The Electric Church in Russian. This was pointed out to me courtesy of the extremely talented translator who worked on the project. Aside from the fact that this is apparently some alternate universe version of the book where Avery Cates is some sort of spacefaring mercenary with tattoos all over his face, this is, of course, insanely cool. Of course, as I don’t read Russian, this could also be an entirely different book. Who knows?
Thanks to Katy for the head’s up! I think all of you should have this in your collections for completeness’ sake.
For some reason there is a lot of me out there on the Intarwebs today. Allow me to point me out to you, okay?
Someone has somehow managed to shoehorn me into the origins of blogging itself. Why has no one else though to do this? Not that I actually claim any credit just because I’ve been self-publishing a zine since 1995, but why hasn’t anyone tried to float me as the inspiration of, well, just about anything cool? This is right up there with my lack of a Wikipedia page. You’re all failing me. What we need to do is 1) start my Wikipedia page; 2) say something ridiculous, like “Jeff Somers invented the Internet” or “Jeff Somers woke up one morning and wrote out the C Programming language on a yellow pad.”; 3) Let a newspaper quote the Wikipedia article with the fakery; 4) When Wikipedia’s Sorcerers try to delete the fakery, we show them an outside source – the very newspaper that quoted from us!; 5) Profit!
This is a grand idea: Every month, Orbit Books (my sainted publisher, from whom all goodness flows) is selling an ebook for $1. Check it out at www.onedollarorbit.com and enjoy, if ebooks are your thing. Personally, I’d rather have the book read to me by George W. Bush than read an ebook, but to each their own.
All right, the final NYCC post. With things this huge, you end up with a lot to say about them. I took all the video we filmed while running around NYCC and edited together this short video to give my 2 days at NYCC in 5-6 minutes. Enjoy!
New York Comic Con was great fun, but the sheer crush of people is wearying. Although out of those tens of thousands, I met a few new folks that were very cool, and a few old friends. Plus we had: ADVENTURES.
Here’s a quick video recap of Day 2 of NYCC:
First off, Jeff’s incompetence rears its ugly head as I arrived at 1:25pm for my 1:30pm panel, then went to the exact wrong location and stood there for a while, confused. After sprinting my way for half a mile of sweaty, costumed people, I arrived at the panel room 5 minutes late with sweat streaming down my face. When you do this, you end up sitting behind a monitor so no one can see you. Here’s my view from the panel table:
Afterwards, I found a complete, total stranger who is not my brother to give me an endorsement:
Then it was off to the Autograph area to sign books, and people actually showed up!
And a few people even brought my mysterious, largely-forgotten first novel, Lifers, which almost made me weep in joy:
We realized we were right next to Lou Ferrigno in the autograph area. Lou was not particularly friendly.
Erik who comments here all the time showed up! He had Lifers too, which made us love him. Then I stalked him for the rest of the day, until he called security and had us ejected.
When The Duchess invaded Lou Ferrigno’s space a little, he growled at her, and I had to remind her that I am a small, weak man.
Obligatory Princess Leia babe getting books signed by me:
Doug Finch of The Whirligig was there and stopped by despite the danger of my reputation being attached to him:
All in all, a fabulous experience. While I wouldn’t recommend showing up late for your panels and having to run the length of the Javits Center in a flopsweat, it all worked out, and we signed just about every book Orbit had sent along.
The Orbit crew deserves a special mention: They not only do a fantastic job of organizing things, they also make it fun. They also absorb my incompetence and somehow alchemize it into success, a mysterious process I don’t claim to understand. They rock!
I have lots more vids, but what I’m planning to do is edit them together into a coherent mini-documentary about my days at NYCC, which might take a few days to accomplish, especially with possible re-shoots and the special effects processing. Look for it!
So, back in the welcoming arms of New Jersey. Travel sucks, and unpacking is the tiny boil on the tip of it all. Crap is just piled everywhere.
And even in this gilded age of Living in the Future, with its sexy wireless Internet available just about everywhere, I am still about six hundred years behind in my correspondence. Although this is partially because I am a jackass. There are two things that are me-centric that I want to post, though:
1. The fine folks at Fantasy Book Critic asked me to give them an idea of what I read in 2008, and what was coming for me in 2009, andthat’s been posted. Check out my sad reading habits!
2. Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist named The Digital Plague #13 on their SFF Top 10 of 2008, which is damned cool.
Wo0t!
Once I have regained some sanity here I’ll start posting my important thoughts on the world and writing and single malt whiskey and, naturally, cats and pantslessness. Cats and Pantslessness, coming to you in 2009.
