Francis Brown grew up near San Francisco, the fifth of seven children in a Irish Catholic family. The family was religious, but of a lazy kind. The type who send their kids to catholic school, go to church on occasion, but couldn't really care whether God existed or not.
Francis took to religion a bit more than the rest of his family, not enough to be a believe, but he found theology interesting, and was the only kid who actually sat down and read the bible. Kierkegaard followed, and then after a short period working at the bottom level of a public relations firm he decided to take a masters degree in theology at the University of San Francisco (Jesuit), to "answer some questions he had," mostly about himself.
Francis' main interest beside theology is women. Which he, quite sacrilegiously, sees as two sides of the same coin. He learned how to pick up women at 19, which he considered somewhat late (not bothering thinking about those people who never learn this treasured skill. He got fairly good at it fairly quickly, and found himself quite often dating several women at the same time. He does want a serious relationship, but finds it hard to find a woman to "believe in" (Kierkegaard informs his understanding of relationships).
His main free time activities are wandering the streets, and collecting music for his weekly folk/blues radio show. Things tend to "happen to him" while walking the streets (a fairly usual phenomenon in San Francisco). His favorite song, as it describes how he thinks about his two favorite subjects, is "The Irish Girl" as sung by John Jacob Niles. A song, about an Irish Girl, that ends:
I thought of Man and all his pain and suffering
and thought of man and all his bitter days
and knew that god sent this bit of heavenly loveliness
to pay in part for our pain.
The theme of this song can be contrasted with the fate of some of his brothers, that will be included in other sketches. (see below)
Relationships:
This will be added as more character sketches are completed
Conflicts
Religious vs. real
church dogma vs. desire
commitment vs. desire
belief vs. disbelief
Stories:
1. I originally came up with this character as the main character for a TV series concept. The TV series would be titled "City of God" or "St. Francis" something along those lines (suggestions appreciated!). Each episode the character would be looking at a different theologic point, which would be then contrasted with some aspect of his relationship with women. The first episode focusing on the above song lyrics, which would be contrasting with events in his brother's life (giving away a future character sketch, he is/was in a war zone, and couldn't handle having killed someone), and a mess Francis got himself in by getting involved with two women he both quite liked. The relationship between the two women (and occasionally others) would progress over at least the first season.
People I have run this concept by thinks its a bit too highbrow for TV audiences, but I think it would run somewhat like a mix of House and Gossip Girl. The theology talk would largely just be incomprehensible, except for the main, emotional, point that would be related to the sexy bits. There would be of course plenty of side characters which will all come out in later posts.
2. I have had a large number of "scene" ideas that I think I could combine into a novel spanning from September 11th (or some vague nearby point) until the flooding of New Orleans (or some nearby point). The main character is someone vaguely me like, but I think if Francis took over the story it would get away from cliched biography toward something slightly more complicated... Though perhaps overly story driven, which wasn't the goal. I'll be posting the scene ideas over the next few months, but many of them depend heavily on a tendency towards random wandering and travel, and a fascination with women, both of which Francis has (though his skill with women far surpasses mine).
