Graham's Army of Musii

Today's guest is our friend Graham Brown, who we met because one of us shares his marrrrvelous agent. Graham's the kind of friend you always hope you'll find among your fellow writers - easygoing, funny, enthusiastic, pretty much up for anything and always has a smile on his face. You also get the feeling that even when he gets famous (and trust us Pens on this one, because we've read BLACK RAIN, the man is going to be freakin' huge) he'll be the same laid-back character he was before. (Although we are totally convinced that the character Hawker in BLACK RAIN is Graham....)

Graham was born in Chicago and went to college in Arizona, earning a degree in Aeronautical Science and learning how to fly.
He later attended law school, where he spent many lectures pretending to listen while scribbling down notes for what he hoped would be a great novel. After working as an attorney for a couple of years, he decided to see if there were any good ideas in those notes. Apparently there were, because Random House bought the rights to his first book, BLACK RAIN, which comes out next week. Graham is currently working on the sequel, BLACK SUN. Latest news on that and anything else he’s doing can be found at: www.authorgrahambrown.com

The Muse

First off, let me say thank you to Pens Fatales for having me on as a guest blogger. There's nothing better than being surrounded by gorgeous and talented women. Seriously , can I photo-shop my picture into your group – it will look something like a bad Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien skit, but it will be worth it...

So, the Muse. Inspirations comes from so many places; can there really be just one? Maybe there’s a whole army of muses (musii?) out there.

I know that for me, each character seems to have his or her own inspiration, and when I get into trouble with the character I go back to those original inspirations, to try and figure out where I went wrong.

A perfect example: in my novel Black Rain—which comes out on January 26th, by the way—the heroine, Danielle, is a type-A leader who takes a government expedition on a dangerous trek into the Amazon. My inspiration for her came from the strong women I know, and from day one I was damn certain that she wasn’t going to trip and fall in the climactic moment and need to be rescued. I also knew she had a difficult road to travel, juggling the lies she’s been ordered to tell, with her ambition and her own sense of humanity.

I’m happy to say that most early readers have found her to be a winning, realistic character, one who acts true to her basic traits and faults. I was even proud when the father of someone close to me read an early copy and said “I love the book, but why was Danielle such a bitch ?”

I guess it’s a generational type thing. The only answer I could come up with was to paraphrase Tina Fey’s famous SNL statement: “She’s got a lot to accomplish,” I said, “and bitches get things done.”

If there are multiple muses, I’m thinking one type works on character and another concentrates on helping us connect with place. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many parts of the world, but not usually the places my intrepid characters have been to.

In BLACK RAIN, there is a second hero, an ex-patriot American mercenary, who goes by the name of Hawker. I had a good idea of how I wanted this character to be. Instead of the classic “rogue cop who plays by his own rules,” I wanted a guy who thought he could play by his own rules and got burned. He needed to be a guy whose sense of duty, habit of questioning authority and his own inherent arrogance combined to ruin his life. No accident made him a pariah, he’d done it to himself, bathed in the bright light of knowing exactly where it was headed. Now, he’s willing to do anything to find his way back. Honor? Forget that, he just wants out.

But where had he been in the mean time? Parts of the world I haven’t seen. So I went online and looked at photos of distant lands, places where I thought a mercenary might travel and fight. I scanned hundreds of JPEGs, not really sure what I was looking for, but thinking I’d know when I found it.

And I did. Pictures of lost places, where stories were cut short and forgotten; remote places; haunted places. Here are some of the pictures I used when thinking about where this character had been:

Lucapa Airport - Angola


Antov crash

Ruined bridge in Cazombo, Angola

These locations don’t occur in the story - they aren’t even mentioned - but I knew Hawker had been there or somewhere similar. It gave me the sense of darkness that surrounded him, one which I needed to make him real.

So there is no shortage of muses as far as I can tell: a conversation you overhear in a crowded restaurant, the sound of an airliner taking off for a distant land, friends, family, the boss who kept you down, the mentor who helped you up.
They’re everywhere - we just have to open our eyes and find them.