Dark Lucidity

Interview with Horror Author Jonathan Janz

2012-01-30T12:41:00.001-06:00

Jonathan, welcome to my blog. It’s great to have a fellow Samhain Horror author here to provide an interview.

Thanks so much for inviting me here, Brian! I'm a huge fan of your work, so getting to know you has been a great experience for me.

1. As someone who has worked in the film business, I just love the concept of your latest novel The Sorrows, about a couple of film composers who spend a month on a creepy island to work on a movie. Can you give us some more details of what the story is about?

The Sorrows was born of several disparate ideas and experiences, but it all started with a single image: a man imprisoned in a tower with nothing but a piano. The song that he played in my imagination gave birth to this novel.

Ben Shadeland and Eddie Blaze are movie music composers who're trying to score a big budget horror film for the most demanding (and diabolical) director in film. Their deadline is looming, but Ben (the creative half of the duo and my protagonist) hasn't written a note because of a nasty divorce and the resulting loss of custody of his three-year-old son, who happens to be the only thing that matters in Ben's life.

Chris Blackwood is the heir to his family's fortune, which includes the Sorrows, a supposedly haunted island off the coast of northern California. Chris is in deep with a vicious loan shark, and because his father has cut off his money supply, to make some quick cash (and to save his hide) Chris allows Ben, Eddie, and two women (Eva, the gorgeous assistant to the film director, and Claire, an aspiring composer with a huge crush on Ben) to stay a month in the island's castle.

What none of them know is the horrific history of the island or the evil that awaits them there. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that the tale is a nightmarish roller coaster that's been receiving some wonderful praise. I'm very proud of it and want everyone to read it.

Of course, every author probably feels that way about his/her book, right?

2. Yes, I would agree. The Sorrows sounds like a great setting for a horror novel. Is the island off the coast of California real or fictional? And what inspired you to you come up with this story?

It's a fictional island, but it has existed in my head since I was about twenty-one. I didn't know where the island was though, until my family and I visited my wife's relatives in Sonoma County, California. Like you, Brian, I'm a nature lover, and when I spent time on the coast and in the mountains near Santa Rosa, I knew exactly where my novel would be set.

You're not the first person to ask me this question (regarding inspiration), but because it's such a good one, I'm going to give you an answer I don't think I've ever given before, but since the novel's release, I've realized that some very strong feelings of mine are expressed in The Sorrows.

The first belief is that sin, like a loyal dog, returns to its owner. Maybe not in this life, but eventually, I do believe that we reap what we sow. And in that vein, my fictional island is like a psychic magnet for revenants or vengeful ghosts (many of whom were wronged in life).

Men commit many sins, but a disturbing number of them are toward women, and a staggering number of those are unholy minglings of sex and violence. In fact, I find many men's attitudes about sex to be inherently violent (if not physically, then without a doubt emotionally). The notion that a woman is a thing, an object, an instrument of temporary pleasure is so endemic to our society that we barely notice how wrong-headed and frightening it is.

There are several monsters in The Sorrows, many of whom are unfeeling lechers whom society enables and even sanctions. They objectify women, exert power over them, and inflict violence on them simply because they can. When you take a step back and examine it, it's really a primitive, animalistic code. Of course, that's an insult to animals, because few species are capable of sinking to the depraved depths that men often do.

I'm proud to be a man, and I'm not down on the whole gender, but I believe most of the world needs to take a serious look at gender politics and consider starting from scratch. As the son of a single mother, the husband of a wonderful wife, and the father of two amazing daughters, I've had many occasion to wonder just how in the heck men can justify the way they treat women.

There is ill treatment of women in my book because I want to write with truth. But there are also consequences to that treatment, and though those consequences don't begin to redress the wrongs that are done, I think they do reflect my feelings on the matter pretty clearly.

3. I agree on everything you said above. The novel I'm currently writing also has some villains who are violent towards women. My protoganist, on the otherhand, holds women in high esteem and takes a stand against such monsters for his sister and the woman he loves. What authors influenced your writing style and in what ways?

Stephen King was my first and most important influence. I wouldn't have been a reader, much less an author, without his writing. So much of what I believe about writing came from him, too. The story is the boss. Edit mercilessly. A story isn't driven by the author, it's driven by the characters; it's merely the author's job to transcribe what the characters tell him. These ideas are just a sliver of what I've learned from Stephen King.

After King I'd put Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and Richard Matheson on my list of primary influences. The same could be said for Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, and Ray Bradbury. Some other names I don't think I've mentioned in other interviews are Hemingway, Steinbeck, Roald Dahl, Poe, Chuck Palahniuk, Shirley Jackson, John Farris, Charles L. Grant, Harry Crews, and James Herbert.

The above writers couldn't be more different, but one thing binds them together: storytelling. There's no single correct way to tell a story, but if anything else gets in the way of the story, the writer hasn't done his job. I love Jack Ketchum because he refuses to lie. Lansdale writes with a similar honesty, but the two have their own unique styles. Laymon's known for pace, violence, and sex, but I like him for a different reason: he fully inhabited his POV characters. Hitchcock called it subjective treatment, and I suspect he would have really enjoyed Laymon's stuff. Matheson is as good as anybody at setting up a big moment and letting it pay off in a spine-tingling way.

4. I've read and studied many of these authors, especially Stephen King and Richard Laymon. I pick up a little knowledge from every writer I read. It's good to read outside of your genre, as well, because horror novels aren't just about writing one horror scene after another. They include dramatic scenes and comic relief, romance, and sexual tension between the characters.

You’re married with three children. How do you make time for writing? Can you share your writing schedule and offer some success secrets to being a busy husband and father who still manages to create time to write novels?

Well, I'm a full-time teacher, so because that's my family's livelihood, I have to make sure I do my best at that. As for the rest of my time, it's a constant internal struggle between spending time with my family and my writing career, and what always suffers is the writing. In a perfect world, I'd have four extra hours a day (at least!) to devote to my writing career, but since I don't, I have to make some tough choices. So when in doubt, I always choose to play with my kids.

This is just a personal philosophy, and I'm certainly not criticizing anyone who lives by a different code, but for me, my family has to come first. I've heard plenty of guys in their sixties, seventies, and eighties who bemoan having spent so much time on their careers. But I've never heard a man regret spending too much time with his family Of course, it isn't just guilt that causes me to make those choices--I honestly believe I was made to be a father and a husband.

What all this means is that I've got to be very smart with my time and very strategic about what I do and when I do it. My wife watches the kids on the weekends during the afternoons, so I get to write and edit then. I write a novel every summer (one of the perks of being a teacher), and I view that time as a pure and marvelous burst of discovery and creativity. I also write at night and in any other free moments I get (which aren't many).

5. You have another novel coming out in June of 2012 called House of Skin. Awesome title. Wish I’d thought of it. Tell us more about this book and what’s in store for us.

Thanks for liking the title, Brian! We're even now, because Dead of Winter is a fantastic, jealousy-inducing title as well.

Essentially, House of Skin is a ghost story with both a gothic sensibility and a breakneck pace. Strangely, the two authors I kept channeling as I wrote it were Peter Straub and Richard Laymon, and though I love them both, most would agree that you couldn't choose two more diverse horror writers.

Don D'Auria wrote a great synopsis for House of Skin, so I'll let his words answer the question…

Myles Carver is dead. But his estate, Watermere, lives on, waiting for a new Carver to move in. Myles’s wife, Annabel, is dead too, but she is also waiting, lying in her grave in the woods. For nearly half a century she was responsible for a nightmarish reign of terror, and she’s not prepared to stop now. She is hungry to live again…and her unsuspecting nephew, Paul, will be the key.

