S.G. Browne

First of all, I need to make something clear.

I don’t love most of the books I read. If we’re giving one to five stars to books, with five for Loved It, four for Really Liked It, three for Liked It, two for Didn’t Like It, and one for Hated It, the majority of the books I read fall into the Liked It category. Three stars. It takes a lot to get four stars from me. And even more to get five stars.

Now, with all of that said, you’re probably expecting five stars for Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Well, that’s not going to happen. I liked it, so it gets three stars. Why not more? Let me elaborate.

First of all, nothing happens for the first two-hundred pages. Nothing. It’s all back story. Yes, I know it was integral to the plot, but I like my exposition peppered into the narrative, not given to me all in one big chunk. By the time I hit page 200, I was wondering how this book became a best seller because I couldn’t imagine anyone continuing to read it. After all, most people I know have a 50-100 page rule. If the book hasn’t delivered anything by then, it’s on to the next one.

But I stuck with it because I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. And then things finally started to happen. Lots of things. I became intrigued and compelled to keep reading. The characters became interesting. The story got darker and more complex. I wanted to know what happened next. And when it ended, I was happy I hadn’t given up.

That said, I’m not compelled to read the rest of the trilogy. I don’t care enough about the characters to find out what happens next. I know a lot of people love crime thrillers, but I’m not a big fan of them. And to be honest, I didn’t find the writing particularly inspired. It might have been the translation from Swedish to English, but if I’m going to read something similar, I’m much more likely to pick up a Raymond Chandler novel or something by James Ellroy. I find their style of writing much more enjoyable to read.

All in all, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely worth reading. But as for the other two books in the trilogy, I’ll find out what happens by streaming the Swedish film versions on Netflix.

I’m happy to announce that Dark Arts Books is going to be publishing four short stories of mine in their new collection Swallowed by the Cracks, which will officially debut at the World Horror Convention in Austin, TX, at the end of April.   The collection, which also includes stories by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, and Michael Marshall Smith, will be available on Amazon and at other various bookstores beginning May 1.

Three of my stories in the collection have never been published and two of them are examples of the type of fiction I predominantly wrote from 1990-2003.  Supernatural horror.  Alternate dimensions.  Unexplained phenomenon and things that go bump in the night.

My four stories include:

“Lower Slaughter” – a story about a married couple vacationing in England who discover that time has a habit of slipping away;

“The Lord of Words” – the tale of a struggling writer who believes that outside forces are attempting to prevent him from finishing his novel;

“Dream Girls” – a social satire about a new technology that involves cloning, aliens, and the assassination of JFK;

and “Dr. Lullaby” – a cautionary comic tale about the unexpected side-effects of an over-medicated society.

These last two stories are both written in the first person and similar to the style in which I wrote Breathers, Fated, and the upcoming Lucky Bastard.  So it’s a nice mix of supernatural tales and dark comedies.

In addition to my stories, you’ll find some nice dark fiction and tales of horror from the three gentlemen I mentioned above (Lee, Gary, and Michael) all of whom are most excellent wordsmiths.  I’m honored to be included in the collection with them and I’m looking forward to celebrating the release of Swallowed by the Cracks next month in Austin.

Gator A-Go-Go is the twelfth novel by Tim Dorsey who, like Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, lives in Florida and has made his living satirizing the Sunshine State.  Dorsey’s novels are what you would probably consider crime capers, with lots of shady characters, drugs, violence, and a sociopathic anti-hero by the name of Serge Storms.

But really, that description doesn’t do Serge justice.  Most of the people he kills in the book deserve what they get, so he’s actually just dispensing his own sense of moral justice.  He’s also highly intelligent, obsessive, an expert on Florida’s history, and he comes up with highly creative ways of dispatching the villains – such as turning a garage door into a light activated guillotine.

In Gator A-Go-Go, Serge is off on spring back to make a documentary film with his trusty sidekick Coleman, a drug addict who knows how to keep beer cold on the beach without a cooler and how to make some awesome pot brownies.  Together, they attract a crowd of college kids who end up following them from one spring break location to another.

Along the way, Serge and Coleman get caught up in the middle of a manhunt that has the feds and a gang of vengeful drug dealers searching for the son of an outed Witness Protection Program informant, who just happens to be in Florida on spring break.

Part crime novel, part social satire, part history lesson, Gator A-Go-Go is a unique and fun read.  I’ll definitely be picking up one of Dorsey’s earlier novels to get acquainted with Serge and Coleman again.

I have too many things to run through on this last Friday of February to talk about just one thing, so I’m canceling Fiction Friday and installing the inaugural entry of Attention Deficit Disorder Friday so I can get to everything on my list.  Now where did I put that list?  Ah, there it is…

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As I mentioned on Wednesday’s blog post, “Softland,” my short story about a family of luck poachers, appears in the eBook collection The Mother Load, which you can get for free by pre-ordering a copy of James Melzer’s Escape: A Zombies Chronicle Novel.  The collection also includes stories from Jeremy C. Shipp, David Moody, and the other bloody names on the pregnant lady to the left.

Here’s a teaser from the opening of “Softland:”

Grandpa only had one finger left and it was pointing at the door.

He was leaning forward in his chair, his gaze turned away from the marathon of Gilligan’s Island reruns, that single, remaining digit on his left hand pointing across the room.

“Someone’s comin’,” he said.

Before I could reach my Smith and Wesson sitting on top of the television, the front door crashed open.

Let me back up.

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Back up to last Thursday, when I received my author copies of the United Kingdom version of Breathers, which is scheduled for release next Thursday, March 3rd. Conveniently, that just so happens to be the two year anniversary of the launch of Breathers here in the states.

So to celebrate, I’ll be throwing a party. Okay, not really a party. But I’ll be giving away free stuff.  To be specific, signed copies of Breathers, Fated, and the UK version of Breathers. So stay tuned for a blog post next week with the details on how you can get your hands on some signed books.

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I’ll be signing books tomorrow (that’s Saturday, February 26th for those not keeping track) from 1:00PM to 3:00PM at the Barnes & Noble in Dublin at the Hacienda Crossings shopping center, off of Interstate 580 at the (surprise!) Hacienda Drive exit.  So if you’re in the area, come on out and say “hey!”  And bring mimosas.

Having just finished up reading Big Machine by Victor Lavalle, which I’ll review next week, I now have the task of picking another book to read from my To-Be-Read pile, which is really more like two piles plus half of a shelf on one of my bookcases, which comes to a grand total of twenty books.  And that doesn’t include a couple of PDF books I have on my computer.

For the sake of fitting what I could into a single picture, here’s a sample of what I have to choose from:

The stack isn’t indicative of the order in which I plan to read all of these, but includes:

Ravens by George Dawes Green
Gator A-Go-Go by Tim Dorsey
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Spook by Mary Roach
Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby
I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis

It also includes my favorite title of the bunch, The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole by Timothy Long and Jonathan Moon, which has been on my stack for much too long. (Hangs head in shame.)

So what’s on your stack to read? And can you beat twenty books?