S.G. Browne

Lost Creatures Fun Facts (Part II)

This is the second in a series of Fun Facts about Lost Creatures, my new collection of short stories, On Sale Now.

Below are two more Fun Facts about two of the short stories in the collection, “All of the Lost Creatures Are Found” and “Riding the Softland Express.”

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LOST CREATURES Fun Fact #3

The title for Lost Creatures comes from the penultimate story in the collection “All of the Lost Creatures Are Found.” That story was inspired by all of the lost pet fliers I see posted around San Francisco and how I wish they could all be found.

The story was also inspired by the idea of childhood dreams combined with job titles I’ve come across on LinkedIn and how no child ever dreams of growing up to be a procurement analyst, a human resources generalist, or a senior account executive.

LOST CREATURES Fun Fact #4

The second story in Lost Creatures, “Riding the Softland Express,” originally appeared as “Softland” in my collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel. That short story was the inspiration for my third novel Lucky Bastard.

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San Diego Comic-Con 2016

comic-con_logoIt’s that time of year again when tens of thousands of worshipers converge upon the mecca of downtown San Diego for the annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con.

I’ll be joining my brethren in the Cathedral of Pop Culture, but my attendance will be limited and I will have only a single appearance where I’ll be signing books. That will take place as follows:

Thursday, July 21
Geekscape booth (#3919)
2:00pm – 3:00pm

I’ll also have a limited number of copies of Big Egos, Less Than Hero, and Lucky Bastard for sale, along with I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus. But whether you’re looking to score a copy, an autograph, or just say “hey,” stop on by if you’re on the convention floor this Thursday.

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Beyond the Keyboard: Lucky Bastard

Lucky Bastard - trade paperbackSome novels develop over a short period of time, like embryonic ideas that are nurtured and gradually grow into fully-formed creations.

Other novels are more like Frankenstein’s monster, with ideas harvested from seemingly unrelated moments of inspiration until it all comes alive with a jolt of creativity.

Next up in my Beyond the Keyboard series, my homage to the hard-boiled detective novel that was harvested from various inspirations: Lucky Bastard.

The Short Story, Part I

Sometime in 2001-2002, I started an untitled short story about two brothers and their grandfather who live together in Central California. I wrote about five pages and liked the characters and what was happening but I didn’t know where the story was going or what it was about. All I knew for sure was that I was sold on the opening line: “Grandpa only had one finger left and it was pointing at the door.”

The Amsterdam Connection

In October 2002 I took a trip to Amsterdam, where I found myself in a coffee shop called Softland, so called because it had a bunch of soft, comfy pillows for patrons to sit on while they enjoyed their coffee. I believe the coffee I consumed was a mellow blend called White Widow. I brought a souvenir from Softland back with me that would sit in my desk drawer for six months or so before I took it out.

Softland1

The Short Story, Part II

I was still trying to figure out what to do with my short story I’d started more than a year earlier, which had a working title that I can’t recall. But when I took out the lighter from Softland, something clicked and I decided to adopt the Amsterdam coffee shop name as the title for my story. Now all I needed was a reason for the story to exist.

The Spanish Connection

intactoAround this time, I saw a Spanish film titled Intacto, which came out in 2001 and dealt with the concept of luck as a commodity. In the film, the main premise centers around underground games of chance in which the losers surrender their amassed good luck to the winners, usually resulting in their death. One of the characters, the hero of the film, has the ability to steal luck from others.

The film didn’t spend much time on this unique ability or how it might have come to exist, but I was intrigued with the concept and decided it would be fun to create my own mythology about luck poachers.

And just like that, “Softland” had it’s premise: a family of luck poachers. A year later, in 2004, I finished what at the time was the final draft. Eight years later, “Softland” would appear for the first time in print in my eBook short story collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel.

The Journal Entry

Lucky Bastard1In July 2006, during a free-flowing writing exercise for my weekly writing group, I came up with the opening line: “It’s my understanding that naked women don’t generally tend to carry knives.”

From there I wrote a scene about a man confronted by an angry naked woman with a knife while on the roof of The Windsor Hotel. At the time I didn’t think it would go any further than that, but something about the scene tugged at me until eventually I decided to do something more with it.

When Ideas Collide

I always felt that “Softland” aspired to be more than just a short story but I didn’t know where to go with the two brothers and their grandfather. And while it took me a while to figure it out, I realized I didn’t have to continue their story. I could instead expand on the mythology of luck poaching. And my journal entry proved to be the jumping off point for that exploration.

But the plot, characters, and storyline for what would eventually become Lucky Bastard didn’t take shape until three years later when I was compelled to write a synopsis for my unwritten third novel.

The Synopsis

In April 2009, while negotiating the sale of Fated to Penguin/NAL, my agent asked me if I had an idea for another novel that we might be able to pitch for a possible two book deal. At the time I didn’t have much more than a dozen pages written and I wasn’t sure how to make the story work. And since I don’t plot out my novels, I’d never written a synopsis for a book I hadn’t written yet. The synopsis always came later.

