We Are Not Good People

#gettheblood: The Scar Under My Eye

I almost went half blind. WHO DO I SUE?

I almost went half blind. WHO DO I SUE?

SO, when I was little, I wanted a dirtbike. A black Huffy dirtbike, to be precise. My family was sort of amazingly typical middle class, I think: We had a house and a car and me and my brother wanted for nothing, but luxuries like brand-new bikes for your birthday required immense, D-Day levels of financial planning.

I got my dirtbike. For three days I pedaled up and down the block on training wheels, and on the fourth day two kids came by. One knocked me off the bike, and the other pedaled that fucking thing away so fast I was momentarily too shocked by this defiance of the laws of physics to make a scene.

Then, of course, I made a scene. But because of the aforementioned D-Day levels of planning, there was no way in hell that I was getting a replacement bike. My parents made that very clear to me as i sat there weeping openly. There would be no other shiny black Huffy dirtbike. I may be imagining this, but I think my Mother threw her arms open and shouted WELCOME TO JERSEY CITY, MOTHERFUCKER!

My parents weren’t heartless, though. They began working back channels, and a few weeks later secured a used Schwinn Ten Speed for me. It was kind of beat up and always felt like it was about to fall apart, but fuck it, it was a bike. When I was kid, a bike was like a car to an adult. You had to have one. So I learned to ride that bike and I rode it around and after a while I forgot about that Huffy. Except, obviously, I didn’t. I hope that kid got hit by a car two blocks away and got part of that dirtbike shoved up his ass.

ANYWAY, a few years on I took that Ten Speed to college with me. During the summer between my Junior and Senior years, I worked at a Student Center on another campus. I had a choice of taking the slow bus, walking about 2 miles, or riding my bike. Despite the fact that riding my bike required me to ride a thin-wheeled Ten Speed off road a bit, I chose to ride the bike. You can see where this is going: One day, while riding down a wooded path, the chain popped and I went flying. I landed more or less on my face, crushing my glasses, which stabbed into my face just below my eye, and I still have a divot there to this day.

I was a bit in shock, but I calmly got up, put the chain back on, and rode the rest of the way to work. I must have looked pretty bad because upon arrival everyone freaked out and for a few moments I was smothered with attention as first aid kits were broken out and I was assured I could just sit and relax for as long as I needed. Then, I just went back to work. It wasn’t until later that I contemplated how close I’d come to literally poking my eye out. In all the times my Mother had admonished me that things would poke my eyes out, my own glasses had never been on the list.

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Twenty years later, give or take, I write a novel where people are covered in scars because they’re constantly bleeding themselves to fuel magic spells, which require fresh blood to work. We Are not Good People is out in October, and the prequel Fixer is available as a free eBbook right now. Check ’em out, and then send me your own scar stories – the bloodier the better, so e can #gettheblood.

FIXER

Fixer by Jeff Somers

BUY ME.

The prequel novella to We Are Not Good People, Fixer, is officially out today! You can download it onto your kindle at the cost of zero dollars. And here’s why you should:

  • I can momentarily pretend I am hugely successful when Fixer is ranked #1 despite earning me zero dollars.
  • If you don’t, this blog will quickly descend into weepy paeans to the Good Old Days when people loved me.
  • You will really enjoy it, and it will inspire you to purchase We Are Not Good People when it comes out in October. Or possibly to found a new religion based on my teachings. Either way, all good.
  • It’s free. Exactly how cheap do you have to be to not download a free book? Followup question: Are you not cheap at all and simply like seeing me cry? Because I’ll happily send you fetish videos of me weeping, if you want.
  • It’s just 10,000 words, so you can read it on the bus into work and be approximately 1% smarter upon your arrival. That 1% might be the difference between life and death, depending on the nature of your job.

If all that doesn’t convince you, here are the first few paragraphs to read. That’s right, this is a free preview of a free novella. The gods have gone crazy.

FIXER

It should have worked. It did work, right up until it didn’t.

You got your trained bear on a leash, Vonnegan?”

I looked up and stared at Heller, his shaved head flaking into drifts of off-white skin that settled on the shoulders of his black fur coat. The big oversized sunglasses were studded with rhinestones, some of which had fallen off. He looked like he probably smelled, but I wasn’t going to test the theory. He didn’t appear to be wearing a shirt under the coat, though I was fucking relieved to see pants emerging from under its hem. Two kids, Asian and skinny and smoking cigarettes, stood on either side of him. Heller didn’t go for muscle. Heller went for speed.

