A Chat with Author Jeff Somers

I thought I’d post something a little different this time. This blog is typically made up of me rambling about my personal opinions on topics I hope might interest readers along with the occasional piece of flash fiction. But what if I interviewed a better known and much more entertaining author? As luck would have it, one of my favorite writers, Jeff Somers, was gracious enough to chat with me about books, agents, cats, and the oft-underestimated value of being miserable.

Avery Cates is one of my all-time favorite literary characters. What inspired you to create him and how do you think the character has evolved over the course of the series?

As with almost everything else I’ve ever done, inspiration most likely came from the hallucinations induced by a brain-throttling hangover. Misery always inspires me to invent horrible people I can imagine murdering things I don’t like—for example, my past self, who just poisoned himself and generated all this misery. Cates actually evolved over a very long period of time; the first version of him in the first version of The Electric Church was in 1993. He was a bit more tragic in that one and the book actually ended with his suicide. Over the course of 12 years I returned to the story over and over again and Cates got less sad and more angry, which was, I think, all to the good. And also probably mirrored my own life.

You sold the movie rights to the first book in the Cates series, The Electric Church, several years ago. Any recent developments on that front? Might we expect a film anytime soon?

The film option on the Cates books actually just expired. Someone may step in and pick them up, who knows; the whole film option thing is maddening, because people step in and buy an option, and then a year or a year and a half later it expires and nothing happened.

The closest we ever got was with Sony back in 2010; they wrote a script and everything, and then it fell apart. Of course, in the mean time you get paid some money and people come around and take you out for drinks. I would publish novels even if there was no advance or royalties just because people sometimes take me out for drinks, and I can scan the shelves and identify the $200-a-shot Scotch and make everyone regret ever meeting me. Which maybe isn’t the best business strategy.

My other book series, The Ustari Cycle (We Are Not Good People), was optioned last year by Legendary Television, and that may yet develop into something. Believe me, if it does ya’ll will know because I’ll probably start wearing a sandwich board that reads MY TV SHOW IS COMING OUT.

While We Are Not Good People and the rest of the Ustari Cycle are as action-packed as anything else you’ve written, they’re also kind of a bromance between the main protagonists, Lem and Mags. Knowing you’re more of a pantser than a planner when it comes to writing, I’m curious, was that intentional or did their friendship just naturally develop as you wrote the books?

It developed; in initial drafts I imagined Mags as more of a menacing figure, actually, a silent, brooding guy whose lack of ability made him angry. Very early on, though, I found that Lem’s exasperation with Mags had a tinge of affection to it, and Mags’ comic relief also upped the pathos a bit. In other words the characters’ relationship almost developed like a real one would, starting off in one vein and then slowly developing an affection and intimacy. Eventually I found it very interesting to write a story where two male characters have such a strong bond. Also, I very much wish I had known a giant, super strong man-child like Mags when I was in my youth. In other words, I wish my childhood had been the movie My Bodyguard.

A project you recently contributed a story to, MECH: Age of Steel Anthology, raised over $20K on Kickstarter. That’s impressive. What do you contribute that fundraising success to and for those poor slobs that didn’t contribute, how might they purchase a copy in the future?

Kickstarter and fundraising is mysterious to me. One reason I haven’t tested the waters of Kickstarter or Indiegogo or Patreon is my fear that I’ll put 3 months and endless sweat into a campaign for a novel or something and no one will contribute. I see myself announcing it with great fanfare and then having some portly man in a fancy uniform following me around with a trombone, playing the “sad trombone” note over and over again as my Kickstarter languishes with $3.50 in it.

As for the folks at Ragnarok, they’re organized, enthusiastic, and passionate—plus, they’ve done this before. Done right, the Kickstarter model works. Supporters get extras and access in exchange (not to mention a kick-ass anthology), and when the book comes out the folks who don’t go in for Kickstarters can still buy the book just like always. Ragnarok has an agreement with the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) so Mech should be in bookstores and libraries as well as online.

A couple of the things that you’re known for are your gritty style and the dark wit that seems to flow throughout your work. Do those things come naturally or did you develop them through some formal sort of schooling or mentorship?

I am something of a natural asshole. My friends will nod enthusiastically if you ask them, “Is Jeff an asshole?” Their nodding will be tinged with affection, but they will still be definitive gestures of agreement. My natural ability to be mean-spirited stems from childhood, of course, when I trained with those very same friends—we’re mean to each other. It’s how we show love.

