S.G. Browne

I will be attending Comic-Con this year at the San Diego Convention Center July 23-26 as part of the Random House / Crown Publishing booth.  It will be my first time ever at Comic-Con.I’ve listed the Random House booth location and my schedule of signings, as well as the location of Mysterious Galaxy Books where you can get a copy of Breathers at the convention.  The Random House booth will not have copies of Breathers for sale but they will have some free buttons, stickers, and bookmarks.  I’ve also included information for the panel I’ll be on Saturday afternoon.

Hope to see you there!

Random House / Crown Publishing: Booth #1128
Mysterious Galaxy Books: Booth #1119

Signing Location and Schedule
(Note: Saturday’s signing is in a different location and follows the Monster Mash Panel)

Thursday  AA29     11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Friday       AA29     11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Saturday   AA1         4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Sunday     AA29      11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Panel Location and Schedule
Saturday   Room 2    3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Monster Mash Panel
Panelists: Amber Benson (Death’s Daughter); Alice Henderson (Voracious);Walter Greatshell (Xombies: Apocalypse Blues); S.G. Browne (Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament); Marlene Perez (Dead Is So Last Year); Rob Thurman (The Cal Leandros Novels); and Samantha Sommersby (Forbidden: The Temptation)

Moderator:  Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy Books

Yes, originally I said this post was going to be U is for Undead.  But Z is for Zombies, like that’s a big surprise, and it seemed kind of silly to preempt zombies with the undead, so I tried to come up with something else and, well, this was it.

Why Ulysses?  Because I have a confession to make.  I’ve never read it.  I don’t even know what it’s about.  And I have never understood any of the obscure references Dennis Miller has made about James Joyce in his stand-up routines.

And it’s not just James Joyce.  I’ve never read any Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, W. Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, Henry James, John Milton, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or William Faulkner.  And I hated Crime and Punishment.  Read it in my Western Lit class in high school.  The crime was that the book was ever written and the punishment was that I had to read it.

Oh, and I think Hemingway sucks.  Yes, he sucks.  His writing blows.  I don’t know how the man got published.  Yeah, I know.  His writing style had a significant impact on the development of 20th century fiction and his works are considered classic American literature, blah blah blah.

But A Farewell to Arms?  Absolute crap. It’s filled with run-on sentences, repetitive use of qualifiers (like VERY lame), and frequent stretches of dialogue involving multiple characters with no indication as to who’s speaking. Plus, the death scene at the end, where Catherine is in the hospital and the main character, Frederic, is trying to comfort her.  I don’t have the book in front of me, but I seem to recall the dialogue going something like this:

“I love you,” he said.  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.”
She smiled weakly. “And I love you.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
“I love you.”

And don’t tell me that’s how they wrote back in the 1920s.  Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, published four years prior to A Farewell to Arms, had beautiful language and believable dialogue.  Hemingway is an overrated hack.

So what is this blog entry actually about and what the hell does it have to do with Breathers or zombies?  Nothing.  Except for the fact that I am obviously not a student of literature and have drawn on none of the famous literary giants in my own writing.  Well, except maybe for Fitzgerald.  Though someone wrote a review of Breathers and mentioned something about channeling Faulkner, which is funny since I’ve never read him, so I have no idea how I channeled the man.
Oh, and I also don’t know what a gerund is.  Though I’m pretty sure I know how to use it.

(Next entry: V is for van Gogh…or maybe Vampires)

The digestive organs and the lungs disintegrate first, for they are home to the greatest number of bacteria…The brain is another early-departure organ.  “Because all the bacteria in the mouth chew through the palate,” explains Arpad.  And because brains are soft and easy to eat.  “The brain liquefies very quickly.  It just pours out the ears and bubbles out the mouth.”

The previous kernel of post-mortem knowledge comes from Chapter 3 of Mary Roach’s STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, a wonderful little book about what happens to the human body after it stops walking around and starts to smell.
STIFF was instrumental in my research into what Andy and the other zombies in Breathers might have to contend with as they confronted the reality of their decomposing existence – sloughage, bloat, maggots feasting on their subcutaneous fat.  All of the everyday things zombies worry about.  In addition, STIFF also provided some insight into the consequences they might face should they get a little too uppity:

Over the past sixty years, the dead have helped the living work out human tolerance limits for skull slammings and chest skewerings, knee crammings and gut mashings; all the ugly, violent things that happen to a human being in a car crash.