Next to me, I heard Mags literally growling. I reached up and put a hand on his shoulder. I was slowly starting to realize that Mags had somehow bonded to me in unholy matrimony, and I was beginning to make long-term life plans that involved him.

I took a deep breath. “Listen—”

Heller held up a hand. “Save the bullshit, Vonnegan. You owe me thirty thousand fucking dollars, and you told me you’d have it tonight.”

I leaned back in my chair and let my hand slip off of Mags’s shoulder. I decided that if the big guy went nuts and killed Heller by accident, I would allow it. Around us, Rue’s Morgue flowed and buzzed, populated by a big group of slummers from uptown who’d somehow found the bar. The extra humidity and noise was straining the environment beyond its capabilities, and everything had become smoky and dense, the air getting thicker as more drinks were poured.

I’d never had much energy for bullshit. When I started a lie, it got heavier and heavier until I couldn’t hold it up anymore. So I just went for brutal honesty.

I don’t have it,” I said, spreading my hands. “I had a line on something, but it . . . didn’t work out.”

I pictured the ustari who brought me to this state, her and her lone Bleeder. She was a bottom dweller, going after her own kind. And that meant I wasn’t even a bottom dweller. I was fucking underground.

Heller smiled. His teeth were little green pebbles in his mouth, and I didn’t like looking at them, but I forced myself to smile back. We were equals, I told myself. I’d had ten years of apprenticeship that had gotten me nowhere, and a lot of the . . . people, the magicians, who hung out in Rue’s were way ahead of me, but I was learning fast. Heller acted like he was some sort of fucking Lord of the Shitheads, and I told myself that was an illegitimate position: No one had elected him.

I don’t give a fuck what worked out or didn’t work out: You owe me fucking money and you don’t have it.” He nodded, once, as if coming to a sudden decision. “Go touch your fucking gasam for it, right? Enough screwin’ around.”

Thinking of Hiram and his hot, musty apartment and his tendency to believe that verbal abuse was a fine motivator, I shook my head. Gasam had been one of the first Words I’d learned: teacher, Master. The implied bondage in the word hadn’t sat well with me. That should have been a sign it was all going to hell sooner rather than later.

I shot my cuffs and thought. Anything to not have to crawl back to that fat little thief and beg him for help. Anything. In service to the grift I’d even tried to improve my look by investing in a fifteen-dollar suit from St. Mary’s thrift store; it fit like it had been made for show and possibly out of cardboard. But thirty thousand dollars, I’d recently discovered, was a lot more money than I’d thought. It was turning into an impossible amount of money.

Keeping my smile in place, I shook my head and pursed my lips. “Isn’t come to that yet, Heller,” I said. “Give me a couple more days.”

Heller’s smile widened and he gestured, vaguely, in the air, with one hand. Rings glinted on its wiry fingers. I had a second of anxiety, then the weird sense of blood in the air. Then I was being pushed down into my chair by an invisible force, so hard I couldn’t breathe.

I could Charm ya out of it,” Heller said, stepping over to take hold of an empty chair and dropping it next to me. I could move my eyes but nothing else. Someone behind me, casting spells.

My heart was pounding. Next to me, I could hear Mags, caught the same as me, straining against the spell, trying to launch himself from the chair. I hated Heller, suddenly. He’d seemed vaguely ridiculous before, running his games, dressing like a porn producer from the 1970s. But now I owed him thirty thousand dollars, and I hated him. And I’d come so close to getting out from under him, too.

It should have worked. It did work. Until it didn’t.

 

#gettheblood Videos

As many of you know, I started a little #gettheblood hashtag recently as part of my increasingly desperate efforts to get everyone in the world to buy a copy of my upcoming novels Fixer and We Are Not Good People. I wrote some essays about scars I’ve gotten, since scars factor in the books, and people sent me some of their own scar stories.

I totally encourage this — email your scar stories to me and I’ll do something with them. Recently I’ve made two videos based on the scar stories folks have sent me. First up was Kent Bunn:

And today I posted a new one inspired by a story told by Matt Handle:

Got a scar story to share? Send it on and we’ll do something creative with it.

Get the Blood: The Scar on My Pinky

Almost lost the finger.

Almost lost the finger.