I also have a very dim view of humanity, and I am a firm believer that we’re all powerless pawns in the universe, and nothing we do really matters. That combined with a sort of automatic sarcasm reflex informs my fiction—my characters know they’re ultimately powerless. Even Avery Cates knows on some level that no matter how many people he kills, or saves, or dooms to a slow apocalypse, it doesn’t matter. He’s just a piece on the board.

Your literary agent, Janet Reid, seems to be one of the better known and more active social networkers out there today. What’s it like working with her and what sort of advice would you offer other writers looking for an agent?

Janet is hilarious, and every time I meet with her she pours me generous dollops of whiskey. I think I was Janet’s second or third client overall; she signed me in I think 2004—on the novel Chum, which she sold in 2013—which was so long ago I actually queried her on paper through the United States Post Office. Jesus Christ. Anyway, I queried another agent; I think I sent out like 20 letters on Chum. I got a rejection from one woman who had just met Janet at a convention and she recommended I query Janet, so I did.

My query letter was chaos, it was all jokes and hilarity and most agents thought I was nuts, I think, but Janet thought it was funny, so she asked for the manuscript. The manuscript was riddled with typos, which she pointedly complained about, but she liked it, and the rest is history!

My advice is simple: Just about everything I’ve accomplished in writing is the result of boring old work. I wrote query letters and submitted samples to every agent and publisher I could find—I actually sold my first novel, Lifers, all on my own without an agent (though I wouldn’t recommend that simply because there were things in that contract an agent would have kiboshed). I submit short stories all the time. I took advice and revised when notes seemed to make sense. That’s it. I papered the world with submissions while simultaneously pursuing DIY and self-pub stuff. There’s no magic to it, just the dull, dull stuff of submitting.

I mean, back when I started I had to do everything with photocopies and postage. The fact that I can send out a submission or a query via email is pretty goddamn amazing.

Based on your Twitter feed, I picture your home as something akin to a cat sanctuary. Just how many cats currently live with you and why are cats better than dogs?

Jesus, the cats. We have five. FIVE. Which means, more accurately, the cats have us. The cat thing started because I’d had a sweet, fat lady cat when I was a kid, Missy. Then I roared off to college and Missy passed away and I spent the next decade drinking and waking up in the backseat of my 1978 Chevy Nova without pants. Then I got married, and my wife wanted a dog. But my wife travels a lot for business, so I knew if we got a dog I’d be out in the rain walking the damn thing all the time, so I resisted.

But they don’t call my wife The Duchess for nothing, so it became clear we would get a pet with or without my input. So I thought of sweet, purring Missy and suggested a cat instead. No walking, they’re kind of self-cleaning, and all I remembered about Missy was her warm and purring in my lap. Little did I know this would shortly turn into Cat Mania for The Duchess, and here we are. Cats are only better than dogs in the sense that with a cat, you never have to leave the house, which means I haven’t left the house since 2003.

A lot of people would probably be surprised to learn that you don’t own a car. When was the last time you owned one and tell the truth, are you really just holding out for the self-driving cars all the tech giants keep promising?

We actually bought another car last year. Prior to that we had an old beater, but we lost it in Superstorm Sandy along with half our house and half of everything we owned, and didn’t bother to replace it, because we live in a town which has a walkability score of about 100.

When I was younger I was obsessed with owning a car; it represented freedom. Now that I’m older I don’t actually need one, because I work from home and live a 15-minute train ride from Manhattan, and cars have come to represent problems for me: they’re expensive to maintain, don’t hold their value, require upkeep, and driving is just stressful. Even worse, The Duchess insists on buying manual transmissions and then wants me to drive everywhere, and driving a manual is like time-traveling back to a much worse time in human history.

OK, last question. You frequently write freelance articles about other books. If you could only recommend one recent book and it wasn’t one of your own, which would it be and why?

Yeah, I’ve been blogging it up B&N and bestsellers.about.com on the subject of books, which is the first time in my life that reading has paid off.

For Science Fiction, I’d recommend The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter. It’s an extension/unofficial sequel to Clarke’s A Meeting with Medusa and it’s excellent.

For Fantasy, check out Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn, book 1 of her new series. It’s got the magic, political maneuverings, and scale of A Song of Ice and Fire but with a distinct Japanese flavor.

For general fiction, I’d recommend The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. A weird historical book set during the New Zealand gold rush of the mid-19^th century, an intricate and gorgeous book that takes a bit to get into but I wound up really enjoying.