Interview with Dean Breckenridge

Dean Breckenridge has written, if I may say so myself, some very swift-moving action stories that feature a character called Wolf. He's an outlaw that is sort of a halfway house between the cops and the crooks; if you can find him, and need a square deal, he'll assist, and make the bad guys go away--usually with a .45 bullet to the skull. I caught up with Dean recently for a few questions.

Brian Drake: It's nice to sit and finally talk to you. We've been passing in the hallway for months now but this is the first chance we've had to talk.

Dean Breckenridge: I don't speak to the help.

BD: Well...I'm not exactly "the help", per se. Where do you get your story ideas?

DB: You're asking me that? Who asks that anymore? I'm calling my agent.

BD: You seem to know a lot about criminals.

DB: I read Mack Bolan books growing up. What did you read, Nancy Drew?

BD: I preferred the Hardy Boys, actually.

DB: You would, pansy.

BD: Now wait a minute...I don't understand the hostility here. This is supposed to be a friendly chat.

DB: I don't need this. Have you seen my sales lately?

BD: I see them every day, actually. Congratulations. You're doing very well.

DB: Would you say I'm doing better than you? THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN--what a joke. Nobody wants him. You suck.

BD: Actually, no I don't. I'm you. You're me. If people are buying your books, they're actually buying my books, so truthfully I don't suck at all.

DB: My head hurts.

BD: So where do you get your ideas, dummy?

DB: Newspapers.

BD: What's a newspaper?

DB: You know, the stuff birds poo on. 

BD: I don't have a bird.

DB: Yes you do.

BD: I'm pretty sure I don't. 

DB: You have a bird. Why else would I have newspapers here?

BD: There are no birds in my house. 

DB: Are you sure you're in the right house?

BD: Let's get back on track. Where did Wolf, your current series character, come from?

DB: He's Batman without the tights. Do you like Batman?

BD: I was always more of a Superman guy.

DB: Pansy.

BD: Are you always going to write about Wolf?

DB: I guess. But I'm also going to write about other guys, too. I got a spy series I'm working on that has lots of sex and violence. Or is that violence and sex? Or is the violence happening during the sex? 

BD: I don't know.

DB: Well, crap, I thought you knew this stuff.

BD: And I thought you told me you were going to concentrate more on urban action stories and let me do the spy stories.

DB: That was before I started outselling you.

BD: You don't outsell me.

DB: Shall we look at the numbers again, smarty pants?

BD: You sell more because you have more books out. I only have a few and none of them are part of a series yet. Once I get more Rogue Gentleman books out I'll sell better, too.

DB: If that helps you sleep at night. Look, are we done here? I got drinking to do.

BD: We haven't had a drink since July 12th of 1996.

DB: Maybe you haven't. I need a drink to tolerate your lousy questions.

BD: You know what, you're such a punk that I'm not going to link your books to this interview.

DB: Whatever.

BD: Hey, if it weren't for me, you wouldn't exist.

DB: If it weren't for me, you would't be driving a Corvette.

BD: My day job pays for the Corvette.

DB: And my money pays for the repair bills. $2000 in repairs for January alone. Are you nuts? If you want to piss away your money, give it to AIDS babies in Africa. Do you feel good that babies in Africa are dying so you can have a Corvette? And by the way, it's an old Corvette. Why don't get you a new one?

BD: You're just a sour puss, aren't you?

DB: I'm not sour at all.

BD: I've had enough of you. From now on, you stay on your side of the room and I'll stay on mind.

DB: Fine with me. My side is bigger than yours.

The Indie Scene: Eric Czuleger's IMMORTAL L.A.

I don't read fantasy stories at all; I have no interest whatsoever in the genre, but I had to read Immortal LA because the son of a dear friend wrote it. How's that for full disclosure? Anyway it's a good book, and I have to agree with one Amazon review that says it's like a mash-up of Neil Gaiman and Douglass Adams. Can't get a better recommendation than that.

I invited Eric to do an interview. I think you'll like his personality; I think you'll like his book, too.

1) Tell us about your new book.

Immortal L.A. is about vampires, and angels, and dead kids who skateboard and psychic self-help gurus and Freemasons and sea monsters. It's an urban fantasy about the gateway to hell (the San Andreas fault) and how the history of Los Angeles has been dictated by a battle between God and Satan.

2) What inspired the story idea?

Buy it at Amazon today!