Julia Merrow has a secret almost as dark as Watermere’s. But when she and Paul fall in love they think their problems might be over. How can they know what Fate—and Annabel—have in store for them? Who could imagine that what was once a moldering corpse in a forest grave is growing stronger every day, eager to take her rightful place amongst the horrors of Watermere?

(End synopsis)

I love that description, and though it does give you a great idea of what the book is about, I'd add one quick thing. There's a character in House of Skin named Sam Barlow. He's the local sheriff, and he's deeply entwined in the history and the happenings surrounding Paul, Julia, and Annabel. Sam is one of my favorite characters, so I'm anxious for others to get to know him.

Jonathan, I can't wait to read House of Skin. I appreciate you stopping by and chatting.

Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Brian, and thank you for asking such awesome questions!

If you haven't read any of the terrifying books by Jonathan Janz, I highly recommend him. Pick yourself up a paperback copy of The Sorrows or download the e-book to your e-reader today. While you're at it, check out his two novellas, Old Order and Witching Hour Theater. Also, this summer keep watch for his upcoming novel, House of Skin.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard. In a way, that explains everything. His first two novels will be published by Samhain Horror (THE SORROWS in 2011, HOUSE OF SKIN in 2012). He has also written two novellas (Old Order and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories. His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true.

One of Jonathan’s wishes is to someday get Stephen King, Peter Jackson, Jack Ketchum and Joe R. Lansdale together for an all-night zombie movie marathon. Of course, that can only happen if all four drop their restraining orders against him.

You can contact at jonathanjanz@comcast.net

His website: http://jonathanjanz.com/

Lust, Hunger, and Terror in the Canadian Wilderness

2012-01-22T11:04:00.000-06:00

My latest novel, DEAD OF WINTER, is a historical horror thriller set in Canada during the blizzard season of 1870. The story is based partly on true events and an old Algonquin Indian legend that still haunts the Great Lakes tribes to this day. It’s also a detective mystery and even includes a couple of love triangles, since I am also a fan of romance and steamy sex scenes.

The Victorian mystery takes place near the end of the 19th Century at an isolated fur-trading fort deep in the Ontario wilderness. Inspector Tom Hatcher, a troubled detective from Montreal, recently captured a deranged serial killer, the Cannery Cannibal. Gustav Meraux is Jack-the-the-Ripper meets Hannibal Lecter. Even though the cannibal has been locked away in an asylum, the case still haunts Tom, so he has moved out to the wilderness, bringing his rebellious teenage son with him. At the beginning of the story, Tom has taken a job at Fort Pendleton to solve a case of strange murders by a cannibal more savage than Gustav Meraux. Some predator in the woods surrounding the fort is attacking colonists and spreading a gruesome plague—the victims turn into ravenous cannibals with an unending hunger for human flesh. In Tom’s search for answers, he discovers that the Jesuits know something about this plague. My second main character is Father Xavier, an exorcist from Montreal. The Vatican sends the priest to Ontario to help Tom battle the Devil’s Plague.

While indeed a work of fiction, I wanted this book to feel real and authentic. Throughout the story I interweave several facts I pulled from history books and an interview I did with a descendent from a Canadian Ojibwa tribe. During my research, I came across some unexplained stories that the Ojibwa and Algonquin tribes all around the Great Lakes region, including Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, and Minnesota, feared a supernatural creature that lives in the woods and stalks people every winter. The tribes migrated every year because of this superstition. This legend also spooked the white fur traders, like the men of Hudson’s Bay Company, who lived in isolated forts all across Canada and traded with the Indians (now called First Nations). In my novel, Fort Pendleton is a fictitious fort named after one my characters, a tycoon by the name of Master Avery Pendleton. When the mysterious killings start plaguing the colonists living within his fort, Pendleton hires Tom Hatcher to solve the case. Tom teams up with an Ojibwa tracker and shaman, Anika Moonblood. She doesn’t believe the killer is a man or animal, but something much more terrifying. In the book, everyone in the neighboring Ojibwa tribe is spooked by the stalker in the woods. I studied the customs of the Ojibwa people of that era, as well as shamanism, and put much of what I learned into the book. To authenticate my priest characters, I studied Jesuit history, demonology, and countless cases of real priests performing exorcisms. From the scriptures I gathered on battling demons, I could probably do an exorcism myself, not that I would ever want to.

As I researched Canada’s legendary evil spirit even deeper, I discovered an article about a real isolated fort in Quebec where all the colonists went crazy and turned cannibal. In the late 1700s, a Jesuit priest who visited this fort documented the case in his journal, describing the deranged colonists as possessed by the devil. This is all factual and documented by the Catholic Church. I also did extensive research on the history of frontier life in Canada in the 1800s. During the long winter months, cannibalism became a way of survival for isolated villages that ran out of food. After consuming human flesh, people often turned insane, or what the Jesuits would describe as “possessed.” Sometimes soldiers would arrive at a fort to find that all the colonists dead except one man, who survived by eating the others.

While my novel is definitely a horror thriller, I mix in other genres like the detective mystery and romance. As Inspector Hatcher hunts for a backwoods serial killer, two women residing at the fort fall in love with him. One is his boss’s wife, Lady Willow Pendleton, a spoiled debutant who hates her cheating husband, Avery. The other woman is Anika Moonblood, the native tracker who has been assigned to work with Tom. Theirs is a love-hate relationship, because Tom only sees Anika as a heathen. To make matters more complicated, she is Avery Pendleton’s mistress, albeit against her will. While Tom feels burning desires for both Willow and Anika, getting involved with either has dangerous consequences, for Master Pendleton is not a man to cross.

I had a blast writing DEAD OF WINTER and I hope you enjoy reading it. My imagination was running wild at the time. I also enjoyed seeing the mystery unfold. When I write, I never know how a book is going to play out. I have a general idea that gets me started writing, but most of the time I’m solving the riddle right alongside my detective. I did my best to make DEAD OF WINTER the scariest book that I could write, while igniting not just fear and terror, but all the emotions to offer readers a truly visceral experience. I am grateful that Samhain Horror released my novel and I’m excited to share this story with readers. Enjoy the adventure!

DEAD OF WINTER is now availble in paperback and e-book.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brian Moreland writes novels and short stories of horror and supernatural suspense. He lives in Dallas, Texas where he is diligently writing his next horror novel. You can communicate with him online at http://www.brianmoreland.com/ or on Twitter @BrianMoreland.

New Books Just Arrived!

2011-12-23T10:43:00.000-06:00

My publisher sent me copies of my new novel DEAD OF WINTER, just in time for Christmas. The paperback version releases January 3rd. The e-book is now available at Amazon.

Interview with Author Martin Lastrapes

2011-10-31T05:00:00.112-05:00

Happy Halloween, everyone! Today completes my October series of interviews with horror authors, and I have a special treat for horror fans with an up close ad personal interview with Martin Lastrapes, author of Inside the Outside. Martin has written an outstanding debut novel that the girls over at Biblio Babes rated 10 out of 10. Read Cara's review. Read Kat's review.

Brian: Martin, your debut horror novel Inside the Outside is about a young woman who was born inside a cult of cannibals and escapes into the outside world. I just love the concept. Can you give us a few meaty morsels about the story and about how you decided to write about cannibals?

Martin: Well, the main character is Timber Marlow, a teenage girl who was born and raised in a cult up in the San Bernardino Mountains. Cannibalism is one of the core tenants of the cult’s belief system, so she grows up believing, among other things, that killing and eating people is normal. I liked the idea of writing a story about a sympathetic killer.