SO, to recap: I’m publishing books this year (Fixer, We Are not Good People) that involve a magic system that requires blood sacrifice, so my main characters (a lot of the characters, actually) are covered in scars. So I thought I’d write a bit about my own scars and invite others to join in (which they have; I’m making videos of some of the responses). Then I’m posting everything with the hashtag #gettheblood, because I am hip and modern and with it.

Last time out, it was the scar on the back of my head, which had not one but three origin stories. This time, it’s the scar on the little finger of my left hand.

THE BURNING QUESTION

Before we go any further – is it pinky or pinkie? I must know before I write the rest of this — aw, too late.

(more…)

Brooklyn Book Festival

BBFSo, looks like I’ll be at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival at the Mystery Writers of America‘s table – precise time to be determined. I’ll be selling books (hopefully I’ll have some early copies of We Are Not Good People to sell) and shaking hands and dancing for nickels, as usual. Bring a lot of nickels, because my dances don’t last long.

WHEN: September 21, 2014, Time TBD

WHERE: Brooklyn Book festival, Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

WHY: The aforementioned dancing.

See y’all there!

Reasons Why You Should Join the WANGP Street Team

Street Team

Street Team

SO, on October 7, 2014, the world will change forever. Well, not really. What’s actually going to happen is my next novel, We Are Not Good People, will be released. Whether or not I spend 2015 dancing on street corners for nickels or ordering rounds of drinks for strangers as I blaze, briefly, in alcoholic splendor before doctors arrive to harvest my ruined body for parts, depends entirely on what happens in the bookstores and online venues in the days and weeks afterwards.

In the past, with the Avery Cates novels, I organized a Street Team (organized may be a strong word here) to help with promotion, and we had a lot of fun, so I’m doing the same, gathering blackguards and bravos from around the world to help make it seem like a passably good idea to spend money on my book. And I want you to join the Street Team. It will be ever so much fun.

We have a forum: http://wearenotgoodpeople.freeforums.net/

The book has a website: www.wearenotgoodpeople.com

I understand your hesitation. I am a notably unreliable author who is easily distracted by glasses of booze and things like videos of kittens acting surprised. So, here are

REASONS TO BE ON THE WANGP STREET TEAM

  1. You love me. You may not realize it, but you do.
  2. You fear me and know if my writering career goes south I will start showing up at your door, begging for a couch to sleep on.
  3. There will be swag — free books, signed things, T-shirts, bookmarks, anything else we cook up to give away or what have you, Street Team members will get first dibs. In the past every member got a T-shirt or a hat and some other stuff just for being awesome.
  4. Meet new people! Who are not me pretending to be other people just to make my Street Team seem huge and imposing, promise.
  5. All Street Team members pat and present earn the Right of Cocktails, which means they can march up to me at any time under any circumstances and, once they’ve identified themselves, demand that I buy them a drink, and I will.
  6. Did I mention the swag?
  7. The forum is there to exchange ideas and suggestions, so if you’ve ever wanted to humiliate and destroy me publicly (and who hasn’t) here is your chance. Why not suggest I dress up in a pig outfit and dance on your lawn? Because if everyone on the Street Team votes for it, I will totally do that.
  8. The abbreviation of We Are Not Good People is WANGP, so you get to throw around the word “Wang” a lot and no one can complain.

    The Pork Avenger (Artist's Conception)

    The Pork Avenger (Artist’s Conception)

  9. Someday, when they decide to make a documentary about me (most probably because I snap mentally in 2016 and start showing up in public in a pig outfit and dancing, eventually becoming known as The Pork Avenger) they will totally come to interview you about it.
  10. Because I am dancing for right now, even though you can’t see it. And also weeping. How can you be so cruel?

So there you have it. There’s no official sign up or anything — just participate. Send me your contact info via email or message, let me know you’re interested, join the forum and say hello and suggest things. What can you suggest? Well, anything:

  • If you know of a bookstore that would love to have me come read, let me know.
  • Ideas for swag or giveaways
  • Ideas for digital graphics that I could create and distribute
  • Forums or other sites that people could post on
  • Ways to tweet and post about the books (or my other books), write reviews, or otherwise spread the word

Or, just lurk until something gets suggested that appeals to you. Literally, anything you want to do is appreciated and I’ll be extremely grateful for.

Onward! I’ve just discovered I will have to have my Pork Avenger outfit let out a little. I’m … not a young man any more.