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Radio Is a Sound Salvation

Author: October 11, 2007

So, I was on the radio last night, on the Joey Reynolds Show, and it was a blast. My lovely wife and I plowed into Manhattan at about 1:45AM and showed up at the studio without incident, and I think I was mildly coherent, emphasis on the word “mildly”.

Everyone was super nice, and Joey is a real marvel. He’s very smart and warm, making you feel at home immediately. His other guest during that hour was the famous writer Marc Eliot, so it was a little intimidating as I was, as usual, the slowest man in the room. Joey was great about throwing me things to talk about, though. When I was first seated in the studio I was alone, and the producer explained the mikes and everything, but no one told me that my time hadn’t yet come and the mike wasn’t going to be on until Joey was ready to talk to me, so I spent a half hour or so grunting into the microphone as Joey and Marc spoke, and no one could hear me.

If nothing else, my name and the title of my book were mentioned a lot, and my pants didn’t fall down while the dying Pac Man sound played softly in the background, so it was a triumph. I almost managed to appear adult and informed, sort of. At least no one had the urge to stand up and slap me during the show.

Anyway, here are some lo-fi MP3s of the show, broken up into 3 delicious parts. Download ’em and listen to me stammer my way through the show!

Part one.

Part two.

Part three.

Huzzah.

Cussin’

Author: October 10, 2007

I’ll be on the radio for the first time in my life tonight. My Corporate Masters are sending along someone to actually speak for me, as my own voice has been deemed “irritating” and “fey” and “mumbling”. They’ve applied some construction-grade duct tape to my mouth and I will pass notes to the Voice Actor, who will read my comments in a stentorian boom.

Well, I should be insulted, but to be honest I’d love to have a Voice Actor follow me around and boom out my thoughts to the world. I’m much better at communication when I’m writing as opposed to speaking. When I speak I forget words and get lost chasing the tail of my admittedly shallow thoughts, and sometimes my pants just fall down with a whoop noise.

Plus, there’s the cussing.

I don’t actually curse all that much in my daily life, although you probably wouldn’t guess that from my fiction. As several reviews of The Electric Church have mentioned the sheer level of foul language in that book, I suppose it’s something to consider—is there such a thing as too many F-bombs? I wouldn’t think so. Foul language, like everything else, is meant to be used.

In real life, however, I sometimes let loose a string of invective at the wrong times. It sort of comes naturally. I don’t curse a blue streak in general conversation, but if my brain decides a phrase or comment needs a little oomph, it does not hesitate to drop a green and shining curse into the stream of words. Sometimes I realize what I’ve just done and sort of freeze up for a second, shocked at what my own subconscious has done. Then I shrug and move on. To hell with it, I figure, I’ll blame it on the booze.

Will they have a delay button on the radio tonight? Lord I hope so. Maybe I should go into the bathroom and just unleash a string of horrible language, get it out of my system.

In my writing, I make no apologies—certainly you get a sense of the language in the book pretty quickly, so I think a quick scan in the bookstore will turn certain people’s hair white and they will put the book back on the shelves with trembling hands, and that will be that. If you skim the book and buy it and then get upset at me for finding 23 new ways to use the word fuck as an adverb—look at me, I’m the Shakespeare of invective, inventing new cursewords!—well, too damn bad. No refunds.

Your Humble Correspondent on the Joey Reynolds Show

Author: October 6, 2007

I was woken up at 2AM last night by several men and women in dark suits, smoking cigarettes and definitely not smiling. Half asleep, I was dragged out of my sheets and into the bathroom, where my head was dunked into ice cold water for thirty seconds. Then I was left to flop on the slimy tile floor for a few moments while one of them sat on the toilet and smoked.

I choked up water and demanded to know what that was for.

“Training,” he said. “Yer goin’ to be up late.”

Believe it or not, I will be on a national radio program, trying to convince people across the country that my book is worth their pesos. I’ll be on The Joey Reynolds Show Wednesday night/Thursday morning:

WHERE: WOR 710 AM

WHEN: 2AM, Thursday 10/11 (or you could think of it as Wednesday 10/10 evening if you like)

WHY: Jeff needs liquor monies, and this will be a good way to announce my new cult I want everyone to join, wherein you give me all your monies.

Please tune in, or at least get the podcast next day, and tell me how incoherent I am. I’ve never been on radio before. I imagine I will have a Brady-esque freezeup moment the second the LIVE light goes on.

The Whirligig is Comin’

Author: October 5, 2007

Since there’s nothing in my contract that specifies I must blog about my own damn book all the time, I think I’ll take a break here and flog something else. My Corporate Masters might send someone to break a finger or perhaps deny me potable water for a few days again as punishment, but screw it. What’s life without chances?

