S.G. Browne

So I’m back from Pittsburgh, where I spent the weekend at the Horror Realm Convention meeting lots of new writers, hanging out with a bunch of great people, and watching movie clips from a bunch of low budget 60’s and 70’s horror films with titles like Cannibal Girls, The Hanging Woman, and Scream Baby Scream.

Though my favorite movie clip was from the classic The Vampires Night Orgy, which prompted a discussion about how vampires have the best orgies, werewolves have the best pajama parties, and zombies have the best pot lucks. Though I can’t take credit for the discussion. That goes to Emily Fear and Maureen White of Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, who graciously hosted me at their booth for the weekend signing books with Jonathan Maberry and eating gummy body parts.

In addition to the wonderful staff at Joseph-Beth, I met a bunch of zombie authors from Library of the Living Dead and Permuted Press, including, Rhiannon Frater, Eric S. Brown, Rob Fox, Kody Boye, Kim Paffenroth, and James Melzer, among others. You can read about all of the authors on the Author Page of the Horror Realm web site.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Pus, the force behind Library of the Living Dead, as well as Rebecca May, Sandy Stuhlfire, Rich Dalzotto, and the rest of the organizers of Horror Realm. Having never traveled to an event on the east coast south of Manhattan (and even then, not since 2002), I hadn’t met the majority of those who attended the convention but soon found myself enjoying their company and sharing in the camaraderie of the weekend.

However, in addition to the wonderful memories, I also brought a cold back with me from Pittsburgh and have been laid up the last couple of days trying to kick it out of my apartment, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go exorcise my germs with some green tea and a shot of vitamin C.

Next time I’ll talk about why I think Tom Cruise should win the lifetime achievement award for running in movies.

I’ll be at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Pittsburgh South this weekend, September 18-20, for the Horror Realm Convention.

Although I’ll be hanging out and available most of the weekend, I do have a couple of scheduled signings and readings:

On Friday, from 6-7PM, I’ll be doing a sit and sign in the Dealer’s Room with Jonathan Mayberry, author of Patient Zero and Zombie CSU.  If you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Jonathan, he’s a great guy.

On Saturday, I’ll be doing a reading followed by a Q&A from 11:30AM-12:30PM, followed by a solo sit and sign in the Dealer’s Room from 12:30-1:30PM.

So if you’re in the area, come on by. There’s lots of zombie goodness to be had.

They’re jackhammering again.

Across the street.  The never-ending Add-A-Garage project.  At least it’s been never-ending for the past year.  But honestly, they’ve installed the framework for the structure.  What the hell are they using a jackhammer for now?

Electric saws I can handle.  It’s white noise.  Freeway traffic.  Ocean waves rolling along the shore.

Hammers pounding?  Not a problem.  Distant tribal drums.  World music from a neighbor’s stereo.

But jackhammers are fingernails on a chalkboard connected to a Spartacus vibrator and pumped through Nigel Tufnel’s Marshall guitar amplifier.

Not exactly ideal conditions in which to write.  And since I don’t drink coffee and am easily distracted by baristas, cafes aren’t an option.  So I have to resort to drowning out the noise with my iPod.

But I can’t listen to just anything when I’m writing.  No B-52s or Squirrel Nut Zippers of Blink-182.  Nothing too distracting.  Nothing I haven’t heard a million times. And when Green Day’s “East Jesus Nowhere” from 21st Century Breakdown comes on, focusing is pointless.  I just want to hold my lighter in the air and sing along with the band.  (Yeah, I know.  Everyone holds their cell phones in the air now.  Call me old school, but holding a cell phone in the air at a concert instead of a lighter is like eating sushi at a baseball game instead of a polish sausage.)

All right, where the hell was I?  Oh yeah, playlists.  In order to drown out the vibrational dissonance of the jackhammering, I need comfort music.  It’s like comfort food, only for my ears.  Nothing heavy.  Nothing nostalgic.  No love ballads or screeching guitars or house music.  Just some of my favorite bands whose lyrics and music inspire me and that I’ve heard so many times that I can listen to the songs without getting distracted by the lyrics.

That comes to more than eight hours of Morphine, The Pixies, Sublime, The Beatles, The Doors, and, yes, some Green Day.  Just nothing from their new album.  Throw in some Booker T. & TheMG’s, some surf music, and some selections from the Fight Club and Pulp Fiction soundtracks, and I’m good to go.  Cocooned in a world of inspired familiarity.

Now if only I could do something about the fact that my cat keeps sitting in front of my monitor.

Truth is, I’ve grown a bit tired of the A to Z of Breathers, which I started back on March 3 when the novel was released.  Six months later, I think I’ve exhausted most of my insight about Breathers and probably been repetitive and redundant along the way.  Plus I’ve run out of fresh ideas for the last four installments.  See?  I’m repeating myself already just in this blog.But I couldn’t think of anything that worked for X or Y.  (Z would obviously be for Zombies, which I think I’ve talked about more than once.)  And W is for World War Z is really a bit of a stretch.  Except I figured it was relevant since Breathers was tied to it, or at least to Max Brooks, on the back cover copy of the novel.

So consider this the last installment dealing with the What, Where, Who, When, and Why of Breathers.

On the back cover of Breathers, the copy reads:

For fans of Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide and zombie aficionados everywhere…

Truth is, while I bought a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide in 2004 and read through parts of it and enjoyed the dry and amusing take on zombie preparedness offered up by Max Brooks, I never really looked at it as anything similar to Breathers.  I was more of the opinion that fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Christopher Moore would enjoy my novel, which has been confirmed by a number of readers who asked me if I’d ever read either Palahniuk or Moore.  So that makes me happy, since I consider both of them talented novelists and influential in my own writing.

However, since The Zombie Survival Guide was a widely read humorous zombie novel, my publisher thought it would make sense to tie the two together and reach out to those fans.  Several readers commented that the comparisons between the two novels weren’t really relevant, while one reader went so far as to complain about the comparison and bash me for not measuring up to Brooks’ caliber of writing in World War Z.  Which is kind of bizarre because nowhere on the cover copy does it mention World War Z.  Whatever.

Is there a point to this?  I’m not really sure.  It’s late, I have an early morning call with my editor to discuss her thoughts on my next book, and I want some Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream but my freezer only has frozen edamame and Morningstar sausage links.  So naturally, I’m distracted.

But I think where I was going with this was that I didnt’ read World War Z until after I’d finished Breathers and had a publishing contract because I didn’t want to be influenced by any zombie fiction.  And while I enjoyed WWZ and found it a compelling and fascinating read, again, there’s not really any point of comparison between my writing and that of Max Brooks.  Though I think you can be a fan of both of us and still respect yourself in the morning.

Onward…

(This is a feature from Undead Anonymous where Andy, the main protagonist of Breathers, answers your questions.)

Ryan, a teenage zombie from the land of Yahoo!, asks:

As a fellow zombie, I’ve only, so far, been eating brains. I’ve lately been wanting to, uhh, expand my horizons, as it were, and I was wondering if you could recommend any of the juicier parts of the body. Thanks.

Well Ryan, personally I’ve always found brains to be a little soupy and messy and not worth the effort it takes to crack open the skull.  Plus there’s always the risk of mad Breather disease, so I tend to stick to the fleshier parts of the human body.

The main thing to remember when selecting a body part is that exercise and age toughen meat.  So using that as a guideline, the legs, neck, shoulder, butt, and flank will be far tougher than the seldom exercised rib and loin.  Old Breathers will be more sinewy than teenagers, especially the pampered ones, so it’s advisable to select a Breather that’s a couch potato under the age of 30.  Shopping in affluent neighborhoods is always a good rule of thumb, too.

My advice?  You can’t go wrong with ribs from an undergraduate at a private college.

Bon appetit!