Ramblings of Jeff Somers, author
Hey all: The new Avery Cates short story, “The Walled City,” is officially available. If you didn’t pre-order it, you can straight-up buy it any time you want, like a boss — even on Nook, which didn’t allow pre-orders for some bizarre reason.
Continuing Avery Cates’ story from “The Shattered Gears,” “The Walled City” sees the aging Gunner tangle with a psionic who has set himself up as a City Lord in the crumbling remnants of civilization.
Here: read an excerpt!
Visual Representation of Most People’s MySpace Pages.
MANY BOTHANS DIED TO BRING US THIS INFORMATION: So, over at US Weekly (don’t ask how I came across this) they did a little piece on Kim Kardashian’s old MySpace account. You can Us Weekly on KK’s MySpace Monstrosity, and view the pink horror of Princess Kimberly and her 856 MySpace friends. This was in 2006, two years before Facebook arrived on the scene, so people can be forgiven for having a MySpace page. However, I think there’s a lesson here for writing and writers — no, seriously, wait, where are you going? Come back!
So, here’s the thing: Forget Kim Kardashian, just look at that hot mess of a page. Then compare it to Facebook. On the one hand, MySpace should have been the more popular. People can customize their pages, changing colors, adding graphics and music. Facebook is like the Dystopian government of social media: You get one shade of blue and one shade of white and fuck you if you don’t want to see promoted shit. And yet, Facebook is dominant and MySpace … well, people are generally confused to discover that MySpace still exists.
The lesson here for writers is: When it comes to worldbuilding, classic and clean is usually better.
See, back in 2006 you might have been forgiven for assuming that the world of social media and online profiles et al would go the way of MySpace: Increasing customization, increasing personalization. People had some hideous, hideous and horrific (but very personal) MySpace pages back in the day. Don’t believe me, just Google “ugly MySpace pages” and see them in their eye-straining glory. But if you were trying to imagine the kids using the intrawebs back in 2006, or trying to envision what the Super Internet of the future in 2015 would look like back in 2006, you might have used MySpace as a jumping off point and imagined a world where everyone had complete and awful control over the aesthetics of their social media.
Instead, of course, Facebook came along. Like a stern older executive at your company, they don’t allow customization, really. Everyone gets exactly one shade of blue, limited control over what they see and who sees what they post, and generally a uniform and bland visual experience. And people love it. Or at least like it better than the nightmarish universe that was MySpace.
So, the lesson: Be careful when imagining where the world will be — and also when cherry-picking the details you use to establish time and place when your story is set in the present. If you published a novel in 2006 that went on and on about someone’s MySpace page, then welcome to that awkward moment when everyone in the universe will have a moment of eyebrow-raising disruption when they come across this nugget in your story.
Now, we all get things wrong, sometimes. And heck — you might use Facebook in a story today, feeling fairly confident that its 7-year reign of terror over us all will go on forever. But like Kubrick’s use of Pan Am in 2001: A Space Odyssey, even the most established and seemingly rock-solid organizations and corporations can fall, leaving your work sadly dated. This would argue for limiting such references as much as possible. After all, your reference to Facebook might lend your scene a verisimilitude today, and make it feel ancient and outdated three years from now. Keep it classic and clean — which means concentrating more on what your characters are doing rather than the corporate channels they’re using.
And, in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t have a MySpace page. I actually thought I was too good for social media until 2010 or so, which might explain why I’m so unpopular.
Holy shit this book is awful
So, as many may have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of writing about books lately over at Jeff Bloviating at Barnes and Noble and Jeff Bloviating at About.com. It’s a lot of fun, and since I am one of those people who lives in constant danger of being buried under his immense piles of books that he keeps around his house like some sort of over-educated hoarder, it’s a perfect fit. But it’s also a job, so I am often expected or encouraged to read outside my normal taste, including some things I frankly would not choose to read of my own free will. And you know what? It’s been fantastic.