I wrote the first story "The Vampire Andy," while I was living in Albania. I wrote it for a horror podcast called Pseudopod. At the same time I found myself researching a lot about the history of Los Angeles. I was terrified to return after living abroad for so long. So, I started looking for something to love about the city. I was surprised how much I didn't know about where I'm from, and also how much there was to appreciate.

The Pseudopod episode came out, I thought that was neat, and I went on my merry way. Then my mom and brother heard the episode. They ambushed me in the kitchen and said I should write a whole book. The wouldn't let me leave the kitchen until I said I would give it a try. They're usually right about things like this. So now it's a book. 

3) Have you always wanted to write a fantasy story, or did this one beg for attention? Will we see more of this kind of book from you?

You know, I never thought I would write fantasy. But I don't like being bored when I read and I really hate being bored when I write. I learned something great from an erotica writer at a reading series I was invited to once. The difference between porn and erotica is what you're talking about. Porn is sex for the sake of sex. Erotica is sex for the sake of discussion.  It can be a discussion of power, ethics, religion, purity--anything, really. A good story can be told in any style. Genre is the gun. The story is the bullet. I would rather have a magical gun forged by Satan and blessed by the Knights Templar, than a regular one.

I want to tell a cool story that people want to read to the end of. I would rather write about a zombie massacre or an angel's impression of Taco Bell than a couple of twenty-somethings wondering where they went wrong. Isn't it always more fun to exist in a world that is supernatural? 

My next books will be tending more towards magical realism and sci-fi- so yeah, more of the same. 

4) You spent a few years in the Peace Corps. working in Albania. How did that influence your writing?

I got to go on a pilgrimage to the top of the second highest mountain in Albania, I worked with some of the smartest students I've ever met, I illegally crossed the border of Kosovo and Serbia by hitchhiking on a Coca-Cola truck, I watched the kids outside of my apartment grow up, I got an elbow to the face and ended up with a bloody nose on New Years in a bar in Romania,  I got lost in a rain forest, and danced (very poorly) with fire dancers in Thailand. I don't really know how the Peace Corps has influenced my writing, but a whole lot of stuff happened in my life. I don't think it matters how it happens, but I think it's good for your writing when a whole lot of stuff happens in your life. 

5) Immortal LA is not your first trip to the rodeo. Some past work has you up for the O'Neill award this year, you've been featured as an emerging artist at the Disney Center's Redcat Theatre, and you run and write for LiveTheatreBlog which raises money for your Albanian Village. How do you manage juggle all of this activity?

Honestly most of my days are filled up working with special needs kids and teaching performing arts. I find that I'm generally uncomfortable if I'm not writing something. Nothing makes me stare into the void quite like not having a project to work on. I told my friends I would take a month off after the book was done because it was making me crazy. That lasted a weekend.

As far as Live Theatre Blog--our final show went to help fund the Mobile Library that I worked on in Albania (not a village exactly). We're now transitioning into working on shows about American subcultures. SPOILER ALERT: For research me and my team went out to Area 51 and to an Alien Abductee conference. "Our Crowded Skies", my new play, will be about the UFO subculture in America. So far research has been really fun. I apply for the O'Neil every year along with a bunch of other festivals. I've been super lucky to be short listed by them a couple of times. 

6) What's next for you?

What's next is I've got to finish my next novel, "Farnoosh," which is about a woman who escapes the Iranian Revolution. She has a Jinn (a genie) and it is the story of the three wishes that she makes in her between when she is twelve and living in Tehran and when she is living in West Los Angeles in her fifties.

I'm working on a sci-fi novella called "SkyCube" which I've been wanting to do for awhile. It's about the near future where we will all be followed around by hovering cubes that meet our every need and watch us constantly. I'll be honest, this one comes from a long running inside joke with my buddy Dave and my own discomfort with technology.

My play, "L.A. Lights Fire," which is loosely connected to "Immortal L.A." will also be available soon in audio.

At some point I am planning on having a social life too.

Here is the link to buy Immortal L.A.

http://getBook.at/ImmortalLA

This is a link to donate to the Tropoja Mobile Library! Give anything you can, it goes to support a book mobile that serves the most isolated villages in Albania. 

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/books-and-activities-for-1500-children-in-albania/

This is a link to a full story from Immortal L.A. This is the story that started everything.

http://pseudopod.org/2013/07/05/pseudopod-341-immortal-la/

Justified Sins Reprise

You may be a wee bit upset with me for this but there's a reason I'm doing it--"it" being re-releasing a book once written under my own name but now recycled as a Dean Breckenridge tale.

