Bullshit

Milled, Swilled

Author: November 25, 2008

Stepped out with The Duchess to the SFWA Reception (the Mill & Swill, as I hear it’s known) in Manhattan last night. Joined there by the UberAgent, who introduced me around to some folks. I always feel so awkward at these things – it’s like when you’re introduced as a writer, folks want you to be witty and entertaining and possibly pants-wetting drunk. Or at least that’s what I always suspect. A lot of that may be my own issues, I’ll grant you, but I still feel like this happens over and over again:

UberAgent: This is Jeff Somers, author of The Electric Church.

Folks: Ooh, nice to meet you.

Me: Uh. . .yes. . .hi. . .Electric. . .Something. <Jeff’s pants fall down with a comical wilting sound>

Again, maybe my own issues here.

Also met some of my Corporate Masters. As Corporate Masters go, the folks at Orbit are Good People, which, translated, means they like an open bar as much as I do.

We didn’t stay too long, though; aside from my belief that a little Jeff in Public goes a long way, we were also exhausted from a weekend trip. The Mill & Swill is always fun, though, and I think we’ll make an effort to show up every year, if only so I can force the UberAgent to buy me an $11 Glenlivet.

Bullshit

Geetar

Author: November 13, 2008

Well, no one asked for this, but lord knows I have never let that stop me: I am posting here 3 MP3s of me playin’ guitar. They’re more or less songs, I guess, written by me. In the sense that they are not, as far as I know, songs you would recognize as anyone else’s, though I am sure I have stolen all the riffs and arrangements from someone else without realizing it. Please do not identify where I stole everything from, damn you.

Song28

Song30

Song35

Anyway, here’s how I made these snogs, in case you’re interested:

  1. An Ibanez ArtCore AF75 hollow-body electric guitar, plugged into
  2. A Fender Frontman Reverb Amp, used as a pre-amp, plugged into
  3. A Kubuntu PC.
  4. Using Hammerhead Rhythm Station (run via Wine) for drums
  5. Recorded and mixed using Audacity.

DISCLAIMER: Babe, I know these aren’t great music. I know the mixing is terrible and there’s distortion. I know I hit some sour notes and my grasp of Key is, um, fragile. These are posted for fun, and because I’ve been taking guitar lessons for a while now and I like to make things.

That said, these are Copyright (C) 2008, me, bubba. Steal them and I will ineffectually insult you over the Internets.

Bullshit

GAMING THE SYSTEM

Author: November 4, 2008

Creating, Managing, and Getting Lost in My Own Damn ARG

LIKE MOST authors, I endured years and years of people giving me The Look—you know, that mixture of pity and amusement that looks like constipation—whenever I mentioned being a writer. The Look, loosely translated, means gosh, is that why you look so malnourished and scurvyish, because of the poverty and the alcoholism? and wasn’t ever really all that far from the truth, at least up until 1997, when I finally discovered that whiskey does not, in fact, contain vitamins.

So, when I sold my second novel, The Electric Church, I had a rush of enthusiasm which inspired me to take a shower, cut my long, tangled hair, and wear pants for the first time in years. I also started creating a web site long before the book had even been copy-edited. I had the idea to create a ‘real’ web site for the eponymous church, and embedded some simple codes and puzzles into the pages using every old-fashioned HTML and javascript trick I could think of. When my publisher saw the final result, they decided it beat trying to come up with a web site themselves and hired a professional designer to create a nifty, candy-colored Flash site for it. They also suggested we take the puzzles to the next level and create a modest Alternate Reality Game (ARG) to make the site fun and promote the book.
(more…)

Bullshit, Filthy Lucre

wikipedia = fun

Author: October 26, 2008

Years ago in my halcyon childhood, my suffering parents bought my brother Yan and I a set of the Columbia Encyclopedia, which I guess is what people who can’t afford the Britannica buy their kids. It was pretty impressive – a rich, dark blue faux-leather binding, gilt-edged paper, all that. My suffering parents were obviously still hoping their childrens’ ability with trivia and video games would somehow translate into well-paying careers, and thought the encyclopedia would help.

I immediately looked myself up, and was amazed – and dismayed – to discover that I wasn’t in there. And me, a famous Defender Prodigy with the high score in no fewer than three New Jersey arcades.

A few years ago, when Wikipedia (motto: almost!) was the hot new Internet toy, I created my own page there. Ah, those were the days. I played it straight; no claims of royalty, nothing about me inventing the automobile, very little megalomania in general. It was fun while it lasted; a few years ago I was deemed not important enough and my page was deleted. And so far none of you bastards have been moved to re-create it, and I hate you for the lapse, believe me.

I wouldn’t bother re-creating it myself, for a variety of reasons. Number one, I have no desire to get into a humiliating battle with Unseen Millions about whether or not I am a “notable” author (hint: I am probably not). Number two, let’s face it: a Wikipedia page is not exactly an honor. Wikipedia is about as reliable and useful for real data-gathering as interviewing drunks down by the pier. Sure, you might get some decent info, and it’ll certainly be entertaining, but you can’t list any of them as references.