Brian: You’ve come up with an original character with Timber Marlow. I mean, by the time she’s 15, she’s already killed three men. Give us some background on how you came up with her character. Did you develop her from the beginning or did her multi-dimensions evolve over the course of writing the book?

Martin: The only thing I knew about Timber Marlow before I set out to write her story was she was a woman. I was fascinated with the idea of creating a female killer, since, historically, there aren’t a lot of female killers in literature. Other than that, she was basically a blank slate who developed organically along with the story itself.

Brian: Who is Timber’s main nemesis and why?

Martin: The primary nemesis that readers will probably connect with her is Daddy Marlow, the leader of the cult. He is a big, brutal man who does quite a few terrible things to Timber. But, more than any one character, I think Timber’s real nemesis is the cult itself and the tension that builds as it becomes clear she needs to get out.

Brian: Which do you create first … the plot or the characters?

Martin: Ideally, the plot comes first. For me, characters are there to serve the story and not the other way around. The best reading experiences I’ve had involve books with great narrative plots, so, naturally, those are the types I’ve books I want to write. That being said, once I’ve worked out the plot, I take great care in developing my characters, making them as real and interesting as possible.

Brian: What kind of research did you do? Did you visit any of the locations you wrote about or do it all from the Internet?

Martin: Most of the research I did was relegated towards the cannibal stuff. I tried to learn as much as I reasonably could about the human anatomy and what happens to a body after it dies. I also did quite a bit of research on sustainable living communities, as the cult in the book exists off the grid. As far as the locations went, I wrote mostly from memory, since I grew up around where the book takes place. I do the majority of my research with books. The Internet is great for little things, but, for the big ideas, books are the way to go.

Brian: How did a man who loves pizza and watches movies over and again get started writing fiction? And were you always drawn to horror thrillers or did you try your hand at other genres?

Martin: I wanted to be a screenwriter and I figured if I learned the fundamentals of prose fiction, I could then apply those lessons to screenwriting. But, as it turned out, I fell in love with fiction writing and never really went back to screenwriting. I’ve always loved horror movies, but I don’t actually read much horror fiction. I did, however, read a whole lot of Stephen King at one point in my life. As for writing, though, I think of myself as more of a literary author with a flair for the quirky and offbeat. So, if you would’ve told me a few years back that my first novel would be a horror story, I’d have thought you were crazy.

Brian: I also wanted to be a screenwriter and took screenwriting classes in college. I found the 120-page structure to be too limiting and felt more freedom writing prose, so I too turned to fiction writing as my main writing format. You studied at Cal State San Bernardino, achieved a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Master’s Degree in Composition. How did your studies mould your writing? And can you share a technique or two that you learned on how to write compelling fiction?

Martin: Because my B.A. focused on creative writing, it allowed me to just write, write, and write. And, more than that, I also got to workshop most of my writing, which was invaluable to my development. As far as my M.A., the best thing I took from that was how to do good research, which comes in very handy when working on a novel. One of the best, and most simple, lessons I learned about writing compelling fiction is to make sure every scene has some level of tension in it.

Brian: Writing novels takes discipline, and writers often spend long hours by themselves typing at a computer. The process can take several months to even years. How long did it take you to write your first novel? And how do you motivate yourself to write?

Martin: I spent roughly five years writing Inside the Outside. Generally speaking, I’m motivated to write simply because I love books and I love reading, so having the opportunity to contribute my own work to the literary world is just really cool. But, more importantly, I love writing and telling stories. Of course, to actually complete a novel, I think you have to be at least a little crazy, so there’s that as well.

Brian: What is your writing schedule like? Daily or when you can find the time?

Martin: In a perfect world, I would write daily, but it’s so hard to find time every day. If I’m in the middle of writing a chapter, I’ll usually stick with it for a few days in a row until it’s done. I tend to take breaks in between chapters, but I try not to stay away from a project for more than a few days. Even when I’m not working on my new book, I’m usually writing for my blog or working on the screenplay adaptation of Inside the Outside, so, in that sense, I guess I write every day.

Brian: What was the journey you took to getting your first novel published?

Martin: Well, the initial goal was to find a literary agent and go the traditional route. But, after a year or so of searching, I decided I would be better served to redirect my energy in a more productive way. That’s when I decided to publish the book myself. I started my own imprint, Cannibal Press, and went on from there. Being an independent publisher is a lot of work, but it’s very satisfying.

Brian: I also self-published my first novel. After many frustrations with trying to get an agent or publisher to even read my book, I finally decided to form my own publishing company and just get the book out there. In hind-sight, it was the right decision for me and I’ve already sold that novel to traditional publishers three times now. Do you have any advice you like to share for aspiring writers?

Martin: Read every day. Even when you don’t have time to write, you must make time to read. Not only does it help sharpen your craft, but you need to be intimately engaged in the world with which you want to live, so to speak. Beyond that, write what you love. Don’t attempt to pander to what you think the publishing world wants. As long as you write the best book you have in you, I can promise there will be an audience who can’t wait to read it.

Brian: What lessons did you learn from professional wrestling and was that from participating or watching as a spectator?

Martin: My lessons definitely came from being a big, big fan growing up. Professional wrestling taught me about narrative arcs and how to sustain a storyline, building it up and ending it with a satisfying climax and resolution. Of course, I didn’t realize I was learning these lessons at the time. I just knew I was enjoying the show.

Brian: If you were ever famous enough to be on Dancing with the Stars what three dances would you choose to win the trophy?

Martin: Hahaha! You’ve clearly done your research. The Jive, the Paso Doble, and the Tango.

Brian: I happened to take ballroom dancing myself and learned over 22 dances. My favorites are The East Coast Swing, Rumba, and Salsa. Let’s get back to talking horror. Describe your next novel project.

Martin: I’m currently working on a vampire novel. My goal, among other things, is to write novel that will appeal both to fans of the genre, but also to readers who assume they don’t like vampires. While it has elements of horror, it’s a much lighter book than Inside the Outside and I think it will definitely display the more quirky and offbeat side of my imagination. I’m definitely paying tribute too a lot of the classic vampire mythology that fans are familiar with, but I’m also adding my own wrinkles to it. I also have a few tricks up my sleeve that I’m pretty certain nobody has ever tried before. Also, professional wrestling plays an important role in the story.

Brian: Where can people find your books?

Martin: Inside the Outside is available in paperback and eBook on all major online retailers, including Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

Brian: Thanks, Martin. I've enjoyed having you as a guest. For readers looking for a fresh new look at horror, go to your favorite bookseller and purchase a copy of Inside the Outside.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MARTIN LASTRAPES is an award-winning writer who grew up in the Inland Empire. He studied at Cal State San Bernardino, where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in English and a Master's Degree in Composition. Inside the Outside is his first novel. If you want to learn more, you can visit http://www.martinlastrapes.com/. You can also check out Martin’s Facebook and GoodReads pages, as well as follow him on Twitter.

Excerpt: The Dealer of Needs

2011-10-26T19:24:00.000-05:00

For a limited time, from now until Halloween, you can read my horror short story "The Dealer of Needs" for free at my second blog THE CRYPT OF HORROR

http://www.brianmoreland.wordpress.com/

Interview with Horror Author W.D. Gagliani

2011-10-25T05:00:00.217-05:00

Brian: Continuing with my interview series for October, I'm thrilled to have werewolf author extraordinaire, W.D. Gagliani, as a guest on my blog. Hi, W.D., thanks for being here.

W.D.: Thanks for having me as a guest, Brian! There’s nothing I like better than talking horror fiction.