Back in 2010 when I joined the self-publishing revolution, my second entry was a book called "Justified Sins" featuring a vigilante hero named Pierce. Pierce worked outside the law, but had connections in the DA's office to smooth over all the mayhem he caused. Pierce was an orphan, his parents killed in a home invasion robbery, and after a successful career in the military Pierce returned to his home city to visit vengeance on baddies everywhere.

Problem is, the story was never supposed to be about a vigilante, certainly not one who was an orphan, and he was never meant to spend his first adventure protecting his foster sister from the Mafia. But those elements were added to the story at the suggestion of those who thought it would make the book more "commercial" and give it "broader appeal". As a rookie, I figured they were right. What happened was, I added those things, and then hated the book. I hated the book so much that I could not look at it on its own merits, nor could I acknowledge the positive comments the book received. Some readers asked for a sequel, but the thought of revisiting the characters made my stomach hurt. Ultimately I pulled the book from Amazon. I couldn't stand to see it on my list.

Pierce was supposed to be a shadowy figure, enigmatic. He would have police contacts, but also criminal contacts, and work both ends against each other when necessary. He'd pursue his own crime-busting activities but also be for hire if one could find him. But he was ruined because I followed suggestions that stole away my original vision.

I could have done a reboot. I probably could have done a lot of things, but I shelved the book instead.

When I began writing the Wolf stories under the Breckenridge name, it was basically a rewrite of Pierce--done right, this time. With a little more experience, a little more confidence, and a little more skill, I decided to hell with the advisors. I'm doing the book my way. Thus, "Justified Sins" has been rewritten and retooled as I originally intended. The Director's Cut, if you will. What's the lesson? Follow your gut. Ignore advice--unless it's painfully obvious that you need such advice. My instincts were correct. The enigmatic mystery hero is something audiences will respond to. The initial pack of Wolf stories proves this. They actually sell better than the books under my real name. I think I'm a little pissed about that.

What I'm doing is a bit unorthodox, I understand, but even if you don't buy the new version, I have to do this for my own sanity. I think it's a good book that deserves to be seen; now that I've brought it back to where it originally started, I can be proud of it again.

Typing like a Madman

My lack of updates can be attributed to an extended time behind the keyboard actually trying to get some work done. The Rogue Gentleman #2: Mine to Avenge is done, and I think it's a really fun book. I'm also blazing away on the next four adventures in the Wolf series, which I write under the name Dean Breckenridge. I've been surprised by the reception the Breckenridge stories have received; he's selling more than I am! I should be pissed, but since it's no secret than Drake and Breckenridge are the same, I'm able to steer readers to the books under my name too.

Anyway more to come eventually. Meanwhile, enjoy a look at the next set of covers for the Breckenridge stories.

Fantastic Storytelling

There's a nasty virus going round the office and I am the latest victim, so while I'm lounging on the couch pumped full of drugs I have been catching up on a BBC show that I've known about for some time, but never bothered to watch. Doctor Who, a program about a time-traveler who goes on wild adventures through time and space. One minute he's in ancient Egypt, then on a distant planet, then back on Earth, well underground, dealing with lizard creatures. Great stuff. A friend recently discovered that I had never seen an episode, so he sat me down to watch one. "You have to watch at least one," he said, and that one turned out to be the 50th Anniversary Special which was so well done and so well written that I've spent the last few days catching up on every episode the cable system has On Demand. I'm feeling about Doctor Who the same way I felt when I finally discovered Wodehouse--blessed is the one who will always have plenty of books to read, or, in this case, television programs to watch.

My cable system only has seasons 5 through 7 so my "first doctor" is Matt Smith, who currently hold the title, and he does a bang-up job of playing the character. He'll be my Sean Connery--everybody after him (or before, as the case may be) will have big shoes to fill. The stories are action packed, well-written, and funny, and they bring you into a world uniquely its own and allow you to get lost in it. And that, if you don't already know, is the essence of fantastic storytelling. I want to be Doctor Who; failing that, I want to be one of his earthling companions who gets to enjoy the adventure, too.

