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Bad Review Contemplations

Author: March 17, 2008

Ego surfing again – very bad habit of mine – and found this interesting rumination on bad reviews which mentions The Electric Church. An interesting quote:

2. Do you temper your feelings about books you didn’t like, so as not to completely slam them? Why or why not?

. . .I also temper them because sometimes I truly see reasons why others may like the book. For instance “The Electric Church” by Jeff Somers. I didn’t like his writing style, or the style/genre of the story. The writing style to me was annoying, but the story style may really appeal to some. I know it would, because I was one of the few that didn’t really like “Altered Carbon” by Richard Morgan. But in sci-fi circles, it is considered a great novel. And it is along some similar lines as “The Electric Church”.

Since I’m generally fascinated by bad reviews of my own work (which aren’t as rare as they should be, dagnabbit) I found this an interesting read. One important thing to remember, sometimes, is that reviewers are people and readers too, and they usually have very good reasons for not liking your work. You don’t have to agree with them, of course, but you should also remind yourself that you’re probably not half as smart and talented as you think you are. Or is that just me? Probably just me.

Musings

Author: March 15, 2008

I’m sitting here working on Avery Cates #3, with a numb butt and a sleeping cat on the couch next to me, and my mind is wandering. A wandering mind writes no books, which is bad, as I believe my editor at Orbit will break my legs if I’m late with this manuscript.

I’m also enjoying a nice glass of Scotch as I write, which is one of the wonders of the modern age, that I can procure and drink such fine whisky any time I like (Glenrothes Select Reserve in case anyone’s interested). In the media writers are often portrayed as borderline (or even full-blown) high-functioning alcoholics, with the open bottle next to their desk. Indeed, a lot of great writers did hit the sauce pretty hard. Every few weeks or months I end up having a drink at The White Horse Tavern in Manhattan, which is where, of course, Dylan Thomas met his wet end. But I’ve always been suspicious of the old saw about inebriated writers – I don’t get much writing done when drunk. One nice drink after dinner, no problem. Even two sometimes causes no harm and I get a lot done while sipping the good stuff. But three sheets to the wind? Even if I did try to write, it would end up a sloppy batch of incoherency.

Those of you just about to say and what would the difference from your sober writing be can just stuff it. I’ve heard them all.

So that’s an interesting question I don’t think I’ve ever seen treated in an author blog or literary web site. How much does booze help or hinder the process? I mean, not all writers drink, of course, and even those who do like to tip a glass have varying degrees of tolerance and appreciation, ranging from the folks who’ll have a single glass of sherry on New Year’s Eve to those like me who have to measure their whisky intake in units similar to crude oil (i.e., the barrel). But it’s certainly part of the writing mythos that we’re all unapologetic boozers. Yet I’ve never seen a serious attempt to quantify the affect booze has on writing. As usual, Your Humble Author here is more than willing to sacrifice his time and, more importantly, his dignity, on the question. So here’s my personal table of booze intake versus literary output:

Number of Whiskies Literary Output
1 Mellow, contemplative mood resulting in intricate plot ideas and soulful dialogue.
2 I begin to think what I’m writing might be the best stuff I’ve ever done, though I remain cautious.
3 I have written four words in the last half hour, but they are fucking golden
4 Man, this commercial for life insurance is the saddest thing I have ever seen. I am weeping openly and don’t care who knows it. I’m going to adapt it for a scene in my science fiction novel about murderous home appliances taking over the earth. I think I may be a genius.
5 I suddenly realize I have fallen asleep and drooled all over my pages, smearing the words beyond comprehension. That, and I need to use the bathroom. Immediately if not sooner. I don’t think I will write any more tonight.

So there you have it, a scientific examination of the effect of liquor on my writing. I hope the world benefits from my fearless reporting. What about you? The world needs more data points so the young writers of the world can learn from their elders and make good decisions about whether to drink and write.

Ah, Sweet Airports

Author: March 8, 2008

My wife always checks bookstores for my books when she travels, and she sent this from the Denver airport last week:

TEC at an airport!