Here’s the thing: Most books have something to offer. I really do believe that — even the books cynically created by marketing divisions to absorb cash from gullible morons, even those books have something in them that you haven’t seen before, or, if nothing else, are edifying in their sheer monstrous evil hollowness. Reading widely doesn’t mean reading an occasional book you haven’t heard of. It means reading shit you would rather walk on glass than read. It means reading shit by political commentators and authors who resemble corporations with divisions pushing novels out of the corporate colon several times a year and reading immensely popular phenomenon novels that appear to have been written by a drunk superfan of other overwrought phenomenon novels.
It means reading everything.
Not all this stuff is good, of course, but it’s all interesting if you find the right angle. And I’ve found myself reading a few books that I would never have otherwise read that turned out to be awesome and incredibly enjoyable books, and as long as that rate hovers somewhere above 0%, I’m pretty much winning.
I’m a man of ruts and habits, deep, deep habits that tend to get ossified over time.If left to my own devices I would be reading nothing but classic novels, old science fiction, and old-school detective fiction, repeated endlessly. If I were to design an experiment to encourage me to read more widely, I might create something like this: One third paid assignments, one third rando recommendations from people, one third drunk shopping on BN.com. Maybe a bit more of the latter, depending on how drunk I am that week. Which, judging from past weeks, is typically pretty drunk.
Anything that breaks me out of my usual routines is a good thing. And reading everything — including some hair-raisingly bad books — and then figuring out a way to comment on those books intelligently (or so I kid myself) has been a blast, and will likely continue to be a blast. Some people act like reading a book they know is outside their wheelhouse and is also probably pretty badly written will somehow infect them and ruin their palette for good books. That’s ridiculous. Read the bad books. Think of something smart to say about them. It’s good for you.
One of the most painful aspects of growing older is the slow sinking realization that I am not so smart. When I was a kid, school was easy and adults were always telling me how smart I was, and man did I believe them. I believed them hard, and my ongoing ability to achieve academic – well, success is too strong a word, more like mediocrity – despite a lack of interest, effort, or even reading the books I was assigned just reinforced it.
As I’ve gotten older, though, one thing has become very, very clear: I may not be stupid, but I am also not smart. Also, I am lazy and have no fashion sense, but these facts have never been in dispute and have also never been controversial in any way.
However, despite not being very smart, I am smart enough to know when commercials and other advertising is wanking me off. And it’s irritating, especially this new breed of Faux Expert come ons.
Just give me five minutes, and I’ll be golden.
I CANNOT HELP MYSELF.
I know that writing endless blog posts about a TV show is silly, really, but at risk of annoying the folks who cannot comprehend how you can spend so much energy contemplating a work of art, I have thoughts about Mad Men and the finale. In a nutshell: The whole show is about the fear of losing that creative spark.
Let’s start with the pilot episode: Don Draper, in a sweat because he has no ideas. He spend the whole episode in a sweat, worried he’s lost his gift, worried his brain will, finally, betray him and leave him with nothing to offer in the pitch session with Lucky Strike. Creative folks know that sweat: Every time we take on a new project, we worry that the Idea Machine in our brains will abandon us. Trust me. I’m still haunted by a brief period in college when I came up dry on story ideas and feared my best was behind me at the age of twenty. Stop laughing. This shit is serious.
Over the course of the whole show, we’ve been watching Don Draper fade. Season One is where his two most memorable and most-quoted pitches occur: Lucky Strike and Kodak. Since then, what truly great pitches has Don managed? None that I can think of. Well — maybe the Accutron Pitch in the first episode of Season Seven. That pitch kind of rocked — but, notably, Don wrote it, but he didn’t pitch it. And while it’s an arresting piece of writing, it’s not exactly a creative triumph that has people rushing from the room in tears. It’s just a solid, well-written piece of marketing. Don is a pro. Losing your creative spark doesn’t mean you lose the skills as well — he can still write, and write well. But he has no new ideas.
That’s not to say he wasn’t still creative. Or smart. Or cool. But we’ve been watching a Don Draper who is less and less creative as time goes by. In the season four episode “The Suitcase” Don’s big idea at the end is a simple steal from the iconic photo from the big fight. Also in season four, Don wins a Clio for his Glo-Coat commercial, but not only is it not an especially brilliant idea, it’s also largely stolen from Peggy. In the season six episode “The Crash,” Don, high on speed, claims he has a great idea, but can’t even articulate it.
