S.G. Browne

It’s a birthday bash for Andy, Rita, Jerry, and the rest of the gang at Undead Anonymous.  That’s right.  Two years ago tomorrow, Breathers hit the shelves in the U.S. and Canada.  To mark the occasion, I’m going to be giving away a signed copy of Breathers.

But that’s not all!

Tomorrow also marks the birth of Breathers in the United Kingdom, with a spiffy new cover. (Check it out on Amazon UK.)  So I’m including a signed copy of the UK edition, as well.  Two books for the price of none.  How can you beat that?

But wait, there’s more!

Act now and I’ll also throw in a signed copy of Fated, which has only been out for four months and is just a baby in book years, but I didn’t want Fabio, Karma, and Death to feel left out.

That’s right.  For the price of nothing, you get signed copies of all three books!

I’ll also be giving away a signed copy of the UK version of Breathers to two other lucky winners.

So three winners in all!

To enter, just leave a comment on this blog post with some way to contact you and, if you’re so inclined, include a note as to your favorite character in Breathers or Fated.  If you haven’t read the books, that’s okay.  There’s no judgment here.

And feel free to sign up for the RSS feed (at the top, right next to the navigation bar).

Contest runs until 11:59pm PST Sunday, March 6th.  Winners will be chosen from all entrants using a random number generator.  (Unfortunately, I do have to limit this to U.S. residents only, so my apologies.)

Ready?  Go!  And good luck!

Last April, I was approached by my buddy, James Melzer, to submit a short story to an eBook collection he was putting together as part of a promotional launch package for his upcoming novel, Escape: A Zombies Chronicle Novel. The idea was to offer up a collection of short stories for free to anyone who pre-ordered a copy of his novel. I liked the idea, so I said “count me in.”

The Mother Load is an eBook collection of never-before published stories from Mur Lafferty (“Style Won’t Save You”), David Moody (“The Deal”), Jeremy C. Shipp (“Spider Clowns From Planet X”), Wayne Simmons (“Mary’s Boy Child”), Matt Wallace (“Knowing”), and yours truly (“Softland”).

I won’t give away what any of the other stories are about, but “Softland” is about a family of two brothers and their grandfather who live in central California and who have the ability to steal luck. It’s also the story upon which my next novel, Lucky Bastard, is loosely based. Though with a different storyline and different main characters.

So how can you get a copy of The Mother Load? That’s easy. Just pre-order Escape: A Zombie Chronicles Novel by James Melzer at any of the following online retailers:

• Amazon (Print Edition)

• Amazon (Kindle Edition)

• Amazon UK

• Amazon Canada

• Borders.com

• Indigo Canada

Once you’ve pre-ordered Escape, YOU MUST FORWARD YOUR PURCHASE RECEIPT TO EscapeNovel@Gmail.com.  Once you do this, you will receive a .zip file that contains The Mother Load in .mobi, .epub and PDF formats for your eReaders within 24 hours.

The collection also contains an excerpt of Escape so you know what you have to look forward to.  You can also check out a synopsis and learn more about Escape: A Zombies Chronicle Novel by visiting the Official Website of James Melzer.

That’s it.  Any questions, let me know.  Happy reading!

This week on Wild Card Wednesday, I’ve decided to list the favorite books I read in 2010.  None of these books actually came out last year but that doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that I read ’em and I liked ’em.

In no particular order, here are my Five Favorite Reads of 2010 with a brief blurb about each:

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
A heartbreaking story about what it means to be human, both melancholy and affecting. Read the book, then watch the movie.

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Sets the bar for mystery noir and detective novels. Rich and satisfying, both in the story and the prose.

Duma Key, Stephen King
King back to his tricks as a master of storytelling and supernatural chills. His best stand-alone novel since The Green Mile.

City of Thieves, David Benioff
Two unlikely comrades attempting to avoid execution during the siege of Leningrad. Wondrously funny and engaging from start to finish.

Skin Tight, Carl Hiaasen
A fun ride through the criminal world of Florida politics and plastic surgery, filled with great characters, social satire, and lots of laughs.

There you have it. That’s my list.  What were some of your favorite reads from 2010?

Welcome to Wild Card Wednesdays, where there aren’t really any rules as to what I can blog about, though I’ll tend to focus on something to do with writing. Sometimes I’ll blog about what I’m working on.  Sometimes I’ll blog about the business of writing.  Sometimes I’ll ask you what you want me to blog about.  And sometimes, I’m just going to be plain lazy and regurgitate a post for old times sake.  And this is one of those times.

In September of 2008, I posted an entry about my now defunct Tuesday night writers group.  We would start off each workshop with a 5-10 minute writing exercise that would change from meeting to meeting.  Sometimes it would be on a certain subject.  Sometimes it would be a certain setting.  Sometimes it would focus on character development or dialogue or description.

At this workshop, the exercise was to write the opening to a story that incorporated five different elements:

A setting.  An musical instrument.  A profession.  An animal.  And a mythical creature.

I asked each of the other five members in attendance to provide a suggestion for one of the elements above.  Those elements turned out to be:

A hair salon. A sousaphone. A nurse. A gerbil. And a leprechaun.

We all wrote our own story openings using those elements.  Below is what I came up with for my opening scene:

One day at the hair salon, I’m giving a simple cut and wash to my third Thursday three o’clock, when in walks a leprechaun with a sousaphone.

“Mind if I play?” says the leprechaun.

I look at the leprechaun, all three feet of him, staring up at me over the lip of the tuba, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a bad idea to say “no.”

“Sure, whatever,” I say, figuring it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The woman in the chair, my third Thursday three o’clock, looks at me in the mirror and says, “That’s strange.”

I figure she’s talking about the leprechaun, who’s standing by the hair driers playing the opening notes of “The Girl From Ipanema,” when in walks a nurse with a gerbil on a leash.

And I’m thinking that this looks like trouble…

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