Author Robert Gregory Browne on Storytelling and the Art of Composing

The age of eBooks has opened the door to an exuberant array of writers. We have new voices, bright with potential. Sometimes they are raw, tentative and hobbled by an uncertain grasp of spelling, grammar or technique, but the talent is there.

On the other end of the scale are the seasoned pros, writers with a past who for one reason or another have stepped away from traditional publishing. When I run into these writers, it’s always a bit of a surprise.  They have old school polish but are producing work in the new frontier of the Internet, riding the cutting edge of technology. These writers are sleek and agile craftsman, wordsmiths who know how to turn a phrase, build tension and create tight, well paced plots. Why are they good? Because they’ve done it before. ALOT. They are professionals.

Robert Gregory Browne is one of those writers.

Robert has been to the mountaintop.  An ITW Thriller Award nominated novelist, he started his career penning short stories and went on to write books for St. Martin’s Press and Penguin Dutton. He’s worked under his own name and under top secret pen names. As a winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, he did a stint in Hollywood, working as a staff writer on shows such as Fox Kids’ animated Diabolik and Spider-Man Unlimited. One of his thrillers, Kiss Her Goodbye was produced for television by Sony/CBS while another book, The Paradise Prophecy, was optioned by Temple Hill Productions for ABC. He also sold a screenplay to Showtime. In many ways, Robert has lived and worked in a world most self-published writers only dream of entering.

Open one of Robert’s novels and the first thing you notice is the impeccable prose. The man is confident, an expert at dialogue, pacing and plot. This is not a newly minted writer, this is a guy with chops. The next thing that sneaks into your mind as much as you might try to suppress it is, What in the world is he doing here? Because the Internet is the Wild West, awash with self-published gunslingers who are often learning their trade as they go, ranging from dazzlingly creative to a little bit nuts. But Robert is something altogether different, a no nonsense craftsman with a refined ear.

Did I say ear? Because there’s another element to Robert that is surprising. He composes music. I was introduced to Robert by a singer/songwriter from New York named Beth Rudetsky who often composes music for novels, a trend I’m seeing in many forms as multimedia e books evolve and book trailers proliferate.

As an added bonus to his brand new supernatural Detective Series, The Linger Novels, Robert created a score for the books. And I’m not talking about a writer DJ-ing their book by slapping together a bunch of cool songs they listened to as they wrote, I’m talking about an actual musical score, an original composition. Having worked for Emmy-winning composers in Hollywood in the past, I first opened one of Robert’s music files with trepidation, followed by amazement. His compositions were artful and complex. He was good! So Robert appears to be one of those rare creatures, a polymath. How does he manage to write so well and compose music?

On the release of his new supernatural Detective Series, The Linger Novels, let’s find out!

AE—If a traditional publishing contract is the golden ring, what brought you to the Internet?

RGB—Well, I’ve been on the web since the mid-nineties, back in my screenwriting days, long before I wrote my first novel. But if you’re asking what made me decide to do a crazy thing like start my own publishing company, the answer is simple: control. Thanks to today’s technology and Amazon’s innovation, I no longer have to seek permission to publish, and I control my work. I’m not a great believer in the “gatekeeper” mentality. Especially since the gatekeepers are the ones who benefit the most from such an arrangement. They control the presses and the profits, despite the fact that their contribution to the final product is minimal. What we call “traditional publishing”—at least as we know it today—is actually pretty new, and was, to my mind, created simply as a way for the talentless to exploit the talented. It’s the same in music, art and filmmaking.

The golden ring was great, as were the people who worked at the various publishing houses that released my books, but most publishing deals are woefully unfair to the person who creates the product that makes this industry run. Most writers get a meager advance and little promotion, and once they’ve turned their manuscript over to a publisher, the house does what it wants with it. Release dates, cover art, content editing, titles, are all under their control and unless you’re a superstar—which is probably about one percent of writers—you have little or no say in any of it. Yet you’re still expected to do the majority of the marketing for your work, and if it fails it’s your fault, not theirs, and you’re soon looking for a deal at another house.

I moved into indie publishing by choice, because I’ve always been a perfectionist and a control freak and it killed me to see publishers often ignore my thoughts when it came to anything other than writing the book. Or to have them say, “No, we don’t think you should write that book. Write this one instead.” Or tell me about their grand plans for a book only to see them fail to follow through, or forget about you if your novel didn’t take off in the first couple weeks. I don’t regret my time in traditional publishing—it was great training ground—and if you can get a good advance and some of the more draconian provisions removed from your contract, then it’s potentially a great place to be—assuming you don’t mind taking the smallest cut of the pie even though you’ve done the majority of the work.

Indie publishing isn’t for everyone. I know many authors who are perfectly happy in trad pub. But I’ve always wanted to own a small business and now I do.

AE—What made you want to be a writer?

RGB—First was a serialized novel I read in Playboy magazine when I was thirteen called SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY by Donald Westlake. I read that—and I think it was the first grown-up novel I’d ever read—and I instantly wanted to be able to do what Westlake did. It took me awhile to start noodling around with fiction, but that was the inspiration. The next time I had that feeling was when I read MARATHON MAN by William Goldman. Although he’s mostly known for his movie work, Goldman is an amazing novelist and another great source of inspiration.

AE—Where did you learn to compose music? What does music mean to you?

