S.G. Browne

Okay.  First of all, I have to apologize because I’m completely and irrefutably delinquent on posting this.  I meant to post this a week or so ago but it seems that I really do have stuff leaking out of my head.  I think it’s called gray matter.

Second of all, I have to say that Rhonda Parrish, the interviewer and CEO of Niteblade, is a fabulous gift of a person.  I met her at my first ever World Fantasy Convention in Calgary last Halloween and am absolutely positive that had she been the only person I met, the convention would have been worth the trip.

You can check out my interview with Rhonda at Niteblade News, which also includes wonderful interviews with other authors.

And while you’re at it, check out the on-line magazine at www.niteblade.com

Just a reminder that my first official reading and signing of Breathers will take place this weekend in San Francisco. Details can be found on the Breathers page of Undead Anonymous under Next Scheduled Resurrection, but if you need the quick skinny on the facts, here they are:

Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA – March 15th, 3:00PM to 5:00PM

If you don’t live in or around San Francisco (or Burbank or San Diego, where I’ll be doing signings the weekend of March 21-22), and you’d like to know where or how you can get a signed or personalized copy of Breathers, the folks at Borderlands are here to help.

Just call the store (888-893-4008) or e-mail (office@borderlands-books.com) and mention that you’d like an inscribed copy of Breathers. The ridiculously nice and helpful staff at Borderlands will ask you a few relevant questions, such as if there’s anything specific you’d like the inscription to say, where you want the book shipped, if you’re paying with a credit card or a DNA sample, that kind of stuff. Then they’ll give me a shout and let me know I’ve got a request for some personalized books and I’ll head down to the store and inscribe your copy and they’ll ship it out.

Yeah, it’s that easy.

If you can’t make it this Sunday, I hope I get the chance to meet you somewhere down the road. Stay tuned for future appearances. Or check for updates under Next Scheduled Resurrection.

Thanks!

(Author’s Note:  Since Andy tends to have a bit more “hands-on” experience with this subject, I’ll turn things over to him for this entry.)

The smell is the hardest thing to get used to.

You’d think it would be the bloating or the liquifecation of tissues or the fluid from the lungs oozing out of the mouth and nostrils.  The brain can go pretty fast, too.  Bacteria in the mouth chew right through the palate and before you can say “Night of the Living Dead,” your brain is pouring out your ears and bubbling out your mouth.

Fun stuff.

Of course, most of these problems apply to those who reanimated prior to being pumped full of formaldehyde.  (Future post alert.  Guess what F is for?)

In addition to the challenges mentioned above, if you’re unembalmed, you also have sloughage to look forward to.  That’s when the liquid leaking from the body’s ravaged cells gets between the layers of skin and loosens them, causing the skin of fingertips and toes to come off.  Sometimes, entire sheets of skin will peel away from an unembalmed zombie.  I’ve known a few melters who suffered this indignity.

But no matter what class of zombie – embalmed, freshie, or melter – the smell of undeath is almost impossible to mask.  Hydrogen sulphide leaking from various orifices, internal organs fermenting in a formaldehyde stew, the constant odor of gradually rotting meat…it’s a challenge to maintain your dignity when the stench of your rotting flesh wakes you up in the middle of the night.

You try to get it out of your hair or your clothes but no amount of Tide or Pine-Sol or bleach can get rid of the smell.  Someone should make a decent deodorant for zombies, or anything hygiene related, really.  They would make a killing.

(Next entry:  E is for Editor)

Meet Carl, one of the seven “survivors” who meet twice weekly for the Undead Anonymous meetings that are more or less the extent of Andy’s social life.

Carl is a bit of a curmudgeon, which is a nice way of saying he’s an insensitive prick. This stems from the fact that he’s angry about having been stabbed seven times, twice in the face, by two teenagers who stole his wallet and used his credit cards to buy seven hundred dollars worth of online pornography. The fact that you can get a lot of quality online pornography for free pisses him off even more.

Carl used to be a member of a local social club and resort, where he played tennis and golf and attended weekly dinners and hob-nobbed with the social elite of Santa Cruz County. Now he sits in a room with a bunch of rotting corpses twice a week instead of being able to go to the movies or take a walk on the beach or play a round of golf.

Understandably, Carl is a little bitter, so he tends to take out his frustration on the other members of the group. But his verbal barbs begin to soften as he develops a camaraderie with his fellow zombies.

In addition to his general snarky attitude, one of Carl’s more endearing habits is his tendency to distractedly finger the stab wounds in his face.

Next entry: D is for Decomposition.

Breather(br‘́́thər) n. 1 one who breathes; a human being; a living person   2 someone who has civil and constitutional rights   3 a tasty, midnight snack

When I first came up with the title Breathers, I was in a bed and breakfast in Hanalei Bay, Kauai, recovering from the fact that I’m a caucasian man who neglected to apply a strong enough sunscreen.  This was in October of 2003, two years after I’d written the short story “A Zombie’s Lament,” upon which the novel is based.

At first I wasn’t sure the title would work for the novel.  After all, Breathers is a dark comedy about zombies, not the humans who abuse and subjugate them.  Except for the Breathers who work at the SPCA.  But that’s for another blog…

Problem was, I fell in love with the title.  And although I tried to come up with alternate titles that might work, I couldn’t bring myself to lose it.  So I had to make sure the content of the novel supported the title.  Still, my publisher wanted to add a reading line so that potential readers would know it was a novel about zombies, so we settled on the title of the original story it was based upon.  Which was kind of cool.

Officially, the first draft of the first chapter of Breathers was written on October 3, 2003.  I only know that because I have the journal entry for it.  But that chapter isn’t the first chapter.  It ended up becoming the second chapter.  The opening to the novel originally went:

My name is Andy and I’m a survivor.  At least that’s what I’m supposed to say and think and believe.  But I can’t say it, I don’t think it, and the only thing I believe is that this is worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

I finished the first draft of Breathers in February 2006.  The long lag between start and finish was due in part to my personal life and to the fact that I’m a binge writer.  I don’t write every day.  Which is heresy among a lot of writers.  I used to write every day.  From 1990-2001.  Two hours every morning before work and whatever I could get in at night.  But binge writing works better for me now.

I didn’t start out to write a novel that had any sort of social commentary.  I’ve just always loved zombies and wanted to give them a voice, show what undeath was like from their perspective.  I wanted to create a zombie the reader could sympathize and empathize with, so that if he eventually gave in to his instincts, the reader would still be on his side.

Plus I always wondered if it was necrophilia if you were both dead.