You’ve written a series of novels about a homicide cop, Nick Lupo, who happens to also be a werewolf. When I was growing up loving all things horror, werewolves were my favorite monster. I remember how much I wanted to have the powers to change into a wolf. You get to live out this fantasy through Nick Lupo. I always like to know how a horror writer’s mind ticks. Out of all the monsters you could write about, what had you gravitate toward werewolves? And how did you come up with the Nick Lupo character?

It’s hard to say where Dominic “Nick” Lupo came from specifically, but I’d say he’s the intersection of several strong influences and a desire to explore some autobiographical notes, as well as wanting to deal with a monster I’d loved since watching Universal movies as a kid. I was greatly influenced by Robert McCammon’s novel The Wolf’s Hour (even the title had an influence), in which a World War 2 spy is a werewolf. It made me realize that a protagonist werewolf could be something other than “the monster.”

I was also a huge Robert McCammon fan growing up, and The Wolf’s Hour was one of my favorites. I really like the concept of having a werewolf as the hero. What were some of your other influences?

Then later along came the syndicated TV show Forever Knight, about the homicide cop who is a vampire. On the surface my Wolf books might seem to owe a lot to that show, but really it was more the format. In FK, Knight was trying to become human by atoning for many past sins. As I built my protagonist’s character, I gave him sins to atone for, but they were more closely related to his youth, and growing up Italian-American, and learning to cope with his condition. If you think about it, a vampire cop has it all – he can fly, he has supernatural strength, he can hypnotize people into submission, or after letting them see his fangs… the only tough element he faces is getting on the night shift forever!

But when I started to see a cop who was a werewolf, he was a tortured soul for reasons different than the TV cop, and I saw that his condition actually would hamper his police duties. He can barely control his temper, or the Change. He’s still learning how to control the Beast. He has to leave his clothes somewhere. If he defends himself, he’s likely to leave a mess. Plus he can’t blend into an urban setting as a wolf nearly as easily as a vampire. He can’t hypnotize people. If he tries to wolf out for cop work, he’ll almost always have to explain himself (where he was, why his clothes are rumpled, etc.). It’s like the Clark Kent thing without all the perks of wearing the cape.

I’d also been a huge consumer of thrillers and crime novels since an early age, and about this time I had discovered people like David Morrell, F. Paul Wilson, and John Sandford. I kept thinking: place the werewolf in that kind of environment, like McCammon had done with the wartime espionage.

Lastly, I was always fascinated by Talbot’s tragic character in Universal’s “The Wolf Man,” and I wanted Lupo (whose name signaled his destiny) to be a tortured soul. Of course, the puberty metaphor was just starting to be explored in the genre, and I grabbed onto that, too, because I had an interesting and not always positive childhood – some of Nick Lupo’s reminiscences and flashbacks to his time as a kid parallel mine in some ways (not in all ways, of course). I started to “see” the major characters during a period in which I vacationed a lot in Northern Wisconsin’s heavily wooded landscape, and the pieces came together. The serial killer in Wolf’s Trap is also based on somebody, though very loosely. The rest was just shaping the clay into various shapes until it rang my bell.

Your fourth novel in the series, WOLF’S EDGE just released with Samhain Publishing’s new horror line this October. And your novel that kicked the series off, WOLF'S TRAP, will re-release through Samhain in March 2012. Tell us about what’s in store for Nick in this series.

Wolf’s Trap was always intended as a one-off novel. In an early draft, I actually killed Lupo at the end. An editor changed my mind! Trap went on to grab a Bram Stoker Award nomination in its small press version, which helped me finally land at Leisure Books – where I’d always wanted to be, based on all the great writers published by them, and based on the legendary editor, Don D’Auria, who had gathered them together. I had met Don at conventions, but his waiting list for getting a reading was huge… the award nomination, I believe, made my novel stand out just enough, and he took it for publication in 2006. It sold better than expected, and a sequel was requested in 2007. I was in the middle of another novel, so it took me some extra time, but Wolf’s Gambit was finished in 2009 and published in 2010.

The reason I mention all this is that when it was time to plot the sequel, I had nothing. Lupo faced down the serial killer and his hired minions in Trap, and there was nowhere for him to go… But then I got the title WolfsKlan in my head and it wouldn’t let go. What if there were other werewolves and they were militaristic, and somehow Lupo had to face this new danger while also facing a more standard opponent? Well, Don hated my title! But that was when I started the loose gambling connection with the rest of the titles (gambit, bluff, deal, and edge are all gambling terms). I’m a lifelong fan of the band the Alan Parsons Project, and their album The Turn of a Friendly Card had found its way into Wolf’s Trap along with a lot of other progressive rock I favored. Suddenly I had a series! Gambit did well, and Don was enthusiastic for another book – which was great because I’d started to drop a lot of hints that there was more to those rogue werewolf mercenaries (whose employer, Wolfpaw Security Services, was based loosely on Blackwater).

The thing was, Wolfpaw had more than just a few werewolves in its rank – it turned out it had a long and sordid history, too. Wolf’s Bluff almost wrote itself. I’d taken nine years to write Trap, maybe eight-nine months for Gambit, but now I was down to about seven months for Bluff. I realized that Gambit and Bluff had started a story they couldn’t contain. I knew a third book would have to finish the Wolfpaw arc – and Wolf’s Edge was born when Don gave it the go-ahead. The Dorchester/Leisure problems hit with a thud and… Wolf’s Edge was later reborn as a Samhain title, purchased for the second time by Don D’Auria, who is absolutely the best! Edge mostly concludes the loose Wolfpaw trilogy, though it also ends on something of a cliff-hanger. Probably more than you wanted to know, but it’s fascinating to me because the story arc seems to have spun itself, and I just wrote it down. Now I need to head in a different direction with the next Wolf book, but the ideas have been flowing…

With four books out, you must be super rich. Is writing your full-time job now or do you still have to work a day job? If so, how do you balance working for somebody else and writing as a second profession?

Ha ha ha! Excuse me, but I have to laugh so I can keep from crying. Neither is a pretty sight, believe me.

I don’t know many writers who can afford to write full-time. I’m definitely not one of them. Balancing a day job and writing makes for very long days, nights of less than five hours’ sleep (and, therefore, constant exhaustion), weekends taken up by long writing marathons instead of movie or TV marathons, ignoring family and friends, eating too much junk food, and sometimes making really bad choices.

But I can’t seem to be able to stop…

The horror genre is new to Samhain Publishing. What drew you to them as a publisher and how has the experience been?

As I mentioned, Don D’Auria was hired by Samhain after the near-implosion at Dorchester (who still hold the rights to Wolf’s Gambit and Wolf’s Bluff). It was only natural that I would approach him and ask if he was interested in my writing more for him. Fortunately, I had pulled Wolf’s Edge for nonpayment, so it was ready to go and Don graciously bought it again.

So far, the experience has been outstanding. But I’m biased, because I know how much better Don makes my writing – so I’m surely judging everything based on getting to work with him again. Don is a fantastic editor who manages to have a light touch while at the same time turning your potentially terrible sentences into great ones. That’s not easy to do. He genuinely loves the horror genre and it shows in every book he’s touched. Samhain’s other genres all flirt with horror anyway, so I can see why they wanted to make it official – and they got the best person to make it happen! I’m proud and thrilled to be a part of the horror line’s launch this October!

Brian: W.D., I’ve enjoyed working with Don myself and can’t say enough good things about him.

Writing a book takes a lot of focus and discipline. Can you share your writing process and tell us how you get into the creative frame of mind to write fiction?

It’s called desperation. I desperately want to continue writing, so I force myself into the frame of mind. Believe me, it’s not easy. I love reading other people’s books, I love movies, and I love music. There’s a whole lot of other stuff I could be doing, so writing fiction sometimes feels like torture… when I’m starting. But when I hit the groove, if I’m lucky, then it’s great. I try to write every day, a little, but on weekends I spend about 12-14 hours at my nearby Starbucks office so I can avoid all that other distraction. Unfortunately, the internet’s still available. I try to put in a couple hours at least three other nights, too.