I am all the way on the right, right next to Joe Hill. PRAISE THE LORD WE’RE IN AIRPORT BOOKSTORES. I expect to be rich in 5. . .4. . .3. . .2. . .1. . .

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God Wants You to Self-Publish

Author: March 2, 2008

My wife just called from an airport to tell me that The Electric Church is sitting there on airport bookstore shelves. That’s pretty cool.

As some of you may know, I publish a zine, The Inner Swine. I’m putting together the 50th issue right now, actually (late; it’s the March 08 issue and it’s now. . .March 08). For a few years I had national and international distribution for the zine, and it was on sale in places like Japan, Ireland, Seattle. Pretty cool to get emails from people saying they were in the Tokyo Tower Records and found my zine.

Alas, those days are gone. My distributors have largely gone out of business, and I’m down to a few hundred hard-core fans, which is actually nice as I don’t have the energy for all the folding and stapling required for sending 1200 copies out to the world any more.

I do publish my own fiction in TIS – no, I don’t take submissions; it’s a personal zine and I publish myself in it, and whoever I decide to make exceptions for. Self-publishing can be a slippery slope for a writer, because the common advice is that publishers don’t want to see anything that’s already appeared out there – be it on the Internet or in your crappy zine. Most of the stuff I put in TIS is kind of just-missed stuff, stories and novellas that I think have a lot going for them but which are not good enough to shop around. This gives them a life they otherwise wouldn’t have.

And that’s the thing – I think self-publishing can, under certain circumstances, be a great thing. You just have to be aware of certain things:

1. You will not get rich self-publishing. For every story of someone who peddles 10,000 copies of their self-published book and parleys that into a big deal with a traditional publisher, there are fifty billion stories of folks with boxes full of their books in their garage. Chances are your sales to non-family and friends will be in the single digits.

2. You won’t get respect self-publishing. No matter how well you do with it, people will sneer at your work and question your sanity. Trust me.

3. A vanity press (like Publish America) is not self-publishing. If you either pay a publisher to publish your book, or take a $1 advance from a company that will then do nothing to promote you and expect to make all its profit from your family and friends buying mandatory copies from you, you are not empowering yourself, you’re being a sucker.

4. Whatever you self-publish probably won’t get published anywhere else. Ever.

That said, if you have something to say and find yourself frustrated by not finding anyone willing to get it out there for you, why not fire up the old desktop publishing program (Scribus is nice and free, but in a pinch any old Word Processor can probably handle it for you) and put out a zine? Or go on over to LuLu.com or similar and put out your book for cheap. You’d be amazed at how much fun it can be to cut out the middle man and sell dozens of copies of your work for a buck or two.

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Fruits of Ego-Surfing

Author: February 23, 2008

I have Google Alerts set to, er, alert me whenever my name or book titles get mentioned out there. It’s always fun to wake up and find out someone has posted about you, even when the post is about how much you suck. No, really – you’d be surprised how much fun even a post entitled JEFF SOMERS SUCKS MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE HAS OR EVER WILL SUCK can be.

Anyway, found this little blog post today, where a guy named Derek James is reading TEC and wonders whether it is worse to be buried alive or trapped inside a cyborg body you don’t control, as in The Electric Church’s monks, and he has a poll set up to see what people think. So, which would it be – buried alive or a Monk? Surf on over and let ‘im know.

TEC in Magyar

Author: February 21, 2008

I woke up this morning to discover that My Corporate Masters had removed the lien on my house, though they’re still garnishing my wages. When I asked why this sudden gift had been given to me, I was put on hold for sixty-seven minutes while Gimme More by Britney Spears played on a loop, and then a gruff voice finally picked up and said “Hungarian Rights.”

Yup, the Hungarian publisher Ulpius-haz has purchased the rights to The Electric Church. I am pleased to welcome my new foreign masters, and hope I can advance their cause of world domination in some small way. Perhaps by assassinating someone? Or maybe selling some books, why not.