So I direct your attention to The Whirligig. The Whirligig used to be edited by Frank Marcopolos, who later sold it to the indomitable J.D. Finch. The first issue of the new Whirligig is coming out very soon, and I have a story in it. Huzzah for me.

The Whirligig is a litzine, though now that it’s a paying market I’m not sure it’s a zine, really, but screw semantics. What it is is a grand read—always was under Frank’s stewardship and I have no reason to doubt the new incarnation will live up to the legend. Here’s the description:

“Included will be Bram Stoker nominee Nick (Move Under Ground; Under My Roof) Mamatas with another of his well-wrought entertaining/disturbing stories. Longtime zinester Jeff Somers, who has a new novel called The Electric Church (Orbit) out now, will be represented with a hard-edged story that almost needs a new genre to describe it — how about avant-noir? Jeff will be at WFC with the book, as will I, to catch any stray rays of his reflected glory, which I’ll use to illuminate the wonders of The Whirligigzine, Issue 1a. Or something like that. (Jeff’s site, http://the-electric-church.com/ is worth a visit.)

And if you like hard-hitting stories, where horror is an everyday occurrence and the writing keeps you off balance, Karl Koweski and Kevin Dole2 will set you up with a couple that make Palahniuk look like a sissy. And top it all off with an excerpt from Arik Berglund’s novel The Prodigal sending you on an all-expenses-unpaid trip to one of the circles of an outrageous and hilarious Dantesque hell in the modern world.

And then the poets…

But I’ll tell you about them in another update. They deserve one of their own.”

Finch will be attending World Fantasy Con concurrent with the launch of the first issue, so if you’re planning to be there come find us and we will tell you more than you want to know about TW and my story in it. In the mean time, you can also check the Whirliblog to keep updated. Send him some money, dammit.

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Bad Review Revue*

Author: October 5, 2007

Well, there’s another less-than-stellar review of TEC in The Austin Chronicle. Which is fine; I don’t mind bad reviews. Everyone gets them, and I do sincerely think it’s better to have discussion about your book than to be damned with faint praise. Besides, reviews are generally really positive. If it was nothing BUT bad reviews I might be in the news right now as WRITER MISSING BELIEVED ON BENDER but with so many glowing reviews to comfort me, I can’t complain.

There’s always the temptation to spin a bad review, to either pretend it doesn’t exist or to do a movie-blurbation of it and somehow ellipse the damn thing into something positive. For example, with the review linked above I could pull this:

“Somers, clearly a gifted craftsman, writes in a clean, sharp style rooted firmly within the Chandler school. . .”

And have done nothing wrong. Nothing! But that wouldn’t be strictly honest, of course, and I’d likely be haunted by the plump ghost of Ray Chandler at night, rattling his chains and calling me 1930s insults.

So, I plod onward, head down. I find it interesting that people assume I was attempting something cyberpunk; I can see why, but while writing this the word cyberpunk never entered my tiny little pinhead, and I continue to be surprised. I don’t think TEC hits that mark at all, which is fine, since I wasn’t going for it. Maybe it’s the cover that makes people expect cyberpunk. Who can explain such things? Not me.

Anyway, interviews are bubbling under. People have been emailing me questions which I attempt to address with the sobriety and class that everyone has come to expect from me. Which is to say, not much of either. Watch the skies!

*Stolen shamelessly from www.defectiveyeti.com

Another Review

Author: October 3, 2007

Shipwreck innovation is an amazing thing. So far I’ve been able to fashion an amazing array of useful items from the furniture and other items in my hotel room. It’s an old place, a little dusty and smelling strongly of ancient Murphy’s Soap treatments. The walls are papered with several layers of wallpaper, each more ghastly than the last, and the carpet has that perpetually dusty quality that makes you sneeze just by looking at it.

I’ve been in here for weeks now, forced to blog by My Corporate Masters, without a television, without a radio, with a one-way Internet connection, and my supplies of booze–smuggled in via techniques you do NOT want to know about–running low. So if I want anything new, I pretty much have to make it myself. This is not always successful.

Anyway, I’ve caught another nice review of TEC out there on the intarwebs, over on SFRevue, by John Berlyne. He starts off with

“Jeff Somers’ début novel, The Electric Church is a lot of fun, in an explosive and profane kind of way”

and goes from there. Despite not liking the amount of cussing in it, he generally thinks the book is bully. And so will you. Buy twelve.

Dystopias Ahoy!

