S.G. Browne

Following up on my blog post for The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, below is my list of The Best Books You’ve Never Read. Admittedly, you might have read one of them. Maybe even two. But I’m guessing no one else has read all five of them. Or even three. Prove me wrong. And feel free to share your own gems.

Kockroach, Tyler Knox
Taking Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and flipping it upside down, this story about a cockroach who wakes up one morning to discover he’s a man in 1950s New York has everything you want in a noir novel – organized crime, a love triangle, and an inhuman antihero with a relentless survival instinct. Good fun.

The Little Sleep, Paul Tremblay
Another noir novel, this one takes its title from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and features a South Boston P.I. who nods off at the wrong times and suffers from hallucinations. Blackmail, corrupt politicians, and a narcoleptic detective. What more do you want? (If you like this one, check out the sequel, No Sleep Till Wonderland.)

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
The not-so-heartwarming story of a family of carnival freaks. Art and Lily Binewski, the owners of a traveling carnival, decide to breed their own freak show by using experimental drugs to create genetically altered children. Dark, twisted, beautiful, and bizarre, this novel about a singularly dysfunctional family will stay with you long after you’ve finished.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
The most likely book of the bunch to have been read, and the only New York Times bestseller on the list, STIFF is a wonderfully informative and delightfully humorous look into what happens to the human body when nature and medical science take over. Roach knows how to make non-fiction entertaining. (This book was an invaluable inspiration in the writing of my novel Breathers.)

Vamped, David Sosnowski
Martin, a suicidal vampire, living off blood derived from stem cells since humans are nearly extinct, finds salvation in the form of a six-year-old human girl who escaped from a preserve. Initially intending to snack on her, Martin instead finds himself growing fond of her company and becomes an unlikely guardian. An original vampire tale written with warmth and humor.

When I first started writing more than twenty years ago, I was reading a steady diet of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, F. Paul Wilson, and Peter Straub. So most of what I wrote from 1990-2002 was supernatural horror. Alternate realities. Things that went bump in the night.

And Stephen King is the reason I wanted to become a writer.

That thirteen year period from 1990-2002 produced three novels and about four dozen short stories, several of which were more dark comedy and social satire than supernatural horror and written in the first person point-of-view.

In 2001, I wrote the last of those darkly comedic stories, “A Zombie’s Lament.” The following year, while rewriting two of my supernatural horror novels, I realized I didn’t like what I was writing. Worse, I didn’t enjoy the process. Writing had become tedious rather than joyful. So after several months of this, I stopped writing.

Nearly a year later, in 2003, after reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk, I was inspired to take “A Zombie’s Lament” and do something more with it. That something more became Breathers. With Breathers I found a voice and a style that resonated with me and made writing enjoyable again and also allowed me to maintain some of my roots in the supernatural and the fantastic.

In addition to King and Palahniuk, I’ve been inspired by authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Christopher Moore, and Douglas Adams. I’m also inspired by films like Being John Malkovich, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, and I Heart Huckabees.

I write social satire because I enjoy poking fun at human beings. There’s a lot to poke fun at. Including myself. And I write dark comedy because that’s just my sense of humor. Plus I have a lot more fun trying to make myself laugh than trying to make myself wonder what’s lurking in the shadows.

Admittedly my main protagonists aren’t your classic heroes. They’re not imbued with a sense of honor or altruistic motives. They’re not someone you would necessarily want to bring home to meet your mother.

They’re selfish.
They’re cynical.
They’re decomposing corpses.

In other words, they’re flawed. But even if they’re zombies, incarnations of fate, or genetic mutants who have the ability to steal luck, they’re very much human. And my challenge is to find a way to make the reader want to root for them or be their friend in spite of their shortcomings.

For this edition of Fiction Friday, I bring you Issue #7 of Strange Aeons magazine. Inside their Autumn 2011 issue, you’ll find my short story “Zombie Gigolo,” which appeared in last year’s release of the zombie anthology The Living Dead 2.

Originally written for and performed at the Gross Out Contest at the 2008 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, “Zombie Gigolo” takes some of the more disgusting elements from Breathers and ratchets them up a few notches while exploring that age old question:

Is it necrophilia if you’re both dead?

“Zombie Gigolo” took third place in the Gross Out Contest and earned me the coveted gummi haggis prize, which I seem to have misplaced.

When I chose the name for my second novel, Fated, I didn’t consider whether other novels had been published under the same name or what the content of those novels might be. It was, I felt, simply the best name for my novel.

However, a search on Amazon reveals that quite a few other novels have been published under that same title. And every single one of them is a paranormal romance novel.

There’s Fated – A Doomsday Brethren Novella by Shayla Black (a paranormal romance)

And Fated (The Eternals) by Carolyn McCray (touted in the book’s description as the #1 historical and fantasy romance)

Then there’s Fated: The Cascadia Wolves Series by Lauren Dane (apparently a hot, sexy paranormal romance)

There’s also Fated (The Bloodstone Saga) by Courtney Cole (the second novel in her paranormal YA series)

And finally Fated by Rebecca Zanetti (another paranormal romance, this one with vampires)

Now, I don’t consider MY Fated to be fantasy romance, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, or any of their relatives. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve written a dark comedy and social satire with a romantic storyline. However, I realize everyone has their own opinions and perspectives, and that’s fine. And considering the company I’m keeping, apparently my title lends itself to hot, sexy, paranormal romance.

I’m thinking I needed more beefcake on my cover.

I’ve often heard others say that in order to write good dialogue, you need to write the way people talk. You need to listen to speech patterns and expressions and emulate what you hear. The problem with this is that most real life conversations require a good editor. Everyday speech is filled with repetition and fillers and unnecessary adverbs like “basically” and “really” and “very.” Not to mention that many conversations tend to be unfocused and repetitive and stray off on tangents.

One way to think of it is that dialogue in writing is good conversation, but conversation in real life is not necessarily good dialogue.

So in order to write good dialogue, the trick is to write the way people should talk rather than the way they actually talk. You want to write dialogue that sounds believable but in real life never happens.

To quote Alfred Hitchcock: “A good story is life with the dull parts taken out.” Good dialogue is very much the same.

So what’s one of the best ways to learn how to write good dialogue? By watching movies.

Movie scripts have to be crisp and efficient. They’re all dialogue and action without the fiction writer’s burden of having to fill in the blanks with narrative prose. Obviously not all movies are great examples on how to write dialogue, but those that are contain dialogue that has a rhythm, is filled with conflict, and moves the story forward. Some of the films that get it right include L.A. Confidential, The Departed, Airplane!, Diner, and The Graduate.

I’d also recommend watching a selection of films written by David Mamet, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Mel Brooks, and Joel and Ethan Coen. All of these writers have a flair for dialogue and do a great job of conveying the rhythms of speech and conversation. The Coen Brothers are especially adept at conversation.

Naturally, since we’re talking about writing, it’s a good idea to read dialogue, too. So read as much as possible and as many different authors as possible. Read mysteries, romance, social satire, and thrillers. And if you’ve never read any Elmore Leonard, Robert Parker, or Christopher Moore, you might want to give one or more of them a shot, if nothing else than to see how they handle dialogue.