We Are Not Good People

Avery Cates & Ustari Cycle Short Stories

Author: September 16, 2024 0 Comments

"The Winter Siege" & "Come and See" Covers

Good news! In October of this year I’ll be publishing a brand-new Avery Cates short story, “The Winter Siege” and a brand-new Ustari Cycle short story, “Come and See.” Instead of putting them up on Amazon et al, this time I’m putting them out on the ol’ short story Substack: Writing Without Rules: From the Notebook. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you get a short story every week! And in October, two of those stories will be The Winter Siege and Come and See.

The Winter Siege is set after the events of The Machines of War, but is fairly standalone. Avery Cates has made a home of sorts for himself with a colony of survivors who have taken over one of New York City’s old skyscrapers. Living like a strange shadow of the way the One Percent used to, Cates knows he’s only useful to the residents as an enforcer, but he likes the obscurity and relative peace. Until that’s all shattered when two people arrive bearing a very unexpected — and potentially world-changing — package.

Come and See finds everyone’s favorite Tricksters, Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags,  trying to work off a debt with a mid-level magician running a blood farm out of a dilapidated old apartment building. But everyone there is dead, and they all died staring at something, and then they hear the scrape of a footstep from up above …

Go on, sign up so you can read ’em next month!

Avery Cates, Fiction, Short Stories, We Are Not Good People

Idea Origins

Author: May 20, 2020 0 Comments

Like any writer, I’ve been asked numerous times ‘where do you get your ideas’? I used to react to these questions with a snarl and a sarcastic remark, followed by a sassy strut accompanied by the theme music I hear constantly in my head1. The reason for the reaction was due to the nature of the question: It’s both incredibly complex and brutally simple. I steal most of my ideas from stuff I read, watch, or listen to, and I have no idea how the process actually happens in my brain. How do I go from watching a rerun of Community on a Saturday night at 3AM after drinking an entire bottle of Scotch to writing a novel about superintelligent cats who subjugate mankind and make us all run around randomly so they can chase us? I have no idea.

Now that I’m older and more mature, however, I realize that this impossibility is exactly why people ask the question. How do you know if your ideas are any good? Sadly, there’s really only one way: You spend several years of your life writing them, and then show as many strangers as possible. Which is a lot of investment for someone who doesn’t have the careless, unearned confidence that I have. So I’ve taken to being more thoughtful about my responses to the ‘ideas’ question, and one thing I’ve realized is how often I have to have an idea several times before it actually turns into something resembling a good story.

Trickster Mark One

Take my novel Trickster, which morphed into the novel We Are Not Good People. I had the original idea that formed the kernel of that story back in 1995 or so; a flabby, not particularly good short story in which a stunned drifted encounters a man floating several inches off the ground as pigeons sat on his shoulders and head. The old man tells the drifter that its easy to do magic, you just have to be willing to be alone.

It wasn’t a great story, but it was a great tone, and the central image stuck with me. I carried that idea with me for twenty years or so. I never re-worked the story, though hints of it made their way into other stories, references to the old man, to the drifter, the fucking pigeons.

When I finished the Avery Cates series in 2010, I started thinking about what I wanted to write next. I found myself thinking of the old man again. That central idea — magic was possible if you’re willing to be alone, really, truly alone, came bubbling back and slowly morphed into the idea of blood magic, magic that literally stole lives to function. That, I thought, was loneliness, and I was off to the races.

In a way, I stole from myself. I developed an idea into a bad story in 1995. That kept the idea preserved in amber over the years, so when in 2011 or so I chipped the amber away that idea was still there, fresh and ready.

That’s one reason why I write a short story every month in a notebook. Most of these stories are terrible–but they each enclose an idea that I might be able to use later. I also write these stories because an old witch once told me the month I don’t write a story is the month I die, but that’s a whole other post, man.

Trickster, We Are Not Good People, Writing

Upcoming Releases

Author: February 10, 2016 0 Comments

It’s tax season, which here in the Somers Compound buried deep under Hoboken (and we do mean buried, as the city removed the entrance/exit long ago) means that we’re slowly being crushed under 1099 forms and other tax documents (delivered via pneumatic tube). When you provide 45% of the Internet’s book-related Think Pieces, you accrue a lot of 1099s. Add on the statements from your agent, your DIY publishing endeavors, and your many Defense Department contracts for the Superweapons Based on Cats project, and it gets kind of cluttered.

