Tag Archives: Fiction

Hello, is this thing on?

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Greetings and salutations.

I have been a way from this blog for a while. I’ve been working and trying to get my head on straight, or as straight as it will go.

I’ve taken time away to work on me. My writing has been put on the back burner for the last almost year, something like that.

I found myself not wanting to write and I know it comes from the way I feel about my writing and some of the community I’ve interacted with.

It’s nothing new to see that someone had a bad experience with their writing community. Mine has not been to the extremes of others but I’m also not a fan of many in my sphere of writing.

I’m getting back into writing horror.

I saw a post about an open call for something and while I’m hoping to be in the cool, “I’m published by a big name” club. I’m at the point in my writing where I honestly don’t care anymore. I’m writing for me, and maybe that’s why I’m feeling that way I do about the writing community.

My wife told me to write what I want and it’s not about whether I publish it or not.

To be honest, I wanted to be published to help my wife out with the bills, but my new job does that. Writing is what I’ll do, regardless of genre, although my thriller book, Disunion By Force has outsold my horror by a large degree and it sells everywhere.

I think about the time I may have lost by not writing and I’m indifferent.

I turned 50 recently and I will write whatever the hell I want. If I publish it myself, cool, if I submit it and it gets published cool, but I’m not going to play the game of asking for help or putting my name in a hot and hope I’m selected for a scholarship or some sort of honorific.

I’m past the point of caring with all of that. I’ll write for me and that’s more important than anything.

A change of thought, not mind

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My wife and I talked about my writing last night.

In my last post I suggested I was considering stopping altogether. It’s something that’s been on my mind for the last six months. She didn’t so much talk me off the cliff as put it into perspective about where I was ten years ago when we moved from Las Vegas to where we’re at now in Utah. And more importantly where I’m at and where my writing is.

We moved almost eleven years ago from a good paying job for me and my wife merely changed addresses. She’s been remote since our youngest was two and is now 16.

She said, “You used to just write and enjoy it. You didn’t care what you were writing or for who and I think that’s what you should get back to doing.”

I got it it my head that I should publish and chase all of those who have been published. Those are people I won’t mention because they don’t need the attention, but I look up to and have for a long time.

Ten years ago I didn’t know about any of the writing associations and I just wrote. I’ve written fifteen novels and they’re still on my hard drive, well all but one, Disunion By Force, which still sells decently, at least for me. It sells in the oddest of places. I sold one in Switzerland last month, digital and physical editions.

I’ve been writing to get published. I haven’t been writing because I like writing.

I’d like to make enough to help my wife out, but with my new job I don’t feel that as much.

I make enough that we’re stable and doing okay.

I’ll continue to keep my social medias deactivated. I’m not sure I’ll ever submit something again. It feels like too much and I’d rather just write stories for the sake of the story.

If I do publish something, this is the only place you’ll hear about it.

I hope all of you who read this have a pleasant week.

B

Changing Things

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This is a cross post from my Substack, where I’ll be posting more often.

I’ve been away from this place for a couple of months. I’ve been sorting things out in my head. It’s about deciding what way I’d like to take my writing.

It’s been a long time coming to get to this point. I love writing. I love writing what I enjoy reading. Let’s skip the BS and get to the nitty gritty.

Hello, I’m Brian. I’ve published horror novellas, short stories, and I have a story in the Utah Horror Writer’s Anthology for 2025.

I love horror stories. I love the darkness of the story. I love watching the movies and reading the books. But I’ve found my love of another genre, thrillers, has more pull with my writing and with who I am.

I watched a lot of horror as a kid. I was left alone often as a kid, as were most Gen X kids. I spent that time watching horror movies. I have the fondest of memories of watching Scanners for the first time only for my father to tell me not to watch it again. I did anyway.

I didn’t read horror until I was older. Horror books didn’t interest me. The movies always did. The first horror book I read was Four Past Midnight by Stephen King. I liked the stories in it but it didn’t hold my attention like other stories.

I spent quite a bit of time at the bookstore. My parents divorced when I was in third grade and I dove into books.

I owe my love of books to my father. He took my sister and I to the bookstore on his weekends. We’d get home and sit for a few hours and read, then dinner, and whatever movies we’d picked up at the video store.

I used to fault my father for only letting me read what he read. I read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising in sixth grade and move of Tom’s books afterward.

I have fond memories of those books and I read many in that same genre.

My father didn’t let me read what I wanted to read. It always had to be the Tom Clancy style books.

I hated not reading what I wanted and took to hiding books in my closet, comics too.

I’m looking at 50 in few weeks. I love reading and watching horror but find that I’m not that good a writing them. My horror stories have sold less than my thriller, Disunion By Force. Which has sold 46 paperback copies and 51 digital copies.

Disunion is my best seller and it’s not even close. I’ve sold copies in Australia, France, Serbia, UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Germany, besides what I’ve sold in The States.

