S.G. Browne

“It’s my understanding that naked women don’t generally tend to carry knives.”

That’s the opening line to my third novel, Lucky Bastard—a detective/noir/comedy/satire that takes place over the course of a single day in San Francisco.

Since I live in San Francisco, I thought it would be fun to take a virtual tour of the locations that factor prominently in Lucky Bastard and the inspirations behind how the book came to be written. Then I had the idea to add pictures.

Thus was born the Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour! (Cue the trumpets and orchestral music.)

Since all books have to start with Chapter One, that seems like a good place to kick things off. To quote James Lipton: We start, as always, at the beginning.

Lucky Bastard opens on the roof of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square, with our hero, Nick Monday, being threatened by an unidentified angry, naked woman holding an eight-inch carving knife. That’s the view from Powell Street of the Sir Francis Drake, known by locals as “The Drake,” on your right. They wouldn’t let me on the roof to take pictures for liability reasons. And I couldn’t find a woman willing to remove her clothes and menace me with a carving knife. So you’ll have to settle for this view, instead.

So what made me decide to start my novel out on the roof of a hotel? And why did I pick The Drake?

Lucky Bastard started out as a writing exercise for my writers group back in July of 2006. I can’t remember what the exercise was, but the opening line just popped into my head and I followed it up with a one page scene about a guy on the roof of some generic hotel and a naked woman holding a knife. That was pretty much it. I had no idea how he got up there or why the woman had the knife. It’s just what showed up on the page.

I didn’t do anything more with the scene until March of 2007. At the time I was working on my second novel Fated when  an idea popped into my head of what to do with that guy on the roof. So I sat down and wrote twenty pages of a novel that was loosely based on a short story about luck titled “Softland” that I’d written back in 2004. Which, by the way, you can read in my upcoming e-book collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel.

Another two years went by before I picked up those twenty pages and decided to see where the story wanted to go. For those who aren’t familiar with the way I write, I don’t plot out my stories. I’m a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants, discovering the story as I go along. Although the book starts on the roof of a hotel, that’s not the story. The story is everything that came before that opening scene. So I had to figure out how to get my protagonist back up on the hotel roof.

The first thing I needed to do was pick a hotel. While I’d set the novel in San Francisco, I hadn’t given the hotel a name, so I went out in search of one located in or around Union Square. The Chancellor Hotel had the right look and the colorful local history, but at fifteen stories it wasn’t tall enough for me. And while the Marriott and the Grand Hyatt were both over thirty stories tall, they lacked a certain panache.

So I decided on The Drake. One, it had the right look and feel. Two, having been built in 1928 it had the local history. Three, at twenty-one stories tall it was the right height. And four, it had something none of the other hotels could match: Beefeater doormen.

In addition to the architecture and the height and the Beefeaters, sitting atop The Drake is Harry Denton’s Starlight Room—a nightclub with a 360-degree view and 1930’s style throwback that I thought might turn out to be a useful setting at some future point in the novel. And I was right. It most definitely was useful.

But that’s another blog post.

If you’d like to read Chapter 1 of Lucky Bastard, you can check it out here.

Welcome back to Fiction Friday, where I’m spotlighting the novels that influenced and inspired the writing of Lucky Bastard.

Last week I brought you Raymond Chandler’s classic mystery/noir novel The Big Sleep. This week, in Paul Tremblay’s The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland, Mark Genevich is a South Boston private detective who suffers from narcolepsy and hallucinations. If that’s not bad enough, he has an overbearing mother for a landlord.

I stumbled across The Little Sleep at my local Books Inc. in early 2010. After finishing it in just a couple of sittings, I immediately picked up the sequel to find out what else was in store for Mark Genevich. I recently asked the author a few questions about his novels and his unique protagonist.

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What gave you the idea to write a novel about a narcoleptic detective?

I don’t remember where or when, exactly, but I got this image stuck in my head of a stereotypical PI scene where a beautiful woman walks into a detective’s big city office. Only her case is a truly bizarre one: her fingers on one hand were stolen and then replaced with someone else’s fingers. I quickly wrote that scene as the first chapter for some unknown, unformed book. Originally, I was going to play the missing fingers straight and try to write a PK Dick/horror/noir mash-up, but I didn’t have any story ideas to go along with it. So I put that chapter away for about a year.