Naturally, we’re aiming to make this year even more complex. Aside from writing even more book-related freelance articles to gain more of those precious 1099 forms, we also have a number of fresh, piping hot stories scheduled for 2016. This is all part of my plan to keep the pennies and nickels trickling in so I can fill the underground pool with filthy coins and swim around in them. Which is a lot harder to do than Scrooge McDuck makes it look.

So, here’s a breakdown of everything Somers coming at you this year, so you can plan accordingly and start polishing those nickels and pennies for me.

Avery Cates

The experiment of writing a novel in novella-sized chunks was a lot of fun, but all great experiments must end, so I’ll be releasing Parts 5 & 6 (The Bey & The City Lord) as well as the omnibus edition containing all 6 parts, The Shattered Gears, on 2/15. I originally said they’d go up for pre-order on that date, but now I think I’ll just release ’em. I wanted to keep the print version of the omnibus to $6 or so, but as it turns out that was drunk talk, as the cheapest I can make it is $14.

The Beycity lord_coverThe Shattered Gears Omnibus

The Ustari Cycle

There will be new additions to my other series, The Ustari Cycle, which began with 2014’s We Are Not Good People (technically, with 2013’s Trickster, but that became Part 1 of WANGP). I have four novellas/short stories scheduled for 2016 from this universe. Three of them will be published as eBooks from Pocket Star:

  • The Stringer (August 2016) (Pre-order now!)
  • Last Best Day (2016)
  • The Boom Bands (2016)

And one short story, Crossed Wires, is a collaboration with Stephen Blackmoore for the anthology Urban Allies, out in July, combining my Ustari Cycle characters with his Eric Carter universe in an explosive (and cuss-filled) adventure.

Urban Allies Coming 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bonus Situation

Finally, a standalone short story of mine titled The Bonus Situation is scheduled to appear in Ragnarok Publications’ Mech: Age of Steel anthology. Technically, this is scheduled for January 2017, but what the heck. I’ve already typed all this, I’m not going to erase it now.

mech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There you go: All the Somers fiction you can handle. Or not handle.

Avery Cates, BAM!, Filthy Lucre, Ustari Cycle, We Are Not Good People

We Are not Good People & WDAC

Author: July 23, 2015 0 Comments

This year at the 2015 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, I’ll not only be offering up my presentation on plotting a novel (which was really well-received last year and which will be 150% more awesome this year because I plan to be sober this time) I’ll also be attending the cocktail reception and signing copies of We Are Not Good People (the plotting of which I discussed last year in a WDAC-related post). It’s my understanding that the conference is sold out, so this isn’t really me drumming up attendance (and yes, I fully expect to be sitting there alone, nursing a drink and weeping when absolutely no one buys my book to get signed).

If you’ve read WANGP, then you know the ending sort of folds back on the story, and the ending has been a divisive aspect of the story for some. It was very deliberate, though; Despite the fact that the whole book was more or less pantsed (that is, made up as I went, as opposed to being planned out) I did have the ending in mind as I wrote. As the story progressed, it became clearer and clearer to me that this was the only way the story could end.

One of the hardest things to come to terms with as a writer isn’t the people who think your works sucks and that you’re a terrible writer–every author will have those folks, and what can you do? No, it’s the people who love your work but hate one thing vehemently. When people tell me they loved We Are Not Good People but hate the ending, it’s difficult, because you feel like you disappointed Your People. These aren’t haters, they’re fans, and so their feelings about your work matter a lot more than the people who think you’re a Pantsless Wonder.

While writing this book, though, it slowly dawned on me that the whole point was really the friendship between the main character, Lem, and his nonsexual life partner Pitr Mags. This was a bromance, really, and Lem has nothing without his friend. As that friendship loomed larger and larger I realized, in the end, that Lem would do anything to save that friend–and thus that friendship. At a certain point, there was really only one way it could end. Sometimes plotting is like that: There’s only one possible ending, whether other people get it or not.

I’ll be talking about WANGP a bit during my Writer’s Digest presentation, and I’ll be ready to sign copies. Or sit there getting soused and muttering obscenities at people, whichever.

Bullshit, More Shit I Gotta Do, Ustari Cycle, We Are Not Good People, Writing

“disturbing but compelling”

Author: March 16, 2015 0 Comments

Over at Fresh Fiction, Jennifer Barnhart reviewed We Are Not Good People and said, in part

“Jeff Somers has created a disturbing but compelling world for Lem and Mags. WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE is gritty and thought-provoking. These people are truly not good people. Lem says this over and over in the story, always including himself, and he’s accurate. He’s not “good people,” but he’s definitely worth reading. I can’t wait to read more from Jeff Somers, because he knows how to balance a strong plot with characters who aren’t nice but they’re interesting, to create an unsettling story that will linger with you.”

