Who is the Main Character, the Protagonist of SNIFF?

Thank you for joining us again on today’s episode of the Promote Your Book podcast with author GC Brown. We’re talking about his book SNIFF. We’ve already done one podcast with author GC Brown about his books, specifically SNIFF, which you can find on his YouTube channel. 

I wanted to start doing some podcasts with him and asking very specific questions. Like, who is the main character, the protagonist of SNIFF? Where did he come from? I know there was an inspiration behind David. Where did that inspiration come from? Where is he going? What’s he doing? Oh my god, this character is action-packed and intriguing. 

Getting into your brain about that character is like getting into his brain. So tell us about David. Tell us a little bit about SNIFF, and then tell us about David. Sure. Okay, SNIFF. I was in the middle of writing the detective series, which behind me is the Mason Storm series. You and I did that book and a half books. 

COVID Hit. 

COVID hit. The prison where I was, all prisons, the United States, the world. shut down. We went on total lockdown. They locked us down so fast. I didn’t have time to get all of my Mason Storm stuff out of my locker at the tier I was in. It was officers coming in, screaming, yelling, everybody out, out, out, out!

It put us in quarantine. So we went to a building, and at that time, it was very early on. No one knew how long we were going to be stuck, how long we were going to be there. We knew it was going to be a while, months. It ended up being several months, four months long, locked in a six-by-nine concrete cell with a steel door and a sliver of a window. 

My New Celly David

We were stuck. We had nowhere to go. I decided to write a different book. Now, prior to that, before COVID hit, I received the new celly. David, Dave. So this guy shows up. He’s everything I say he is. He’s this suave half-Puerto Rican, half-Belgian, just a nice guy. He looks like he walked off a magazine. 

He had the life. He started telling me all these funny stories of his life and all this crazy stuff that he’s done. Now, I was in the African diamond trade. I’ve been in the nightclub business. I’ve owned flower companies in Ecuador, built software companies, and I’ve been around. His stories and my stories are stories you don’t run into very often. In fact, both of us went to prison for our stories. That’s how different they are from most people. 

So, let me get back to Dave. He’s telling me about banking in the Middle East, and he’s in Dubai doing crazy things. There are hookers involved, drugs involved, there are all the wrong things, all the right things, making big money, he’s losing bigger money, makes all the money back again, and he’s just moving and shaking. 

He runs into the devil’s dreams, gets married, got the kid, and has a great family. His daughter comes home from school one day and ends up with a terminal disease out of nowhere. 

So yeah, David is a funny, hilarious, actually well-spoken, funny guy. He is that guy you would see in the movies, so I said to him I should write a book. I’d already written the Mason Storm series. I’d already won awards. I already decided this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Let’s write a book. So we agreed on it. 

I told him if I can at least get your character and my character merged with some of the crazy stuff we’ve done in life. And of course, add some glitz and glamour, some crazy stuff, to make it even crazier than what our lives were. I said we, I gotta, we gotta hit it. 

Not Everybody’s A Writer

Fast forward, I get to writing. Dave never picks up a pen. I said, Dave, hey, at least edit this with these chapters, cut, paste, scratch out, add to. Never. He didn’t do any of it—not anything. So, he’s not a writer. Not everybody’s a writer. 

I found that we had funny stories, and he guided me through them. I changed everything around. One thing about being a federal inmate is that you cannot actually write about your crime. Mine were tax-related, loosely based around the diamonds, some real estate, and a whole bunch of made-up stuff from the government. His was a little bit more serious. I’ll fast forward, and I’ll come back and tell you about him. 

More About SNIFF

I’ll tell you more about SNIFF. His daughter comes home and ends up diagnosed with a terminal disease. The markets are crashing. The world is falling apart, and his world is falling down around him. He decides it’s time to rob banks. 

Now, this guy is the least assuming, and he doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. He wouldn’t tell the dogs to shut up if they were barking and throwing a fit in the backyard. He’s just one of those guys. Oh, my goodness. He’s super kind. He’s a nice guy. He’s almost too nice. 

He dabbled with the devil with drugs. And like most of those guys in that fast-paced industry, he ended up paying more than he was bargaining for. So when the world started crashing, his world crashed down around him. He then experimented with some harder stuff. He ended up with a heroin addiction. Ended up that he couldn’t get himself out of the trick bag he put himself in. 

He convinced himself the only way out of this and the only way to get money to save his daughter’s life is to rob banks. Although he’s never committed a crime and has never done anything like that before. He wasn’t robbing the banks for the money for himself, to support his drug habit, or to go to strip clubs or hookers. He was robbing banks for medical care. A sad story.

