There were more than a dozen entries that incorporated a monkey theme, including Chimply, Chimp Charlie, Mr. Monkeypants, Banana, Bananas, Bongo Bananahands, Sir Simian, Howler, Bonobo, Thelonious Monk(ey), and Chunky Banana Monkey (which played to my love of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream).

Some entries offered up full names, like Walter Lamar Booth and Charlie Buckhead, while a handful provided regal names like Princess Consuela Banana Ha-mach and Captain Reginald Carpaccio of Winchester that resonated with royalty.

Several entrants who are very secure with themselves suggested I name my monkey after them. Another thought I should name my monkey Jason Bateman (which played to my love of Arrested Development).

The majority of the names were of the Madonna or Prince variety—single names that needed no surname to complete them. Xavier, Maynard, Feldspar, Rasco, Rufus, Schroedinger, Calvin (which played to my love of Calvin & Hobbes), Mercutio, Barnaby, Grums, and Beppo, who is apparently Superman’s pet monkey. I had no idea Superman had a pet monkey. But if he did, his name would be Beppo.

Half a dozen people suggested the name Spank, Spankie, or Spanky, while another threw out Slappy, just in case spanking my monkey grew tedious. Three offered the names Lucky, Son of a Bastard, and Dirty Bastard (which played to my love of my new novel). And one entry suggested I name my monkey Balboa Browne (which played to my love of myself).

But after careful consideration and mulling and rolling the names around on my tongue and in my head, I finally settled on a winner: Reginald Muffintop the 3rd, suggested by Cassandra Rose.

Congratulations! You’ve won signed copies of all three of my novels, a copy of my eBook short story collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel, and a $50 gift card of your choice to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iTunes.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest and who took the time to come up with a name. I appreciate you playing along and helping to make the contest a success.

Oh, and just for the record, Reginald Muffintop the 3rd’s gangsta rapper name is Reggie M3.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy that experience when I went to Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, located on the 21st floor of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Before I could take any photographs of the interior of the night club to post on my blog, I needed permission from someone who wasn’t available at the time. And since I waited until Wednesday night to take pictures for the final Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour installment, the best I could do was take a picture of my monkey in the elevator.

However, if you click on the link to Harry Denton’s above, it will take you to the official website, where you can see photos reserve a VIP booth, or book your reservations for their weekly Sunday drag queen performance brunch.

While no drag queens appear in Lucky Bastard, the Starlight Room makes several appearances in the novel—the first near the end of Chapter 18, when Nick Monday is escorted up to the nightclub by one of the Beefeater doormen.

When the doors open, he gestures for me to exit, then follows me out of the elevator and into Harry Denton’s Starlight Room,the nightclub atop the Drake with a 360-degree view and 1930s throwback style.  Decorated in ruby reds and Egyptian golds, with deep-velvet booths and rich crimson silk drapes and signed celebrity photos in the bar, Harry Denton’s looks like something you’d see straight out of a noir film. Standing at the bar with a half-finished cigarette and a full set of curves is a long-haired brunette in a formfitting, long-sleeve, black shirt, a tight, leopard-skin-print skirt, black stockings, and high-heeled shoes that match her skirt. But I only notice her shoes because they’re connected to her long, sleek legs. Which are connected to the rest of her anatomy.

As for who the woman is, you’ll just have to read the book to find out. But I will say that I had no idea she was going to show up until Nick walked into the bar and saw her sitting there.

We end up visiting the Starlight Room in Chapter 37 and again in Chapter 40, both near the end of the book.  So it’s the appropriate place to end the Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour, as it plays a significant location role in the climax and the dénouement.

As is often the case in fiction, I’ve taken some liberties with the reality of Harry Denton’s Starlight Room:

1) The office for the Starlight Room is downstairs on the Lower Lobby level of the hotel, which would make for a rather boring location.

2) Harry Denton doesn’t own the nightclub in my novel. It just kept his name.

3) Although the elevators are right across from the bar, there isn’t a wall of signed celebrity photos.

4) There’s no EXIT door that leads to the roof. But since I started my story out on the roof of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, I had to find a way to get Nick Monday back up there. So I did some interior decorating to suit my needs.

And that concludes our virtual blog tour of the San Francisco locales that appear in Lucky Bastard. I hope you enjoyed your trip. Please feel free to tip your tour guide on the way out.

So here were are, in the next to the last entry for the virtual blog tour, and rather than picking a single location, since there are so many of them remaining and I just don’t have the time to do a blog post about all of them before Lucky Bastard comes out next Tuesday (can I have a Woo Hoo!?), I decided to combine them all together in a single post.

We kick things off at  the Green Street Market on the corner of Green and Laguna at the edge of Pacific Heights, where Nick stops in to buy a pack of Mentos. It’s also where his day starts to get complicated. Not because of the Mentos but because of the Asian woman in the red coat. I don’t know if the proprietor of the grocery store/deli is named Sam and has a shaved head, but he does in my book.