I don’t do focus or discipline very well at all. It’s all put-a-gun-to-my-head kind of stuff to get me into a project, and sometimes other ideas try to crowd out the one I’m working on. I like to say I have many more burners than I have stove! But when that groove happens, when the action starts rolling, or even better, when characters start to do things on their own, ignoring the paths I set out for them, then it’s sweet indeed. I’ve been fortunate in that quite a few of my characters have rebelled against me and done their own thing, some of them lived and died against my wishes, and the fact that they surprised me has also hopefully surprised readers.

Brian: I can totally relate. There are days I have to force myself to sit down and write. But when I hit my groove, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.

Also, I’ve collaborated enough with my friend David Benton, and found that projects we work on together flow a lot more smoothly because it’s two writers carrying the burden of plotting and writing scenes. You get more stamina, fresh eyes, and a partner who’s not afraid to tell you something’s not working. All this can have a good effect on your solo work, too.

As many people will know, Samhain Publishing is named for the ancient tradition that became every horror fan's favorite festival of Halloween. What would make for your best ever Samhain celebration?

Hard to say. I’m much more of an observer than a participant. I love the holiday and all its ancient and modern trappings. But you’ll never get me into a costume. But I so like to watch…

I find Halloween very intriguing, scary, kind of sexy, kind of dangerous, kind of illicit, kind of taboo. I take it all in. And I love chocolate…

W.D. trying his luck against the Casino Beast.

You live up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I once visited Green Bay and toured a cheese factory. All I know about the state is cheese, the Packers football team, and Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. Besides watching sports and eating cheese curds, what else do you do for fun in Wisconsin?

Fun? What’s that?

We dig ourselves out of tons of snow, shiver through 20-30 degrees below zero days (with windchills even worse), and watch our Packers and Badgers and Brewers doing very well this season! I’m looking for a Packers Super Bowl Re-peat, since that’s my game. And the Wisconsin Badgers are looking big-bowl bound, too. The Brewers, who knows, maybe it’s the Series for them after many years’ drought.

I love a good Friday fish fry, I do declare. And a good brew to go with it.

And yes, we put cheese on everything. What of it? (Am I being too defensive?)

Oh, and we’ve sure created our share of serial killers in this general area… wonder why?

W.D., thanks so much for being here. I’ve really enjoyed having you as a guest on my blog. Book lovers, check out W.D. Gagliani’s werewolf series. The Leisure editions of WOLF’S TRAP, WOLF’S GAMBIT, and WOLF’S BLUFF our out of print, but you can buy autographed copies directly from W.D. Gagliani's website. You can now buy a copy of his fourth Nick Lupo novel WOLF’S EDGE, which just released from Samhain Horror. And be on the lookout for a re-release of WOLF'S TRAP through Samhain (March 2012) and the novella WOLF'S DEAL (summer 2012.)

Thanks a million for having me here, Brian! Let me return the favor, okay? And good luck to you with your own Samhain release, Dead of Winter. I’m looking forward to reading it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

W.D. Gagliani is the author of WOLF’S TRAP, WOLF’S GAMBIT, WOLF’S BLUFF, WOLF’S EDGE (Samhain, 2011), WOLF'S DEAL (novella), SAVAGE NIGHTS, SHADOWPLAYS, and MYSTERIES & MAYHEM (w/ David Benton), plus THE GREAT BELZONI AND THE GAIT OF ANUBIS (novella). WOLF'S TRAP will be reissued by Samhain in March 2012. Most are available on Amazon Kindle and other e-formats. He has also published numerous short stories in various anthologies, and nonfiction in ON WRITING HORROR, THRILLERS: THE 100 MUST READS, and THE WRITER magazine (October 2011 issue), among others. Gagliani is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA), the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and the Authors Guild. Visit him at www.wdgagliani.com, www.facebook.com/wdgagliani, http://www.williamdgagliani.com/, and on Twitter: @WDGagliani.

Radio Podcast Interview with 5 Horror authors

2011-10-24T17:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a Diabolical Radio podcast featuring authors Kristopher Rufty, Ronald Malfi, Jonathan Janz, Hunter Shea, and myself. We discuss why we write what we do, what made us want to write what we do, and so much more.

http://lastkristontheleft.blogspot.com/2011/10/samhain-authors-unite.html

Interview with Horror Author Hunter Shea

2011-10-14T10:40:00.008-05:00

Today, I'm excited to announce that I am expanding my blog to interview authors and find out how these writers of horror have successfully written novels and gotten published. I also love getting to know the people who write the scary novels I enjoy reading. To kick things off here in October, my first interview is with a new up-and-coming horror author everyone should be reading: Hunter Shea. His debut novel, FOREST OF SHADOWS, is already a huge success, topping the Samhain Horror best-seller's list at #1 several times.

Brian: Hi, Hunter, it’s great to have you as a guest author on my blog. Your debut novel, FOREST OF SHADOWS will be out with Samhain Publishing’s new horror line this October. You’ve written a frightening modern-day ghost story that had me hooked from the prologue. Tell us about the story.

Hunter: Forest of Shadows is about a man whose wife dies in her sleep on the same day they win the lottery. He’s left to raise an infant daughter on his own and struggles for 5 years with crippling anxiety. He becomes obsessed with the paranormal, creating a website that is a basic library of all things odd and unexplained. He also fancies himself a bit of a ghost hunter. In an effort to overcome his anxieties, he moves his new makeshift family to a haunted cabin in the heart of Alaska where he’s met with hostility from the locals (he’s one of now only 2 non Native Americans in the town). The haunting in the cabin at first turns out to be a ghost hunter's dream come true, until the cold season makes an early entrance and all hell breaks loose.

Brian: Great premise! Have you ever encountered any real ghosts or supernatural phenomena? And is your novel based on any true events or do you just have an active imagination?

Hunter: I’ve actually had 2 experiences that I can’t explain. There is a part in the book that is most certainly based on one of them. Back in the 90’s, my wife was very ill and spent a year, at home, on life support. During that year, I kept seeing a boy walk past me into our room where she was in bed. I chalked it up to stress and never told her because I felt she had enough to deal with. When she got better, one day she looked at me and said, “You know, when you left for work, it was nice having that boy sit with me and keep me company.” Needless to say, I was floored and my view of life and death and the beyond has forever been changed. I couldn’t resist adding our phantom boy to the book. Aside from that, the rest is from my overactive imagination. It was an issue when I was a kid, but now it’s finally coming in handy.

Brian: A phantom boy visiting your wife's bed ... now that's spooky and at the same time it makes me wonder if spirits really do guide us to the afterlife. Speaking of children, you also write children's books under a different name. Tell me a little bit about that writing career and what got you into writing horror.

Hunter: I just kind of fell into the whole children’s writing gig. My goal was always to be a horror writer, but while waiting for a deal to come through, my agent asked me to send her any manuscripts I had in the old writer’s drawer. I had written a story for my girls when they were young and to my surprise, we sold it within 2 months to one of the top book publishers in the world. Just crazy, but I’ve found I really love writing for kids. I have several more projects completed and in the works.

Horror has always been my true love, ever since I was a small kid and got to watch scary movies from the back seat of the family car at the local drive in. The first ‘grown up’ book I ever read was Stephen King’s Night Shift. I love how horror can play with your deepest emotions and let your darkest fantasies take flight. And good horror deals with some heavy subjects as well, which is why I tackled anxiety disorder, survivor’s guilt and discrimination in Forest of Shadows.

