Author Archive: jsomers

Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and regrets nothing. He is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series published by Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket Books. He sold his first novel at age 16 to a tiny publisher in California which quickly went out of business and has spent the last two decades assuring potential publishers that this was a coincidence. Jeff publishes a zine called The Inner Swine and has also published a few dozen short stories; his story “Sift, Almost Invisible, Through” appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight, published by Berkley Hardcover and edited by Charlaine Harris. His guitar playing is a plague upon his household and his lovely wife The Duchess is convinced he would wither and die if left to his own devices.

The Inner Swine Summer 2013

1912_coverSo, I still put out a little zine called The Inner Swine, although instead of printing out 1200 copies, stapling and folding them, and then spending a million dollars on postage in the hopes of getting two wrinkled dollar bills back in the mail five years later (the standard zine business model) it’s now only available as a Kindle or Nook book, with free PDFs one issue behind available on the web site.

The Summer 2013 issue is live on Amazon and B&N, yay! It’s about 30,000 words of rambling, cussing, and ridiculousness. It’s likely riddled with typos and the formatting is probably botched because I am lazy. It’s a dollar, people. Have at it!

KINDLE

NOOK

The Tiniest Slice of Hell: My Trip to Ikea

This essay is appearing in the Summer 2013 issue of The Inner Swine.

dignityOkay, so, holy shit, but I actually wanted to purchase something from Ikea. Nothing against Ikea, really, except that everything I’ve ever bought from them has been this weird mix of stylish and the cheapest crap ever made – I mean, furniture you have to assemble yourself should be your first clue that this shit it awful – but like every other person born after 1970 and at some living on their own making a salary that is to laugh, I’d bought my fair share of Ikea crap back in my youth. Now that I am old and wealthy in the sense of not eating Ramen Noodles every night in a desperate attempt to survive one more day, I haven’t bought anything Ikea in a long, long time. Because I have pride.

But, then, there are these weird spaces in life, right? Little alcoves formed by poorly planned construction or renovation and we have to figure out what to do with them. In my house there is a garbage room-cum-storage area under the stairs. Have you ever tried to organize under the stairs? That shit is not easy. So I was tempted back into the Ikea mindframe by the Ekby Riset adjustable shelf bracket. You can put those bad boys on a sloped wall and adjust them until they’ll hold a shelf. It’s not exactly transparent aluminum or the Higgs Boson, but finding shelf brackets for sloped walls ain’t easy. So, we drove out to Ikea.

And holy fuck, what a mistake.

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“A Meek and Thankful Heart” in Buzzy Mag

Watch the skies, er, the Internet tomorrow, kids. I’m told my short story A Meek and Thankful Heart will be appearing on Buzzy Mag’s site (http://buzzymag.com/) tomorrow. Of course, they also told me it would be appearing on 6/7 and then nothing. On the other hand, they actually paid me for this one, so one would think they must do something with it.

A Meek and Thankful Heart is the second story I’ve published about the character of Philip K. Marks. The first was Sift, Almost Invisible, Through which appeared in the Crimes by Moonlight anthology, edited by Charlaine Harris.

I’ll post an update when it’s live, but keep your eyes peeled. I’ll also be monitoring the comments section and responding to reactions and questions.

Can Open Worms Everywhere

Believe me, I know. One touch, is all it takes. I suck it out of your cells like a biological download and your whole stinking, boring life hits me like a ton of bricks. I usually get nauseous.

One more cigarette, what the hell? You could see it on their drone-like and passive faces, flushed now with cocktails and nicotine and pointless lust, the whole sad bunch of them, wasting their pathetic lives in offices and bars, bars and offices, an endless stream of coffee and whiskey sours, diuretics that kept them pissing and moaning as the weeks dragged on into months and then into centuries and then into coffins, a sudden and unexpected death as a vein swelled within and said enough of this shit, already, and flooded them out, one eyeball dilating to enormous scale, bloodshot and staring, eternally.

And with them the sad fading girls in their demure office outfits, pantsuits and short skirts, white blouses and stockings, high heels and conservative cleavage. Hair up. Expectations down. Trained after all these years to drink like a man, to wobble in on heels and do shots and smoke and curse and tolerate the greedy wet stares they got from all around, desperate to share their brief and unexciting life with some other bottom-feeding wage-earner, pooling their resources to buy a termite-ridden house in the suburbs, raise some uninspired kids, buy a minivan.

Was the bar any different from a thousand others in the city, in the state, in the world? Not really. Clientèle differed in each but whether it was Martini-soaking wall street types or bikers grousing over nickel beers they were all wasting their time and drowning sorrows they had neither the time nor the intellect to even comprehend. An instinctual drive to gather together and become inebriated and complain complain complain, and then maybe try to procreate and pass their sins on to sallow chubby progeny who would gladly shoulder the burden which would eventually drive them into a similar bar, like a hammer pounding in a nail.

