And yeah, I know, the title is long. When I picked it,  being concise was not the foremost thing on my mind. Perhaps the fact that they’re SHORT stories made me want to go with a long title to balance them out?

So subscribe! The form is right below this post. I promise to never use your email address for anything beyond sending an occasional newsletter with updates on my writing and other fun geek-related things, and I’ll especially never give or sell your contact information to any third parties. (And if you ever change your mind, you can always unsubscribe.)

Subscribe to the mailing list and get Mythed Connections FREE!

Subscribe and get it free!

Short Story: “Squirrel!”

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Though I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, my first ever published short story (not counting stories published in school magazines and such) came out in 2003 in a little literary magazine known as “The Armchair Aesthete.” It wasn’t even a story I’d originally intended to publish. Heck, technically it wasn’t even a story at all, in the beginning.

I can still remember writing it on a sunny day out in the Quad on the UW campus. Though I’d graduated, I used to go there sometimes to sit among the cherry trees and write. Yet whatever I’d planned to work on that day just wasn’t flowing. Still, “a writer writes,” so I figured it couldn’t hurt to practice. Essentially it was just a bit of tongue-in-cheek journal writing. I wrote the first section, then went home, and on the way, other things…occurred to me.

Just a few days ago I decided to post the story up on a reading site called Wattpad. While I’d like to think my writing has improved since then, I wanted to share it with people again–and if it leads to more attention for my upcoming comedic fantasy Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure, then so much the better.

And so, here ’tis. Enjoy “Squirrel!”

And don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list below!