BUY ME

BUY ME

To say this is pretty much the ideal reaction I could get to my work would be an understatement.

BAM!, Ustari Cycle, We Are Not Good People

Prompting the Question

Author: December 27, 2014 3 Comments

Just a story.

Just a story.

So, as noted in this great review from Matt Handle, many people are assuming/hoping that the new Avery Cates story The Shattered Gears is a teaser for a new Cates novel. I’ve had a lot of emails along those lines, asking if this is leading to something and if I have a clear storyline for a new Cates book, and whether The Shattered Gears is part of that.

The answer is yes and no. Yes, I have a very clear idea of what Cates gets up to and a lot of notes for a new novel. And yes, The Shattered Gears is directly connected, so it’s canon, baby. In fact, Gears started off as a way of organizing some thoughts for a new Cates book. But no, I have no plans to write that book right now. It will remain just a collection of ideas for now.

The same goes for We Are Not Good People and the Ustari universe. Do I have ideas for another novel or fifteen with Lem and Mags? Sure! Am I working on them right now? No! Reasons include:

  • It’s the holidays and I am incapacitated by drink more or less continuously
  • No one has paid me an enormous amount of money to write those novels (yet)
  • My work writing and composing the world’s worst rock songs in my home office takes too much of my time
  • I’m far too busy perfecting my Irish accent
  • I’m actually in the middle of writing a novel now that not only has nothing to do with Cates or Lem Vonnegan, it has nothing to do with cyborgs or magic at all.

Anyways, I’m delighted people seem to enjoy The Shattered Gears so much. If it sells well I might make releasing Cates stories a more or less regular event, though not all of those potential stories would be directly related to a new storyline, some might be flashbacks. Who knows? It might be fun.

Anyways, you know the best way to guarantee sequels? Buy the existing books and then emotionally manipulate everyone you know to follow suit.

Avery Cates, Fiction, Ustari Cycle, We Are Not Good People, Writing

Retread: The Journey

Author: December 4, 2014 2 Comments

BUY ME

BUY ME

(NOTE: I posted this back in February 2013, reposting here slightly altered)

We Are Not Good People: I started writing this book in 2010. It’s amazing sometimes how you start with a germ of an idea and then end up somewhere far away from that. Here’s the first ~850 words I wrote for this book. I trashed this (and several versions afterwards) before settling on the final approach in October 2010; much of this is still in the final version, though in a different form, and spread over many sections.

WANGP Draft Zero, August 2010

WHEN I was nine years old, my father picked me up after one of my Cub Scout meetings at the old church, which was strange because my father had left us the year before and I hadn’t seen him since. He drove an old boat of a car, cracked seats and broken radio. I remember climbing around the front and back seats, so much room it was like a little portable house on wheels. He let me; he just sat behind the wheel with a pint bottle of brandy between his legs, humming old songs as he drove.

We merged onto an empty highway, amber lights driving away the darkness but creating a weird Marscape of road, like we’d left the real world behind and were driving in the Ghost World. I didn’t know where we were going. Dad took regular sips from his bottle and answered all my questions with grunts and monosyllables. I had a lot of questions. I remember being really excited, after all this time Dad had come to take me on a trip, and after I got tired of not getting answers to my questions I settled into the back seat with my Webelos handbook and tried to figure out where we were going—amusement parks, zoos, the beach all seemed likely candidates. Eventually I remember falling asleep, liking the sensation of rocking back and forth in the big back seat, the smell of cigarettes and the sound of the wind.

Dad shook me awake and we were out in the middle of nowhere in the parking lot of a small square tavern with a huge red neon sign that said, simply, BEER. I followed him sleepily inside, where a handful of people who all seemed to be wearing flannel shirts and baseball caps were scattered around the tiny, gloomy room. Dad lifted me onto a stool and I remember slouching there, still asleep, looking owlishly around.

“Bourbon,” Dad said. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d picked me up. “Neat. A coke for the kid.”

This was magic. The man behind the bar, who was fat and red in the face, his gray-white hair greasy and pasted flat against his round head, put a glass in front of me with a grin and used a gun on the end of a rubber hose to fill the glass with soda. Soda from a hose! It was magic, and I immediately schemed to have one installed at Mom’s house, because she always forgot to do the shopping and there was never anything to eat or drink.

