About Lisa Brackmann

Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. She still takes pride in her karaoke-ready repertoire of bad pop hits and an embarrassing number of show tunes. A southern California native, she lives in Venice CA and spends a lot of time in Beijing, China. Her three cats wish she’d stay put.

A little more about me

I’ve been writing since I was aware there were such things as words and books. My first attempt at a novel came at the age of five. It was to be an epic tale of cats who went camping. Unfortunately, I did not know how to spell “tent,” resulting in my first case of writer’s block.

After that, I decided that I’d rather be an astronaut. This lasted through most of elementary school (my nickname: “Lunar Lisa”). By junior high I’d adjusted my career sights to what I felt was a more realistic goal: Secretary of State.

I stayed fairly focused on this notion of studying foreign policy and joining the Foreign Service through high school and well into my freshman year at college. But stuff tends to happen at college that shakes a person up. I realized that I had a need to express myself creatively. I decided to study film and become an incredibly famous and wealthy Hollywood screenwriter.

redandexpertThen came the unexpected: I found myself in China shortly after the Cultural Revolution, at the beginning of Deng’s reform era. It was a setting so alien, so unfamiliar, with virtually nothing from my own culture there as touchstones (well, except for the ubiquitous popularity of the film “Sound of Music” and then the bizarre appearance of “The Man From Atlantis,” a failed TV show set in my hometown San Diego and starring Patrick Duffy) that I pretty much accepted China for what it was – I wasn’t going to waste a lot of time trying to understand something that was beyond me. It wasn’t until I returned home that I experienced culture shock – mainly because I’d changed and what I’d come home to hadn’t at all.

As a result of this profoundly unsettling experience, I decided I was going to be a famous screenwriter and a rock star.

After a few years of college, I drifted north to Venice Beach and Los Angeles. I did play in a band, and I did write a bunch of screenplays/teleplays, with little material success in either endeavor. But I had fun, learned a lot, made great friends, and did some of what I’d set out to do.

Somewhere along the journey, I realized that I preferred writing novels to screenplays. I wrote a couple of very long books for fun and practice, and then the novel that would eventually become ROCK PAPER TIGER.

I am extremely fortunate to be represented by Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Ltd., who found a wonderful home for the book at Soho Press. Look for Rock Paper Tiger in June 2010.

I’m currently working on a new book, an untitled novel of existential suspense set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Part of the suspense is seeing if I can pull it off or not. I am cautiously optimistic.