So I sat down and wrote a two-page synopsis about this private detective who stole luck, had an affinity for Lucky Charms and mochas and corporate coffee-house baristas, and who got caught up in a big luck fiasco with the feds and a Chinatown mob boss. I also had him meeting a kid with the purest luck he’d ever encountered.

I didn’t know if any of that was going to stick. It was just what stuck when I threw a bunch of ideas on a blank piece of paper. As it turned out, I ended up using almost everything in the synopsis. Go figure.

The Chandler Connection

Big_SleepWhile preparing to write Lucky Bastard, I picked up The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler to get some ideas about writing a detective novel. I’d never read Chandler and fell in love with his writing immediately.

In addition to Chandler, I also read The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay (about a narcoleptic detective in Boston), and Marlowe and the Spacewoman by Ian M. Dudley (a futuristic detective novel that was work-shopped in my writer’s group).

So after all of those detective novels, it was unavoidable that my main protagonist in Lucky Bastard would be a private eye. The only problem was, I needed the right name.

The Screenplay

Back in 1991, while living and working in Hollywood, I wrote a screenplay titled A Fish Out of Water about a private detective in Chicago trying to track down a rare Asiatic myna bird that had been bird-napped. The script was inspired by the Airplane! and Naked Gun films with lots of goofy gags and clever/silly wordplay.

My protagonist was a semi-competent private detective named Nick Monday, while his leggy and sexy client was named Tuesday Knight. The script never got bought but I loved the names and wanted to find a way to use them. Since I’d decided my main character in Lucky Bastard would be a private detective, I borrowed the name from my screenplay and brought Tuesday Knight along for the ride as a femme fatale.

And that’s how Nick Monday got his name.

The Final Jolt of Creativity

Even with all of the pieces in place, the novel didn’t come to life until I brought everything together and sat down to write it. And although I’d written a synopsis that included a lot of plot elements, many of the other supporting characters showed up in the first draft unexpectedly, including Bow Wow, Scooter Girl, and the proprietor of The Starlight Room.

For those of you who have read Lucky Bastard, when Nick first meets the woman at the bar in the nightclub atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, I was probably just as surprised as you to find out who she was.

And setting the story in San Francisco was a lot of fun, since I live here. Researching all of the locations and sitting in Huntington Park or at O’Reilly’s Irish Pub and writing several scenes made the story come alive that much more for me.

If you’re interested in taking a virtual tour of some of the San Francisco locations that appear in Lucky Bastard, I did a series of blog posts under the category Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour.

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Lucky Bastard $1.99 Ebook Sale

Lucky Bastard - trade paperbackWhile I’m still a stalwart holdout of fully caving into the digital age when it comes to books, I realize there are others out there who have managed to unshackle themselves from their Luddite ways.

It is to those of you I am heralding the news that Lucky Bastard is now on sale as an eBook in all formats for $1.99. That’s McDonald’s Extra Value Menu pricing. Though I like to think the quality is a little more nutritious.

So whether you have a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or Kobo, you can order Lucky Bastard for less than a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or your favorite independent bookstore, many of whom have partnered with Kobo to sell eBooks. So you can get your digital fix while supporting a brick and mortar bookstore.

I’ve included links to a few of my favorite independent bookstores below that sell eBooks, along with the usual suspects. The sale is only for a short time, so get it while it’s cheap. Or give it as a gift and spread the luck.

Barnes & NobleAmazoniBooksCopperfield BooksBooks IncMysterious Galaxy Bookstore

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Filed under: Lucky Bastard,Summer of Bastards and Egos — Tags: — S.G. Browne @ 6:58 am

The Summer of Bastards and Egos: Lucky Bastard

Lucky Bastard - trade paperbackIn April 2012, I published my third novel, Lucky Bastard. Or rather, Simon & Schuster / Gallery Books published my noir and luck-themed dark comedy, starring the luck poaching private detective Nick Monday.

Now Lucky Bastard is back, this time in trade paperback with a brand spanking new cover. And to mark the occasion, I’ve included a reading of Chapter 1, narrated by yours truly. Just click on the link below to access the MP3 file:

Lucky Bastard, Chapter 1

The opening line to the novel was something that just popped into my head during a writing exercise at my writer’s group back in July of 2006. I didn’t know where the line was going to lead me, so I just went with it and wrote a short scene about a guy being held at knife point on the roof of some fictional hotel. At the time, I had no idea that scene would end up as part of the opening chapter for a novel about luck.

But one day, after finishing up the final draft of my second novel, Fated, I sat down to figure out what my next book was going to be. I started flipping through my journals and that scene on the rooftop caught my attention. I still wasn’t sure what to do with it, until I combined it with some of the concepts I’d created in a short story about luck poachers called “Softland,” which I’d written in 2004. (You can find “Softland” in my eBook  short story collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel).

So that’s how Lucky Bastard was conceived, by a short story getting together with a journal entry. A little over nine months later, I had a newborn novel.

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