Don retains his “cool” until his disastrous pitch to Hershey in Season 6. In the final season of the show, Don is relegated to creative grunt work, and even when he regains his executive authority, there are no good ideas. Don Draper goes from a creative genius in 1960 to a man still coasting on past (and long gone) creative glory in 1970.
Until rock bottom. Until Coke.
Once again, in the finale, Don is up against it. While he hasn’t been officially tasked with coming up with a pitch for Coke, we know he’s been assigned to the Coke pitch. We know Jim Hobart wants Don on Coke. And throughout the last few episodes, Don has been seeing Coke everywhere: At the meeting for Miller Beer he walks out of, on the road as he wanders the country. Many of the details at the retreat end up in his commercial pitch, and even rando Leonard’s speech about being unnoticed and wondering about love — the speech that moves Don to embrace him and break into tears — reminds Don of Coke (think about it – the whole bit about the dream of being in the refrigerator).
Don finally has a good idea again. No — a great idea, because no matter how you feel about advertising as a creative medium, the fact is that Hilltop Coke commercial is regarded as one of the most effective and most creative ads ever. After nearly ten years of stagnation, Don manages one last flash of genius. And that’s why Don will be okay. It has nothing to do with his familial obligations or failures, or his money, or his libido. Don will be okay because he’s found his creativity again.
Or, yanno, it was a TV show and they made it up as they went along. Shut up.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a great movie. Zero exposition, nonstop action, real-feeling stuntwork, and subtle performances plus a surfeit of imagination when it comes to the details and characters of a universe — these are the ingredients for a film that will probably be remembered long after the Marvel tent collapses under its own weight. If you disagree that Fury Road is a good-to-great film, we are no longer friends.
What struck me most about the universe in Fury Road is the way George Miller assumes that in the event of apocalypse, it’s not the strong who will survive. Or the just. Or the smart. Or the innocent. No, Miller’s universe has consistently assumed one thing: When the world ends, it will be the assholes who rule the embers.
Confining ourselves just to Fury Road, every single character, basically, is an asshole. You have your murderous thugs in Immortan Joe and his crew, you have your unsympathetic, gluttonous plutocrats in the leaders of Gastown and the Bullet Farm. You even have Max himself and Furiosa, our protagonists, who are both incredible assholes. Max, after all, spends much of the film concerned only for himself, and Furiosa isn’t exactly nice, and she’s making “amends” for some mysterious crimes, likely pegged to her rank as Imperator in Immortan Joe’s brutal society.
Now, this makes sense. A lot of apocalyptic fiction likes to imagine that at least somewhere some thoughtful, socialized folks will set up camp and impose some sort of order, or that even when pushed to the edges of their humanity people will still be fundamentally good. The Stand and The Walking Dead both trade in these tropes, but Miller is probably closer to what would really happen: The assholes who already act like civilization is an impediment to their enjoyment of life will simply strap on a studded codpiece, rev up a chainsaw, and take over your town with brutal glee.
Think about the folks you ride the subway with, who share your HOA, who bump into you at bars and nightclubs. Think about all those assholes and despair, because chances are they will be the Immortan Joes of our future world, whereas the rest of us will be killed, enslaved, or exiled.
In fact, I personally like an interpretation of the film that “Max” as portrayed by Tom Hardy isn’t actually the Max Rockatansky from the original three films — that Max has become a legend of sorts, a ceremonial name people adopt when they leave behind the brutal me-vs-you attitude of the world. This appeals to me because it fits in with my Assholes Theory: It’s like you have this epiphany that you just fought like a dog for something larger than yourself, or common decency, and you’re declaring that you’re no longer, I dunno, Gloriable Amputate or some other insane persona wearing leather and driving a car festooned with rusting metal spikes, but a person – the legendary Max.
Likely that’s a stretch, though Miller’s casual attitude towards continuity and throughline in his four films makes it entirely possible. Either way, it doesn’t matter, the point remains the same: In the Mad Max universe, the assholes have taken over, and it’s why the films are so good. It’s the verisimilitude.
