SoMa

THE NOVEL

New Voices From San Francisco

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

To outsiders, San Francisco is all one big city. But to those in the know, there is SoMa, South of Market, where sleek eateries are squeezed between bail bonds storefronts and high-priced lofts look out over still-rough edges. It’s home to a generation of hipsters disillusioned by the dot-com bust, restless and searching for the next thrill, the next high, the next step too far. Sex, drugs, kink—you can find it anywhere in SoMa, if you know where to look. But first, you’ll need your tour guides. There’s Raphe, a writer torn between two worlds, belonging to neither. Lauren, the poor little rich girl living on the edge and pushing farther out. Mark, beautiful and cruel, who lives for games, the more extreme, the better. Baptiste, hot, smooth, and maybe as real as it gets. And Julie, both an object of desire and a pretty pawn to be played.

In a glittering, surreal subculture of private sex clubs and kept boys, identity theft and betrayal, nihilism, redemption, and sometimes love, they’re spinning out of control and into each other’s orbits, desperately looking for something real—something that will show them who they really are. In this provocative, intense novel, Kemble Scott puts a new neighborhood on the literary map for good in a tale that is disturbing, gritty, wholly original, and utterly unforgettable.

Kensington Trade Paperback

320 pp, ISBN: 0-7582-1549-5

SoMa

By Kemble Scott

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Praise for SoMa and Kemble Scott:

"Wonderful."

--JT LeRoy, bestselling author of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

“SoMa is just like SoMa: spewingly kewl, fall-of-Rome splendidly filthy, glittery, guttery, twisted sick and slick. I highly recommend taking a vacation there.”

--David Henry Sterry, author of the bestselling memoir Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent

“SoMa tells a story about what's really happening in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, in the aftermath of the dot-com bust. It's one man's story, of a twisted journey and compromised redemption. San Francisco can be a city of extremes, and we see one here.”
  --Craig Newmark, cyberspace guru and creator of Craigslist.org

“A fascinating tour de force of the darkest parts of San Francisco's underworld in search of one man's sexual core. The images created by Kemble Scott will stay with you for a very long time. Riveting entertainment.”

--Isadora Alman, renowned syndicated sex and relationship columnist of Ask Isadora and author of Doing It: Real People Having Really Good Sex.

“Scott provides us with an insider’s look at a little known and gritty underground world….Shockingly, his raw and gritty account of this dark world is all true, which makes for an even more fun ride.”

--Andy Behrman, bestselling author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania

“I read the first page of SoMa and never put it down until I read the last page…I know people who are less real than these characters.”

--Joe Quirk, bestselling author of The Ultimate Rush  

“Scott's book is like a train. Once you get on you can't get off, till the ride is over: And a ride it is: like David Lynch's Blue Velvet, it tells you that the ordinary, sunlit world you walk through every day is actually throbbing with secrets, full of mystery, riven with dark threads of human possiblity--all this in a voice and sensibility that wastes no words and yet is somehow...innocent.   A voice that says, there is no darkness here, just play.”

--Tamim Ansary, bestselling author of West of Kabul, East of New York and The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky