S.G. Browne

For the past month I’ve been working on a collection of short stories that I plan on releasing as an e-book sometime later this year. Some of the stories were written between 1997-2004 and some of them have appeared in anthologies and collections, but never before have they been collected together. And several of them are brand spanking new.

The collection will include the following:

“A Zombie’s Lament” – My two-thousand-word short story about a newly reanimated corpse that was the genesis of Breathers.

“Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel” – One of my newest creations, a cautionary tale about what happens to a writer when he purchases words from a drug dealer.

“Dream Girls” – A futuristic story about sexual obsession, extraterrestrial intelligence,the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK.

“Softland” – A family of luck poachers living in central California deal with the consequences of their actions. This story spawned my next novel, Lucky Bastard.

“The Sodom and Gomorrah Shore” – The Seven Deadly Sins in the original reality television show, set back during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This one was written after Fated.

“Zombie Gigolo” – The shortest story in the collection, this took third place in the Gross Out Contest at the 2008 World Horror Convention.

There are four other stories, including “Dr. Lullaby” and “My Ego is Bigger than Yours,” both of which are sneak peeks of two novels I’m currently writing. The collection will also include an introduction and author notes for each story so you get some kind of background information on how the stories came to be written.

I’m excited to have the chance to share these with everyone, so I’ll keep you posted as to when you can expect the collection to be available. And thanks for reading!

In honor of Zombie Awareness Month (yes, apparently, May is Zombie Awareness Month), I’ve asked Jerry from Breathers if he would like to share his thoughts on some of his favorite current zombie fiction. So without further delay, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Jerry!

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Thanks dude. So to be honest, I don’t read a lot of, like, zombie fiction. Just because I’m a zombie doesn’t mean I want to read about myself. How narcissistic is that? I mean, do private investigators only read detective novels? If they do, they’re total tools.

But anyway, I have read a couple of zombie novels recently that I thought were pretty good, so here’s my take on them.

Zombie, Ohio by Scott Kenemore

This is a story about a college professor dude in rural Ohio who wakes up from a car accident to find out he’s, like, a total zombie. Only unlike the other brain dead zombies that are freaking everyone out, he’s a smart zombie. At first he doesn’t even realize he’s one of us, but when it becomes apparent, he pretty much gives in to his hunger for human burgers.

But as he becomes isolated from the humans in his life (his friend and his girlfriend, who seems totally hot), he finds himself bonding with the other zombies and leading them across Ohio in search of food and purpose. It’s pretty cool, in a funny, disgusting, existential kind of way.

The main character kind of reminds me of Andy, all philosophical and wondering about the meaning of things. Personally, I think he should just chill out and have some fun. Smoke a bowl and drink some Jack. But of course, that’s what got me here, so maybe I’m not the best one to give out advice.

Zombies and Shit by Carlton Mellick III

This is one of the most bizarre books I’ve ever read. In a good way. Funny and gross with a lot of action and hot chicks. It’s like a mixture of the zombie apocalypse, The Running Man, and a totally fucked up version of Lost. Only without Hurley.

A bunch of dudes and dudettes, like twenty of them, wake up in an abandoned building on this island that’s totally swarming with zombies. Turns out they’re on a game show. And only one of them gets to make it off the island alive. So like, one by one they each get picked off, either by the zombies or by each other. Bummer.

The book was a lot of fun, with a bunch of zombies and zombie smart cars and these mechanized zombie dogs that totally freaked me out. I liked a lot of the characters, and totally related to Scavy and Junko, but Heinz was a complete dick. Oh, and one of the characters is a cybernetic Mr. T, that dude from The A-Team. That was awesome!

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Scott Kenemore is the author of the Zen of Zombie series, including The Zen of Zombie, The Art of Zombie Warfare, and Zombies vs Nazis

Carlton Mellick III is the author of numerous Bizarro novels, including Satan Burger, The Haunted Vagina, and Christmas on Crack

I enjoy stories with characters who aren’t clean-cut, perfect heroes. Who have flaws and secrets and skeletons in their closets. Who struggle with their inner demons. It makes them more believable. More three dimensional.

The same goes for my movies. Which is why I thought L.A. Confidential should have won the Best Picture Oscar in 1997 instead of Titanic. The richness of the story aside, I thought the characters resonated with more truth.

I mention L.A. Confidential because that film is what ultimately led me to read The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. Both The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential make up the second and third entries in Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, which also includes the bookend novels The Black Dahlia (which I’ve read) and White Jazz. I’m only halfway through the four but eagerly anticipating the third.

The Big Nowhere takes place in 1950, just a year or so before the events that occur in L.A. Confidential, and, like The Black Dahlia, the novel starts off with a gruesome murder. Eventually, the murder becomes plural and dovetails with several other story lines dealing with police corruption, Hollywood politics, and the Los Angeles mob.

Ellroy’s prose hits you like a prize fighter, never pulling any punches and taking you all twelve rounds. The book is dark and gritty and paints a picture of 1950 Los Angeles that is both believable and far from flattering.

The narrative is told in alternating chapters by the three main characters – Detective Danny Upshaw, Lieutenant Mal Considine, and Buzz Meeks -who are as flawed and as tragic as any heroes you’ve ever met. Sometimes you wonder if you should be rooting for them. But in the end, you realize you don’t really have any choice.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting excerpts from each of my four short stories included in the recently released Dark Arts Books collection, Swallowed by the Cracks, which is available for order through the Dark Arts website.

Below is an excerpt from the opening of “Dr. Lullaby,” a short story that takes place in Manhattan and is the concept upon which I’ve based one of my future novels.

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DR. LULLABY

People still get confused about my name.

I suppose I shouldn’t take it personally. After all, it’s not like I’ve ever done any interviews or tried to set the matter straight. I’m not even the one who came up with the moniker. I think The New York Post was the first to print it. That was my first big headline. The one that turned me into a local celebrity. Though celebrity isn’t really the right word, since no one knows for sure who I am. Who any of us are.

Still, you’d think that after all of the press surrounding the events that have transpired over the past few months, people would understand what it is I do. But from what I hear on the street and on talk radio, a lot of people still think I’m some kind of serenading physician or an academic pedophile.

I’m thinking I need to hire a good publicist.

Before I go any further, I should probably explain a few things. So let me start at the beginning. Or maybe we should start in the middle. Isn’t that where stories are supposed to start? In the middle? Not with the hero graduating from college and getting a job working for an advertising agency in Manhattan, then getting downsized and blowing through his severance and savings in less than a year and trying to figure out how he’s going to earn a living.

You don’t start with all of that expository crap.
The wistful reverie.
The character building.

It’s not: Lights. Camera. Backstory.

What you start with is action.

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“Dr. Lullaby” can be read in its entirety in Swallowed by the Cracks.

It’s not often I read a book that gets five stars out of me, but such is the case with this fantastic novel about the importance of words by Markus Zusak.

Although technically a YA novel, written for children ages 12 and up, The Book Thief resonates on so many levels that it should be enjoyed by adults of all ages.

The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with her foster parents in a small town in 1939 Nazi Germany. More accurately, the story is told by Death, who has a rather empathetic view of the human race and who is understandably overworked during this period in history. Yet he finds himself inevitably drawn into the lives of those who inhabit Liesel’s world.

As are we.

I’m not going to tell you the synopsis of the novel. You can read the synopsis on Wikipedia or Amazon.  What I will tell you is that the novel is dark and touching, filled with both dread and hope. It’s filled with characters who remain long after the last page has been turned. And it’s filled with prose that is lyrical and eloquent, with fabulous imagery that you want to breath in and savor.

Breath collapses. Words lean. Sentences fumble.

It’s the type of book that reminds you of the beauty of words. The power of words. And that, in essence, is what The Book Thief is about. The power of words to transform the world, both for good and for bad.

Someone once asked me what book would I recommend to everyone. I used to have an answer. That answer has changed. That book is now The Book Thief.