Bullshit

FRIENDS, I realize I am not William Shakespeare or John Steinbeck, Charles Stross or Fred Saberhagen, but I demand my Wikipedia entry.

I had one, once. Heck, I had two over the years. Both deleted because I am not ‘notable’. Which is ridiculous, as I am very notable for a number of notable things. Admittedly, most of those things include the words pantslessness and obscure, but I’m still damned notable in my own strange way. I mean, I’ve published four novels and more than twenty short stories, a zine continuously since 1995, and a comic book.

Meanwhile, I have no Wikipedia entry. Meanwhile, there’s this.

So, I’m laying down the gauntlet: I’m going to sulk and complain until some Hero steps forward to add me to this ridiculous compendium of unreliable knowledge. I don’t care if the article is complimentary or filled with libel, if it’s fact-based or filled with unicorns and fantasy. As long as the guidelines are followed so the article doesn’t get deleted, I’ll be happy.

Because I have no Wikipedia Page. Meanwhile, there’s this.

I’ve set up a little widget on the side to monitor my WP status. Until an hero shows up to save me from obscurity, I will keep this blog on a war footing. Spread the word! Obscure author demands his due. Because if this is considered notable, then I submit that I am equally notable. Although possibly less horrible.

UPDATE 8-3-09: Damaso tried, and the page was deleted within moments. One starts to suspect an anti-Jeff Somers faction over at WP.

UPDATE 2 8-3-09: Jon Gawne, bless him, has created a preliminary page for me [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jgawne/Jeffrey_Somers&action=edit] which he thinks may help if people add material to it. Thanks, Jon!

Okay, I’ve pondered this and contemplated and I am now ready to state that I think the publisher’s decision to change the color of the cover for the trade paper The Eternal Prison from skin-burning orange to rot-inducing green was the right one. I look at the three books side by side and I think the orange would have been too much on that end of the spectrum:

OR

The green pops when you have all three on a shelf. Which I assume you all have.

DON’T FORGET: I’ll be tweeting an Avery Cates Short Story over at twitter.com/somers_story starting on 8/5. I’ll tweet each section at noon every day. Sign up to follow me there and enjoy/be irritated by fiction at 140 characters a pop!

Someday maybe I’ll start writing Avery Cates short stories that are 140 characters in total. That would. . .be interesting.

THE ETERNAL PRISON is now being shipped from Amazon, so it’s going to start appearing everywhere soon. Sales are brisk, so get yours now. We’re cooking up some web fun to go along with the “official” release date of 8-12-09, although we might move that up by a week since the book’s shipping, eh? Keep an eye on www.eternalprison.com until then.

CAT UPDATE: The cats are better, thanks, though no more happy about their medications. Our cats weigh 17, 17, 19, and 9 pounds. Carrying Guenther down the stairs is like carrying a bear cub. Jeff needs power bars and rest. And perhaps an exercise regimen, eh?

I’m trying to think of promotion ideas for TEP as well. Do you think people would want to fly me to their cities at their expense to have “Beer Summits” with them? Hmmmn? And then they could buy 50 copies of the book and I’d sign them in an increasingly drunk and incoherent way. Which, you will note, does not guarantee that the first signatures won’t be incoherent too.

Think about it. I could be passed out in your bathroom!

Have a great weekend.

J

i know the mechanics of death better than anybody

This week The Somers Compound is rife with sick cats. Not terribly sick; intestinal parasites causing, um, some unfortunate events. This resulted in Your Humble Author hauling ~75 pounds of cat to and from the vet this week, and now I spend all my time trying to get 4 cats to eat pills twice a day. Have you ever tried to pill a cat? I might as well be building a time-machine with nothing but a Schwinn bicycle and some paper towels. It’s exhausting.

As a result, this post may ramble a bit. Or maybe the rambling is old age: Yet another birthday next week, after all, one more inevitable step towards the day my doctor tells me I can’t drink anymore or my liver will explode.

Or, maybe my doctor will tell me I’m a prime candidate for a Google iLiver, because, folks, we’re living in the future, and don’t ever doubt it. All the trappings of a Sci-Fi future are here or getting there, with the possible exception of those fucking flying cars we’ve all been waiting for. Although if you told me Dick Cheney was zooming around Colorado in a flying car, I’d believe you. DAMN YOU CHENEY.

Ahem, anyway, the rest of it’s coming: Dick Tracy two-way wristwatches? Pretty much done. The wired-up house that talks to you? Years away, tops. Cure for Cancer? Dunno, but again, if you told me that Dick Cheney. . .well, you get the idea. I picture Cheney in an underground bunker dressed like Blofeld from the Bond movies, playing with his water engine.

Of course, some of this stuff is already here and has simply taken on a form we weren’t expecting. Cyberspace, for example, did not arrive as a semi-physical place we could enter and fool around in like little godlings, or at least it hasn’t yet. But there is a cyber-space of sorts: Social Networks and the Internet. Sure, we’re not riding Tron cycles around and hacking world governments with our bare hands or at least digital simulacrums thereof, but we are, increasingly, living a lot of our lives online in these virtual communities. This isn’t news to anyone. Whereas when I was a kid in college we sat around our dorms all night drinking terrible beer and trying to top each other in misery, today you can do that without ever leaving Mom’s house.

Of course, like everything else, I am doing it wrong.

Social Networks are supposed to bring people together in a convenient way, right? The idea being that you can stay in touch with friends and family who are far away and, presumably, far too busy to stay in touch with you physically. What I actually use it for is passive entertainment, snarky comments on people’s activities, and an excuse to never actually contact anyone, since I can just leave a 10-word insult on their profile and run away, giggling.