Author: October 2, 2007

One thing that keeps coming up in reviews of The Electric Church and interviews and all that jazz is dystopias. You know, those broken imagined futures where everything has gone to shit? TEC is obviously set in a dystopia, sure—any place where the cops are more likely to kill you than serve out justice and where cyborgs plot to steal your brain and eat your knowledge is the opposite of a utopia, I think.

I’ve always liked dystopias. Same way I’ve always liked murder and sadness and funerals—for fiction, that is. Happiness is boring. When you’re happy you mix up some cocktails and sit on the deck enjoying the sunset and murmur things like sure is pretty and who in hell wants to read the literary equivalent of that?

When you’re sad and angry, however, the deck holds no joy for you, so you put on a jacket and get out on the street to walk to the local bar for a few bitter shots, and along the way you purposefully bump someone with your shoulder because you’re pissed, and then they spin and yell at you and the next thing you know you’re spitting teeth into the curb and miserable.

Now, that’s interesting. I can write a story about that.

Utopias? Not so much. Even regular old balanced worlds are kind of boring, if you ask me. But my eye always goes for the rot underneath, the horror of a world you don’t actually have any control over. I think that’s the difference—those of us who imagine they have some control over the world imagine utopias or at least balanced worlds. Those of us who believe we’re all just sliding down a meltstream of existential suffering into a big blob of meaninglessness, well, we see Dystopias.

As with much that I say, this is pure, ignorant opinion. I have no proof or evidence to display, aside from my certainty that I am right. You’d be amazed how often people don’t accept that as “evidence” however.

Paul Di Filippo Likes TEC

Author: October 1, 2007

My days vary here in the hotel. When there is a good review or positive media mention of me, sandwiches are left on the small coffee table in the parlor. When a bad review is posted, or if I’ve failed to blog recently, something is stolen from the room in the night. Once they took the toilet handle. Another time they removed all the light switches. I’ve found I can “earn” back some of these items with good press or energetic blogging. This morning, in addition to sandwiches, I got back my underwear, which is very comforting.

The reason is this mention of The Electric Church by Paul Di Filippo on the Barnes and Noble Review. Huzzah! It’s wonderful to be mentioned in such august company, and by someone who is such a great writer himself.

In other news, I’ve been interviewed a few times recently and should have something to show for all my glib, charming answers in a bit. I tried to work in subtle SOSes with clues as to where I’m being held, but I’m sure the bastards will edit it all out, along with my passionate discourse on the usefulness of Helper Monkeys.

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Sweet Action

Author: September 27, 2007

Well, the reading was a blast. Rocky Sullivans is way out in the middle of nowhere Brooklyn, which dampened attendance, but the reading went really well and all had a good time, and I had a few drafts of the wonderful Sweet Action lager they sell there. That stuff is yum. At one point I crawled under the tap and attempted to just pour it into my mouth, but I was restrained.

Anyhoo, those smart kids also cracked the puzzle we’ve been rocking over at the TEC website. If you’re curious about the answers and where they lead, some Googling will get you there, but you might want to start at the beginning and work it out–why not? Might be fun.

Otherwise, I amuse myself by studying my Amazon sales rank and dreaming of sweet, sweet royalties, watching the NY Mets throw their year away, and watching my cats hunt sparrows on our deck. They don’t catch any, but it’s fun to watch’em. I’ve been trying to read “Gödel, Escher, Bach” and my head hurts just thinking about it—who was I kidding? And, of course, putting the finishing touches on the sequel to TEC, The Digital Plague.

Yes, contrary to popular belief, the title of the sequel is not The King Worm. It was for a while, but that’s a different book which may come out later. But at the time we prepared the advance copies for reviewers, The King Worm was the title and it got reported a bunch of places like that. Now, forget it, and memorized The Digital Plague.

Finally, they posted my Book Notes essay over at Large Hearted Boy (http://blog.largeheartedboy.com). I think I’m mildly amusing, what do you think?

Readings is Fundamental

Author: September 24, 2007

I am currently in an armored, tinted kind of SUV, the type they use in Iraq to protect VIPs. I don’t think I am being protected, however. I think the SUV is being used to keep me from leaping out into traffic to escape my Corporate Masters, who have forcibly tucked me into a wrinkled, disreputable suit and are now conveying me to the reading in Brooklyn tonight at Rocky Sullivans.

