S.G. Browne

Okay. So I didn’t really have a summer vacation. And the list of books that follows includes everything I’ve read in 2009, but it’s just what came into my head first.

The idea to blog about this came about from a comment on one of my posts that suggested I include a link on my web site about what I’m reading. Well, I looked into placing a flash widget from Goodreads on my site, but it turns out WordPress, on which my web site is based, doesn’t accept flash widgets. Seems kind of discriminatory, if you ask me. What’s wrong with flash widgets? What did they ever do to WordPress? Does the ACLU know about this?

So until I figure out the best way to include some kind of link to what I’m reading, I figured I’d just blog about it.

First up is what I’m currently reading, which is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

I’m glad I didn’t know about this book before as at first glance it seems to be at least a cousin to Fated, my next novel, in that God and Death and a number of other immortal entities are characters. Not sure if that’s where the similarities end, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.

Although I try to devour a couple of books a month, I’m a little behind, but so far in 2009 I’ve consumed:

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
World War Z by Max Brooks
Fool by Christopher Moore
Jailbait Zombie by Mario Acevedo
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Something Missing by Matthew Dicks
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard
In the Woods by Tana French

The reads I enjoyed the most were Water for Elephants, Beat the Reaper, and Fool, though both In the Woods and Sharp Objects had such believable characters and page-turning plots that they have to be included in the top five.

The most disappointing reads were Something Missing and Pygmy – the first because I just couldn’t seem to get caught up in the story or the character and the second because, well, the broken English of the protagonist used throughout the entire novel prevented me from enjoying the narrative. I appreciate what Palahniuk was trying to do and applaud the message of the novel, but if it had been any other author, I would have put it down before the fifty-page mark.

If I had to pick a favorite so far this year, it would be Water for Elephants. Great narrative and style, compelling story, wonderful characters and setting, and a protagonist you genuinely cared about.

Favorite book of all time? There’s a handful that would be in the running:

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
The Stand by Stephen King
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

But if I had to choose one book to read over and over, my desert island novel would be, ironically, Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

So long as I had the conch.

So I’m back from Pittsburgh, where I spent the weekend at the Horror Realm Convention meeting lots of new writers, hanging out with a bunch of great people, and watching movie clips from a bunch of low budget 60’s and 70’s horror films with titles like Cannibal Girls, The Hanging Woman, and Scream Baby Scream.

Though my favorite movie clip was from the classic The Vampires Night Orgy, which prompted a discussion about how vampires have the best orgies, werewolves have the best pajama parties, and zombies have the best pot lucks. Though I can’t take credit for the discussion. That goes to Emily Fear and Maureen White of Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, who graciously hosted me at their booth for the weekend signing books with Jonathan Maberry and eating gummy body parts.

In addition to the wonderful staff at Joseph-Beth, I met a bunch of zombie authors from Library of the Living Dead and Permuted Press, including, Rhiannon Frater, Eric S. Brown, Rob Fox, Kody Boye, Kim Paffenroth, and James Melzer, among others. You can read about all of the authors on the Author Page of the Horror Realm web site.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Pus, the force behind Library of the Living Dead, as well as Rebecca May, Sandy Stuhlfire, Rich Dalzotto, and the rest of the organizers of Horror Realm. Having never traveled to an event on the east coast south of Manhattan (and even then, not since 2002), I hadn’t met the majority of those who attended the convention but soon found myself enjoying their company and sharing in the camaraderie of the weekend.

However, in addition to the wonderful memories, I also brought a cold back with me from Pittsburgh and have been laid up the last couple of days trying to kick it out of my apartment, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go exorcise my germs with some green tea and a shot of vitamin C.

Next time I’ll talk about why I think Tom Cruise should win the lifetime achievement award for running in movies.

They’re jackhammering again.

Across the street.  The never-ending Add-A-Garage project.  At least it’s been never-ending for the past year.  But honestly, they’ve installed the framework for the structure.  What the hell are they using a jackhammer for now?

Electric saws I can handle.  It’s white noise.  Freeway traffic.  Ocean waves rolling along the shore.

Hammers pounding?  Not a problem.  Distant tribal drums.  World music from a neighbor’s stereo.

But jackhammers are fingernails on a chalkboard connected to a Spartacus vibrator and pumped through Nigel Tufnel’s Marshall guitar amplifier.

Not exactly ideal conditions in which to write.  And since I don’t drink coffee and am easily distracted by baristas, cafes aren’t an option.  So I have to resort to drowning out the noise with my iPod.

But I can’t listen to just anything when I’m writing.  No B-52s or Squirrel Nut Zippers of Blink-182.  Nothing too distracting.  Nothing I haven’t heard a million times. And when Green Day’s “East Jesus Nowhere” from 21st Century Breakdown comes on, focusing is pointless.  I just want to hold my lighter in the air and sing along with the band.  (Yeah, I know.  Everyone holds their cell phones in the air now.  Call me old school, but holding a cell phone in the air at a concert instead of a lighter is like eating sushi at a baseball game instead of a polish sausage.)

