S.G. Browne

I didn’t always want to write.

In grammar school and junior high, I wanted to be a football player. A wide receiver. Maybe a defensive back. Except at age 14, I was 5’11″ and 145 pounds and wasn’t exactly built for the sport. And I don’t like pain. So no NFL career for me.

In high school, I excelled at math. It came easy to me. I loved it so much that I figured I could parlay my aptitude into a career in engineering. This was because I really had no idea what I wanted to do and engineering seemed like a safe career path.

Problem was, I didn’t realize how much I hated physics. And thermodynamics. So after a year of floundering in science classes and watching my high school GPA drop more than a full point, I switched to a major in business. Still no thought of being a writer.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year at UOP, when I started reading a bunch of Stephen King, Peter Straub, F. Paul Wilson, Robert McCammon, and Dean Koontz that I first considered the idea of dabbling at writing. Actually, I can remember the moment when I wanted to become a writer.

I was sitting in my room, reading The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. While it’s not my favorite novel by either author, I got so caught up in the adventure unfolding within the pages that the world outside of the book ceased to exist. And I thought:  I want to make others feel like this.

I didn’t start pursuing a path of writing at that point but the idea was there. The following semester, I helped with my fraternity’s entry into UOP’s annual Band Frolic – a musical stage competition between all of the living groups (fraternities, sororities, dorms, etc.) Each group was responsible for a fifteen-minute skit that included dancing, singing, acting, and some semblance of a story. We came in second in the men’s category that year. We got screwed.

When the title of Band Frolic Director was passed down to me at the end of my sophomore year, I was now in charge of writing, directing, staging, choreographing, and costuming my fraternity’s Band Frolic. We came in first each of the three years I was director. And after the second year, I realized that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be creative in some way.

So I took a couple of writing classes, graduated with my BS in Business, eschewed by degree, moved to Hollywood and got a job working for Disney, and wrote some short stories and a couple of screenplays. After three years, I moved to Santa Cruz, where I wrote a few dozen short stories and the first of three unpublished novels and where I would eventually write my fourth novel, a dark comedy about zombies, titled Breathers.

So even if you don’t start out having any idea what you want to do, you can still get here from there.

I’ll be appearing at WonderCon this weekend at the Moscone Center South in San Francisco for a couple of events.

April 1 – Signing
Geekscape, Booth #617
2:00PM – 3:00PM

On Friday, April 1, I’ll be signing 11″ x 17″ posters of the covers for Breathers and Fated, including the UK versions.  Unfortunately, I won’t have any copies of my books for sale, but feel free to bring your copy to the Geekscape Booth (#617) and I’ll be happy to sign it.

April 2 – Interview w/ F. Paul Wilson
Room 220
2:00PM – 3:00PM

On Saturday, April 2, I’ll be interviewing F. Paul Wilson, bestselling author of The Keep, Black Wind, and the Repairman Jack Series, as well as numerous other novels, screenplays, and comic books.  There will be an audience Q&A afterward.

Hope to see you this weekend!

Yes, I know it’s a week past due, but better late than never. Besides, I was busy enjoying 80 degree sunny days on the Gulf of Mexico, which even in California are a rarity right now. So I couldn’t very well spend them sitting at a computer.

But here we are, a week after my first time attending the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (or ICFA, for the multi-syllabic challenged) and I’m happy to announce that I had a wonderful time.

I have to admit, I was a felt a little out of my element about attending an academic conference of literature students and scholars, since I am neither an academic nor a scholar. Especially when I needed a dictionary and an interpreter just to understand some of the titles for the papers, like:

Languages, Litanies, and the Limit: Mathematics as Discourse in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem

I still have no idea what that means.

In any case, with four days of round table panels, author readings, and academic papers, I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of great people, make a lot of new friends, share my thoughts on humor in horror on my panel, and even attend a couple of papers on zombies that referenced Breathers, including:

The Decomposition of the Contemporary Family: Zombie’s Role in the Transmogrification of the Nuclear Family (by Emily Mashak);

and The Politics of Zombie Love: Subversion, Self-Actualization, and Erotic Zombies in S.G. Browne’s Breathers (by Professor Franc Auld).

It was interesting to sit in on the papers and hear someone else’s interpretation of Breathers, which is another blog post entirely, but I very much enjoyed the conference and I’m looking forward to going back to ICFA again next year.

I’ll just make sure to bring along an interpreter.

Congratulations to Maria Garcia, who the Random Number Generator selected as the Grand Prize winner in the Breathers Birthday Bash Giveaway.  Maria takes home signed copies of Breathers, Fated, and the Breathers UK edition (pictured here).

The RNG also selected two more winners, Arielle Jovellanos and David Sobkowiak, who each receive a signed copy of the Breathers UK edition.

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest via my web site and through my mailing list and who shared their favorite characters from my novels.  Your support and enthusiasm is appreciated.

Happy reading!

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!