BIOGRAPHY!
after years of waiting nothing came.

For Lee Sommers, childhood was little more than a bleep on his radar, a blur of desks and skateboards and afterschool activities in the tiny town of Port Hardy, British Columbia. There were no traumatic events to stick out in his mind, though the odd scene that would have meaning later in life has held on. There were no great times, either. The fifth of five boys, Lee’s parents were already exhausted and his brothers already too paired up to bother with the baby of the family. This, of course, is constantly disputed at family holidays when the two oldest brothers (twins) argue that Lee was always the apple of his parents’ eyes but for the most part sticks true enough. It wasn’t so much that he wasn’t loved as he simply wasn’t set aside or made special or even included. Long hours spent playing alone meant he developed a strong imagination during his formative years. This would get him in trouble as a teenager when a penchant for imagination developed into lying but it was also the same trait that got him his first book deal. For the most part, Lee was liked enough at school but never found any sort of popularity. His friends in primary school would end up being the sort of kids one didn’t want to be caught associating with in their teenage years but that was well enough as Lee fell out of contact with them somewhere around grade 7. Similarly, secondary school failed to produce any sort of lasting, meaningful friendships though his talents at ice hockey made him a bit of a minor celebrity for his last three years of local schooling.

There was no surprise and no real drama when Lee finally left Vancouver Island for University. St. Francis Xavier University was chosen as much because it was a good school as the fact that they were willing to waive all fees for the athletic-but-brainy Lee. The fact that StFX was far away and rather small didn’t bother Lee, nor did the fact that he was cut from the Hockey team by his second year. It was at StFX that Lee finally bonded with a group of like-minded friends in any sort of a real way, and also at the University that he learned about beer and how much easier it was to talk to girls after consuming a large amount. Surprisingly and despite his newfound love of alcohol, Lee found his grades steadily amongst the top of his class and his course work in his Literature and writing classes actually flourishing. Sometime around his third year at University, Lee realised he could actually use his imagination as something that could make him money instead of just settling for a job behind a desk (like his youngest brother had) or in some sort of nature-involved career (like his two other brothers that managed to complete university).

Though talented, Lee’s first year out of University was a hard one. Not entirely sure how to go about making his English degree work for him the way he wanted it to, he accepted a position in a Vancouver publishing house simply because it could pay the rent and the novels he worked on in his free time couldn’t. The worst part of the year, however, was not the menial tasks he was forced to perform on a daily basis, but instead having to deal with the harsh reality that actually getting a book published and making a career out of writing was much, much harder than he had ever anticipated. Lee watched manuscripts he considered amazing turned away day in and day out, and even the ones that were accepted were often given little money up front. “Making it” seemed like a near-impossible task, something reserved for the uber-talented, or the well-connected, or the downright lucky, none of which Lee usually was. By his third year at the firm, Lee was ready to accept a life of monotony and, for the most part, anonymity. He continued to send out copies of his Big Idea, yes, but stopped bothering to open the rejection letters before throwing them in the trash. If Michael Jameson hadn’t called Lee personally, then, his career might have stayed on the same boring path and the letter bearing someone’s willingness to represent him put out with the day’s garbage.

Michael Jameson, as it turned out, was young and ambitious and looking for someone just like Lee to represent. He wanted a nobody the way Lee wanted a beer on Friday night and the two hit it off almost instantly over lunch where Michael spent the majority of the time trying to see if Lee didn’t already have 500 other offers from 500 other agents to represent him. Michael’s hunger would pay off for Lee; not in the business long enough to know fear, Michael sent Lee’s manuscript to all six major publishing firms and quickly started a bidding war that would end in an offer of 500,000 U.S. Dollars for the North American rights to Lee’s first book. It was enough to pay the rent, but more than that, it was enough confidence to push Lee into quitting the job he hated and go into writing full time instead. Without the stress of a menial job, Lee’s work flourished and it showed in his second novel when it went to the top of the New York Times’ Bestseller list almost overnight.

Since his foray into being A Novelist, Lee’s work has continued to sell well. His personal life, however, has stayed much the same: even in New York, where people like novelists can be celebrities in their own right, Lee has failed to hook onto a social group outside a few select men and women he met mostly through his hobbies of watching Star Trek and yelling at Hockey Games in bars. In 2005, Lee was blessed with a daughter but under less-than-ideal circumstances. Stella’s mother was a perfectly nice woman but one he hardly knew and instead of trying to force something that wasn’t there, the two broke up only three weeks into their relationship, an entire month before it was known that Stella had even been conceived. The pregnancy changed nothing, though it did allow future mother and father to get to know each other a bit more and become friends (“for the child’s sake”). Their custody arrangement was agreed upon without the help of a judge or the legal system: Lee was to take Stella whenever he had the inclination and time as well as every other Christmas and half the summer once she was old enough to have it as a vacation, and her mother would have her for the majority of the time. This arrangement has yet to change or be challenged and works mostly because Lee doesn’t mind Stella having a nanny so her mother can work, and her mother doesn’t mind Lee “dodging” his parental obligations for weeks at a time while deep in the middle of a novel. To date, it is debatable if Stella or the writing has had a bigger impact on Lee’s life, but both are treasured and loved if in different ways and neither are likely to be pushed aside any time soon.

Lee Sommers is a Canadian best-selling author and loyal Canucks fan. He currently lives in Manhattan with his daughter Stella, his cat Jean-Luc and his H1B visa. Anyone willing to marry him so he can get a green card should contact his agent or visit the Molly Wee Pub and look for the swearing man with the dark beer.