From STIFF I learned that when maggots feast on subcutaneous fat it sounds like Rice Krispies, that when the internal organs liquefy they turn to chicken soup, and that up until 1965, necrophilia wasn’t a crime in any U.S. state.  Not really sure what made everyone change their mind then, but since I was born in 1965, I’m sure there’s some cosmic connection.
What made STIFF such a pleasure to read, rather than simply pouring through a bunch of facts about putrefaction and rigor mortis and forensic science, was the funny, matter-of-fact style of Mary Roach.  Her humor and light-hearted irreverence toward the dead makes reading about impact testing and anal leakage a lot of fun.  No, really.

If you like a good non-fiction read with a touch of morbid fascination, then I recommend you pick up a copy of STIFF.  As Entertainment Weekly says, it’s “Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting.”

(Next entry:  T is for Tom)

“Rita’s face is a pale moon hovering in the black hood of her sweatshirt. She has on a black turtleneck and black pants. The only color she’s wearing is on her lips, which are Eternal Red.”

This is the first glimpse of Rita, a suicide who slit her wrists on her twenty-third birthday and who consumes formaldehyde in trace amounts by eating lipstick, fingernail polish, and other cosmetic products.  She’s the only character, other than Andy, who made the jump from my short story “A Zombie’s Lament” to Breathers.

Rita is also the love interest for Andy, who becomes increasingly attracted to Rita in spite of his feelings of guilt and loss regarding the death of his wife.  As Andy puts it when dealing with his conflicting feelings about his wife and Rita and describing the differences between the two:

“One who is dead and cold, the other who is undead and hot.”

When I started out writing Breathers, although I had the character of Rita in my head, I didn’t intend for Andy to develop feelings for her and for the two of them to fall in love.  Their relationship just seemed to develop as the story went on and it only made sense for the two of them to start up an undead romance.  I think the first moment when this happened is in Chapter 10, when Andy goes for a walk on a Sunday morning and ends up meeting Rita just at the moment when he’s feeling like he’s made a big mistake.  Which is actually one of my favorite chapters in the book.  I remember finishing the chapter and thinking, “Well, that was fun.”

Obviously Andy is my favorite character in Breathers, and while Jerry holds a very dear spot in my heart as my second favorite, Rita was an absolute pleasure to discover.

(Next entry:  S is for STIFF)

I originally planned on having this post be Q is for Quitting, which would address the voice in the head of the writer that often speaks up and says:  “Why are you doing this to yourself?”  But I wasn’t really happy with the way the post was developing.  Plus it had such negative connotations that I ended up going in another direction.  So instead, I decided to address some of the general questions I’ve received about influences, favorite films, books, music, that sort of thing. I know, not particularly deep but I’m feeling lazy today.

To keep it simple without elaborating too much while at the same time paying homage to High Fidelity (Nick Hornby) and the male instinct for making lists, here are some of my Top 5 Lists.  I stayed away from my Most Memorable Split-Ups and Top Five Dream jobs and instead focused on artists, musicians, and films that inspire or influence my own writing.

Favorite Authors
1) Chuck Palahniuk
2) Christopher Moore
3) Stephen King
4) Kurt Vonnegut
5) Gregory Maguire

Favorite Books
1) The Stand by Stephen King
2) Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
3) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
4) Lamb:The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
5) Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Favorite Bands
1) The Beatles
2) Green Day
3) The Doors
4) Sublime
5) Cake (before they got rid of their horns)
(Honorable mention goes to the Pixies, Weezer, and the Violent Femmes)

Favorite Music to Listen to for Inspiration
1) Green Day
2) Pixies
3) Sublime
4) Morphine
5) AC/DC (before Bon Scott choked on his own vomit)

Favorite Films
1) Fight Club
2) Being John Malkovich
3) The Big Lebowski
4) Unbreakable
5) Donnie Darko

Favorite Soundtrack Moments in Films
1) “Tiny Dancer” (Elton John) – Almost Famous
2) “Build Me Up Buttercup” (The Foundations) – There’s Something About Mary
3) “Down With the Sickness” (Richard Cheese) – Dawn of the Dead (2004)
4) “Where Is My Mind?” (Pixies) – Fight Club
5) “Bullwinkle Part II” (The Centurions) – Pulp Fiction
(If I had a theme song to play whenever I walked into a room, this would be it)

(Next entry: R is for Rita)