I’ve sold copies of my horror mainly in The States, but a few overseas.

I’ve realized that my thrillers are more popular and because of that I won’t be writing horror for a while. It’s less about sales and more about enjoyment and the process. Writing horror feels difficult. I’ve taken time off because I struggle writing horror.

My thriller writing comes easily. I’m able to outline, choreograph a beat sheet for an entire novel in a matter of days, but horror doesn’t come that way.

Every day feels like a challenge. Every time at the writing desk is hard.

I recently returned to a thriller novel I put away only to bust out 2,000 words without blinking. I’ve never been able to do that with anything horror related.

I love the horror community online. They’ve helped me figure out where I should put my focus.

I have plans for the next couple of years. I’ll be submitting my current project to agents. I’ve never submitted my thriller novels so I’m leery of it. I have plans for them regardless. I have 4-5 novels on deck in the next few years. I’ll be working on them.

If I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.

Review for House of Bone And Rain by Gabino Iglesias

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Gabino is one of my favorite authors. I’ve taken a few of the writing classes he’s offered. I’ve read Coyote Songs, Zero Saints, and The Devil Takes You Home.

He’s not just a fantastic writer but a nice dude. He cares about the writing community, and his legendary tweets and TikTok posts about writing and some of the shady operators within the community reflect this.

I knew very little about this book going in. I try to do that for many reasons. I only knew the author. I received my copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I remember the people I hung around with in high school, the crazy things we did, and the stunts we pulled, and I’m glad there is no video footage.

This book is about that. It’s about, at least to me, the brotherhood we take into adulthood.

We meet Gabe. He has a girlfriend, Natalia, who wants to leave Puerto Rico. He has friends Bimbo, Tavo, Paul, and Xavier. This is his brotherhood. These people he vouches for, fights for, and will do anything for. If someone messes with one, they mess with all of them.

This quote struck a chord early on: “We’re all sad animals looking for something to lift us out of the mud we lived in and make us think being alive was worth it.”

There’s something about Gabino’s writing that pulls the reader in. I’ve never been to Puerto Rico, but with his help, I know what it feels like to walk the streets and know if going to one part of Old San Juan will cause problems.

Bimbo’s mother, Maria, dies just before Hurricane Maria makes landfall. This is all intentional. They take it upon themselves to find out who killed her. This brings us into the realm of Dante. It’s a spiral of epic proportions as this group descends into the abyss of murder, mayhem, and death.

The storytelling and the connections to all the religions that make Puerto Rico the place it is had me feeling like I was back in American Gods as Shadow took his steps.

We followed these men and this brotherhood through the various belief systems within Puerto Rico. It was a learning experience and fascinating. This book is as brutal as Gabino’s others, but there’s a point to it, as with The Devil Takes You Home.

The darkness within Devil Takes You Home emerges in the House of Bone and Rain, but its brutality is never for show. You know that there’s some truth to it. There’s a reality to it. Gabino never does his violence for show.

When the bodies start adding up, and the brutality takes a turn I wasn’t expecting, the reality of it is as with this quote from the book: “You don’t need a huge army to take over the world; you need three or four crazy motherfuckers who really love you and are will to do whatever had to be done.”

This is what this book is about—showing up for those who need you.

Gabe realizes this too late.

There are some things in this book I can’t put in a review because of spoilers, but Gabino has written another banger.

I pre-ordered this in April, long before I could read it. He’s that good.

I’m looking forward to reading other’s reviews and having someone to discuss this book with.

Review for Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around The House

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Josh’s novella collection, Spin A Black Yarn, was one of my favorite books of last year. I read it in two days. I talk about it enough that my wife has told me to stop.

When I got the Netgalley approval, I didn’t know what I was getting into. It took me to some places—not the places I wanted to go—and scared me. I would have read it in a day, but I needed breaks from the seriously freaky things happening.

I have been afraid of closets since I was a kid. I don’t know why, and I can never say it. My wife doesn’t get it. I don’t like them. If you’re like me, this book is for you. If you’re not, then it’s still the book for you.

It opens with a little girl, Bella. Her parents are having issues. They have parties all the time, and something is haunting her. The Other Mommy is not like the one from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. It’s a terrifying descent into a family dealing with something traumatic happening to their kid as they deal with their lives.

Josh is very good at traumatic experiences. He writes Bella so well. We watch her struggle through the fear of Other Mommy, not knowing when she’ll pop up or be at the end of the bed. This is a story that would do well as a screenplay.

I set the book down numerous times because of what was happening—the story’s imagery. The description of Other Mommy is something out of my childhood nightmares. I knew something would come out of the closet. I felt it as a kid.

Josh captures a child’s fear in this story: the fear of the Other Mommy, what’s going on with her parents, and not knowing how to make the Other Mommy go away.

It’s been a while since I felt a child’s fear in a story, but Josh does it quickly in this one.

The ending and the lead-up to the ending were unexpected but worked well for the story.