Tag Archives: books

My Political Thriller novel experience.

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I wrote a political thriller during lockdown in 2020. I published it on Election Day 2022.

It’s the book that keeps trying.

A guest at the bar recently bought it for his father, who read it in a weekend and loved it.

I’ve only heard from family and friends that they enjoyed the book. It’s never been someone I don’t know.

The book, like my other published work, sold well overseas. It’s never taken hold of anything but it’s been interesting watching it go up and down in sales.

I think it’s time to go back and write the second book, and finish another book in that world.

I know everyone knows me for my horror stuff, but this book meant a lot to me. The guest at the bar’s father’s words of encouragement meant a ton to me.

I’ve never had anyone who regularly reads those types of books tell me how much they enjoyed it. It’s a different feeling to have that.

I always wondered what it would feel like to have someone enjoy my books and want to talk to me about them. It’s invigorating.

I’ll leave you today with this. Keep writing. You may find your readers in the unlikeliest of places.

Down to the last thing

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Last week I wrote a couple of reviews here. I’m going to be only on here.

I tried the Substack thing. It’s just like being on here, but there are fewer readers. I had almost zero engagement on there. Twitter is the same way. I’ll probably leave there soon.

I’m considering leaving every social media I have except for this one. Substack is a blog. You can dress it up and add fancy things, but it’s still a blog. It’s why I deleted my account yesterday.

I can devote time to writing or social media, not both. I know SM is supposed to help me gain readers. I understand that, but I’m at the point where I’d rather write and publish what I want. It could be the next Jax Reed novel, a horror collection/novella/novel, or something else.

Jax’s book came out almost a year ago, and I haven’t written his next book. I know what it’s about. I have an outline. I’ve been worrying so much about finding connections on SM that I didn’t write it. I’ve written a lot of horror stories. Those will be coming out later this year and early 2024. I’ve created the covers for them. This is for the novella coming in October/November.

It’s been through a bunch of rewrites and revisions. I’ll be inputting those this week. I should have it up for preorder in early August. I’ll post here when that happens. I’ll have the other covers up soon, but the edits aren’t done for those yet.

You’ll be seeing more of me in the future. This is the only place I’ll write.

Brian

Back to work…

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I’ve had a lot of thoughts this week. All of them about my writing and which direction it’s headed.

As I said in a previous post, I’ll only be writing horror for publication from now on. Anything not horror will be for me. I have a list of places I’ll be submitting short stories and the novellas I’ve written. Those will be going out in the next few months.

I can’t not write. I’ve created stories since I was a little kid. It’s as much a part of me as anything else. I will narrow my focus on horror.

I love to watch and read horror and while I enjoyed writing books like Disunion, those will be trunk books or books that will never see the light of day.

I hope you’ll continue to follow me on here as well as Substack. I also recently pulled Disunion and my collection. I’m figuring out what to do with the collection. Disunion and Jax Reed are going to be done. While I love the world I created with him and Griggs and the research I did was a lot of fun, I feel those stories are not what was expected of me.

I’m going back to horror unless something pulls me another way. I don’t see that happening. Disunion’s reception hurt and it’s the main reason those stories are shelved.

Have a good weekend,

Brian

Complaining too much and my brain telling me things.

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Disunion by Force by Brian J. Stone

Everything I’ve written for the last couple of weeks is terrible. Whatever I picked up to read bored me and I’ve talked about it on social media.

Now, I try not to do this, but last week my brain told me off through a dream.

All the writers I interact with had an intervention. One said, “We’ve been watching you for a couple of years. I don’t know where you fell off, but you need to stop complaining and work.”

Needless to say, I thought of this dream for a couple of days. It resided in every waking moment. When I thought I got away from it, there it was, reeling me back in.

The funny thing is, I thought everything was fine. I didn’t see it. My subconscious did. It yelled at me in the dream, “You’ve been doing so good. You need to stop this complaining and work.”

Now, this is not a complaint to follow up on by the subconscious. It’s more of a story that I need to listen to that voice in my head that says to work.

I have a book out in a month, and I will promote the hell out of it for the next month and thereafter. What I will not do is complain about how hard this shit sometimes is. How hard I’m working. I want everyone to read Disunion By Force. I wrote it for me, so maybe it won’t reach the people I want it to, but I know someone will enjoy it.

They say you should write what you’d read and this is what my fourteen-year-old self would have read. It’s a book I think my biological father would like.

You have to put a book away sometimes.

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Last year I struggled to read books. I started strong but got stuck along the way. I’m certain I know which book did it: Lonesome Dove.

Don’t get me wrong I loved the book, but I felt like I read it for months. I’m feeling the same way with The Brothers Karamazov. Which I’ll be setting aside for a while. I finished Lonesome Dove last month, followed quickly by Streets of Laredo which was a good book, but it’s not the same as Lonesome Dove.

I need to read something fun. Dostoevsky is not fun. I’m enjoying reading about the characters but feel like so much is dragging on about various story threads. It feels closer to a bunch of stories put together to form a book rather than a novel with cohesion. I don’t care for the story, but the prose is incredible. There’s a difference.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I picked up a couple of books recently and I’m a subscriber to the Nightworms monthly book box. I received last month’s books and haven’t touched them because I’ve been reading Karamazov.

I recently finished watching the Reacher show on Prime and while I’ve read the first book, I haven’t read any of the others. I think I’ll read some of them for a while, then read the Nightworms books.

It’s okay to put a book down if you’re feeling overwhelmed, bored, not digging the story, or that you’d rather brush your teeth than go through another paragraph. Read what you want to read and read for enjoyment, not for a number.

Anyway, I enjoyed the Reacher show. I’m glad they’re going to do another season. I’m going to read something fun for a while. Dostoevsky feels like schoolwork.