Because this is my job, I’m going to continue to try and convince you to buy my wares. Here’s the first 600 words or so of the new Cates short story, which you know you want like the desert wants the rain:
1. the accumulation of humiliating aches and pains
I made myself as comfortable as I could against the tree and watched the smoke rise. Several thin tendrils of white smoke, very tidy, very on purpose. This wasn’t some old fuel depot blowing, or a town catching a spark from a wildfire. This was civilization.
In the field in front of me there was the wreck of an old SSF Hover, bent nearly in half, a scattering of rotting white uniforms around it. It had been stripped of anything useful years ago, and a climbing vine had begun to envelope it industriously, crushing it an increment at a time over the course of centuries.
The fields had once been worked and still retained the basic outlines of neat squares of crops, but were being overrun, melting slowly back into the wild. I sat for a long time in the warming air, watching, listening. The smoke was the first sign of life I’d encountered since the Howler. I didn’t exactly have the urge to go running towards it, shouting in joy at not being alone any more.
Instead, I let my hands slide the shredder off my shoulder and begin dismantling it while my eyes, which weren’t what they used to be, kept scanning, and my ears – also not what they once were – kept straining through the birdsongs.
Shredders, the Roon Corporation 1009 model – gas-powered, explosive shells – were notoriously easy to jam. They attracted grit and dirt like it was a design feature, and failed on a regular basis. For the old Stormers in their white ObFu, it didn’t matter because they’d had plenty of backups, and plenty of other Stormers laying down fire. For me, alone and old, with limited ammo and fraying reflexes, the shredder was a superpower. If it didn’t jam when I fired it.
Luckily, they’d been designed for morons to take apart and clean.
I didn’t know where I was. I hadn’t seen any of the robotic … things that had dragged me to the Howler’s little playpen, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. And now I had cooking fires, my first people in a very, very long time. I didn’t know how to feel about being alarmed and unhappy about the idea of seeing other human beings.
Feel smart, Marin whispered in my head.
He was the last survivor, or at least the last conscious survivor. Where once I’d had dozens in my head, Marin was the only one who spoke up, now. It was rarer and rarer, and usually only to insult me, though if I concentrated I found I could usually get him to answer me. There might be others in there, silent, watching – Marin had hinted as much – or then again he might have been fucking with me, because I got the sense that Richard Marin, former Director of the System Security Force, did not like me very much.
When I was done with the shredder, I stowed it next to me in its bag and took out the Head. Mara’s face was frozen in an expression locked somewhere between shock and amusement, and would always be if I had anything to say about it. Inside the plastic and silicon was Canny Orel, or a magnetic imprint of him, all those secrets, all that death.
“One,” I said, holding it up to the sky, “I go check out the smoke. Good idea if it’s civilized. Maybe I can trade some stuff. Jesus, maybe someone has fucking alcohol.”
The Head said nothing.
“Two,” I offered. “I go around the long way, because everyone I’ve ever met in my whole life has been a miserable asshole.”
The Head said nothing, but it felt like it was agreeing with me.
—-
NOOK (T/K)
So, I am in this anthology: Mech: Age of Steel
From the publisher: “Growing up there was only one thing I loved more than giant monsters and that would be giant robots! The anthology will feature a diverse array of tales from some of the genre’s finest talent … and each story will be accompanied by a piece of interior art by either Frankie B. Washington or Oksana Dmitrienko.
“The Mech: Age of Steel Kickstarter campaign will launch in Q3/4 2015 and feature stories from some of the genre’s finest talent.”
Mysteriously, they include me in that category. Considering who else in this thing, that’s incredible:
Just FYI for now – get ready to support the kickstarter so I will actually be paid for this thing. Otherwise I will find you and burn your house down.
How come when I wear a suit I look like a 10-year old kid playing dress up?
While I realize the universe is likely not waiting breathlessly for one more set of random thoughts on a TV show, I have always been that jackass that likes to bloviate endlessly about TV shows and the like, so let’s do this.