Brian: My love of horror was first influenced by watching scary movies and reading comic books, then later as a teen I discovered the joy of reading horror fiction. What are some horror movies, books, and/or comics that influenced you most?

Hunter: I was a comic book fiend (I have a Captain America tattoo to prove it) and loved both super heroes and the different horror comics like Creepy, Ghostly Tales, and Man Thing. I read everything by Stephen King and Brian Lumley I could get my hands on. The movies that really hooked me were Dawn of the Dead, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (directed by Bob Clark of A Christmas Story fame) and An American Werewolf in London. Plus, I loved the classic monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula. I made all the famous monster models and had posters, you name it. I’ve been surrounding myself with horror all of my life.

Brian: I love all those classic movies. I saw Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things last year. Funny, I had no idea that was the same director who filmed the classic A Christmas Story. Dawn of the Dead, especially the 2006 remake, is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. In the world of horror fiction, the genre is new to Samhain Publishing. What drew you to them as a publisher and how has the experience been?

Hunter: Well, I was originally going to publish Forest of Shadows with Dorchester Publishing Leisure horror line. It had always been my dream and it almost came true. But, the company kind of fell apart, along with the deal, and the biggest part of that dream, working with editor Don D’Auria, had to be put on hold. When I heard he had joined up with Samhain and wanted my book, I jumped at the chance. To be able to be on the ground floor of a new horror line with an editor who is a legend in the business is just too good to be true. Samhain horror is going to be huge. I can feel it like a storm coming on in my arthritic shoulder.

Brian: Writing a book is such a complex exercise. Can you summarize your writing process for me?

Hunter: I hear a lot of people say you have to write every day, which is great, if you’re a full time writer with very little in the way of family or distractions. When I’m working on a project, I set weekly goals for myself. It could be a certain number of words or pages, but I always make sure it’s something attainable. What can be worse than missing the bar you set for yourself? On the first pass, I just write. I don’t worry about anything but getting the story out of my head. When it’s done, and I reward myself with a cigar and a stiff drink, I start the rewrites. This is where the hard work comes in. The story is there, and now I have to get it in shape. I’ll do as many as ten revisions before I even let anyone see what it is that’s been taking up all my time.

Brian: I know that you have a family and a day job to balance time with, how do you make time for writing? What are your work habits like?

Hunter: You know, it was very hard when my kids were small because they demanded a lot of my time and heck, I wanted to be with them. That’s part of the reason that Forest of Shadows took 4 years to write. Now that they’re teens, they understand and it’s much easier. I just make sure I set at least an hour for myself on weekdays, and as much as I need on the weekends. It takes a lot of discipline to go in that room and write after a long day, but I have a compulsion to write and I’m not happy unless I’ve gotten it in. When I’m deep into a book, I’ll even use my lunch break to work on it and any other free minute I can find in a day.

Brian: As many people will know, Samhain Publishing is named for the ancient tradition that became every horrorhead's favorite festival of Halloween. What would make for your best ever Samhain celebration?

Hunter: I actually had it a couple of years ago. We took the kids out trick or treating for about 4 hours. The weather was perfect; crisp, clear, with autumn leaves crunching under our feet. My wife and I dressed up, of course. Then we went back to the house to hand out candy and talk to the neighbors, having a few drinks, just enjoying the night. We finished it off by pouring all the spoils onto the floor while watching a slew of horror movies. It doesn’t get any better.

Brian: Hunter, thanks so much for being here. I’ve really enjoyed having you as a guest on my blog.

After talking with Hunter Shea and watching his show "Monster Men" on Youtube, I am certain this author is sure to make a name for himself. Readers, check out Hunter Shea’s new novel FOREST OF SHADOWS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Bio: Hunter Shea was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. His short stories have appeared in dozens of magazines over the years. Forest of Shadows is his first full length horror novel. His next novel with Samhain Publishing, Evil Eternal, will be out next spring. He has been a book reviewer, editor, blogger, op-ed ranter and anything else that can keep him happily ensconced in his room with his keyboard and overactive imagination. He currently lives in New York with his family and savage cat that was rescued from a shelter. He’s working hard on his next novel and can be found at http://www.huntershea.com/ where he’s always happy to hear from you.

My Radio Interview on America Tonight

2011-10-12T12:32:00.018-05:00

On Tuesday, October 11, I had the honor of being a guest on the national radio talk show America Tonight with Kate Delaney. In this 10 minute interview we talk about my new novel DEAD OF WINTER, Halloween, why the woods are scary, and lighter topics like exorcism and cannibalism. Click on the audio link below to listen.

Interview Author Brian Moreland on America Tonight with Kate Delaney by BrianMoreland

Buy the e-book to DEAD OF WINTER.

Excerpt from DEAD OF WINTER

2011-10-04T12:14:00.006-05:00

For a sneak peek inside my new horror novel, here are the first 3 chapters of DEAD OF WINTER.

Read the chapters.

The e-book to DEAD OF WINTER releases today!

2011-10-04T11:41:00.001-05:00

Today I'm celebrating the e-book release of my historical horror novel DEAD OF WINTER. For those who still love reading old-fashioned books, the paperback will release January 3rd, 2012.

Here are some early reviews:

“It isn’t often that I am BLOWN AWAY by a book. Dead of Winter, by Brian Moreland, is the best book I’ve read all year and I believe that Brian, in terms of talent, is one of the best writers I’ve ever read.”

Reviewer Erin Al-Mehairi, Oh, for the Hook of a Book blog

Read more: http://hookofabook.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/dead-of-winter-by-brian-moreland-is-dead-ringer-for-book-of-the-year/

“Author Brian Moreland doesn’t pull any punches. This story grabs and pulls you back into 1870, at a fort in the vast Ontario wilderness. There is an excellent diversity of characters, and a great understanding of the people and cultures of that time. Indians, soldiers, priests, exorcists, cannibals, and one very sick killer. You think you have read it all when you’re read as many horror books as I have. Dead of Winter managed to shock me over and over.”

Reviewer, Kerrie Crawford, The Rediacs blog

Read more: http://www.thereadiacs.com/dead-of-winter

“Brian Moreland has put together a fantastic book filled with historical significance to Native American Lore and just the right touch of mystery, occult and terror. The first chapter hooked me and I couldn't put it down until I finished it all.”

Rick Gleason, Digital Macabre

DEAD OF WINTER is available where all e-books are sold or buy it for less at this link:

http://store.samhainpublishing.com/dead-winter-p-6507.html

Cool Ads for New Horror Line

2011-09-09T00:19:00.014-05:00

My new publisher, Samhain Horror, is already making a splash--or shall I say "splatter"--on the internet. Here's an ad they placed for the new horror line that opens up in October. I'm in some pretty scary company, including the legendary Ramsey Campbell, werewolf specialist W.D. Gagliani, Ronald Malfi, who is one of the best writers I've read in a long time, and one-to-watchout-for Hunter Shea, plus several others. Samhain Horror will be releasing 2 new horror novels a month. I'm proud that my novel DEAD OF WINTER is one of the first to release on October 11, 2011.

Ad in Famous Monsters of Filmland mag (Sept/Oct 2011)

New Horror Novel Almost Here...

2011-08-14T13:22:00.003-05:00

I just found out from my editor at Samhain Horror the official release dates of my novel DEAD OF WINTER.

The ebook version goes on sale October 11, just in time for Halloween. And if you like to curl up with a good book when it's snowing outside, the paperback releases January 3rd, 2012.

I promise plenty of scary fun and white-knuckle moments in this one.

