The new blog (with the awesome name) Rescued By Nerds interviewed Jeff Somers about the star of his novels, Avery Cates:

I’ve created a character who kills people, who physically assaults people when annoyed, who has stepped over the bodies of friends in order to save himself—albeit, perhaps, regretfully. Then I went ahead and made him kind of fun and charming. It feels good on some primitive level to then smack Avery in the head with a lead pipe. It feels like the Literary Lead Pipe of Justice.

Visit the nerds for the full interview.

There’s also a new messageboard for any citizens of Old New York who aren’t feeling like themselves lately. You can find that here (at least until the SSF takes it down).

Anyone who’s read EMPRESS – or any of the early reviews of the novel – will know that it’s a book with a very unsympathetic central character (and that there aren’t a lot of hugs to go around at the end.)

Over at Grasping for the Wind, John Ottinger talks to Karen about how the book upends the expectations of epic fantasy:

GFTW: Although Hekat is a sympathetic character at the beginning of the novel, we have come to dislike her very much by the end. How were you able to write a character that rather than having an upward spiral toward a “happily ever after” instead moved on a downward spiral filled with selfishness and hate?”

Read Karen’s responses here.

You can read the first chapter of EMPRESS here.