I know not everyone can make it into Brooklyn tonight to throw roses at my feet and scream like it’s the friggin’ Beatles—though that would be fantastic, kthx—so I thought I’d give you a taste of what my readings are like by reprinting this essay I published in my Zine The Inner Swine a few years ago, when I organized a little DIY book tour for my last novel Lifers. Here it is from Volume 8, Issue 3 of TIS:

READINGS IS FUNDAMENTAL
The Day I Read to No One
by Jeff Somers

AH, the book tour. There is nothing worse than trying to promote yourself. If you disagree with that statement then I feel very very sorry for you, because you are a soulless monster eating humans to survive. Though I suppose that if you’re a soulless monster eating humans to survive then pity is really wasted on you so I take it back, you soulless monster. Promoting yourself is just embarrassing, even when it goes well, but at the beginning of 2002 I took a long hard look at my royalty statements from my publisher and realized that if I didn’t get off my ass and try to sell some copies of my novel (hell, even standing on a soapbox on the corner of 8th and 42nd would be better than nothing) it was going to very quickly be remaindered. SO I decided to launch a “book tour’ of sorts.

I don’t have a press agent, I don’t even have an agent. I have few resources. But with the wonder of the Internet I started looking up stores in various cities and emailing them, asking if I could come and do a reading. Somehow, I set up four readings in Chicago, Philadelphia, new York, and Washington, D.C. within about three weeks. Then I slacked off and forgot to set up any others. Still, I figured there was plenty of time, and four cities felt like a good start, because I had no idea what to expect and figured if it totally sucked, well, four might be one too many.

It really is that easy to set up readings. Pick a city, any city. Go to the web and search on the word “bookstore’ and that city’s name. You might need to be a little creative in the keywords, but as a last resort go to the yellow pages for that city and see what you can dig up. Go to web pages, look for a link to EVENTS or READINGS, and see if there’s a contact name – sometimes it’s that simple. If not, I look for any email address that seems vaguely on-target. Send the good people an email. Send an email to 50 stores if you can find that many email addresses. Send them a nice letter explaining who you are, attach some biographical info and some links to any press you might have, and then wait. Out of 50, 10 might get back to you. Out of those 10, at least one will more than likely shoot you a date and book you.

You see, stores love having writers come in, especially if you’re vaguely local, because a) you’re free – it costs them nothing aside from the advertising (if they do any) to have you in and b) they’re hoping you’ll bring in, if no one else, a few friends and family, who will then buy some books. It doesn’t have to be your book. Just a book, get me? So they’re usually pretty happy to set you up. All you gotta do is ask.

The first three went very well. In Chicago, Quimby’s Bookstore was friendly, supportive, and we had a good crowd. In Robins Bookstore we had a similar experience, and managed to get a book review out of the Philadelphia Inquirer. At Rocky Sullivans we had a large, boisterous crowd and got extremely drunk – a win/win. Flush with all these successes, I bundled The Inner Swine Inner Circle (TISIC) into a car and headed south for Washington D.C. and Olssons Bookstore, expecting, if not the rave successes we’d been having, at least a modest success.

Sadly, this was not to be. Settle back and let me tell you the sad but true story of The Day I Read to No One.

THE DAY I READ TO NO ONE

I don’t know anyone from the Washington, D.C. but why should that stop me? I am internationally famous zine publisher Jeff Somers, known around the world. So confident was I that I forgot to send out any press packets (in which I beg abjectly for interviews, reviews, or any other kind of publicity) until a week before the reading -far too late for any self-respecting organization to run a story on me. Or perhaps it wasn’t confidence but rather incompetence. Or perhaps it was neither and simply the fact that my hangover from Rocky Sullivans on May 22 lasted three weeks, leaving me frail, shivering, and gastrointestinally unreliable. I did manage to send out one or two pathetic emails begging the two people I knew who knew people in the area to beg their friends and acquaintances to attend.

Somehow, I thought it would all work out in the end. I was encouraged in this by my success up to that point on the little tour. Somehow we’d found crowds at all five previous readings, and I’d even gotten some press, without ever feeling like I knew what the fuck I was doing. I figured if I just kept moving doggedly forward, the Good People of the world would come to my aid and somehow the whole thing would work out. I was also buoyed by the sudden announcement by Misty Quinn, Jeof Vita, and my sainted mother that they would attend. This seemed like a sign: instead of crawling into a strange city with no hopes or prospects, I’d have friends and family barging in with me.

We drove down to D.C., which took about three and a half hours. No traffic, no problems, and upon arriving in the city I magically found the hotel with my Rain Man powers, which instantly made me think the Gods were with me, that maybe all sorts of wonderful things were going to happen. After a quick rest period (we were there about 3 hours early) we went out to get dinner and to find the bookstore. The first sign that things were not going my way was the Gay Pride parade going on about block from the store, which is not meant to convey any negative feelings towards homosexuals, but rather the sinking feeling I had that my slim publicity-drawing skills had been engulfed by a larger, better-promoted, and, by all signs, better-dressed event. The second sign that things weren’t going my way was the complete absence of any kind of poster in the store.