All right, where the hell was I?  Oh yeah, playlists.  In order to drown out the vibrational dissonance of the jackhammering, I need comfort music.  It’s like comfort food, only for my ears.  Nothing heavy.  Nothing nostalgic.  No love ballads or screeching guitars or house music.  Just some of my favorite bands whose lyrics and music inspire me and that I’ve heard so many times that I can listen to the songs without getting distracted by the lyrics.

That comes to more than eight hours of Morphine, The Pixies, Sublime, The Beatles, The Doors, and, yes, some Green Day.  Just nothing from their new album.  Throw in some Booker T. & TheMG’s, some surf music, and some selections from the Fight Club and Pulp Fiction soundtracks, and I’m good to go.  Cocooned in a world of inspired familiarity.

Now if only I could do something about the fact that my cat keeps sitting in front of my monitor.

vanity >noun (pl. vanities)  1) excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.  2) the quality of being worthless or futile.

It’s interesting that the two definitions of vanity should seem to have such extreme opposites, but it’s actually a pretty good description of what it’s like to be a writer.  Not that all writers take excessive pride in their achievements, but there’s definitely ego involved for anyone who sits down to write with the goal of publication in mind.  After all, if you think something you’ve written is good enough to be read by a bunch of strangers who would actually pay to read it, then there’s a pretty good chance you’ve got a healthy ego.  Hopefully not on steroids, but an ego, nonetheless.

Let’s not confuse ego with arrogance, either.  While arrogance and conceit have negative connotations, an ego is a good thing to have.  Losing your ego can have significant consequences.

John Lennon once admitted that he’d done so much acid in an attempt to destroy his ego that he didn’t believe he could do anything.  By the time The Beatles were creating Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he’d given up all control of the band to Paul.  I’d like to think The Beatles would have been even better had Lennon chosen to put more of his mark on their last few albums.  But then, I think Abbey Road is a masterpiece.

Once again, I’m off on a tangent.  Which is why I’m my in-person interviews are always all over the map.

Back to vanity.

Okay, so there’s ego and then there’s pride in one’s achievements.  For the sake of argument here, let’s take the word “excessive” out of the definition and just stick with pride.  Of course writers are proud of their achievements.  You spend six months or two years of your life creating something and when you’re finished, you have a sense of accomplishment.  A sense of pride.  And when that first manuscript actually appears in your mailbox in the form of a published book, with your name on the cover and a blurb from Kirkus on the back, the feeling is even greater.  Almost surrealistic.

But along the way, through the writing and publishing process, the second definition of vanity comes into play, as well.  The feeling that what you’re writing is worthless.  That the hours you’re spending sitting at your computer writing about imaginary places populated by imaginary people is futile.  What the hell did you think you were doing?  Who in their right mind would want to publish this?  Or pay money to read it?

But when that first e-mail arrives from some stranger who read your book and they tell you they loved it and couldn’t put it down and didn’t want it to end, those concerns vanish like John Lennon’s ego.

A friend of mine, who is also a writer, once said that having a book published is like jumping off a cliff.  You have no control over what’s going to happen and you just have to hope that you land in something soft rather than in a dumpster filled with broken bottles.  Or something like that.  I’m paraphrasing, but the point is you’re at the mercy of the world, so you might as well enjoy the fall.

(Next entry: W is for World War Z)

It seems like I’ve had a lot of interview requests lately, which is a good thing.  Hopefully I’m not just regurgitating the same story every time.  Like Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees, who tells the same Shania Twain joke over and over as a way of defining himself before being called on it by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman who wonder if he is himself without the story.

“How am I not myself?”

Where was I?  Oh yes, repetitive responses to interview questions.  It seems like whenever anyone asks me to describe Breathers during a “live” interview, I end up either rambling about social satire and zombie angst or paraphrasing the back cover copy.  Usually at the end of this, I’ll say, “It’s Fight Club meets Shaun of the Dead, only with the zombies as the good guys,” and then wonder why I just didn’t say that in the first place.  Short.  Simple.  And it conveys the basic idea in less than 20 words.

My favorite interviews are the ones in which I get asked odd or playful questions, such as:

What scares you?  (Children. And paraplegic mannequins.)
How do you escape these days? (By hot air balloon.)
Can you describe Breathers using haiku? (It’s like Fight Club meets / Shaun of the Dead only with / Cannibalism)

I actually prefer doing the written interviews by e-mail, which give me a chance to edit my responses and maybe wax a little philosophical or throw in some amusing comments. While I appreciate that people find Breathers as amusing as I do, I’m not nearly as funny in person. I need to be able to edit my thoughts or do research before I come up with a good, snappy response. I would make a poor stand-up comic.

So if you’re interested, you can read my most recent interviews, which include a phone interview for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a written e-mail interview about the marketing of Breathers with Buzz, Balls, and Hype, and an in-person lunch interview with Gothic Angst Magazine.  You can even check out my video interview with Suvudu.com from Comic-Con.
As always, thanks for listening…