Michael G. Munz

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

Announcing Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure

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It’s official: My upcoming comedic contemporary fantasy, previously titled Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet, now has a final title and release date! (Cue the lights and some manner of musical gravitas!) Coming from Booktrope on July 21, 2014…

Zeus Is Dead:
A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
Thank you all for your opinions on the various title options here and elsewhere. The Booktrope team and I gave this one a lot of research and thought, posting polls in various places, arguing among ourselves, and hurling punctuation to and fro with enthusiastic vigor. (Mostly exclamation points, some colons–there was even an umlaut in there somewhere. Not sure what THAT was about…)
I’m quite pleased with this title, and can’t wait for you to have the chance to read the book this July. Watch this blog for more info as we get closer! There will be more details about the Zeus Is Dead, a sample chapter or two, and some other fun little bits and pre-order incentives.
Oh, and you’ll see the cover at some point soon, too, in case you want to violate all proverbial wisdom and judge the book by that. Careful, however: Violating proverbial wisdom could be considered hubris, which might very well bring down the Erinyes upon your heads, and I hear Alecto is getting especially twitchy lately…

Writing Zeus is Dead

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In part two of my reblogging some entries written a few years ago when I finished writing the original manuscript of what’s now titled Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure (a comedic contemporary fantasy coming soon from Seattle publisher Booktrope!), I talk a little about the process of writing the novel itself. (See part one for the origin of the idea.) Writing it was a blast, though not without difficulties…

(Note that the working title of the novel was Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet.)

In my last entry I wrote about how I originally embarked on writing the (completed) manuscript I’m now calling Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet. At the time I began, I only made a few veiled comments about what I was working on. “Somewhat less serious” was the phrase I used when comparing it to my previous work, but I didn’t mention anything at the time about Greek gods.

[Read more…]

“The Spaceship”

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So I’m in the process of moving to a new home (nowhere far, just from one Seattle neighborhood to another), which means I’m going through my stuff and culling the herd a bit to make moving easier. I’ve been here for a while, so there’s quite a bit of stuff to go through, and in a box in the back of my closet I found something amusing: The very first book I ever wrote.

Note that I did this in elementary school in 1985. I’d like to think my writing has improved at least a little bit since then. It was a class project, if I remember right. Every student wrote one, as well as doing the actual binding and illustrations. (I’d like to think my drawing has improved at least a little bit since then, too. I’d like to. But it hasn’t.) So now, without further ado, I present to you my first ever novel, the sci-fi tour de force known as…

THE SPACESHIP
(Is that an awesome title or what?)

It was the 1980s. Cover art wasn’t as important back then. Apparently.

Look at that quality binding! Yessir, slathered rubber cement!

See, there it is. Proof I wrote it, right there in…pencil! I know, the title page gives away a major plot twist. I was young and naive.
See? Copyright! All rights reserved! No stealing this for your next movie, Shia LaBeouf! (Always copyright your schoolwork, kids. The teacher will add 10 points right off the bat, I swear.)

“Once there was a boy named Fred. One day Fred got in a fight and got two black eyes.”
(Isn’t that a wonderful beginning? I can actually remember wanting to establish how good Fred was at kicking people here.)

“He was walking on the field (after the fight) and he saw a silver disk coming down. Then a read beam came down and zapped him up!”
(The exclamation point tells you it’s exciting!)

“When he awoke he found he was in a cage. But the bars were wide apart and he easily got through. After that he ran down the hall and came to a corner.”
(Cages. Aliens are terrible at ’em. This is exactly how Captain Kirk escaped from the Klingons on three separate occasions. Why is “was” written in cursive? Because! I guess.)

“He peeked around the corner and saw two guards! Then Fred turned the corner and kicked over a guard who landed on the other guard!”
(More exclamation points! The non-illustrated fight scene is exciting!! I actually rather like the look of the aliens. Especially their merit badges. I guess they got their abduction badges that day.)

“Then he pushed a button and the door flew open. He went inside and got in the spaceship inside.”
(It’s important to demonstrate how doors get opened. Buttons!)

“Then he shot out of the bigger spaceship and blew it up with the small ship’s super-power lasers!”
(Regular lasers wouldn’t have made a dent, you see. I liked drawing fireballs. I can remember being particularly pleased with this one.)
“After that he of toward Earth. When he got to the school he circled the field once and then went home early.”
(Geez. That should be “…he flew off toward…” This is why you should always have someone else proofread your work before publication!)