Got hooked on heroin, robbed banks, and ended up in federal prison. Fast forward, runs into me, a guy in the African diamond trade, wheeler and dealer, never met a stranger, been everywhere, done all of it. Same kind of life. I mixed those two stories together, of course, all fictional, and added, like I said, glitz and glamour. 

We’re headed to Hollywood. It turned out to be a great book; Dave is a great character. I wish that we could have been partners on the book. I left and went to an old prison. He stayed where he was, where I met him. By no choice of ours. He didn’t write. We didn’t go forward on it. I continued to write.

I told him. He’s read it. He loves it. Can’t wait to see it. He’s got several more years to do. 

Who Dave Is

Just to give you an idea, another idea quickly of who Dave is, the judges, in a situation like that, where you rob five banks, and there’s a gun involved. You get the max. Every person I’ve ever met in this kind of situation has two choices. Tell on somebody which he did not. There was no one to tell on him either. He was a single-man conspiracy or a single-man bank robber, or you go postal like he did. In the truest form of “one day just snapped.” Never would have done it had it not, had it dawned on him. 

He just snapped. The judge gave him a downward departure. Instead of getting 25-30 years, he got 12. So he’ll do 10, nine and a half. He’s probably got three or four left to go, and hopefully, everybody will get a chance to meet him. 

It’s Tedious. It’s Hard.

I wish that he would have taken the opportunity to write. It just wasn’t his thing. I get it, but it’s not for everybody. It’s tedious. It’s hard. People think you just, and I’m guilty of this. I read way back when sitting in those cells before I started writing the Mason Storm series on the front page of USA Today that the top 10 hardest things to do is complete a novel. I wrote just because they told me it was one of the hardest things to do. But make no mistake about it: things in my life were hard.

I was in the diamond trade. It was clear after the country had a conflict, people ran around trying to kill you every step of the way. People were missing. So I’ve done hard things. Nothing compares to making a novel. Nothing. Nothing I’ve done compares. It is as hard as people say. But it has gotten easier. The more I write, the more I learn, and I have improved with creating authentic characters. 

More About David

Cindy: So you’re protagonist, David? 

Yes, it stems from your relationship with David. Who was your cellmate? Isn’t that interesting? It doesn’t really matter where the inspiration comes from as long as it comes. 

And in federal prison, it comes by every 15 seconds. The characters you run into are unbelievable. It’s really unbelievable. I’ve been around bank robbers, gangsters, killers, murderers, cocaine traffickers, drug lords, heisters, financial gurus, and billionaires. We all shared the same uniforms. We all ate from the same commissary. We were all limited to the same things.

Yeah. Black, white, Spanish, Asian. We all spent time together. We did it in small, cramped places, sometimes with nothing. We got along. We had fun. We laughed. We watched the stuff that’s going on in the world today. It’s just that I see it with my own eyes. People can get along from all walks of life. Some of my best friends are non-white. We just all got along. 

Not everybody. If you put 2000 men in the same place, you’re bound to have some issues here and there. But for the most part, we worked it out. Some of us who had been in for a long time got together and made sure the young guys got in line. 

I’m not going to say prison was fun. I don’t recommend anybody do it, but we made the best of it. I met a lot of characters. A lot of those guys are in the books. They’re underneath different names, obviously, which you’ll meet Paper, you’ll meet Link, you’ll meet Yuri, you’ll meet Dave, you’ll meet all these people, you’ll meet all these people in the books, underneath different names that they were all part of the book.

SNIFF I Need More

Cindy: The book’s amazing—I’m not just saying that. It’s a great read. My friend Liz and I absolutely do not read crime fiction. We don’t read anything as unconventional, gritty, or raw as SNIFF. You have the first four chapters and the prologue of SNIFF available on your website, gcbrownbooks.com/sniff.

I went to the website and started reading the prologue, and I couldn’t quit. I had to read the first chapter and then the second chapter. Then I had to wait because there was a snafu on the website. So, I didn’t get the other chapters, and I had to wait for a couple of days. I was not happy about that. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to read the book. 

Finally, you sent me the whole of part one of SNIFF. You had it in two different parts as part of the editing process, and I was chomping at the bits to read it. I stayed up reading SNIFF all night! When I finished reading, you left me hanging again. Then I had to wait for part two! It was worth it!  

I loved the character David because he’s just so smart—smart, slick, and kind. We’ve got some AI renditions of what David would look like, and we’ve put them up on your social media for people to see. And they’re spot on. We introduced him to people, and we’re going to do that with the rest of the characters, too—yes, at least the majority of them.

You’re Gonna Love It

GC: Yes. 

Cindy: Is there anything else you want them to know about the protagonist, David in the book? 

No, I think fans should go read the first couple of chapters. You’re gonna love it. People used to, while in prison, I’d write the chapters, and hey, what do you think about this? And I’d send them around, and of course, I’d type them out for them to read and pass on.  

