Anthony Dobranski Online

Author: Anthony Dobranski

  • Real people in my fiction

    Real people in my fiction

    The recent Steven Soderbergh movie Let Them All Talk tells the story of a successful old writer, hoping to reconnect with two closest friends of her youth — but one friend feels the writer’s exposure of her real-life secrets, in the writer’s most successful book, led to her divorce and subsequent poverty.

    I can’t promise anything, but I doubt that will be a hassle I’ll face. Not that I’m above betraying a confidence, or stealing a shining moment, if I can make good fiction out of it. Writers are not people you should trust.

    Happily, social media has made public a billion bad lies. Just rewrite your friends’ posts the most other way possible, and you’ll have true drama for a thousand novels, with clean hands. “No,” the writer says, “the idea just came to me…”

    That said, I do use real people in my writing, all the time. They’re closer to artist models, or actors. If I were making an amateur film, I’d find friends or colleagues who looked the part, sounded the part, had that special something… and I’d dress them up and put them in wigs.

    One technique I enjoy using is to cast different people as the same character at different times. There are many women who played Zarabeth, similar from a distance but not up close. When with Gabriel one real person played her, when with Magda another, when in danger another still.

    I recently imagined a movie cast for Demon for a blog tour. It would be a tremendous movie cast, but, I obviously had to work with real actors, whose previous roles somehow touched on elements in my novel.

    When I summon a character to, in Edward Gorey’s lovely phrase, “a fitful and cloudy reality,” I’m under no such constraints!

  • A Demon movie cast

    A Demon movie cast

    For a recent blog tour, I was invited to imagine a cast for a movie version of The Demon in Business Class. It’s a fun exercise!

    I limited myself to living actors, currently at an age that matches the characters, and tried to be neither obvious nor obscure. You can compare them with the images in my Demon character profiles!

    Happy to entertain alternate casts in the comments!

    Zarabeth Battrie – Natalie Martinez

    Zarabeth longs for respect, but will exploit being underestimated. In her complicated role in The I-Land, Martinez pulls this off. Also, pinch out a lit cigarette? This actor would.

    Gabriel Archer – Chace Crawford

    Behind his straight-shooting demeanor, Gabriel is a hugely conflicted person. Crawford’s wild, bleakly comic arc as The Deep in The Boys shows he could integrate Gabriel’s hope and his anger.

    Missy Devereaux – Miley Cyrus

    Missy is a child of privilege who grew up leading a double life, and still chafes at it. Any questions why I cast Cyrus?

    Walt Wisniewski – Charlie Hunnam

    Walt is a seeker, an imposing presence who also wears his gifts lightly, and is fine not being the hero. Hunnam would find the sensitivity and cleverness behind Walt’s big bold front.

    Bill Thorn – Bokeem Woodbine

    Bill is not emotional, but he’s keeping his passions tamped down, maybe unwisely. Woodbine conveys great power whether serious or comic. He’d find the depth and pressure beneath Bill’s still waters.

    Magda Crane – Charlotte Rampling

    Magda is old, complex, and several steps ahead of you. In her whole acting career, including the upcoming Dune movie, Rampling has an intelligent, secretive toughness.

    All images are from the actors’ listings in the Internet Movie Database. Image source links:

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjRhOTYyNTAtNGM5Yy00M2NiLWE5MjMtZjg2Mzc2ODQxOWQ4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyOTExMjQ0OTE@._V1_UY317_CR17,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjM4Nzc3Njc0N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjE0MDEzMTE@._V1_UX214_CR0,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTc3MzE1MzcxNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTM1MTA2OA@@._V1_UY317_CR5,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjE5NjE5Mzk2MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODI5MDE1Ng@@._V1_UY317_CR5,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODY0MjQ0MDQyNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMTgxNzQxNjM@._V1_UX214_CR0,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTU0MTgyMjIzMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTc3NTA0Nw@@._V1_UX214_CR0,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

  • Video – The Book Break

    Host Melissa Martinez interviews me about Demon, my Tarot, and more!

  • From the vaults…

    January 2021 – this month’s selection from the vaults is one of my most popular posts, from 2012, about my spiritual beliefs –

    Dark Consciousness

    I have decided to come clean. I am not an atheist.

    People who note the Abrahamic and Gothic mythologies behind my novel might be a little surprised to hear I ever thought I was an atheist. Thing is, they’re my mythologies too. I’m as entitled to use them to tell my difficult tales as the wonky Athenians were when they took up PTSD through the lens of oracles and furies.

    But I thought I was an atheist. …

    Click to keep reading

  • Excerpt – Chapter 8

    In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, Gabriel and his boss try to recruit a criminal with a secret hobby, and a special talent…

    from Chapter 8 – San Francisco

    In the silent dim gray, the limousine’s facing benches seemed less car than train. Gabriel remembered long rides in Russia, bundled up in the cold cheap seats. The memory grew immediate, the start of a dream he shook off. The limousine had stopped.

