It’s a little strange to realize it’s been almost six years since I last published a book, Sword of My Mouth. It’s something I did pretty regularly for a decade, putting out five books between 2000-2010 — and then I just stopped. A couple of reasons conspired to make this so.
The first one was kind of a heart-breaker. I had previously always printed a Canadian edition and my US publisher had printed their own edition. This was costly and risky for me. But by my fifth book I worked out an arrangement with my US publisher that they would overprint the amount of books I needed — an amount which I could get from my Canadian distributor, after their sales team had gotten their orders in. The timing was complicated, but I worked it out. So I got the numbers, gave them to the US publisher, and someone there forgot to add them to the total. They ended up having to do a special print run of that amount that cost just as much as if I had done it myself. Then, it turned out the Canadian distributor had overestimated the numbers needed. So in the end, despite all my careful planning, I ended up with more expensive books than I needed.
The second reason was more inspiring. The year before I had co-founded a videogame arts organization and it had immediately caught fire — the energy was incredible. The culture of games seemed to embrace my new models and ideas where the publishing world had resisted them, and instead of spending years finding a half dozen like-minded indie publishers there were instantly legions of volunteers who wanted to help make stuff happen. So while I never decided to leave publishing, I just got more and more into the world of games and found it was a better fit for me, both as a creator and as a community organizer. Five years later the organization has grown substantially and is stable enough for me (as of today) to step away from the executive director position and into a fundraising and partnerships one. We got to know our successor, Sagan Yee, through our first women-in-games initiative, and I’m so excited to see the new energy she and her team will bring to the organization. It also frees me up a bit, and I’m looking forward to the new ways I can express my love for writing, games, and communities — I’ve got something cooking that’ll be ready to serve pretty soon.
But for now: here’s a story about a city likewise in the midst of creative reinvention… the final 15th anniversary giveaway, a collaboration with the terrific Shannon Gerard, Sword of My Mouth.
Ella’s baby is not quite right. But since the righteous floated into the sky and magic started working, not much is.
A stand-alone story continuing on from the acclaimed graphic novel Therefore Repent!, Sword of My Mouth moves the focus from Chicago, under siege by angels with machine guns, to the urban prairie of Detroit. Folks in the D have banded together to turn land with burned-out crackhouses into farming tracts, and seem to be on a road to self-sufficiency… until Famine rides into town.
“Jim Munroe’s done for the Book of Revelation what Ronald D. Moore did for Battlestar Galactica.”
— Peter Watts, author of the Hugo-nominated Blindsight
“Sword of My Mouth is beautifully drawn and deals with a post-rapture urban environment that’s filled with machine-gun wielding angels, men with skeleton hands, various mutations, babies with huge teeth, and sustainable farming. It’s pretty much got it all.” — Kelly McClure, bust.com
Back cover copy & more blurbs here.
Download epub/pdf/cbz/cbr here
Free in August: Angry Young Spaceman (now pay-what-you-want)
Free in September: Everyone In Silico (now pay-what-you-want)
Free in October: Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask (now pay-what-you-want)
Free in November: An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil (now pay-what-you-want)
Free in December: Therefore Repent! (illustrated by Salgood Sam) (now pay-what-you-want)
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