You’re also supposed to use things like Facebook for self-promotion, natch. Plenty of readers have friended me on Facebook and I’m happy to have them – all you have to do is tell me you like my books, and I’ll friend you immediately and then ask you for a loan. But I don’t do that right either, because I never post anything there or have any useful materials up there for folks.

I am forever doing it wrong. This is not new. Folks who know me well are just shaking their heads in resignation. Even twitter, which is 140 characters of simplicity, I’ve managed to do wrong: All I post are insane monologues that, read out of context and split up, must look like the deranged mutterings of an inmate.

And now I must stop as a cat is sitting on my keyboard, looking stern.

Over at SF Signal, they asked their readers which books they’d like to see made into movies, and someone voted for The Electric Church. Which is great to read, of course. Naturally, I’ve thought about this possibility, and it’s always fun to cast the movie of your book. Of course, when you’re imagining casting and budgeting the movie of your book there’s a tendency to assume a) unlimited, blockbuster-level money and b) you’re going to have some control over the proceedings. The first is unlikely, though, of course, possible. The second will never happen. I’ll be lucky if they remember to include a “based on the novel by” credit, much less invite me to be a part of the process. Which makes sense, because when they decide that the Monks should turn out to really be demons from hell complete with wings and glowing red eyes, they don’t want me throwing furniture and setting hotel rooms on fire.

As I’ve said before, if and when a movie gets made of one of my books, chances are it’ll be an international SyFy kind of project, starring the action stars of 1983 (if we’re lucky) and funded by the Canadian government, so it’s best not to get too hopeful and creative, but it’s also fun to think about who might star in such films. So what do do you think? Assuming unlimited budget, who would you cast in the major character roles of TEC?

To be honest, I haven’t thought on this too much, though I do have an opinion here and there. But I’m interested in what everyone else thinks, as it’s a fascinating glimpse into how my characters are perceived by readers.  Have at it!

I keep a PO Box for my zine correspondence, and yesterday I found an airplane-sized bottle of vodka in it, sent by an angelic benefactor:

I suggested a few years ago in my zine that if people wanted to buy me a drink but couldn’t travel to New Jersey/New York, you could mail me a tiny bottle of booze, and more people than I would have originally imagined have taken me up on the offer. Thank god!

I have nothing coherent to say this morning, partly due to having drinks with the very interesting and talented Sean Ferrell at the World’s Greatest Bar last night. Sean and I share an agent and have been trading random pantsless jokes for months, so we decided it was time to put all that brain power into one place and pour whiskey over it. The experiment went well; I had some nice Glenmorangie Port Wood 12 year and we had a great conversation that ran the gamut from the movie memory hole to day jobs to the modern affliction that is modern pants requirements. Also, Sean outlined a story idea for a novel that I am going to steal, it was so good. Avast!

What was fun about meeting Sean, as well, is that at no time did either of us give any serious thought to dinner. Myself, I like to have cocktails after the working hours (9-5), and often when I indulge in cocktails (which for me means whiskey, neat) I slowly lose the desire for food until I wake up the next day starving. It’s hard to fnid folks who either share this sort of approach to serious classy boozing or who can at least tolerate it; usually people are tossing cheeseburgers at me, interrupting the flow of booze to me, which is unforgivable. In the immortal words of Mel Brooks as channeled through Gene Wilder: Food just makes me sick.

It’s a glum, rainy day in Hoboken today, which is good writing weather.  Of course, any day is good writing weather. I think I’ve decided to put a personal embargo on any essays concerning Twitter and the Kindle-slash-eBooks; I’m personally getting tired of everyone weighing in on whether Twitter is destroying conversation and privacy as we know it or just a toy for overly self-liking kids, and I’m definitely tired of the debate about whether the Kindle will destroy print books and whether that’s bad or not. I do have my opinions, but I doubt either technology will change/destroy the world, as nothing – not even the goddamn hydrogen bomb – has managed to do that so far. I’m no fan of the Kindle (because it strips you of your rights as a reader) and I’m still trying to decide if Twitter is fun and useful or just weird and pervy, but I don’t fear either technology and so I think I’ll just let them marinate for a while.

I’m sure someone will alert the media.

I’m also pondering Lost, which I’ve watched faithfully almost since the very beginning. I’m not as excited as other folks are about this season, and I have 2 theories: One is the inevitable letdown whenever the curtain is pulled back. The only revelations in a story that really sock you in the head are the ones you don’t expect. When Tyler Durden turns out to be the evil second personality of the Narrator in Fight Club, that hit me in the head (let’s table discussions of my intelligence and perception for later, thanks). But with Lost, I’ve been waiting for these revelations  – and guessing at them – for years now, man. It’s like any monster movie: The Monster always seems cooler and more badass when all you get are shadowy glimpses and people screaming. When they real that latex-and-CGI hokum, you’re invariably less afraid of it. With Lost, half the power was in the mystery, and as those mysteries get revealed they simply become spokes in the plot wheel, and thus a bit of a letdown.

My other theory is that Sci Fi is leaking into the mainstream at such a rate that you have a lot of folks who have never read/watched a time-travel story in their lives suddenly hooked on this show and it. is. blowing. their. minds. Don’t get me wrong: Lost is a great show. But I’ve read so many time-travel stories that the idea of looping back on your own life doesn’t, by itself, amaze me, so maybe I’m wanting more from Lost than some folks who started watching because it was a creepy and well-done survival story at first.

Anyway, I started this post at 10:30AM and now it’s 2:11PM, and I did absolutely nothing in-between. Talk about Time Travel. I’m apparently fast-forwarding through my entire life.