    Gabriel followed Thorn out to face a bluer brighter sky above a boarded-up building that stank of urine and rat. The rest of the street looked like anyplace: market, laundry, nail salon, carry-out Chinese, bank. As they walked Gabriel oriented himself. Van Ness behind them. The bar where he’d met Gita was only a few blocks away. Gita would find all this exciting.

    Thorn led him to the nail salon. “It’s downstairs. All I know is we’ll get in.”

    Keep reading – or listen to the audiobook!

  • Excerpt – Chapter 12

    In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, in a hotel bar in Aberdeen, Scotland, two people meet cute … not so cute.

    Chapter 12 — Aberdeen

    Gosh she was pretty.

    “The bartender comes and goes,” Gabriel told her. “He helps in the kitchen.” Her face was a tangram of sharp ellipses: pointed chin, long nose, tall forehead, wide mouth. He smelled cucumber from the hotel soap, lemongrass shampoo, old smoke. “Shame about the weather.”

    “Yep.” The bartender returned. In glasses and a gray mustache, he looked like a squirrel. “White rum?” Zarabeth asked. “Diet cola. Stiff, please. With a lime.”

    “On my tab, please,” Gabriel told the bartender.

    “Thank you, Gabriel.” She slid off her barstool gingerly, walked around him and took the stool to his right, at the end of the bar. Her scent rust and clay, dry dust of dead leaves. “My first night, here and in Scotland. You?”

    Keep reading – or listen to the audiobook!

  • Excerpt – Chapter 1

    Begin at the beginning! In this opening excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, meet Zarabeth, who both sinks and rises when her office gives her bad news…

    Bankruptcy

    APRIL 2009
    BANKRUPTCY – You Need Help

    Chapter 1 — Washington, DC

    In the fake-oak-paneled conference room, Zarabeth Battrie found a dozen others standing. All looked wilted and worn, with bunched shirts and bowing ankles. The plastic tables were gone, the plastic chairs stacked in the corner. More people arrived but no one unstacked the chairs. A herd instinct, Zarabeth decided, to keep a clear path for fleeing.

    A natty beige man in a crisp blue plaid suit came in, pushing a low gray plastic cart with stacks of documents. If the standing people surprised him, he didn’t show it. With practiced ease he lowered the room’s screen, plugged in his powerstrip. Someone passed the documents around but no one spoke. In the silence, Zarabeth felt anxieties around her, about money, status, children, groping her like fevered predictable hands. Too intimate, these people’s worries in her skin when she didn’t know their names, or want to. She shook them off, pushed through to the front so as not to stare at men’s backs all meeting.

    Keep reading – or listen to the audiobook!

  • The first idea

    The idea for The Demon in Business Class came at a weird time. I had a good job, opening overseas offices for the internet company AOL. I had just finished a six-month stint in Tokyo, a life-changing and confidence-building experience. I was waiting to start my upcoming assignment in Sydney — waiting far longer than expected. After the energy and focus of startup life overseas, I suddenly had very little to do at what had become an enormous company. I felt like a snowboard in summer.

    I was still processing a bad relationship from the year before — or, really, back to processing it, cleaning out the emotional junk I had ignored while working in Japan. Many friends had settled down while I was away, so social life was hard to find. I ate a lot of dinners, at home and in restaurants, alone with a book.

    My dear friend Erik Bennett was working as an actor in Los Angeles. He and I had created a short-lived arts magazine some years before, and he was my only connection to my early creative dreams. At one point Erik had said, lightheartedly but with a sense of real possibility, that I should ditch my job and come make movies with him. As the boredom of waiting had grown, it was on my mind.

    One evening I wrote him a letter — on AOL Japan stationery, with a fountain pen given to me by a London colleague.

    Indie movies sounded fun, I wrote, but I was in a navel-gazing place. I could write about corporate life, but while I enjoyed it from the inside, it wasn’t exciting from the outside. I’d probably need some big plot, maybe something archetypal and fantastic. Like, if Good and Evil were rival companies, and two people who were on either side of that somehow fell in love.

    The great juggler Michael Moschen once talked about how he might pick up an object, like a bent piece of rebar, and feel a sickening in his stomach. He knew from that single heft he could do something with it, and that it would take him a year of hard work.

    I understood that feeling, then.

    It took me more than a decade. I did go to Sydney, and after that to Hong Kong. When I stopped living in hotels, life was waiting for me: my mother’s illness and death, meeting my wife, starting a family. I wrote some screenplay scenes, but I liked fiction better — even though I had to relearn how to write it, and learn more. I wrote 400 pages, tossed them out, and started over.

    What surprises me still is how I didn’t let go of this basic idea, or it of me. Now I have new books in me, but this is the book that made me a writer.

    Welcome aboard. Fasten your seat belt. Bon Voyage!

  • A playlist for The Demon in Business Class

    I created this playlist for a blog tour — if you want to start listening, here it is on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tR8uHsFCla94vEFZnwz8c

    It was a fun project, sort of a soundtrack with backstory.

    Some of these songs were specific influences, though unnamed, on certain scenes. Other songs evoke its moods.

    The project also put me in touch with my younger self, who long ago spent many hours making mix tapes — on cassettes — that then took me across the United States and back, not unlike Gabriel’s own journey late in Demon.