You can pre-order DEAD OF WINTER at Amazon.com.

http://www.brianmoreland.com/

My New Book Cover

2011-06-26T09:55:00.015-05:00

"A frightening and chilly romp through a winter wasteland, Dead of Winter will freeze your soul! Sharply written and scary as hell, this one is a must-read for all horror fans. I am in awe of Brian Moreland."

-- Ronald Malfi, author of Snow and Floating Staircase

Well, it's just months away until the release of my next horror novel, DEAD OF WINTER. The official release date for the ebook is October 11, 2011. To read an excerpt of the first three chapters visit my DARK LUCIDITY blog.

"Moreland's novel is a unique blend of historical fiction, thriller, and horror--and it all works flawlessly. Dead of Winter had me breathless. This is one hell of a great read."

--Nate Kenyon, award-winning author of The Reach, Sparrow Rock, and StarCraft Ghost: Spectres

“From lust and greed to duty and piousness, the cast of complex characters in Dead of Winter erupt to life in historical splendor. Drawing on several horror elements, the reader will be swept away on this canoe-ride of excitement, terror, and mystery. Tom Hatcher takes his son, Chris to the isolation of the Ontario North to repair the wounds of their past. When the blizzards bring an evil to the fort that mysteriously turns the inhabitants into vicious cannibals, Tom’s detective skills are insufficient weapons against the menace that lurks beyond the walls of the fort. Grab a warm blanket and throw another log on the fire, and delve into the terror that only winter can snow down on the soul.”

--Aurora Nominee Suzanne Church, author of "Destiny Lives in the Tattoo's Needle" and "The Tear Closet"

Just Landed a New Book Deal

2011-03-24T17:32:00.006-05:00

My previous post promised some big news. Well, I just inked a book deal for my second novel, DEAD OF WINTER. It's been a long journey since I published my first novel, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, five years ago. My World War II supernatural horror novel has done well, publishing first as a trade paperback, then as a mass paperback through Berkley/Penguin, then as a hardback in Austria and Germany under the title Schattenkrieger. Now, it is still selling as an ebook for Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook.

DEAD OF WINTER is a horror novel I started researching and writing back in 2006 and finished the winter of 2009. It sat in limbo for a little over a year before it found a home with Samhain Publishing. I'm thrilled to be working with legendary horror editor Don D'Auria and I'm eager to get my second novel out to all the readers who've been asking, "When's your next book coming out?" Well, now it's very soon. I'll announce the release date as soon as my publisher has set one.

In the mean time, you can read an excerpt of DEAD OF WINTER at my fiction blog DARK LUCIDITY.

Big News Coming

2011-03-15T14:23:00.002-05:00

I've got some big news I'm eager to share regarding my next book, but I can't say anything just yet. Hint: I've got a new deal in the works. I should know something later this week.

Social Media Overload

2011-03-15T14:10:00.005-05:00

I just spent the entire day updating my website http://www.brianmoreland.com/ and linking all my Twitter, Facebook, and blogs together. Connecting through Social Media is fun but exhausting when you have five websites open at the same time and you're trying to get them all to link up to one another. After several hours I think I've finally gotten all my sites to work.

I have a new Facebook page, Author Brian Moreland. If you scroll down there should be a link. That's where I'll be posting news and redirecting my friends since I'm about to hit Facebook's limit. Feel free to go to to my fan page and hit "Like." I also have a Twitter page @BrianMoreland where share more immediate news or just whatever I'm doing at the moment.

I also added a "Coaching 4 Writers" page to my website. If you're a writer or know a writer who could use some coaching or consulting, I now offer personal one-on-one coaching to writers to discuss anything from writing and publishing to marketing and promoting books.

World Horror Convention 2011

2011-03-13T11:03:00.001-05:00

I just signed up to attend the World Horror Convention in Austin, TX Apr 28-May 1, 2011 http://worldhorrorconvention.com/future-whcs/

http://www.BrianMoreland.com

Twitter: @BrianMoreland

Facebook: Author Brian Moreland

My Novel Releases in Austria and Germany

2010-02-11T17:57:00.005-06:00

My novel SHADOWS IN THE MIST just released in Austria and Germany under the title SCHATTENKRIEGER. It translates to "Shadow Warriors." If you know anyone who enjoys reading thrillers in German, please send them to this link. http://www.otherworld-verlag.com/index.php?set_language=de&cccpage=buecher_details&set_z_buecher=14

Watch the video trailer

Traveling to Iraq with the USO

2010-01-30T17:08:00.036-06:00

When I'm not writing novels, I work as a video editor on documentaries, TV commercials, and corporate videos. This year I was invited to travel to Iraq to edit a TV commercial. On January 1st, 2010, Tostitos and the USO hosted a "Salute the Troops" Bowl game, where the soldiers stationed in Iraq got a chance to play flag football with some celebrity football players and coaches from the United States. Among the celebrities traveling with the USO were Coach Barry Switzer, Coach Tommy Bowden and eight football players: Tony Casillas, Rocket Ismail, Bruce Smith, Brian Bosworth, Ty Detmer, Tee Martin, Tommy Frasier, and Joe Washington.

I was part of a video crew that filmed the entire event to produce a TV commercial, Hi-light video, and documentary. I got the privilege to travel to Camp Liberty military base in Baghdad to edit on site. On January 4th, the two-minute commercial played during the half-time show at the Tositos Fiesta Bowl. You can view this a the bottom of this article. First, I have posted several photos from the trip.

First stop: London.

On our way to the Middle East, we stopped off for a day in London to change planes. Since we had a ten-hour layover, we decided to take a day trip into the city. We took a train to to Picadilly Circus, which reminded me of New York's Times Square. We ate dinner at a pub called The Sussex. I ordered Fish 'n Chips and had a beer with the crew. Below is a busy street where there were many billboards advertising musicals and shows.

Me posing outside the pub.

After an overnight flight from London we landed in Kuwait.

We spent one night at the Radisson Hotel and ate some wonderful Middle Eastern cuisine. Below is Kuwait City on the coast of the Persian Gulf. I found the city to be beautiful with a mixture of modern architecture and Arabic buildings. There was even a space needle like the one in Seattle. The people in Kuwait were very friendly.

The next morning we were escorted by U.S. soldiers to the military airport where we boarded a C-130 cargo plane. Flying on an Air Force plane was one of the most exciting parts of the trip.

Inside the plane we all sat across from one another.

We were required to wear helmets and Kevlar vests in case we were fired upon. Missile tracers were fired off to make sure our path was clear. Behind me is the cargo area where all our gear was stored.

We were able to go up to the cockpit and watch the pilots in action.

On December 29th, we landed at the Baghdad airport. This was a very surreal moment for me. We were greeted by a welcome party of troops and members of the USO.

Two of my heroes, Coach Barry Switzer and Tony Casillas, getting off the plane. Switzer coached the Dallas Cowboys in the mid-nineties when they went to a Superbowl. Tony Casillas was also a member of the Dallas Cowboys and proudly wore his Superbowl ring.

The flight crew posing with cheerleaders from Colorado University. The cheerleaders came on the trip to cheer at the pep rally and football game and to boost the troops's spirits.

The legendary Brian Bosworth (a.k.a. "The Boz") from the University of Oklahoma.

Here are quarterback Tee Martin and running back Joe Washington being greeted by an Army officer.

Former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver and Notre Dame star Rocket Ismail visiting with an Army officer.

Campy Liberty. Every day choppers flew over the base in Baghdad.

The base encompasses several lakes with beautiful palaces that had once belonged to Saddam Hussein. These palaces are now used as military headquarters.

