Bullshit

A week or so ago I was sitting in my agent’s office, signing some contracts. Since I infect everything I do with incompetence and laziness, we had some trouble getting things going in the right direction:

ME: Uh, was I supposed to sign this page?

AGENT: (peering through cloud of brimstone and smoke that swirls around her perpetually) No! <thunder rolls> Does it have your name next to it?

ME: Uh. . .no.

AGENT: Only sign the ones that do.

ME: Thanks. <Flips pages and signs several> Uh. . .it says here sign in blue ink. This is black.

AGENT: Lord, give me strength.

ME: Also, I’ve been signing a fake name. I don’t know why.

AGENT: What?!?

ME: And I was a little nervous. . .coming here. . .so I drank a whole. . .bottle of whiskey. . .

<JEFF PASSES OUT>

You’d think, after having several books published, having appeared on radio shows and on Con panels, after being interviewed and cashing all those advance checks, I’d feel like a professional. or at least an adult. The sad truth is, I don’t feel much different than I did a decade ago, when my biggest published credit was a comic book episode of Sliders (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I still usually feel like a kid, and a socially awkward one at that.

I don’t have business cards. Every time I go to some official event as a literary guest or something, everyone else has nice, professional-looking business cards to hand out and if I have anything it’s just some quickies I dashed off on the home printer. And that’s unusual; usually it’s just me stuttering and writing my email address on slips of paper.

The fact is, I still think of myself as a zinester who’s photocopying his latest issue on the company machine after hours, and writing mostly for himself. No matter how many people send me emails telling me they enjoyed the books, no matter how many books I actually publish, I still feel like I’m faking it in some way. The constant endrunkening is part of it, as is the pantslessness, the tendency towards gibberish, and my rare ability to make my own books sound boring when speaking about them off the cuff.

Oh yes, the pungent scent of incompetence is everywhere.

Except, of course, when I am actually writing. It’s always been the one time I feel absolutely competent: When I put two words together, they are meant to be. Writing the books has always been the easy part. Promoting and marketing–selling–them has always been hard. Which is, I suppose, how it should be. And socially awkward is why Jebus gave us booze, right?

Being a writer of Science Fiction, let’s face it: You’re making predictions. Now, of course, no one takes us seriously. First of all, we drink. A lot. My experience with writers is, stereotypes be damned, we’re all sodden with booze (or other things) all the time, and it’s actually surprising that we create anything worth reading. Secondly, despite the word science in our job title, the shocking truth is very, very few of us actually have advanced degrees. In anything. Even our unAdvanced degrees aren’t worth much, as a rule.

Still, despite this kind of deep unreadiness, I’ve made it my business to predict the future every day. In a gonzo, unserious way, of course, but still a prediction. Thankfully, no one really expects me to be accurate about these things. I write about a future where cyborgs eat your brain and steal your knowledge, and no one starts building anti-cyborg bunkers (that I know of; if you have, let me know immediately). However, some folks make predictions for a living in a more serious way: Pundits. There are always going to be people in this world who want to tell you what’s coming, and, like Nostradamus, people tend to only remember when pundits are right.

Thankfully, someone thought to start up http://wrongtomorrow.com/.

I think it’s great to track the ridiculous things people say are gonna happen and have some sort of serious statistical report concerning pundit accuracy. I have a feeling that the scores are going to be really, really low.

All I ask is that no one add me to the site for predicting brain-eating cyborgs and such.

There’s a short bit over at Tor.com concerning panels at NYCC here.

I’ve only been involved with 1 panel at NYCC in my life, so my experience is quite limited. In general, I agree with the sentiment in the piece – the panel was too big. If your purpose is to let fans interact and question authors in a satisfying way, I think a panel half that size would have been ideal.

On the other hand, we had a big crowd that I got to prance around like a jackass in front of (my favorite promotional technique), and if we cut 5 of those authors would we have done so well? Probably not.

Next time I do a Con, friends, let’s organize our own unofficial Jeff Somers Panel: You guys, me, a tavern. You buy the drinks, I answer the questions, someone volunteers to a) carry me to my hotel room and b) call my wife and explain it’s not my fault.