S.G. Browne

When I initially sat down to write Lucky Bastard, all I had was the concept of luck poaching and the novel starting out on the roof of a hotel. I didn’t know where the story would go, how I would get my character back on to the hotel roof, or even my character’s name. I just had twenty pages of an idea with a couple of characters and some potential for plot.

It was around this time in April 2009  that I sold my second novel, Fated, and my agent asked me to send her a synopsis of Lucky Bastard that she could share with my publisher. Which is all well and good if you’re a plotter but when you’re a pantser, writing a synopsis of a novel you haven’t written yet poses a bit of a problem.

After all, how the hell am I supposed to write a synopsis when I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen?

My agent told me to just make up something, so that’s what I did. I made something up. And it started out like this:

Jon Rolli is a private detective who lives in San Francisco with his cat, eats Lucky Charms every morning for breakfast, and has an affinity for corporate coffeehouse baristas. He’s also a luck poacher.

There was another page-and-a-half of gibberish about luck and plot points and other characters, and we’ll get to the name of my protagonist in a minute, but the idea for him to be a private detective popped into my head for a couple of reasons.

One, I’d recently read and critiqued a couple of detective novels written by other members of my writers group. And two, I walked past the building on the right, located at the corner of Fillmore and Filbert, at least a couple of times a week over the previous three years. On the second floor, the one above the defunct Irish bakery, is Immendorf Investigations, Private Detectives. (Click on the photo to enlarge).

At that point, I still wasn’t sure my main character was going to be a private detective. It was just an idea that I thought might be useful. Even nine months later, in early January 2010, with only eighty pages written, he still wasn’t a P.I. (I know this because I save every version of a manuscript I’m working on on as a separate file).

Nick Monday wouldn’t become a private detective until nearly a year after I’d written the synopsis, which is when he would finally get an office at the corner of Sutter and Kearny. On the left you’ll see two buildings. (Again, feel free to click on the image for a larger picture). The one on the far left is the actual building located on that corner. In reality, the offices and units on those five floors are much larger than the cramped 10′ x 10′ office Nick inhabits in Lucky Bastard. As Nick describes his digs:

I have my own little office in downtown San Francisco. And when I say little, I don’t mean in a quaint or a charming kind of way. Like a little cottage or a little eccentric. It’s more like a little hungover. Or a little anorexic.

The building on the right, which is just up Kearny on the other side near Bush Street, is more like the office building I imagine for Nick. But I preferred the sound and feel of him having an office on the corner of Sutter and Kearny rather than near the corner of Kearny and Bush. So I took some creative license with reality and left him there.

As for how Nick Monday got his name, I’ll share that in my next blog post.

Okay. I admit it.

As a full-time-stay-at-home writer and my own boss, it’s often a bit of a challenge to stick to a schedule and maintain some discipline, considering that the only one keeping me in line and making me accountable is myself.

No one’s holding me to a deadline.
No one’s giving me performance reviews.
No one’s looking over my shoulder.

Unless you count the mannequin in sunglasses, Hawaiian shirt, and Peter Grimm hat standing over my left shoulder, six feet away.

(But that’s another story.)

Self-motivation is something every writer struggles with at one time or another. And with all of the distractions we have today (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), it’s hard to believe that anyone ever gets anything written.

Which is why you’ll often see me post to Facebook or Twitter early in the day and then disappear. I can’t stay logged in and connected all day long. If I don’t unplug, I’ll never meet my own self-imposed deadlines. Which, admittedly, are written in pencil and chalk more often than in permanent marker.

On the flip side, because I’m my own boss, I’ll often work until 10:00 or 11:00PM. So even though I might get distracted and go out for a couple of hours in the middle of the day to meet a friend for lunch or catch a matinee at the movie theater or take a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, I’ll more often than not log ten hours of work per day.

Granted, not all of that time is spent writing. I rarely write for more than 4-6 hours a day. My brain burns out. I’m not interested in getting words down just for the sake of getting words down. I’m interested in making the words count more than I am in reaching a word count.

But when you throw in time spent on Facebook and Twitter, along with answering e-mails and following up on e-mails, updating my website, and writing the occasional blog, interview, or guest post, the hours eventually add up.

Fortunately, I enjoy what I do. All of it. Okay, most of it. Sometimes I feel like I spend too much time in front of my computer and not enough time interacting with human beings. Another confession. I’m full of them today.

Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Or rambling. Or trying to figure out how to wrap up this post. Whatever it is, I better get back to work because the mannequin is starting to make me nervous.

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.

*          *          *          *          *

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.