I get them back, and guys would read them back to me and say hey, where’s the next chapter? They even wanted to read my handwritten notes. They wouldn’t even want to wait until it was typed out. They were begging for more. Anything in federal prison that gets passed along from one man to another, like my book, just doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, the way the world’s set up, people don’t want to see the next guy make it. Especially in federal prison, it’s the big boys, or a lot of people are the big boys. Like I said, they hate on you. They don’t really hate on you—that’s the wrong word—but not everybody wants to see you make it. 

Pass The Book

This book made its way around the prison system everywhere. It was it would take me during COVID. I never got my hands on it. It got passed from the garbage guys who came to the unit to take the garbage out of my unit, total lockdown, all units locked down, no mixing of any sort. Somebody from another unit asked to read SNIFF, which I knew from the rec yard. 

I sent it to his unit through the garbage guys, who are other inmate workers. That was the beginning of COVID. When we came off that lockdown 11 months later, I finally got it back. And it was from somebody who wasn’t even at the prison. When I sent that first copy out, a guy walked up to me in the yard and said, “I was told to give this back to you.” 

He was a guy, a black guy from the islands, and he read it. He was actually one of those who said, “Is there any way I can read the notes or part two? I said it’s in pieces of notes. I haven’t typed it up yet; it’s still in raw form. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to know what happened!” 

So it’s a hit. We’re going to do well with it. I’m not just saying that to brag. I’m not saying any of that. Everyone else is. 

This is a passion. I fell in love with writing. Like everything else I’ve done in my life, I’m going to put in blood, sweat, and tears to write these books for my fans. I’m going to make them something to talk about. I, for one, am a diehard fan from now. 

Cindy: So am I. I can’t wait to start on book two. You left us hanging again. Your first chapter gets them into the book, and then your last chapter wants to make them read the second book. I’m there. I want to read that second book.

Yeah, we’re currently working on getting it out. There’s a series—we haven’t talked about that—but there’s SNIFF, SMOKE, and SHOOT,  in the SNIFF series. 

The Other Series 

Cindy: Then, the other series is Taken by Storm. How many books does the Mason Storm series have? 

I wanted to end the character after four books. I don’t know if the publisher will allow that now. We’re talking about five, six, seven. I’m a guy who reads everything. But I don’t like the characters that stretch out 12, 13, 14, 15 books. I can’t read them that far. It’s too much. So I was always the guy that said, I’m going to write the series. But I’m gonna kill him off, or I’m just gonna let him go, or whatever I decide to do with him. Four or five books in, so we’re four books in on Mason Storm. 

I ended the story, but the publisher didn’t like the ending. Thinks that we should get five, six, and seven. Hollywood loves it. They’re talking about some crazy stuff. So we’ll see. I’m not opposed to a few more. A few more, but right now, it’s four or five. It may stretch to six or seven, but it’s, again, a cool character setup. 

He’s set in a Miami, South Florida scene. He’s a homicide detective who was once a champion UFC fighter. Got hurt. Money dried up. Wanted to do something different. Went to be a homicide detective. Got a past he’s trying to run from, and meanwhile, he’s chasing some murderers. He’s living the South Florida life. He’s got a little bit of money. He’s wild. He’s Don Johnson and wears linen pants. He’s not wearing a tie. The gun is not in the holster; it’s in the back of his pants. It’s a cool character. 

Release Date

Cindy: You’ve got SNIFF, which will be released on November 1st, 2024. Taken by Storm is in March. Do I have to wait a long time to get SMOKE?

Oh, you’re talking about SMOKE, probably in July. It will probably be a little less than a year before you release one, probably July of ‘25. Oh, it’s coming. I don’t have any choice. 

Cindy: They are good books, and I look forward to seeing you on the New York Times bestselling list. 

If we don’t hit that number one spot, there’s something wrong. We didn’t work hard enough. 

Conclusion 

Cindy: Thank you for joining us and telling us about your protagonist, David, and what inspired you to write that character. He is something else. 

I encourage you to get the book and read the first four chapters on his website gcbrownbooks.com/sniff. Like and share while you’re there, and hey, let us know what you think. Don’t forget to check out amazing reviews. 

My friend Liz sent this review. She said he has the ability to make you see things that he writes. He paints pictures with his words, but not everybody has that ability. They can try to paint a scene, but he literally makes it come alive for us. And I can attest to that fact because of the scene at the party, the safari party. I’m not going to get into it. Yeah.

There are things in this book that will shock you, amaze you, thrill you, and make you say, Oh no! It will also make you cry. 

Yeah. Yeah. That’s the part.

So, it runs the gamut. Thank you, GC Brown, for joining us for this interview.