Then one night I was researching medical afflictions (not a pastime; I was doing research for another story), and I stumbled across narcolepsy. When I read about the symptoms, particularly hypnagogic hallucinations, I remembered that missing-fingers chapter and knew instantly that her fingers were no longer really missing, and that my detective was dreaming. The title, THE LITTLE SLEEP, occurred to me immediately thereafter, and I went to work on research and building a plot for poor Mark Genevich.

Tell us about your hero, Mark Genevich. What’s he like?

Mark is really kind of an anti-detective. Because of his narcolepsy, he’s not really cut out for the surveillance, cloak and dagger lifestyle. He’s more than a little surly and sarcastic. He’s a glass-half-empty kind of guy to be sure, but can you blame him? His lives and works in a building owned by his well meaning but overbearing mother who constantly checks up on him. A terrible van accident left him scarred physically and mentally, as well as emotionally.

Mark isn’t going to outwit every suspect he stumbles upon, but he isn’t stupid. He’s not going to win very many brawls, but he isn’t weak. Single-minded will and determination is what sets Mark apart from most. Despite everything going against him (including himself, more often than not), he won’t ever give up.

Do you have narcolepsy? What kind of research did you do to bring your main character to life?

I do not have narcolepsy. However, in the mid-to-late 90s, I did suffer from a sleep disorder: sleep apnea. So, I do have some personal experience with crushing daytime fatigue. That said, based on my research and collected first-hand accounts from those who suffer with narcolepsy, my sleep apnea was nothing compared to what narcoleptics have to deal with. Most of my research was online, though I did read a self-published first hand account of a woman who lives with narcolepsy, and found it to be quite informative.

Mark Genevich, lives in Boston. You live in Massachusetts. No one ever sees the two of you at the same party. Coincidence? Is Mark your alter ego? Or are you just good friends?

Shh. Don’t tell…

I lived in South Boston for three years with my wife before moving out of the city. Lisa’s mother’s side of the family were born and raised in South Boston, so I had a wealth of homegrown experience and information at my disposal.

I’m as grumpy and surly as Mark when I go too long between meals. Or when I’m low on sleep. Otherwise, Mark is his own guy.

The title of your debut is a play on The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, and your opening paragraph is a wonderful nod to his novel. It’s obvious Chandler had an influence on you. Who and what are some of your other literary influences?

As a reader, I first fell in love with horror and speculative fiction. While I’d read some crime/noir fiction, I certainly wasn’t an expert. For The Little Sleep, I did as much research on crime and noir fiction as I did for narcolepsy. I read and re-read Chandler (including his personal letters), Hammet, Ross McDonald. I also re-read noir mash-ups from PK Dick, Jonathan Lethem, and Will Christopher Baer. Baer’s Phineas Poe informed Mark Genevich as much as Chandler’s Marlowe. Though as you noticed, The Little Sleep’s first paragraph is a big nod to The Big Sleep.

My other literary influences include Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, and many more. I try to steal from everyone!

Your novel No Sleep Till Wonderland is a terrific follow-up to The Little Sleep. Did you always plan to write a sequel? And will Mark Genevich come out to play a third time?

I didn’t actually plan to write a sequel. In fact, when I finished The Little Sleep, I told my agent that this book was it and that there’d be no sequels. As a reader, I’m not all that interested in series, to be honest. I much prefer stand-alones. And besides, I’d written Mark Genevich’s story and that was it. Well, Henry Holt came in with an enthusiastic offer for two books, and it was hard to say no. There are worse problems in life to have than writing a sequel, right?

That said, I had a hard time coming up with a plot line for the second book. I know part of the issue was me subconsciously (or consciously) rebelling against the idea of writing a sequel. But when I thought about the first book and how it was a novel about memory, the past, and how it shapes our identity, I found my way into the second novel. If The Little Sleep was about Mark’s past and who he was, then the second novel would build on that, and be more concerned with Mark’s present. Who he was would still be a mystery, but so would who he is now.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I hate coffee and pickles. Pickle flavored coffee would be the worst thing in the world, and a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Also, keep an eye out for my dystopian novel (doesn’t everyone have one?) SWALLOWING A DONKEY’S EYE, coming in August!

