Just a reminder that The Digital Plague is scheduled to be Roasted over at Book Roast in exactly 1 week, on July 22. It ought to be a lot of fun, and I’ll be on the site like a lonely guy at a dance, butting in to every comment and demanding attention. If you’re lucky I’ll still be drunk from the night before, and as a result ashamed and irritable.

Here’s how it works: They’ll post a short excerpt from The  Digital Plague and then 3 questions. The questions are written by the Book Roast folks, not me, and will skew towards the humorous and/or ridiculous. Then people post answers to the questions, and I’ll be monitoring the blog comments and jumping in as well, so feel free to ask me questions or, as I said, insult me (do I know my readers or what?). I will, of course, be sitting at my desk pantsless with a glass of whiskey in my hand and will post photos to prove this if asked. If anyone’s working on the little puzzle over at the TDP web site, I might be induced to offer hints. But only if you’re super nice.

Then, I pick a “winner” who I think answered the 3 questions best – not necessarily correctly, just “best” – and the winner gets a free book. I might get creative with the prize, actually, and if you already own TDP we can figure something out, and naturally I will sign the book as well if asked.

Friends, every author dreams of the day that he or she hits the big time. But how do you know you’ve hit the big time? Is it when you don’t have to siphon booze out of your neighbor’s bottles during parties in order to drink like a civilized human being? Is it when you have people on the payroll who do absolutely nothing? Is it when you actually have a payroll? Is it when the police, coming upon you once again pantsless and inebriated on a park bench after a night of “research” for your latest novel, drive you home instead of beating you senseless and forcing you to wash their squad car the next day while you shiver with hangover pain?

No, friends, you know you have hit it big when your novels turn up on file-sharing networks.

That’s right, I am proud to say that if you go looking, you can now find both my novels as HTML files, complete with full text – including copyright notices – and a nice JPG of the cover. I AM HUGE. Now all I need is for someone to start up a fan-made encyclopedia that I can sue, and my fame will be permanent.

Back to “research”.

Well, I feel Big Time today because I received the special SF & Fantasy Book Special issue of SFX today, and I’m in it as part of the Ten by Ten section, where they ask ten questions of ten authors and print their responses. Holy frick, I’m in the same section as Charles Stross, Jennifer Rardin, Lili Saintcrow, Neil Gaiman, and R Scott Bakker (among others), which is heady company to be in. It’s like I’ve been invited to a great party. I don’t often get invited to parties, on account of the drinking and potty-mouth, so this was pretty cool.

Here’s a sample question/answer from my piece:

If you weren’t a writer what job would you be doing?

Easy: Stalking the neighborhood in a greasy longcoat and a bottle of Rye, terrorizing the good citizens and begging. What, other writers have skills? Like, marketable skills? This is news to me. I assumed that writers unable to earn a living writing were gently placed on public assistance with a liquor stipend. The fact that this is not so is shocking. Civilization has failed me. I am angry now.

I don’t think it’s on sale until 7/11 and I’m not even sure if it comes out in the US. But I have a physical copy so I’m pretty sure it happened.

SFX Magazine has deigned to review The Digital Plague, friends, and they love us. Eddie Robson writes:

“This is a brash, brutal, brilliant novel, gleefully packed with violence. Fans of gratuitous swearing will also find plenty to enjoy, with major profanity appearing on nearly every page. In fact, possibly on every single page – we haven’t checked, but it seems eminently fucking plausible…”

Of course, for some reason they seem to believe someone named Nick Harkaway wrote it. Which might be problematic for folks reading the review and seeking to find me for celebrity endorsements. I’M GONNA SUE. As soon as I find my pants and a place to put my drink down.
UPDATE: At some point, they’ve fixed the name, thank goodness.

No, seriously–Rescued by Nerds has interviewed me and posted the resulting brilliance for all to see here. A sampling:

 ”What happened, of course, was that after five wonderful years lazing around college as an English Major, the idea of actually working for a living horrified me, so I took the lowest-paying job that utilized and required only my word skills, which meant I could do the job half asleep.”

Huzzah! Check it out.

Well, looks like TDP is out all over the place. This just came in from Alex:

HUZZAH! Go forth and buy them out. On a side note, I can’t believe my book is next to Tad Williams. I can remember buying Tad Williams’ books when I was a kid. Dayum.

Heyo,

Mike from the cool site Rescued by Nerds (a part of www.yourmomsbasement.com) has posted a nice early review of The Digital Plague:

“The Digital Plague - Jeff Somers burst onto the scene with last years The Electric Church featuring hitman Avery Cates trying to survive in a monolithic, dystopian future. Avery returns in the fast paced, blood soaked sequel that features a nanotech virus designed to kill the world. Everything I loved about The Electric Church is here in spades. If you like noirish post cyberpunk in the vein of Richard Morgan or Jon Courtenay Grimwood TDP is right up your alley.”

Huzzah! Mike also interviewed me for the site, so keep your eye out for that in a week or so.

I’ve been hearing rumors of The Digital Plague being out on shelves already – if you see one, take a pic and send it to me!

Hey there hi there ho there–just a quickie to point y’all to another very positive review of The Digital Plague. Yahoo!

“Let’s be honest here: Jeff Somers may never win a Hugo Award. Nevertheless, as long as he cranks up these explosive and entertaining balls to the wall and action-packed near-future thrillers, Somers will continue to rank pretty high on my reading list! Two volumes into the Avery Cates series, and these books are definitely becoming addictive!”

Huzzah! I never wanted a Hugo anyways.

Well, I’ll be appearing on The Joey Reynolds Show again, despite feeling like I was more ridiculous than usual last time. Somehow they’ve decided I was a good guest and asked me back – who knew? The universe is confusing.

I will, of course, be struggling to mention the new book, The Digital Plague, as often as possible, resulting in some amusing outbursts, like this:

JOEY: So, Jeff, you’re from Jersey City originally, yes?

ME: DIGITAL PLAGUE, JOEY!

JOEY: Uh, what?

ME: DIGITAL PLAGUE! DIGI-TAL-PLA-AGUE!

And then I will be removed by security.

Anyways, I’ll be on May 12th at 1AM, which means it’s actually early morning May 13th, on 710AM in NYC and elsewhere in syndication. If you’re awake, tune in and snicker at me. If you can’t stay up that late, no doubt I will have MP3s of my brilliance available for general mockery shortly thereafter.

Wish me luck.