I never know if anyone cares about stuff like that – I mean, should I send out an email update to folks? While some people seem politely interested in my career, I have to think what they want to hear about are exciting public appearances or major events, like “I sold the movie rights for eleventy billion dollars and will now proceed drinking myself to death” or “I’ve built a fort out of the couch cushions and there is no power in this world which can make me leave its protective walls”. You know, important shit. I can’t imagine foreign rights makes anyone excited.

Then again, it’s hard to imagine any part of my exciting career – which involves, mainly, petting cats and mixing highballs – warrants an email bulletin. And yet I do occasionally contrive to send them. In a weird way that kind of sums up my career altogether!

Seen Wayne Handcuffed to the Bumper of a State Troopers Ford

Author: February 19, 2008

SO, I’m working on Avery Cates Exciting Adventure #3, which hopefully won’t be the last Avery Cates Exciting Adventure because the character is a lot of fun and I can see him doing all sorts of damage. But you never know, and if we’re selling worse than Pintos in Mexico this may be it. Time will tell.

As usual, I took a break around what I think is the halfway mark to let a few special folks take a gander at it (agent, wife, etc). This is tough. I hate doing it, in fact, because there’s so much yet to be figured out and massaged. Inevitably you get back questions that will be explained later, or comments you know won’t matter once you finish up. Plus, some people (I won’t name any names) can’t seem to read a first-draft without marking every single typo they find, despite your continual pleas that it’s a first-draft and thus plagued by small errors.

Sigh. I don’t know how you handle it. I drink.

Still, it’s a good exercise, because the other inevitability is that someone will note something about the story that just isn’t sitting right, and it’s usually a moment where I thought shit, this is genius and it turns out it’s simply lazy writing*. Like deciding to skip a big chunk of story and tell it via allusions and interior character monologues. Yep, that seemed like a cool, mysterious way to write it up, until someone actually tried to make sense of it and. . .failed.

Frustrating, but this is why I let people read partial manuscripts, to let me do some course-correcting before I get too deep into it. As painful as it is, I’d rather know I’m fucking up now rather than 50,000 words past now.

So that’s me today. My cats are fighting and we’ve had to separate them for a while in hopes that when we re-introduce them in a week or three they’ll blink their eyes and say Golly, who are you? And start purring and licking each other. This may not happen. In the mean time, most of my energies are being spent keeping cats from fighting each other to the death–which is only a minor exaggeration.

*I believe I have patented this style of writing. Let’s call it Stupidism. I am its master.

GUD Magazine

Author: February 9, 2008

Hola,

GUD Issue 2Just a quick note for anyone interested that GUD Magazine #2, containing my story closer in my heart to thee, is out and you – yes you! – can buy a copy.

Check out their site here. Then buy a few copies so’s Jeff can get some liquor monies, and stop this nagging shake that’s been making my handwriting so unreadable recently.

I’ve Got Nothing to Say, Hope You Have a Nice Day

Author: February 8, 2008

You know what the problem with me trying to post on this blog every day? Nothing ever happens to me. Nothing, seriously. I also have very few thoughts which would qualify as “blog-able”. I am sure this surprises no one, especially those who actually read my zine The Inner Swine. The poor souls. If I were to somehow summon the energy to blog every day, the posts would read something like this:

Woke up, still tired. Sat and stared at day-job work for some time while cats batted my ears with their paws, painfully. Finally fed cats to much purring and rejoicing. Wife called me “little man” again while threatening to beat me if the house wasn’t cleaned by the time she got home. Napped some. Had bourbon for lunch again, no regrets.

I don’t think anyone wants something like that.

I do have some news today, though! It’s the Second Annual Fantasy Bookspot Book Tournament! Check out the explanation of what’s going on and note, dearest readers, that The Electric Church has been nominated. If you’re inclined and able, vote the heck out of it. Please. If nothing else, defend it against theBlue Meanies who will call it names and make me cry.

Finally, the ARCs of The Digital Plague are in, and they are gorgeous. Orbit sure knows how to make me look like a genius.