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Get your copy of The Little Sleep:

• On IndieBound
• On Barnes & Noble
• On Amazon

You can read more about Paul Tremblay on his Website and follow him on The Little Sleep’s Blog

Welcome to Fiction Friday: Lucky Bastard Edition, where I’m spotlighting the novels that influenced and inspired the writing of Lucky Bastard.

Last week I interviewed Ian M. Dudley, author of Marlowe and the Spacewoman. In Dudley’s novel, the main character is a futuristic clone who has taken on the identify of a famous fictional detective. In The Big Sleep, written by Raymond Chandler more than 70 years ago, the real Philip Marlowe makes his literary debut.

First, a little background:

Prior to writing Lucky Bastard, I hadn’t read a lot of detective fiction. And what I had read was years ago and mostly forgettable. But as I’d decided to make Nick Monday, my main character, a private detective, I thought it would be a good idea to do a little reading research before I got started.

On the advice of a couple of members of my writers’ group, who had both written novels that featured private detectives as protagonists and contained some mystery/noir elements, the first book I picked up was Raymond Chandler’s debut novel written in 1939. And if The Big Sleep is the only book I would have read, I wouldn’t have gone wrong.

I was hooked on the first page. The narrative voice, humor, style, and tone pulled me in like a pair of inviting arms and held me in their embrace.

Without getting into any plot details: the story moves along at a brisk pace and the mystery unfolds page by page, keeping you turning them, until you arrive at a satisfying conclusion and can’t wait to pick up another Chandler novel and get back into the world of Philip Marlowe.

Even though the plot is compelling and the story well-crafted, it’s the writing that brings you back. Chandler has a knack for narrative drive and creating characters and writing dialogue that seems like it could have happened. And it never gets dull.

While I didn’t know much about Chandler before I read The Big Sleep, I’ve learned that he is considered one of the fathers of hard-boiled detective fiction and has had an immense influence on other writers of the genre. Consider me influenced.

Purchase The Big Sleep at:

• Indiebound
• Barnes & Noble
• Amazon.com

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be spotlighting several authors and novels that inspired and influenced me in the writing of my third novel, Lucky Bastard (scheduled for release on April 17). And the first one up: Marlowe and the Spacewoman.

“It’s hard to stay clean when even the soap’s out to get you.”

That’s the tagline on the cover of Marlowe and the Spacewoman, the debut novel by Ian M. Dudley—a humorous sci-fi/dystopian/detective story about a clone-turned-private-eye who lives in the 22nd century.

Ian is part of my writers’ group here in San Francisco and I had the opportunity to workshop his novel several years ago. The novel was actually written in 2002 as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but, as Ian said, it sat around for a while before he decided to do something with it. I’m glad he did.

I asked Ian a few questions about his novel, which he was kind enough to answer below.

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Describe Marlowe and the Spacewoman in twenty-five words or less.

“To avoid death, a spare parts clone-turned-private-eye, made redundant by medical advances, must prove a woman who crashed to Earth is indeed from outer space.”

Does clone-turned-private-eye count as one word, or four? If one word, I made it. Otherwise, I went a bit over. Sorry. Man, and I thought twitter was hard!

Your novel includes a talking Rottweiler, a codependent toothbrush, a genetically modified parrot, and a sentient bar of homicidal soap. How much acid did you drop in college?

I’ve never in my life dropped acid. I handle my drugs with extreme care so they don’t fall on the ground and get dirty.

Actually, I wish I HAD dropped acid at some point in my life. It would make a lot of people far more comfortable about where my ideas come from. Myself included. To reassure my family and friends, I tell them my freshman roommate spiked my Jolt Cola with LSD when I wasn’t looking. It’s a lie, but it makes everyone feel better about the situation.

How far in the future does your novel take place? And would you want to live there?

The book takes place a century in the future, when we will finally get those flying cars science fiction has been promising for decades. The world’s more than a bit dystopian, so even though Marlowe manages to do pretty well for himself despite cloying toothbrushes and soap out to get him, I wouldn’t want to live there. However, I would LOVE to visit the place.

I don’t think I could write a book with a setting I didn’t want to visit, or characters I didn’t want to meet. I derive a great deal of pleasure figuring out the idiosyncrasies of a world and then forcing my characters to think fast in order to navigate them. I have a bit of a cruel streak.