Next we have Tommy Wong’s undisclosed hideout in Chinatown. Since not even I know the location, it’s represented here by the Lucky Cats in the photo up top. While the Lucky Cat is actually a traditional Japanese sculpture, it’s a ubiquitous staple in Chinatown gift stores and in Chinese restaurants and shops to help beckon in good fortune. That’s what the Lucky Cat is doing. Not waving but beckoning. Depending on which paw is raised and who’s doing the interpreting, the left paw raised brings in customers, while the right paw attracts good luck. The Lucky Cat appears several times throughout Lucky Bastard.

In another chapter, Nick is dropped off in North Beach on Broadway in the strip club district, across from The Hungry I Club, The Roaring 20′s, and Big Al’s—which used to be an adult super store selling skin magazines, edible underwear, and porn videos but which is now a deli and grocery store that peddles a more traditional kind of salami. Next to Big Al’s is The Condor Club, former hot spot featuring the famous Carol Doda that claimed to be the world’s first topless and bottomless entertainment venue when it opened in 1964.

Nick also contemplates his problems as well as a girl in a bikini in Huntington Park at the top of Nob Hill, goes into the Searchlight Market on Hyde and Union to pick up some Advil and Mentos (he’s got a thing for Mentos), has lunch and one too many Bellinis at Scala’s Bistro with the cute and vexing Scooter Girl, and meets with wanna-be gangsta rapper Bow Wow on Market Street across from the Westfield Shopping Center.

Those of you who have read Fated might catch a reference to a scene that takes place in my second novel at the Westfield Shopping Center. Nick also mentions the full name of Fate’s alter ego.

Finally, we visit Union Square, the only other iconic San Francisco landmark that appears in Lucky Bastard. Nick comes through Union Square on a couple of occasions—first while following Tuesday Knight after she leaves his office and again when he goes into Caffe Rulli and poaches luck from a douche bag on a cell phone. Not to be confused with Alex the Vegan Douche Bag, who is Nick’s personal chauffeur.

By the way, in the photo of Union Square on the right, that’s the Sir Francis Drake Hotel towering above Saks Fifth Avenue, with Harry Denton’s Starlight Club perched atop it. As The Starlight Club appears in several chapters and plays a somewhat significant role in the novel’s climax, that’s where the Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour will come to an end on Friday.

On a typical weekday afternoon (yes, writers drink during the week in the afternoon—it’s one of the perks of being a writer) the Nite Cap is fairly quiet with several regulars sitting at the bar. Chances are when you arrive, you’ll be greeted with a “hello” and a smile from the bartender. It’s a friendly place with cheap drinks and good people. At least that’s been my impression the few times I’ve been there.

Admittedly, I’d never been to the Nite Cap until I wrote Lucky Bastard. The first time I went inside the bar was for research, as was the second time. The third time was to take the photos in this blog post. I hadn’t planned on the bar playing a role in my novel until it seemed like a good idea. And that happens in Chapter 33, when Nick Monday walks out the front door of 636 O’Farrell to find his cab gone:

I wait a few minutes for another cab, but the only ones that pass are taken, so I glance up O’Farrell and see the sign for the Nite Cap bar at the corner of Hyde. Not that I’m expecting to find a ride there, but the two pints of Guinness I had at O’Reilly’s and the mocha from Peet’s are kicking around in my bladder like a second-trimester fetus, so I head that direction to make use of the facilities before my good luck starts running down my leg.

When Nick sees the Nite Cap and decides to go there to use the facilities, that’s because when I have him leave 636 O’Farrell (which is a fictional address that just showed up in a previous scene like magic) I needed someplace for him to go next. So I did a Google map search of that block of O’Farrell Street and used a street view to find out what was nearby. It just so happened the Nite Cap was half a block away. So that’s where Nick decided he wanted to go and I followed along to document what transpired.

In real life, I don’t know if the crowd I imagined inside the bar in Lucky Bastard is anywhere close to reality, but then I write fiction so it’s my job to make things up. But every time I’ve gone into the Nite Cap I’ve encountered nothing but good conversation and friendly peeps. Like Courtney here, the bartender who’s been working at the Nite Cap for nearly a year and who was nice enough to pose with my monkey and give him something to drink. Me? I had a Guinness. Naturally.

By the way, you still have time to enter the Name My Monkey Contest on Facebook for a chance to win signed copies of all my books, plus other goodies. (Just click on the contest name for the link). So think up a good name and play before April 16. You might just win.

However, the one iconic San Francisco landmark that does appear in Lucky Bastard is Lombard Street, otherwise known as The Crookedest Street in the World. (Though there is some debate that Snake Alley in Burlington, IA holds that distinction.)

But for the sake of argument, we’ll say Lombard Street has the title. The one-way section of brick-paved street in Russian Hill runs for one block from the Hyde Street cable car tracks down a steep grade through eight terraced switchbacks and residential homes, ending at Leavenworth. The famous street has appeared in numerous films, hosted an Easter Big Wheel race (which I attended), and been turned into a giant Candyland board to celebrate the board game’s 60th anniversary.

