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!

For the most part, it’s a bad idea to read your reviews. One, they’re just someone’s opinion and not necessarily indicative of the quality of the work, good or bad. Two, writing, like any art, is subjective. As a writer, you have to remember that and not take anything personally. And three, it’s much too easy to get caught up in what someone says, whether it’s positive or negative. But as any writer can attest, no matter how glowing the reviews, a negative review has a way of embedding itself in your DNA.

Not that I don’t read any reviews. I give a look to those from places like Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post in hopes of a good review that yields a nice, juicy blurb.

Those are always fun. And I’ll read reviews on blogs that have requested a review copy or for which I’ve authored a guest post. As for the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and random blogs that show up in my Google alerts? I do my best to avoid them.

But sometimes, you can’t help it.

While checking online for local bookstore locations where I might be able to swing by and sign stock copy, I came across a reader review about Fated that gave it one star and included the following gems:

Could it be the worst book ever written?
Completely mindless.
Worst use of $$ I’ve ever spent.

Ouch. But at least they read the book to the end because they didn’t believe it could be that bad all the way through.

Aah, another satisfied customer.

And then there’s the blog that listed Breathers as one of the most disappointing books of 2010 (even though the book came out in 2009). For the most part, the blog explains in detail why Breathers failed to live up to expectations, then finishes with this:

As a result — and due to Browne’s at-best serviceable prose — Breathers fails to elicit either laughs or sympathy. It’s horrifying, but not, I suspect, in the way that Browne intended.

Can I have some salt with that knife wound?

These are just a couple of examples of the criticism that authors expose themselves to when they get something published. That doesn’t mean we have to believe it. Or take it personally, which isn’t an easy thing to do. The trick is to try to have a sense of humor about it and realize you can’t please everyone. But if you please yourself, then you’ve done your job.

And if that doesn’t help to make you feel better, you can always respond to your bad reviews like this:

So my recent book tour for Fated had some minor disappointments, but those were more than offset by the highlights of the trip.  And since the opposite of blue on the color wheel is orange, I thought that would make for a clever title.

Yes, it’s a stretch, but it’s the best I could come up with on short notice.

“That’s very clever.”
“Thank you.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“What?”
“Being clever?”

(Bonus points if you can name the film that dialogue is from).

All right, where the hell was I? Oh yeah…

My road trip down through southern California included signings in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.  It also included the revelation that many brick and mortar bookstores are an endangered lot, as I ran across no less than a dozen Borders and Barnes & Nobles along the way that were either closing or had already closed.

Not that I had signings scheduled at all of these stores but whenever I’m traveling, I make a point to hit as many local bookstores as possible to sign stock copy and pimp myself out.  Hey, someone’s gotta do it.

While the bookstore closings were a rather distressing reality to witness first hand, I still enjoyed my signings at Barnes & Noble (Santa Barbara), Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Borders (Costa Mesa), and Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego).  Unfortunately the Barnes & Noble in downtown Santa Barbara is closing because their landlord jacked up the rates, so it’s going to be replaced by a clothing store.  Like we need more of those.

And while being on the road can often be a bit of a grind, especially when you’re driving from San Francisco to Los Angele to San Diego and logging 1500 miles over 10 days, the grind is offset by the people you get to spend time with while you’re traveling.

One of the benefits of being a writer that I hadn’t included in my initial list of reasons to embark on this path (long hours spent alone, frequent rejections and criticisms, people telling you how they always wanted to be a writer) was the opportunity to see friends that I otherwise wouldn’t get to see.

Much like my trip through the Pacific Northwest in November, my trip through southern California afforded me the chance to visit with numerous friends I’ve known since college and new friends I’ve made over the past few years at conventions and conferences.  There’s nothing like a home cooked meal with good conversation to make the road a less lonely place.

More than anything, it’s the company of friends that makes traveling and road trips so worthwhile.  So I’m looking forward to the next one.

I thought I’d share the covers for a couple of foreign editions of Fated.

The first one is from Leya in Brazil, who published the title as Desastre (Disaster in English), since there’s no Portuguese translation for Fated:

The second cover is from Piatkus (Little, Brown) in the United Kingdom. Although this edition won’t be available until September 2011, I thought you might enjoy a sneak preview:

Here are links to a couple of more interviews I’ve had recently as part of my Fated blog tour.

The first one is up on Reading Frenzy, where I talk about Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, why I took up writing, and my favorite character in Fated.

And you can find another one on The Inner Bean, in which I discuss my writing process, mojitos on the beach, and why I’d most likely be Sloth.

Hope you enjoy the interviews!