    Enjoy! Songs are listed Title – Artist, with notes after each.

    Part of the Process – Morcheeba

    This track evokes the uncertain, down-but-not-out place Zarabeth finds herself at the novel’s start. On my own visit to Aberdeen, Scotland to research the novel, I bought Morcheeba’s album Big Calm in a record store bargain bin. I think it’s the last actual compact disk I ever bought!

    Opium Dreams – Rithma

    Don’t read into the title. This song is here for its smooth groove, punctuated by the unsettling party laughter, both evoking when we meet Gabriel at a party that really isn’t fun.

    Cirrus – Bonobo

    This propulsive yet pretty track, known for its amazing video, is all for mood, launching Zarabeth and Gabriel down their respective rabbit holes.

    The Marriage of Coyote Woman – All Them Witches

    A slow, psychedelic blues, with an opening line that works in business class – “I never met a salesman like you before” – and a mood that fits Walt’s as he kicks himself back into the world.

    Season of the Witch – Lana Del Rey

    This breathy take on the 60’s pop classic brings out Missy’s seductiveness, and the turmoil behind it.

    All That We Perceive – Thievery Corporation

    A song about picking up more than other people do, and the difference between knowledge and understanding, an issue even for those paranormally gifted.

    My Girls – Animal Collective

    Sunny, but also manic, this track is from the album Gabriel plays for Zarabeth on their first drive together. It’s a hope for simplicity that Gabriel will not find.

    Atlas – Part 1: Personal Climate: Travel Dream Song – Meredith Monk

    This minimalist, haunting opera about modern travel is what Gabriel is listening to when Zarabeth comes to visit him in his Aberdeen hotel room. Zarabeth thinks it sounds like DNA.

    Example #22 – Laurie Anderson

    A fun nod to Gabriel’s uneasy trip to Hamburg, seemingly sung by Zarabeth working her way into his dreams. “What are paranormal voices?”

    Policy of Truth – Depeche Mode

    At a house party of deaf grad students, Zarabeth taps into her wild magic while dancing. This naughty, world-weary ode to lying was on repeat while I wrote the scene.

    Just Like Heaven – Katie Melua

    A gentle, sad take on The Cure’s story of lost love. We’re at the halfway point. It gets darker from here.

    Revenge – XXXTENTACION

    Like Zarabeth’s own feelings, this track is small and dense, a seed for careful growing.

    Chce Se Mi Spát (I Want to Sleep) – Psí vojáci

    One of the major voices of Prague’s Velvet Revolution, Psi Vojáci (Dog Soldiers) evoke Zarabeth’s fatigue, and the insincerity and disconnection in a world of surveillance.

    等著你回來 (Waiting for You) – 白光 (Bai Guang)

    1940s singer and actor Bai Guang was the sultriest of what have become known as the Shanghai Divas, and is still known across Asia. I went with the original to evoke Zarabeth’s bitter desire in Hong Kong, but you can find updated remixes on the album Shanghai Lounge Divas.

    Furious Angels – Rob Dougan

    Some will recognize the instrumental version, used in The Matrix Reloaded during Neo’s opening fight sequence (“Upgrades.”) For burning blue Zarabeth and hot desperate Gabriel outrunning angry angels, I opted for the full melodrama of Rob Dougan’s original.

    Hessel, Raymond K. – The Dust Brothers

    This heavy, spacy drum and bass track evokes the Las Vegas cult ritual where the wrong god shows up, to Zarabeth’s benefit… and no one else’s. Originally from the Fight Club soundtrack.

    Thirteen – Johnny Cash

    Gabriel crosses the American West, trying to find an answer to his love and the hurt he caused her. Johnny Cash knows about that.

    Wolf Like Me – TV On The Radio

    Missy and Walt just hope to settle down, but there’s a reckoning ahead with Missy’s family and coven — and TV On The Radio’s tale of horror and hunger speaks to Missy’s reaction.

    Cheap Thrills – Sia

    My editor Vivian Caethe told me to add a chapter about Zarabeth after Las Vegas, lest she seem to be “waiting by the phone.” Laying low in Lincoln, Nebraska let Zarabeth tie up some loose ends. To get back in her head, I had this song on repeat as I wrote the chapter.

    IKAZUCHI (Thunder) – Tom H@ck – Yoshida Brothers

    During my own work in Tokyo, I was introduced to the spare, bluegrassy music of the banjo-like shamisen — just before Yoshida Brothers took it international by mixing in drums and synth. This track is for modern Japan, land of quiet beauty, bullet trains, and much that is not spoken but that you need to know.

    Regret – St. Vincent

    Wouldn’t it be nice if love stories just ended well forever? St. Vincent doesn’t think that happens, and maybe Zarabeth and Gabriel agree, sometimes.

    Demons Are A Girl’s Best Friend – Powerwolf

    A little heavy metal, and maybe a renewed love triangle, to close out this stormy ride!

    Thanks for listening!

  • Demon +

    Demon +

    Go deeper into the novel with text and audio samples, backstory, and special content!