And occasionally, if you look closely, you can spot one of San Francisco’s famous Wild Monkeys of Russian Hill.

The scene in Lucky Bastard that takes place here occurs in Chapters 12 and 13, when Nick arrives at the top of the street after a failed luck poaching. He’s surrounded by tourists, looking for a mark— someone who exhibits behavior that indicates they were born with good luck—when a sixteen-year-old kid races down the twisting road, maneuvering between cars:

I watch the kid on the skateboard glide between fenders and curbs, past bumpers and hedges, oozing teenage bravado and confidence. Halfway down the hill, the kid gets clipped by a Volvo, rolls over the hood of the car, and lands in some bushes blooming with pink flowers. Then he pops up and gets back on his skateboard unscathed and continues down the street with a smile on his face and a triumphant middle finger raised in salute for the driver of the Volvo.

And behold, I think I’ve just found my mark.

He takes off after the kid, racing down the 250 steps, only to run into trouble when he makes it to the bottom. What kind of trouble? That would be a spoiler. But I will say that I reference Cory Haim and Cory Feldman and someone ends up with a bloody nose.

That’s the opening line to my third novel, Lucky Bastard—a detective/noir/comedy/satire that takes place over the course of a single day in San Francisco.

Since I live in San Francisco, I thought it would be fun to take a virtual tour of the locations that factor prominently in Lucky Bastard and the inspirations behind how the book came to be written. Then I had the idea to add pictures.

Thus was born the Lucky Bastard San Francisco Blog Tour! (Cue the trumpets and orchestral music.)

Since all books have to start with Chapter One, that seems like a good place to kick things off. To quote James Lipton: We start, as always, at the beginning.

Lucky Bastard opens on the roof of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square, with our hero, Nick Monday, being threatened by an unidentified angry, naked woman holding an eight-inch carving knife. That’s the view from Powell Street of the Sir Francis Drake, known by locals as “The Drake,” on your right. They wouldn’t let me on the roof to take pictures for liability reasons. And I couldn’t find a woman willing to remove her clothes and menace me with a carving knife. So you’ll have to settle for this view, instead.

So what made me decide to start my novel out on the roof of a hotel? And why did I pick The Drake?

Lucky Bastard started out as a writing exercise for my writers group back in July of 2006. I can’t remember what the exercise was, but the opening line just popped into my head and I followed it up with a one page scene about a guy on the roof of some generic hotel and a naked woman holding a knife. That was pretty much it. I had no idea how he got up there or why the woman had the knife. It’s just what showed up on the page.

I didn’t do anything more with the scene until March of 2007. At the time I was working on my second novel Fated when  an idea popped into my head of what to do with that guy on the roof. So I sat down and wrote twenty pages of a novel that was loosely based on a short story about luck titled “Softland” that I’d written back in 2004. Which, by the way, you can read in my upcoming e-book collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel.

Another two years went by before I picked up those twenty pages and decided to see where the story wanted to go. For those who aren’t familiar with the way I write, I don’t plot out my stories. I’m a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants, discovering the story as I go along. Although the book starts on the roof of a hotel, that’s not the story. The story is everything that came before that opening scene. So I had to figure out how to get my protagonist back up on the hotel roof.

The first thing I needed to do was pick a hotel. While I’d set the novel in San Francisco, I hadn’t given the hotel a name, so I went out in search of one located in or around Union Square. The Chancellor Hotel had the right look and the colorful local history, but at fifteen stories it wasn’t tall enough for me. And while the Marriott and the Grand Hyatt were both over thirty stories tall, they lacked a certain panache.

So I decided on The Drake. One, it had the right look and feel. Two, having been built in 1928 it had the local history. Three, at twenty-one stories tall it was the right height. And four, it had something none of the other hotels could match: Beefeater doormen.

In addition to the architecture and the height and the Beefeaters, sitting atop The Drake is Harry Denton’s Starlight Room—a nightclub with a 360-degree view and 1930′s style throwback that I thought might turn out to be a useful setting at some future point in the novel. And I was right. It most definitely was useful.

But that’s another blog post.

If you’d like to read Chapter 1 of Lucky Bastard, you can check it out here.

On Friday July 10th, starting at 5:45PM, zombies of the world will rise up and demand their civil rights on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

Zombies have been treated like third class citizens for too long, so come support equal rights for zombies. All zombies and zombie supporters welcome.

At 7pm we will hobble a few blocks over to Books, Inc. at Opera Plaza to hear un-undead Scott G. Browne read from his new book, Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament. After that it’s any zombie’s guess.

Come for the protest.

Stay for the reading and signing of Breathers.

Free “Zombies Are People Too” swag while supplies last.

Bring Signs to show your support. Use your imagination, but here are some ideas.

- Zombies are people Too
- We Are Recruiting
- Brains. The Other White Meat
- ZombieMatch.com
- We’re Hear. We’re Dead. Get Used To It.
- Benefits for Zombie Vets
- Stop Trying to Bury Us

See all you zombies there!