BAM!

Hey there hi there ho there, it’s time for the Weekly Recap, where I basically regurgitate everything I’ve already posted, published, or announced this past week. Or, lacking any news, where I will most likely complain a lot about miscellanea. You’re welcome! This is born out of that old idea that you have to tell people things like 5,000 times for them to remember. Will I tell you 5,000 times that We Are Not Good People is $1.99 in July and The Stringer is available for pre-order. YOU KNOW I WILL, BABY. That’s what authors do, after all. We spend about 5% of our time writing and the rest weeping as our crippled fingers tap out Tweets about our books.

Anyways, here’s what happened around these parts this week:

Did I already mention that We Are Not Good People, books 1&2 of the Ustari Cycle, is just $1.99 in digital format? I can’t remember, so there it is again. Kirkus Reviews said “In this hefty and insistently entertaining novel, Somers creates a world of seedy urban crime that develops into a violent epic with the help of an intriguingly bloody magic system.” INTRIGUINGLY BLOODY, what are you waiting for? If you already own the novel, you could go post a short review on Amazon, Goodreads, or someplace else. It helps.

Right here on this wee blog, I posted an essay about disturbing commercials that feature food not only eating itself cannibalistically, but eating itself cannibalistically with what can only be described as gusto. To say that I am freaked out and disturbed by this is an understatement.

This was actually a few weeks ago, but I can do whatever I want because I am awesome and also the god of this here wee blog: I did an interview with Matt Handle that includes the quote “I am something of a natural asshole. My friends will nod enthusiastically if you ask them, ‘Is Jeff an asshole?’ Their nodding will be tinged with affection, but they will still be definitive gestures of agreement.”

I published an essay over at About.com concerning the fact that more than 25% of Americans say they hadn’t read a book in the last year, and how James Patterson has a solution for this. I also had a solution, but it involves an eat-your-veggies approach of offering up some easy-to-read books, so naturally everyone ignored it.

I posted this photo of my adorable cat, Spartacus. It was a hit:

And finally, the July Jeff Somers Rocks You Like an Email Hurricane newsletter went out, containing the free Avery Cates short story The Sewer Rat. If you weren’t signed up for the newsletter, you have two choices: Find someone who was who will send it to you, or sign up now. If you sign up and send me a note, I’ll send you the story. Why not?

Until next week, I will be drinking heavily and writing under the influence, which usually generates sentences like “He stepedhgu iuntio the room and rhfdjhsfjkhsdkfjdskjfhdskjhfldksjhfkdsjhfdskjhfksjdh.”

Cheers!

So, this will be a new thing I do at least until I forget about it sometime in the Fall: A weekly recap of things I’ve posted, announced, linked to, complained about, or otherwise referenced in my social media, private out loud conversations with myself I could swear I transformed into a blog post, or other communications channels.I may be stealing this idea from someone, but since theft is the foundation of all my online promotion, why stop now?

So, this week you may have missed

1. I wrote an article titled “I Asked Novelists How Hard It Is to Write a Novel” that is pretty much what it says on the tin, and which includes fascinating facts such as the fact that 52% of all published authors admit to the use of black magic to get their publishing deal.
2. Technically this was last week, but that fits the general theme of incompetence I wallow in, so I’ll allow it: There’s a new Avery Cates short story coming, but you’ll have to be signed up for my newsletter in order to read it, which is some flat-out illuminati stuff, brah.
3. I wrote a new piece for Barnes & Noble about novels that inspire vacation destinations, including A Fine Balance, one of the best books you’ve never read, Ulysses, and one of the best books you’ve never heard of, Snow Country. Read it here.
4. I wrote a piece for About.com touting some of the most patriotic bestselling books you can read in order to celebrate the upcoming 4th of July with a modicum of American literary spirit while you drink a beer that’s literally been renamed America. Read it here. I also wrote a piece for B&N about books that were written in prison, because making the act of writing a novel seem exciting is not easy. Read it here.
5. A lot of cat-related photos, like this one.

While not technically a part of new business this week, let’s all take a moment to pre-order the upcoming Ustari Cycle novellas: The Stringer, Last Best Day, and The Boom Bands,which are coming to blow your mind very, very soon, plus the anthology Urban Allies which contains my short story co-written with Stephen Blackmoore that combines my Ustari Cycle universe with his Eric Carter universe. And finally, don’t forget The Shattered Gears: Omnibus is just $2.99 right now!

Enjoy your weekend. I plan to drink a lot and complain.

I may have mentioned this several thousand times by now, but Pocket Star will be publishing three eBook novellas set in the blood magic world of The Ustari Cycle this year and next. The novellas are titled The Stringer (August 2016), Last Best Day (October 2016), and The Boom Bands (January 2017) and I am really, really excited for y’all to read them.

The covers are final, I think — or at least the cover for The Stringer is, because it’s up on all the store sites, so here you go:

They’ve also revamped the covers for Fixer and We Are Not Good People to make the series cohesive, and those will pop up in due time. In the mean time, The Stringer and the other novellas are all available for pre-order, so why not go and, um, pre-order them?