Author Archive: jsomers

 In spirit, anyway (pic sent in by the very cool Davida Gypsy Breier, from Xerography Debt):

I ache all over. In the past week, I have done the following feats of Herculean amazingness:

1. Re-grouted our shower, due to water leak that punched a soft, chewy hole in the kitchen ceiling
2. Re-stained deck
3. Drywalled, mudded, and taped hole in said kitchen ceiling
4. Installed two storm doors on dear old Mum’s house
5. Cleaned like a demon

All this and delivered a manuscript, too! And created about 6,235 new concepts for Next Major Project, the ultimate fate of which depend mightily on whether someone wants to pay me to write any particular one. The Duchess has been pushing a particular idea of hers which is an amalgamation of three stories I wrote years ago that she didn’t like much individually, but she hit on the idea of combining them and has haunted me about this ever since, as she believes combining these ideas = instant Nobel Prize. But if someone wants to pay me to write something else–perhaps an Epic Poem dedicated to the lump of green putty found in my armpit this morning–all bets are off.

I am exhausted.

Of course the other night I was sitting at my desk looking out my window onto our street, and a drunken motherfucker stumbled in-between two parked cars as I watched and began urinating lustily. I stared in surprise — I’ve crawled through enough bars on the East Coast to have witnessed plenty of public urination before, but this is the first time it’s happened a) while I was sober myself* and b)  it was right outside my own damn house.

After a second he looked up and saw me watching. He shrugged, looking back at the business at hand.

“Whatchu gonna do?” He slurred. “This is what happens when you drink.”

Indeed. There is wisdom in there, if you care to look. By the time I decided the appropriate response would be to go get the garden hose, hook it up to the kitchen sink, open the front door and douse him, he was long gone, and I’d been staring blankly out the window for about fifteen minutes.

*Old hands will know automatically that sober is a relative term. 

Over at the often forgotten Jeff Somers Rocks You Like a Hurrican Forums, a few folks were discussing reading at work (specifically, since this was, after all, the Jeff Somers Rocks You Like a Hurrican Forums, reading The Digital Plague at work). Work tends to be a big old package of wasted time no matter how you slice it — I’m convinced that people who complain about being busy at work simply haven’t figured out time management yet. Or perhaps that’s just my job, which can be done in about 3 good hours on a sunny afternoon while lying in the tall grass of your local park, daydreaming. When I had to troop into an office every day to accomplish my job it was a horror of wasted hours as I sat at my desk trying to look busy.

Anyway, reading at work is the Great Dream of all lazy, unambitious geniuses (like me). Before the Internet, which I know for a lot of youngin’s sounds about as far back in the past as The Great Depression, it was almost comically hard and you ended up doing a lot of things you would normally consider insane, like sitting in toilet stalls with a paperback, or photocopying a 1200-page book just so you could carry it around in a manilla folder and look busy while you were devouring a good potboiler.

The Internet made it easier, of course, as you could now find at least something to read on your computer and still appear to be borderline-productive. If nothing else you can find lots of classics at Project Gutenberg and the like. Now, today, I found this site: Read at Work. It’s a little weird, and I’m not sure if you can add content to it, but it’s a nifty idea.

There: I do my part to ruin your career and undermine the infrastructure of our great nation. Now, back to work.

Last night The Duchess and I crashed an io9.com meetup in NYC, at The Magician on the lower east side. Got to meet editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, and a couple of folks from my publisher dropped in as well, including marketing goid Alex and my fearsome editor Devi. The bar was a real find, and Annalee and Charlie were very nice to an awkward and slightly inebriated author. I learned a little bit about Women in Refrigerators, and got to hang out with some cool people. A pretty good night, I’d say.

Ah, livin’ the dream: burgers and hot dogs on our sizzling hot deck (sweet baby jebus, is the sun parked next door in someone’s backyard? It feels like it is) a few sleep-inducing beers, and our cats, spooked by visitors, hidden all over the house, inviting our friends’ 3-year-old daughter to play the age-old game of Find & Terrify Teh Kittens. And then, bleary-eyed and sleepy, revising fifty pages of The Eternal Prison, chopping out words at a murderous and righteous rate. We’re at that stage of the manuscript where chopping words is really the best thing you can do.

Some of you folks may recall that when The Electric Church came out we had a little “alternate-reality game” set up for it. Well, ARG is maybe a bit ambitious for what was really a collection of online puzzles. Anyway, did you know we’re running a new one for The Digital Plague? Ayuh. You can start it here if you’re interested.

I’m excited, because the game’s been live for a week or two and no one’s gotten very far in it, which either means no one cares (bite your tongue!) or the puzzles are harder than I realized, which gives me the warm fuzzies.

Is there a prize? I can’t say. But it’s got to end somewhere, right? Plus also too, the web page is a nice collection of supplementary background material for the book. A good time is guaranteed for all.

Now, back to chopping words. I had no idea how often I repeat myself when writing first drafts–it’s like I’m smoking Meth while writing and not remembering it. Which would explain a lot, actually.

Well, The Digital Plague is out there, folks, and that means reviews are comin’ in. Here are a couple of the more interesting ones to come my way recently:

– Paul Di Filippo ran his eye over it at Sci Fi Weekly: Not completely laudatory, but any review that contains the line “Still, let it never be said that Somers is not a daring writer” makes my toes curl.

– Fantasy Book Critic took a swing at it as well: “I immensely enjoyed the book—even more than “The Electric Church”—and my adrenaline is already pumping for the next Avery Cates adventure” HUZZAH!

Reviews are funny things; on the one hand when I see one come across the transom I get a thrill, because someone is talking about a book I wrote. On the other hand, you hate to read them because they might say something really disheartening, and then you have to on an epic drinking binge, waking up three weeks later in Panama wearing someone else’s suit. It puts a dent in the writing time. And also too the brain cells.

J