“The next day he told his friends about his adventure but no one believed him. ‘Oh well,’ he thought. ‘I’ll just drop it.’ And he did.”
(I guess this is the part with all the angst that makes it art. Or something.)

THE END
Wasn’t that a fantastic book, boys and girls?
Well?
Wasn’t it?
And yet there was never a movie deal or even a sequel.

Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet to be published!

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(Note: Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet was the working title. The book will be published under the name Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure.)

So it’s happened.

Big news.

Epic, one might even say.

That’s right, the Seahawks actually won the Superbowl! Er, wait, that’s not it. (I mean, they DID win, but that’s not the news.) Sorry, it’s early Saturday and I haven’t yet finished my coffee. One sec.

*gulps*

Okay! So, the actual news: Seattle publisher Booktrope will be publishing my comedic fantasy novel, currently titled Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet!!!!

It would be accurate to say that I’m a wee bit excited about this. Yes, I do have two sci-fi novels out there right now as ebooks, but Murdering Zeus will be my first non-self published novel and will be published in both paper and electronic formats. Don’t get me wrong, self-publishing can be a great way to go–there are a great many fantastic self-published authors out there–but it’s long been a goal of mine to get a publisher interested enough in a novel I’ve written to say, “Hey, this is great! Let us put it out there!” If you’ll permit me a little pride, it’s an incredible feeling.

“That’s great, Mike, really. But quit blubbering and tell us what the novel’s about, huh?”

Impatient folk, aren’t you?

Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet is a comedic contemporary fantasy set in a version of our world where reality TV heroes slay actual monsters and the Greek gods have their own casinos, media empires, and Twitter feeds.

Yet the gods have only recently returned to our world. You see, Zeus (king of the Greek/Olympian gods, for those not in the know) ordered the Olympian gods to go into hiding 3,000 years ago. Everyone knows that you don’t argue with Zeus unless you want a lightning bolt where the sun don’t shine. Yet it seems that wasn’t enough to stop someone from assassinating him nine months ago, and with Zeus dead, his order fell by the wayside. The Olympians are back! (Except, obviously, for Zeus.) And if you thought mortal celebrities had big egos, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This is not to say that killing an immortal is commonplace in this story; it’s got the entire pantheon quite consternated. Someone out there can KILL them? As in dead? Forever? Heck, even the Titans only got locked up in Tartarus after the Olympian gods overthrew them, and those bastards were dangerous! It’s got them so disturbed that they’ve all decided en masse to just, well, kind of ignore the question of exactly who ganked him. Why poke about in matters that might get them killed, too? Besides, now they can strut their stuff openly among the mortals again, and who doesn’t love attention?

I won’t go into too many details about the actual plot just yet, but I will say that I had a blast writing this book. I got to throw the full force of my sense of humor into the voice (my sci-fi novels are obviously more serious), and I’ve always been fascinated with Greek mythology. I can’t wait to share this book with all of you.

I don’t yet know quite when it will come out, but sometime in 2014, certainly. Booktrope is a new publisher (but so far quite successful–they’ve been written up in Forbes), working on a different publishing model to adapt to the evolution of the publishing industry. That means a shorter time to publication than the year or more that older publishers can take. But we’ve still got to do some editing, cover design, layout, etc. I’m excited to get going on it all, and I look forward to being able to show you the cover once it’s available.

In the meantime, why not follow one of the book’s characters on Twitter? Thalia is one of the nine Muses, and responsible for musing comedy, poems about farming, and science fiction. Yes, science fiction. What, did you think the Muses just ignored the modern genres?

I leave you now with a quote from Thalia, who tends to babble. A lot:

“I’m not Artemis here, you know! I can only talk to animals, I don’t have some special stupid slavery-power over them! You think training a cat is bad, try getting a bird to do what you want it to do! There’s a reason ‘flighty’ means what it means! And for that matter, we’re dealing with jewelry here! Birds do not like carrying jewelry for anyone! Tolkien understood that; why can’t you? Stay here!”

Keep an eye out on this blog, my Twitter feed, or my Facebook page for more info on Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet! Further bulletins as events warrant. (3/13/14 edit: Like this one and this one about the origins and writing of the book…)