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Without Further Comment

A review of The Digital Plague, Avery Cates #2:

“This was my first Jeff Somers book, and I will be avoiding any other books from the series. I would have rated this book 3 or 4 stars if not for the overuse of the F-Word. The F-ING writing style is F-ING like this: If you are F-ING fine with having to deal with the the F-ING F-Word, sometimes twice in the same F-ING sentence, then F-ING go for it. I’m not overly sensitive. I use the same word myself at dumb drivers, for example. My objection is the way it detracts from the narrative, like having a conversation with a person with limited vocabulary, throwing in F-bombs throughout their conversation.”

That is all.

Khan Vs. Khan

KhaaaaanSo, saw Star Trek: Into Darkness today and it was very good. Extremely well made, wonderfully cast and acted, with a snappy script and an okay if not exactly marvellous plot. On a scale of One to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I’d give it a seven.

Because The Wrath of Khan kicks its ass in just about every way except action and special effects. The action sequences and special effects in Into Darkness make Wrath of Khan look like a play put on by Our Gang to raise money to save someone’s farm. In every other way, though, Wrath wins. It kicks Into Darkness’ ass in terms of story, dialogue, the comfort zone of the characters, and, most importantly, in terms of the villain character. Here there be spoilers, so if you fear spoilers, run.

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Saturday is Guitar Day

Epiphone Les Paul CustomAmateur guitarists of the world, unite! If we all keep posting our ridiculous homemade recordings, we can legitimately claim that “everyone is doing it” and no one will be able to mock us ever again! Or something.

Here, songs:

Song565
Song568
Song572
Song572b
Song576
Song579

If anyone wants to know how to play these amazing songs, too bad; I forget them almost as fast as I record them.

The usual disclaimer: 1. I admit these are not great music; 2. I claim copyright anyway, so there; 3. No, I cannot do anything about the general quality of the mix, as I am incompetent.

Book Trailers Galore

In my spare time I make book trailers. Here’s two new ones.

I Was a (M)Ad Man by Richard Gilbert: I’m a big fan of Mad Men, like everyone else in then universe. I also understand it’s fiction and doesn’t really depict the 1960s or even the Ad business accurately. This book by Richard Gilbert, who was actually working on Madison Avenue during that era, does:

Dominus by Christine Fonseca. This one was a lot of fun for different reasons. I like getting into the feel and spirit of a book and coming up with all the elements to give you a feel for it in one minute. It’s a wholly different challenge than actually writing the book. I think I nailed it on this one:

Go buy books.

How to End Up at an Eddie Money Concert In 3,000 Easy Steps

Eddie-money-post-concertSO, start at the beginning: The universe is created.

Millions of years later, the city of Rome is founded. Thousands of years after that, the guitar is invented. Then  electricity. Then Rock n’ Roll. Then Eddie Money himself is born, joins the NYPD, quits to pursue a recording career. Somewhere in there my wife is born. Somewhere in there I am born. I am vaguely aware of Eddie Money and the five or six songs that always got played on the radio when I was a kid. I grow up. I meet my wife. We get married. And one day she emails me and says, BTW I just bought us two tickets to see Eddie Money in New York in May.

And I say, holy shit, you’re kidding.

And my wife is not amused.

So there I am on a Saturday night with a glass of whiskey seated uncomfortably at a table with The Duchess and three other people. It’s a packed house, which is amazing. Up until a few weeks before I had assumed Eddie Money was either dead or working at a Wal Mart somewhere. I mean seriously: Eddie Money.

The show is, however, kind of fun. Eddie is 64 and looks it, and he dances and moves on the stage in a way that frequently alarms. You sit and watch him and every now and again you wonder if he’s going to just fall to the floor and start twitching, because his stage moves are the kind you imagine older folks perform when stroking out. But god bless him, because he puts on a decent show and there are actually more hits than I remember.

I’m not a big Eddie Money fan. I don’t actually own any of his songs, despite hearing so many of them at least a thousand times each over the course of my lifetime.

But it’s kind of impressive in general that he’s still making a living from his songs. And from a really embarrassing commercial currently on TV, too. But still: If I’m able to make money from my art several decades from now, that would be amazing. So good for Eddie Money. Not so good for me. Because now when someone asks, with raised eyebrow, Who in the world goes to an Eddie Money show? You can point at me and say “He does.”

Long Days Journey Into Published

Let me back up.

In 1997, I wrote a novel. After a lengthy period of writing in the SF/F genres exclusively (though I didn’t think of them as genres back then but just as Shit I Wanted to Read and Therefore Write About) I entered into a period I think of as my Faux Literary Period, where I thought I should be writing about Velly Important Stuff and eschewing things like robots and magic. So I started writing about a bunch of alcoholic losers who rob an office where one of them works, thinking it would change their lives. At first it was titled Lie Down in Our Graves after a Dave Mathews song I’ve never heard, because my titles always suck.

I renamed the novel Lifers and in 1999 started sending it out, and sold it, unagented, to a tiny publisher out in California. For money! A microscopic advance and a standard royalty rate. I figured I’d made it and began purchasing rare whiskies in bulk.

I wish I’d had an agent, however, as it was a terrible contract I was saved from only because the publisher went out of business in 2004. I will never know how many copies of Lifers sold back then since I never received any sort of statement from them. Lifers got reviewed in The New York Times Book Review and The Philadelphia Inquirer but that didn’t amount to much.

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