Watching the final episodes of Mad Men I’ve been struck by the way the show repeats patterns in different ways, generally following changes in the characters. In some ways, each of the principles is ending the show on a pitch-perfect note for their characters, the perfectly appropriate ending. Roger has come full-circle as the monied but irrelevant figurehead. Joan, who once advised all the girls to pursue husbands and not get too ahead of themselves, is cut short on her rise to power. Peggy, whose life has been dedicated (to the detriment of everything else) to her career, attacks her new job with gusto. Pete, lusting after executive success, finally gets a job that lives up to his expectations. Betty – sure, Betty is dead, but her final scene showed her back in school, flirting with the boys, like she’d always wanted. While some of the details of these fates are unexpected, you can line them up with Season One’s depiction of these characters.
The perfect example, which I suspect will show up in next week’s finale in some form, is simple enough: Don is running away again. Don Draper, coward, liar, creative force, is once again fleeing his life into the West.
He’s done this before, or tried to. When Pete Campbell threatened to expose him, he tried to run away. When his wife found out about his affairs and his lies and began to assert herself, he fled to California for a long time. Don has always run away, or dreamed of running away. It’s what he does.
The difference is that before, Don ran out of fear. Fear was what drove him, a desire to escape consequences. What’s he running away from here at the end of the season? Not fear: For once he has nothing to fear. He’s secure in his career (or could be), he’s got access to all the best accounts, he’s divorced, rich, and his kids are finally growing up. His relationship with poor Betty was on the upswing. He’s even day-drinking in a modestly controllable manner and hasn’t vomited, passed out, or pissed himself in front of other people in ages!
You could argue that he runs out of fear, that what inspires him to run is actually the sight of all those other Creative Directors, the competition. Maybe Don is terrified he’s lost “it” and can’t compete. Instead of a big fish in a small pond, he’s suddenly a guppy, and he runs in terror. The clue, for me, is the shot of the plane that captures Don’s attention right before he flees. It’s not fear. He looks around and realizes he has no desire to do this work any more.
No, Don’s running for other reasons, finally. He sits in a boring meeting and realizes he’s no longer the Golden Boy, he’s one of dozens of Creative Directors. He’s a cog. And he’s bored. So he does what I think anyone with an office job has dreamed of doing: He walks out of a meeting, away from millions of dollars, gives away his car, and seems happy about it all. Just walks out. Because it’s not fear, for once. He’s just ready to move on.
This is why I’ve really enjoyed the show. It’s thoughtful, and while it could be occasionally obvious in its metaphors, and sometimes a bit plodding with self-seriousness, it’s one of the few TV shows I’ve ever seen that explores themes and patterns over the course of the entire show, and not just for a brief episode arc. Don’s a runner, so he runs – but not always for the same reasons.
Once again, I’ve taken a walk through my many, many, many rejections letters in search of interesting or humorous things. This time I switched over to my pile of short story rejections.
I write a fair number of short works out of love, and also because I think writing short stories keeps you in practice. By forcing myself to think up a premise and knock out 1,000 – 5,000 words that conclude with a recognizable ending every month, I’m keeping my skills sharp. Or so I tell myself. Whatever, shut up. Anyways, as a result of this practice I have tons of short stories to sell, and so I, er, sell them. I’ve been trying to hawk my short stories for decades, and I have the rejections to prove it.
These days, most of those rejections are emails, because I don’t submit via paper any more. But back in 2006 I was still sending out paper submissions, with HILARIOUS cover letters. Trust me: Hilarious cover letters for the win. I got this response for a short story called “Time’s Thumb”:
NO PANTS for the win.
I don’t recall what I wrote in the cover letter about my pants, but it amused the editor enough to invite me to submit again. Did I? I honestly can’t recall right now. Probably not, because I am incompetent.
I do think selling writing is 50% finding someone on the other side that sees things the way you do, who gets your jokes and references. Making an editor laugh is a good way to be memorable to them, and to wedge your story into their brains. Also, it’s one more step towards a world where everyone just accepts that I don’t wear pants. Mission: Accomplished.