Dad didn’t pay any attention to me, just sat there staring at the silent TV mounted up on the wall and sipped from his glass. Any time I finished a soda the man behind the bar waddled over, smiling, and refilled my glass. Free soda from a hose. After a while I eased off my stool and wandered over to where a trio of ancient electronic games sat blinking dully. Dad watched me for a moment, then shrugged and called the bartender over, fishing out a five dollar bill and holding it up.

“Give the kid some quarters,” he said.

I drank soda until I had to pee so badly my legs ached, and played fifteen games of bowling before finally giving in to the realities of the situation and heading for the bathroom. It was a scary bathroom. It had a door that didn’t close right and was dark, everything in it cold and slimy. To get there I had to pass by an old man of at least my Dad’s age sitting at the end of the bar. He wore a white suit with no tie or socks, just white pants and jacket that seemed too light for the weather and a white shirt. He was a mass of wrinkles. His hair was long and slightly curly, and his nose dominated his face, making him resemble a squirrel. I didn’t want to push past him to get to the bathroom, and hesitated for a second or two while my kidneys swam up behind my eyes, bulging them out. Finally I screwed up my courage and hustled past. He just grinned at me.

###

I got bored after a while. The games were old and creaky and not fun and after my seventh or eighth soda the impossible happened and I didn’t want any more of them. Dad just sat and drank and stared. I was afraid to make much noise or bother him, remembering how terrifying he was when angered, and tried to find other ways to amuse myself. I looked around and found the man in the white suit staring at me. He smiled and waved, and I looked away. When I stole a glance back at him, he waved again, and I realized with a start that his fingertips were on fire. As he moved them back and forth through the air they flickered and smoked.

The flames were blue-green. As I stared the man winked at me.

I looked around, but no one else seemed to have noticed. Everyone else might as well have been asleep. Not me. My heart was pounding

We Are Not Good People, Writing

Why I’ll Never Be an Actor

Author: October 27, 2014 3 Comments

A face for radio!

A face for radio!

So, the other day I was recorded reading a brief excerpt of We Are Not Good People for The Author’s Corner, a public radio program. When I was initially approached for this, I was excited, of course, and also pretty confident. I’ve done a fair share of readings, after all, and I think I have a good sense of what works in a reading and how to read my own work so it’s a little entertaining. I’m fairly confident in my voice; while I don’t think it’s some sort of Saruman-like instrument, people don’t run screaming when I start to read some fiction. Or, more commonly, when I stand up in a tavern and begin to recite The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock from memory, as I am wont to do.

As usual, life noticed me being cocky and confident, and decided that Somers boy needs to be taught a lesson.

First, the first twelve or so excerpts from the book I submitted were rejected. We only had about a minute to work with, so the excerpt had to do a lot of work: Be entertaining, be coherent, have an arc and a point, not be too gory or profanity-laden (that last one, from a book written by me and involving blood magic, was a doozy). Finding the ideal piece to read was a struggle, and just when I thought we’d failed, I hit on the perfect excerpt: The very beginning of the book.

Triumph! We were both happy with that choice. So I sailed into the offices of my redoubtable lit agent and met the producer of the show. He unpacked his equipment and created a mini-studio in an unused office, and we started working on a very brief introduction. This was harder than expected, too, but we finally nailed it down and I commenced reading. And discovered I could never be an actor.

Which I guess I knew.

Take after take, the producer gave notes. Good notes, really. Smart notes. And while I always considered myself at least modestly facile with performance — see my leading man-caliber performances as part of Two Men Have Words, for instance — even I knew that I wasn’t really nailing it. I knew what I wanted to do, how I wanted it to sound, and yet when I read it I would lose the thread of what I was hearing in my head and it would be … not so good.

Actors, I imagine, have to go through something like that. Being told their performance was just not … quite right, do it again. And then that the version they gave five minutes ago was 98% right, but this most recent one was only 60%. And then you finally nail one bit that was problematic, and feel great, only to hear that there are 15 more things to tweak. It’s exhausting. It didn’t exactly make me think that actors deserve the tens of millions of dollars they get for their films, but it drifted me a little closer to that conclusion.

In the end, I got it right. For about eighty total seconds of audio we worked for an hour and a half. It’s probably the longest I’ve gone without a drink in years.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, More Shit I Gotta Do, We Are Not Good People