That said, I’ve yet to create a setting I’d want to live in. I’m not sure what that means, though. Have I yet to write the ultimate (for me) book? I like that idea – this awesome novel that knocks you off your feet, lurking in the dark corners of my imagination, waiting for me to tease it out. The thought of something like that still in me fills me with a sense of optimism. And a smidgen of dread.

You include a lot of details about what the future might hold. Did you do a lot of research? Or do you just have a wild imagination?

I started to do research, but then it got hard and I gave up.

The star system Nina (the Spacewoman) claims to have returned from is real and has planets around it. So for that, yes, I happily plugged away in science journals and web sites. But then I thought, “You’re an engineer, figure out what percentage of the speed of light she’d have to be traveling at, including acceleration and deceleration, to add to the book’s realism.” This is how I discovered that an engineer is NOT an astrophysicist, no matter how much he’d like to think he could be. So for the really hard science stuff, I…avoided…potential sources of embarrassment by being a little vague on the details.

The other crazy stuff, I just took what’s going on in the world today and extrapolated to an extreme. I certainly hope none of it actually comes to pass! Well, most of it. I like the idea of super-intelligent parrots controlling the teamsters. I think they’d do a better job of it than humans.

And then there’s the spray-on clothes. Male-dominated marketing for sci-fi books inspired that, but after I wrote the book, some university actually invented it! Holy crap! I need to lose some weight, pronto!

Your title character is named after the iconic detective created by Raymond Chandler. Were Chandler’s novels an inspiration for Marlowe and the Spacewoman?

Absolutely. Both his novels and the film noir movies that they inspired. In fact, I called the reading and viewing ‘research,’ to get back to your previous question, but it felt too fun to be real research.

I’ve always viewed that era a bit wistfully. Big, ugly American cars, sharp-minded sleuths trying to make sense of those cars and the criminals who drove them, and the femmes fatale always betraying those sleuths. We need to bring back the femmes fatale. You knew they were gonna stab you in the back, but they were so smolderingly beautiful you just didn’t care. A man would find himself wishing she’d hurry up and finish backstabbing that other guy so she’d come over and give him his turn.

THAT is how it was done in those days, and it was awesome! Plus I love a good mystery, well told. And Chandler was a master of doing that.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your novel?

This book has been a major part of my life for years, and I can’t express with words the elation I feel now that it’s finally out in the world. You can find excerpts (as well as the option to buy!) via the links below. I hope people will check it out.

Also, while a stand-alone novel, Marlowe and the Spacewoman is the first in a series. The second book, Balloons of the Apocalypse, is almost done. If you love Beethoven, you’re gonna HAVE to read that book.

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Get your copy of Marlowe and the Spacewoman:

• Buy on Nook
• Buy on Kindle
• Buy via Smashwords
• Buy an old school paperback

Follow Ian M. Dudley on Twitter or visit him on his Blog

I’m proud to announce the (almost) two month countdown to the publication of my third novel, Lucky Bastard, which is scheduled for release on April 17 in hardback and e-book. I’ve marked the occasion by publishing information for the novel on my web site, including:

Synopsis
Cast of Characters
Reviews
Chapter 1 Sneak Peek

And, of course, at the bottom of each page I’ve included links for various sites where you can pre-order a copy.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be blogging about the book, how it came about, and taking pictures of various locations throughout San Francisco that appear in the book and giving some background on the writing of the novel as it relates to those locations.

Also, since I found inspiration from a number of authors and novels in the writing of Lucky Bastard, I’ll be spotlighting the novels that influenced me in a series of blog posts on Fiction Fridays.

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In addition to the upcoming release of Lucky Bastard, I’m excited to announce the impending e-publication of my first collection of short stories, Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel, an original e-book of ten dark and twisted humorous tales scheduled for release on March 27.

Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel is a mix of never-before-published tales and stories that have appeared previously in print anthologies, all gathered together for the first time. It includes stories about extraterrestrial sex toys, a group of professional guinea pigs, a zombie gigolo, and a reality TV show starring the Seven Deadly Sins. It also contains the stories that gave birth to both Lucky Bastard and Breathers.

If you’d like to learn more about the stories included in Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel, or if you’d like to pre-order it for your Nook or Kindle, just click on the image for the book cover. Or just CLICK HERE.