This may sound like sour grapes. Would I burn Wikipedia down if it were a structure, in revenge for my de-listing? Sure. I also flatly refuse to play first-base for the New York Mets, the picky bastards. Since it is an amorphous web-page and not a structure, or a person whose kneecaps I can break and then run away, I must choose to suffer the humiliation and carry on.

Of course, Wikipedia is damned entertaining; I spend hours every week just paging through it, reading fascinating entries and wondering if any of it is actually true.

If anyone is nuts enough to actually want to create a new Wikipedia page for me, I encourage you to be creative. I wouldn’t mind being a former President of Nauru, or a former Bounty Hunter. Give me some magical powers, too, if you don’t mind, and for god’s sake use some free stock photography for my photo – some good-looking, strong-jawed fellow, but with a rakish quality. I mean, go all out.

The Man will likely delete my new entry, so it might be best if you organized a bit and formed a team who would be prepared to post replacement pages as quickly as they come down, using slight alternate spellings to evade automated checks. Naturally I’m not actually endorsing any of this, but in case you’re determined no matter what I say, I’d like my middle name to be Rex.

Bullshit

Why I Do Not Hate The Kindle, Despite the Fact That I Do Not Own One, and Most Probably Never Will, Unless The Earth is Conquered by Hideous Lizard Aliens and Our Alien Overlords Decree That We Must All Use Kindles, Which Would be Insane

Author: October 10, 2008

The other afternoon I wandered downstairs onto the first floor of the Somers Manse for the first time in weeks. I avoid the first floor because the front door is located there and past experience has taught me that the front door is the gateway through which the outside world torments me. Neighbors always want to speak with me about vague “behavior” issues, their children always want to taunt me with childish insults and name – calling, and authorities of all kinds are always delivering subpoenas or demanding admittance to ask me questions – all very tedious.

So, despite the fact that it inspires the local kids to more and more creative names for me, I tend to stay upstairs, where I have everything I need: My tatter bathrobe, my Converse Chucks, bottles of Rye in the desk drawers (for sustenance), and plumbing facilities. Whenever I am lured downstairs I always seem to get into trouble.

This time, however, I found to my delight my first royalty statements for The Electric Church. Discovering that several thousand people you don’t know personally have opted to spend money on your book is always cause for celebration, and the next 24 hours are a bit of a blur.

When I woke up, I took another glance at the statement and discovered that a good number of folks had bought TEC electronically. I don’t know for sure that all – or any – of these were Kindle sales, but I assume at least some of them must have been. This remains a tiny, tiny portion of my sales, but you hear a lot about the Kindle. Personally, I’d rather have bamboo shoots slid under my toenails than read a book on the kindle, but then I am also the Last Man on Earth to Not Own a Personal Cell Phone, so I’m obviously an idiot. When the Kindle first emerged I thought it would die a quick, smothered death, but it hangs on, doesn’t it. not exactly taking the world by storm, but still. . .there.

I’ll probably never own one, or anything similar. I just like books too much. While my sad devotion to an ancient technology is. . .well, sad, it doesn’t bother me much. I enjoy gloating over my stacks and stacks of cheap paperbacks too much. Carrying around all the same books in one brick-like digital reader just depresses me. Plus, I worry about DRM issues and not actually owning anything. It’s bad enough that I had to replace all my old Iron Maiden cassettes with CDs, if I have to buy old 1980s Del Rey fantasy books all over again just to satisfy my OCD tendencies, I will cry. And I don’t doubt at all that 10 years from now the kindle will be a convenient paperweight and we’ll all have to re-buy all of our books on the Apple iBook or some such bullshit.

Still, I don’t hate the kindle. No, really. The rosy glow of book geek joy that emanates from folks when they’ve just bought one means that at least people are excited about reading, and as an author I can’t look down on that, now can I? If it gets people to read more, than I’m all for it. Just like that dreadful Harry Potter.

Oh well. No one is paying any attention to a rummy skiffy writer like me, and thank goodness. If people were paying attention to  me, we’d likely be going through some sort of worldwide economic crisis. . .oh dear.

, Bullshit, Filthy Lucre

Coffee Dystopia

Author: September 28, 2008

The Duchess is running a half marathon in Jersey City today, so I am sitting in a Starbucks fine-tuning a manuscript and waiting for her to finish up so I can cheer her at the Finish and go home. And man, Starbucks is a horrible, horrible place. It’s been a long while since I’ve been in one, drinking their bitter, over-roasted coffee and listening to their bland, corporate soft-rock music. And I actually had to use the word venti <shiver> (which, thank goodness, WordPress’ spellcheck flags). I’ll need a shower when I get home. Just wanted to share that.

Bullshit

Not a Joiner

Author: September 24, 2008

MySpace is haunting me.

Like a lot of clueless morons, I signed up for a MySpace page a while ago because some random person told me it was a necessary marketing tool. Every now and then I wake up on a strange park bench wearing a white linen suit that isn’t mine, and I think, damn, it’s time I started acting like a real live professional writer. On the long walk home I ponder what exactly real live professional writer means. I imagine wearing a dinner jacket all the time, smoking a pipe, and being able to quote poetry and Greek tragedies on demand. And then I notice I am walking by a windowless place named Teddy’s Bar and I forget all about it.