Men are always using baseball to make analogies about sex:

• He strikes out a lot
• He only got to second base
• He has control problems

It’s just what we do. Relating sports to sex. I’m sure there’s some Freudian connection to be made there, but I’m not the man to do it. Suffice it to say, we like our sports analogies.

Which is where the writing part comes into play. At least for me.

In baseball, when a pitcher is in the middle of throwing a no-hitter or a perfect game, no one talks to him. He sits alone on the bench at the end of the dugout and no one says a word to him because no one wants to jinx him. No one wants to put the kibosh on the no-hitter. So at the very least, even if anyone talks to the pitcher, no one talks about the no-hitter.

I’m superstitious in the same way about my writing. Specifically about whatever I’m currently working on (aka my Work In Progress or WIP). I don’t like to talk about it while I’m in the middle of it because I’m afraid to jinx it. To take the energy away from it. Which is why you’ll rarely, if ever, hear me mention my WIP on my blog or on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else. Some writers can talk about it all the way through the process, but I’ve never been comfortable doing so.

Part of that comes from the fact that I make up the story as I go and sometimes I get stuck trying to figure out what comes next. This isn’t something I exactly want to share with others:

“How do I get my main character back on the roof of the hotel?”
“What happens when my protagonist gets stripped of his immortality?”
“The narrator just killed and ate his parents. Now what?”

This is something most writers experience at some point in almost everything they write. It’s the self-doubt that creeps into the creative process. Sometimes we nail it and we know it and it feels really good. But most of the time, there’s at least one moment where we read what we’ve written and we think: “What a piece of crap.”

Which is when perspective and editing come into play.

So when it comes to talking about my WIP, you likely won’t hear me mention much of anything about it until that final pitch is thrown and the last out is recorded and I can raise my hands in the air and celebrate what I’ve accomplished.

And with any luck, when I send it off to my agent, I’ll hit a home run.

There are all sorts of bad habits writers can get into and all sorts of distractions that can keep us from doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is writing. We can spend all day on the Internet. Play video games. Watch the entire first season of Breaking Bad in one day on Netflix streaming.

This list could be called Ten Stupid Non-Writing Things Writers Do. Or twenty. Or fifty. But I decided instead to list just the following five, which are really less about habits and distractions and more about destructive behaviors that can have a significant impact on your writing.

1) Read Your Reviews
Yes, I know. How are you not supposed to read your reviews? And if you’re fortunate enough to get a positive review from Kirkus or Entertainment Weekly or The Washington Post, of course you’re going to read it and share it with others. But if you’re constantly reading about what others are saying about your books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Goodreads, that’s when you get into trouble. Not everyone is going to love your book. And as most reviewers will tell you, the reviews aren’t there for you. The reviews are there for other readers. Which leads to Stupid Non-Writing Thing #2.

2) Get Attached to Reviews
Every writer knows that a bad review can ruin your day and that the best way to get over a bad review is to read a good review. Though you’ll have to follow the Rule of Ten and read ten good reviews to offset the one bad review. But whether the reviews are positive or negative, don’t get attached to them. After all, writing is subjective. What someone thinks about your book has nothing to do with whether it’s good or not. What ultimately matters is how you feel about the book. Don’t let the opinions of others dictate how you feel about your writing.

3) Argue With Reviewers
Never, ever, ever argue with someone about a bad review of your book. Again, writing is subjective. And as I’ve said before, the truth of creation is no more valid than the truth of interpretation. When you let your creations out into the world, they no longer belong to just you. They belong to everyone who reads them. So whatever someone thinks about your book is true for them and to argue about it makes you look like an idiot. Which is another reason why you should avoid doing Stupid Non-Writing Thing #1.

4) Get Fixated On Sales Numbers
While selling books and making your living as a writer is something every writer hopes to do, the sales aren’t always there. Or what you hoped they would be. When this happens, it’s easy to get fixated on your sales and start measuring your value as a writer in the number of books you’ve sold. This will only lead you to a dark place. So stop focusing on book sales and focus on the satisfaction and the gratification the act and art of writing gives to you. Even if your sales are better than expected or beyond your wildest dreams, don’t allow that to impact your writing. Whether you sell a hundred books or a hundred thousand doesn’t change what you’ve written. It’s still the same book. And you still wrote it.

5) Spend All Day on Facebook and Twitter
Yes, social networking is important in this day and age, but you need to have some balance, and the balance should be weighted more heavily toward writing, not Tweeting or Facebooking. Plus it’s good to disconnect. Get out and have new experiences. Receive stimulation from a world that doesn’t exist on computers. As Francoise Sagan said: I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live. She didn’t say anything about constantly updating her Facebook status.