We skulked around for a while, spying out the place. In every other store I’d read in, even when there was no real space for a reading, there was a display up long before the reading as advertising. This usually had lots of books out, with a poster announcing the date and time. It’s a small thing, but that way the store at least alerts the foot traffic that there’ll be an event in the store. The fact that no one bothered to set something like this up stabbed a cold dagger of fear into my heart. Jesus Christ, I thought, fewer people than usual are going to be aware of this.

We did find some posters up near the entrance, along with 500 posters for other things. I began to really worry. We skulked back to the hotel to get my bag and contemplate the coming humiliation, which, I had to admit, I was beginning to taste in the back of my throat, familiar and bitter. We got back to Olssons about five minutes after the time advertised, and they had put up a little card table with a bunch of books displayed, along with some wine and cheese and crackers. The store manager greeted me, and was very nice, but my sense of horror increased exponentially as the following conversation took place:

Manager: Hi! Thanks for coming.
Me: Sure. Where will I be reading?
Manager: Uh, well, we don’t have any space for that, so I thought you’d just stand up on those stairs.
Me: Excuse me…

[I wander off a few feet and just stand still as a wave of terror passes through me]

Me: I’m back.
Manager: You okay? You were shivering.
Me: Actually, it was vibrating. I’ll be fine. How many people do you usually get for these readings?
Manager: We never have readings at this store. All the readings are at our other locations.
Me: So the answer, I guess, is zero?
Manager: Guess so. Some wine? It’s free.
Me: Leave the bottle.

I don’t blame the manager, or the store. I could have done more to promote myself, certainly. The store, on the other hand, could have a) done more to promote the reading and b) either booked me into the usual spot where people actually expected to see readings, or just politely told me that it wouldn’t work and saved everyone some trouble. I wandered the store, bottle of wine permanently wedged in my mouth, and watched the place empty out. People were streaming for the doors, as if fleeing my appearance. I wanted to instruct Security Chief Ken West to block the doors with trash cans or something, but Ken hadn’t come along this time. I only had effete artiste Jeof Vita and his girlishly long hair, his fiance Misty Quinn who didn’t seem inclined to break a sweat, my sainted mother who is 68 years old, and Legal Counsel The Duchess, who was standing far away from me lest the stench of failure attach itself to her. So I was powerless.

After a few minutes, the manager decided the torture had gone on long enough and hopped up on the stairs to announce me…to nobody. My friends and family gathered around, and I stumbled up there with a copy of my book. The three or four employees of Olssons took up positions too, possibly prompted by the kindly manager to give me some semblance of an audience. It helped; I always love my friends, but man, if I’d been there by myself I would have swallowed my tongue. At least with seven or eight people acting interested, I was able to start – reading fast to just get it over with. As I read, a few browsing customers wandered by and paused to listen, which gave me more incentive, so I managed to do the whole chapter without too much horror. Jeof took lots of pictures, trying to angle about and catch people in poses that looked like they were paying attention, for future propaganda. When I finished, at least there was some applause.

The manager seemed genuinely impressed, and kept a few copies of Freaks on hand despite the fact that no one came, which was nice. Plus, an acquaintance who’d helped me book the reading but who hadn’t been able to attend bought a copy of Lifers to be nice, so I felt a bit better about it. I was reminded of Matt Dillon in Singles: “All this negative energy just makes me stronger.”

In fact, all that negative energy just made me thirsty. We thanked everyone and I tried to look dignified as I ran the fuck out of there as fast as I could, but not before getting directions to the nearest tavern from the manager. At The Big Hunt a dejected TISIC ordered drinks, but our depression, as always, didn’t last long. In the familiar tavern darkness, with drinks sweating on the table, and with our convivial company filling up the empty spaces, our spirits rose. By the second round, we were completely recovered, and I was already happily re-inventing the event, turning it into a rousing success. I knew that after a few months I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the real memory and the happy fake memory, leaving me free to discard the real memory and have nothing but happy recollections. It had been a successful strategy for thirty years.

In the end, what did I learn? Nothing, as usual. A wiser man, however, might have learned the following three rules of life: 1. Never admit you’re there until you’re sure it’s going to work out (if I’d skulked a bit longer and overheard them cackling about no one coming, I could have slinked away with my dignity); 2. Never assume that the publicity gods will help you – just when you need them, they will abandon you; 3. The sound of my voice is mesmerizing – by the time I was done I was entranced.

So remember, folks, next time you see an ad for a reading of mine, out of simple human pity, show up.

 

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