RGB—I’m self-taught. I’ve been playing instruments ever since my uncle stuck a ukulele in my hands and showed me a couple of chords. From there I went on to guitar and keyboards and started writing songs when I was eleven or twelve. Music is my first and truest love, and as a teenager I yearned to be the next James Taylor. There were people at the time who said I had the goods, but what I didn’t have was the internal fortitude to get up in front of a big crowd and play. The one time I did it was in a small band I had when I was ten, and during our first public performance we had a technical glitch that caused the audience to roar with laughter. That was pretty tough for a ten year old and, I think, pretty much sealed my fate as a performer.

So I became a closet composer and musician and recording nerd. I bought my first four-track recorder in my early twenties and have kept up with technology as it changed over the years. I’ve only recently begun doing orchestral work because technology allows me to and I find I’m not bad at it, although I have a loooong way to go. Everything I do is based on instinct, not formal training, and I prefer it that way.

The Linger Soundtrack

AE—What drew you to the Thriller genre?

RGB—I’m not sure, to be honest. Probably the movies. I grew up watching a lot of the film noir classics, which were shown every Saturday and Sunday morning on one of the local TV stations. So when I went looking for books to read it was usually in the thriller genre, although I do read a wide variety of genres and always have. But they say you should write what you love, so I do.

AE—Your prose is lean, mean and grounded, yet your plots introduce spiritual elements. What draws you to the supernatural?

RGB—Well, not all of my books have supernatural elements. The Trial Junkies series is strictly mystery-thriller and the books I’ve written under pen names are thrillers and romance. But I’ve always been attracted to movies that have supernatural elements, and of course, books like Stephen King’s. In the novels I’ve written that do have supernatural, it’s really a blend of supernatural and crime thriller, so, again, I’m writing what I love.

AE—How did writing scripts affect your prose?

RGB—Screenwriting is all about pictures. You create pictures in the reader’s mind and hope he or she (usually a producer or director) can see them playing across the screen. The images and dialogue tell the story, and narrative is kept to a minimum. You have to be able to economize on plot and characterization and you quickly learn that plot and story structure—the beginning, middle and end—are of paramount importance. There’s a certain streamlined clarity to writing movies, and a sense of urgency that I hope has carried over into my novels. I want my stories to move. And I want the reader to be compelled to move with them and keep turning those pages. The difference, however, is that in books you can get into a character’s mind, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

AE—The quality of your prose is obvious. Do you have any advice for writers who are just starting out?

RGB—Stop talking about it and start doing it. You can tell yourself you’re going to learn to play the guitar, but until you actually sit down and do it and struggle with sore fingertips and difficult chord changes and the ability to coordinate the left hand with the right—a struggle that takes time and patience and a lot of practice—you will never be able to play. You will only dream of playing. It’s no different with writing. It’s hard, demanding work. And unless you’re willing to put in the time it takes to learn your craft, you may as well keep on dreaming and find a different line of work.

AE—Tell us about your new series.

RGB—The idea for the Linger series is one that has been percolating in the back of my mind for many years. It came to me first as an image: a young blind boy in a hooded sweat shirt standing in the middle of a crime scene, staring up at the ceiling as if he’s in a trance. I had no idea what he was doing there or what it meant, but then one day inspiration struck and I thought, what if every crime scene has an emotional residue that lingers for days—or even years—after the crime has been committed. And what if this boy is somehow able to tap into that residue and translate it into something meaningful that will help investigators catch the killer?

From there it developed into the story of a quest—the boy, his guardian, and a woman detective traveling across country, moving from town to town and crime scene to crime scene in search of the serial killer who has, in one way or another, destroyed all of their lives. I thought it was a great idea not only for a series of books, but for a TV series as well, and when I saw what Netflix was doing with “binge” TV—releasing all the episodes of a series at once—I thought, why doesn’t anyone do that with books? So I set out to do that, releasing five books simultaneously. But I knew it would take me a considerable amount of time to write those books myself, so I created the pen name Edward Fallon, wrote the first book, and invited several friends to contribute “episodes” to the series under that name.

The first five authors are me, J.D. Rhoades, Tim Tresslar, Will Graham and Rob Cornell, with Ann Voss Peterson, Allan Leverone, William Malmborg and Joshua Corin working on follow-up books and Brett Battles and Toni McGee Causey hoping to join us sometime next year, if their schedules allow it. I’m running the series as if we’re writing episodes for a TV show. The quest for the serial killer is the overall arc—with the same three continuing characters—but each story is self-contained and able to be read as a standalone. I edit all the books and rewrite only for continuity.

AE—What is your writing process?

RGB—It’s a very simple one. I think of an idea, let it percolate, figure out who the characters are and what they want and how their lives are affected by this idea, then I sit down and start writing. I revise as I write, so when the book is done, it’s essentially done. I do very little rewriting after the fact. I never leave a scene until I feel it’s ready to be published.

AE—What do you think writing should accomplish?

RGB—First and foremost I think it should entertain. As Samuel Goldwyn once said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” There’s nothing wrong with messages and meaning in stories, but it should never be at the expense of entertainment. Storytelling is about thrilling your readers. Showing them a good time. There are certain circles that frown upon this idea, who believe that genre stories are crass and commercial—and they certainly have the right to feel that way. But let’s face it, even “literary fiction” is a genre. And much of it is bleeding over into the mystery, thriller and science fiction fields.

AE—George RR Martin said that when it comes to writing, “there are two types of writers; architects and gardeners. The architects design with a blue print, the gardener plants a seed and sees what grows.” Which one are you?

RGB—I’m definitely more of a gardener, but I’ve been known to come up with a half-assed blue print now and again. It depends on the book and the amount of time I have to write it.