Sometimes, though, I make these spastic efforts at being all adult and professional, and lame attempts at branding or marketing result. Like, for example, setting up a MySpace page.

The great part about the MySpace page is that I don’t remember much about it. I think I set it up and then forgot about it, imagining it would yield all sorts of markety goodness all automatically and shit, without my intervention. Which is how I like to run things whenever possible. Hell, I would write my books without my direct conscious involvement if I could.

Instead, all I’ve gotten out of MySpace are endless friend invitations. And this is just underscoring and exacerbating my general misanthropy. I’m socially awkward, and this apparently extends to the Internets as well. As a matter of fact, it’s worse. In real life when total strangers try to flag me down for a conversation, or invite me to functions, I can generally do something to signal to them that I would rather make a total ass out of myself in public and be hated for all eternity than speak with them – you know, feign a seizure, feign not speaking English, all the usual tricks. On the Intarwebs, this is not possible. I get these friend requests and they just sit in my Junk email like radioactive nuggets until I turn off the PC and they get flushed away. Meanwhile, someone somewhere places me in their asshole folder for never responding.

I know it’s possible to delete your MySpace account and stop giving out the impression that I want to be people’s friends, but this would involve some actual effort, unlike the act of setting up the account in the first place, which basically involved me thinking casually that I ought to do it and then somehow, in a process probably involving black magic and elves, my account had been created.  Aside from crippling misanthropic tendencies, I am also: incredibly lazy. I’m the whole package!

How can a man be this socially awkward and yet achieve some modest success as a writer? Science has no answers.

Bullshit

When the Music’s Over

Author: September 9, 2008

SO, the book’s done.

INTERIOR: Jeff’s office. A simple wooden desk laden with pornographic magazines and old copies of Who’s Who in Baseball, some filing cabinets, a futon, a hollow-body electric guitar, four cats, and a computer.

Enter JEFF. He is wearing a soiled-looking bathrobe. His hair stands up as if superglued. He is carrying an unlabeled bottle of brown liquid. He sits down at his desk and stares blearily at the computer screen. Slowly he nods off, chin sinking to his chest. Just as the bottle slips from his slackened fingers, three uniformed Helper Monkeys appear, gather up the bottle, make sure Jeff is still breathing, and scamper off, chattering.

In other words, I always find the transition from working like mad on a novel to being done with the novel to be a tough one.  I go from constantly working on a familiar and well-known piece, something I know so well I can jump to tiny details in the manuscript automatically without having to search for them, to having no big project at all.

For a few days I’ll contemplate my next step: Hire mercenaries and try to take over a small, unstable South-American country? See if I can finally gain that 150 lbs I’ve been dreaming of? Start writing that vampire-romance where pure, agape-type love cures vampirism? Begin my campaign to make public pantslessness acceptable to society?

Or, most likely: Sit around getting drunk and hate myself for wasting time? Yup. Let’s go with that.

I hate wasting time, but after a major project it takes me a few days to retread the tires and get started on something else, so for a few days all I do is waste time. So I sit around drinking cocktails and thinking, damn, I ought to be writing something. This way lies madness, of course. And cocktails.

In the mean time, in an attempt to make this dull period not completely useless, I am trying to learn the guitar solo from AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. ANGUS YOUNG WHY DO YOU MOCK ME SO! The man must have freakish hands. Freakish.

, Bullshit, Writing

Reagan Calls Women ‘America’s Little Dumplings’

Author: September 2, 2008

A quick update for all your weirdos who care what I’m up to:

  • Finished my monthly short story on Sunday. For those who may not know, I write a short story a month, rain or shine, inspiration or no. This is mainly an exercise to force myself to finish at least one project a month, and also a way to keep a steady flow of ideas hitting paper. This is especially important when working on a book project like The Eternal Prison, because otherwise some good ideas might wither away as I kill brain cells with reckless alcohol consumption triggered by a phone call from my agent wherein she advises me to add More Unicorn. Writing a story a month has the expected result: 99.9% of my stories are Teh Suck. But a few every year can be earmarked for future rewriting and expansion, and the one I just finished is one of them. It’s got potential.
  • Finished my latest revision of The Eternal Prison, too. The new draft is much better than the previous draft, which I’d labeled FINAL. Just goes to show, you think a book is done, you show it to your editor and she kicks it back to you, you spend a few hours in the bathroom with a gun in your mouth, weeping, and then suddenly you realize she just made your final draft look like clown shoes. And BAM! A better draft is born.
  • The new issue of The Inner Swine, my little zine, is being proofread. Whether it will actually mail in the month of September remains to be seen. You can check out the editorial from it at the web site, and then send me two bucks for a sample issue, you cheap bastards.
  • I am surrounded by cats. And I have no pants on.

Not too shabby. Between all that, baseball, and avoiding the various political conventions like plague-infested blankets, I’m a busy, busy man.

Bullshit, Writing