The best stories do exactly what Doctor Who does, and your story doesn't have to be sci-fi or fantasy in order to accomplish the goal, though most stories I'm thinking of are indeed in that genre because the writer is required to construct a realistic world for his story to take place in (such as Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings). The better comic book movies do what I describe--I'm thinking of The Avengers, specifically--and I think the Bond movies fit the bill, too, because they are clearly set in our reality yet occupy a different reality of their own, and tap into one's imagination to the extent that men want to be Bond and women want to be with him (at least the older ones, forget the recent efforts). That's good storytelling, too. I would rather be Bond than anybody in a Frederick Forsyth or John le Carre or Len Deighton novel, where the daily drudgery of the spy business is highlighted more often than anything exciting.

Fantastic storytelling is something writers should all aspire to, but unfortunately I have no idea to prove whether or not we actually create what I describe. How can we judge? The best we can hope for is for a reader to tell us where we took him or her, if our story provided a hypnotic effect, and that's a fine way to judge, isn't it?

Now please excuse me. The Doctor is about to save the Earth again....he's in 1969 and rubbing shoulders with President Nixon and there are aliens about!

Wolf Goes Live

Back before the Earth cooled, I mentioned on this blog that I had a pen name I was planning to use, Dean Breckenridge. My idea was to use that name to do shorter, punchier, much more hard-boiledier (yes, I made that up) stories than I'm doing under my own name, and crank them out on a regular basis. The first two, THE KILL FEVER and THE DARK, are available, with Episode #3 on the way. Please take a look.

They've been a lot of fun to write. Just plain story. No fancy themes or sentimental slop, just rock 'em, sock 'em, shoot 'em, kick 'em action. Basically, it's "Have Gun, Will Travel" set in the inner city, featuring a vigilante hero named Wolf, and they're short, not more than 100 pages in manuscript form. Read 'em on the bus, the train, on the deck, at the beach, wherever--it won't take you long, and I promise a terrific ride.

In THE KILLER FEVER, Wolf must stop a gang war from exploding, the roots of which grow from one man's desire for revenge.

In THE DARK, Wolf takes on kidnappers who aren't the usual suspects, and he has to turn up the heat in order to shake 'em from hiding.

Thanks for looking!

Surviving the Deadline

My silence on this blog lately has not been due to laziness, but racing to meet a deadline. Earlier this year mystery author Paul Bishop asked me to contribute a volume to his Fight Card series, which I thought would be a terrific opportunity to do a story that didn't feature blondes, bombs, and quasi-Bonds for a change. However, I was not at all prepared for the genuine challenge such a story posed. Paul's instructions to me was that the story could be about anything, but boxing had to be at the center of the conflict, and he gave me a December deadline. OK. I did a bunch of research, watched fights, developed what I thought was a pretty good story, and started to write. And then it all screeched to a halt.

When I say halt, I mean almost that....it eeeked along on dry bearings. The writing was hard, the characters wouldn't talk, nothing seemed to make sense, and I swore I would never take another assignment ever again, ever, ever, never. I work from detailed outlines, and I kept going back to the outline, scratching my head, wondering why what seemed to work in that form did not at all work on the actual page.

Did I mention I started this project 30 days before the deadline?

I'm a masochist, you see. But I also wanted to prove that if a writer puts his butt in a chair and produces pages, he can meet a deadline in a short period of time. Maybe even beat it.

The outline assured me I had a good story. I decided to put my faith in my outline and forged ahead. But, wow, what a slog. I would up, at some points during the project, doing as little as one page a day. It was that hard to put together. I have never worked this hard on a book before, nor wanted to quit so many times in the middle.

In the end, I think my Fight Card book will be a worthy entry. It's funny that by the time I reached the end, it all seemed to magically come together. Reading it through for fine-tuning, I can't find that parts that I thought needed fixing, and it all seems to flow along. I think part of the problem was a hectic work schedule that, basically, had me working 30 days in a row at the same time, without any time off, so, luckily, I had my outline to guide me instead of having to sit at the computer each day and figure out what happens next.

I beat the deadline by four days, by the way.

So let that be a lesson to you. Writing + butt in chair = produced pages = 100 page manuscript in less than 30 days = a happy Paul Bishop because I don't have to tell him he has a blank spot in his 2014 schedule.

You're welcome.

Now my Fight Card book, still untitled, gets edited by Paul and his people and then by me again and, anyway, I think it will be out late in 2014.

What I hope I take from this experience and bring to my independent work is the same sense of discipline, the "write every day" approach. I am sooooo guilty of not doing that, and taking a year to do a 200 page manuscript which, according to this project, I could have turned out in two months.