Here are two young men from Uganda who were hired by the military to guard the posts. They were very serious about their jobs. My hand is hovering over one of the guard's shoulders, because I started to put my arm around him, and then I stopped short, thinking, "Woah, he might not like that."

The JVB was a palace converted into a hotel for soldiers and civilians who come to visit the base. This is where we ate three meals a day in the mess hall. Our sleeping quarters were in trailers surrounded by concrete walls to protect us from mortar fire. There were four bunk beds to a trailer. Sharing a trailer with three other people, I felt like I was at summer camp.

Above and below are views from the back of the JVB hotel where we ate.

Below is a sequence of soldiers in action around the base.

I got the opportunity to work at Saddam's main palace, which is considered the Pentagon of Iraq.

My editing suite was a very small storage building beside the palace. It was very cramped quarters.

On New Year's Eve, I was working inside this tin box when I suddenly began hearing explosions right outside. The booms were the loudest I had ever heard. The repercussions made the walls shake and rocked the ground like an earthquake. A U.S. soldier came into my edit room and told me we were under attack and that we needed to take refuge in the palace. He gave me a helmet and handed a Kevlar vest to a producer I was working with. We began running for cover. My heart was racing as we ran flat along the palace walls. We heard sirens going off and the rotors of helicopters as we took cover inside the palace foyer. There were at least a dozen soldiers coming out with guns drawn. It was quite exciting. Within a half hour the base was secure. I found out later some Iraqis had pulled a truck up to the base wall and fired 9 mortars. They exploded at random places around the base, but thankfully no one was hurt. The film crew and celebrity players had been in the middle of their pep rally at the gym when the explosions started happening. They all hit the deck and had to lay flat on the gym floor until the sirens stopped.

After the barrage of mortar shells, it was back to work. We had a film to make. Here I am editing footage the camera guy just brought me.

The entire week the soldiers got to hang out with the celebrity football players.

Bruce Smith posing with two soldiers.

Rocket Ismail and Sgt. Taylor

One of the troops posing between football greats Ty Detmer and Joe Washington.

Tee Martin and a soldier.

The Colorado University cheerleaders.

Me in front of Saddam's palace.

Tony Casillas with several fans.

The entire Tostitos and USO crew.

Traveling over to Camp Liberty in Iraq was an amazing experience. I met so many wonderful troops and returned home with a deep sense of pride. Below is the two-minute commercial that I edited for the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. My next project is to edit a longer documentary which I will post at a later date.

If you are looking for a great way to support the troops, I recommend donating to these two charities: Books for Soldiers and the USO.

Radio Interview: "Coffee with an Author"

2009-10-26T12:38:00.001-05:00

I just did an interview this morning where I talk about novel writing and my journey as a published author. You can listen to the interview at this link: http://www.ijustfinished.com/

Just scroll down to the bottom left corner and look for the BlogTalk Radio player.

Evolution of a Book Cover

2009-10-12T09:47:00.003-05:00

When I self-published my first novel, Shadows in the Mist, back in 2006, I formed my own publishing company and switched from being novel writer to being publisher and art director of a product I was bringing to the market. My novel is a supernatural thriller set during World War II. I was an unknown author at that time. So I decided the cover had to be good enough to compete with all the other novel covers out there grabbing people's attention. I also wanted bookstores and readers to take my self-published book seriously. More than anything I wanted a book I was proud to share with the world, so I invested most of my publishing money into the cover design. The investment paid off. My book not only won a gold medal in an international contest, within one year it got bought by Berkley/Penguin for a small paperback deal and also by a German publisher to be translated in German. For any writer considering self-publishing, my advice is hire the best in the business to design and illustrate the cover. Here you will see the various stages my covers went through from initial sketches to final products. Read more . . .

Interview #4 for the Examiner

2009-10-07T18:27:00.003-05:00

Here's my latest interview for the Examiner. I had the honor of being interviewed by Gabrielle Faust, author of the vampire series Eternal Vigilance

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-23384-Horror-and-SciFi-Entertainment-Examiner~y2009m10d7-Brian-Moreland-takes-us-behind-the-Shadows-in-the-Mist

Book Signing in Austin, TX

2009-09-27T22:46:00.010-05:00

October, 17, 2009: I'll be signing books with several horror authors at an event called "Blood of the Bean." It's at a coffee house called Kick Butt Coffee. It's going to be a fun party with horror readings, coffee, wine, and live music after. If you're in Austin that weekend, put on a Halloween costume and come join the frightfest!

Time: 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Location: Kick Butt Coffee

5775 Airport Blvd. #725

Austin, TX 78752

http://www.kickbuttcoffee.com/

Teaser Chapters from My Upcoming Novel

2009-09-23T15:08:00.003-05:00

I just posted a sneak peek from my horror novel DEAD OF WINTER. You can read the first 3 chapters at my fiction blog Dark Lucidity:

http://www.brianmoreland.wordpress.com/

Interview #3

2009-09-01T17:53:00.002-05:00

I just did an interview for Rae Lori at her blog "A Writer's Dream"

http://raelori.blogspot.com/2009/09/september-spotlight-on-author-brian.html

New Advice Blog for Writers

2009-08-28T18:08:00.004-05:00

I just started a new blog called Coaching for Writers. At this blog I offer advice about writing, publishing, and marketing books in today's publishing industry. Visit http://www.coachingforwriters.com/

Look for the "Followers" button and join my blog list.

New Book Review

2009-08-24T18:11:00.002-05:00

Fatally Yours just did a glowing review of my book. You can read it here.

http://www.fatally-yours.com/horror-literature/book-review-shadows-in-the-mist-by-brian-moreland/

Interview #2

2009-06-06T18:25:00.001-05:00

I just did an interview with LiteralRemains.com. You can read it at

http://www.literalremains.com/?p=1214

On Writing Horror and Suspense

2009-05-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

One of my new friends on Facebook recently wrote me asking for advice on writing horror. She wrote:

I see you're a horror writer. Do you have any advice for me, when writing particular scenes for horror? As far as gore/suspense, descriptions/emotions, etc...

Writing horror/suspense: When writing horror, don't hold back. Tap into your deepest, darkest imagination and write whatever your imagination gives you. Avoid censoring yourself. I've written some pretty twisted scenes and thought: I can't let anybody read this. The violence is just too brutal. But then people would read it and say they loved the scene.

I enjoy writing and reading fiction that originates from truth. When I say “truth” I mean that the scene was written from the writer’s heart. There’s a great distinction between stories written from an idea and those written from an author’s heart. The way to tell the difference is a story written from a writer’s heart evokes feelings in you when you read it. So in the case of writing horror, which explores darker themes, the genre attracts readers who want the writer to give us everything he or she has within her. As you type words across your computer screen, unleash whatever's clawing to get out. At the core of good protagonists and evil villains is a darkness driven by fear. Readers of horror can relate to fear, because we all have inner demons that we battle from time to time.

Suspense is putting a character into a situation where the reader knows danger is present. Example: a cop enters a house where a serial killer is hiding. All the lights are out. The cop finds a mutilated body, and it’s his partner. The dead man’s face has been skinned off. We might already know the killer likes to peal off the faces of his victims and wear them as masks. Now the cop has tracked down the killer to his lair. Every second the cop is exploring that house, we're on the edge of our seats, wondering when the killer is going to leap out of the shadows. We can ratchet up the suspense as our hero discovers a basement where shelves are lined with mannequin heads, each one draped with shrivled skin masks staring at our hero with hollow eyes and twisted grimaces. The more we learn how dangerous the killer is, the more suspenseful the scene gets.

Describing violence and gore: As far as gore goes, that's a matter of taste. Horror includes a whole spectrum from psychological horror (with very little gore) to splatter punk (graphic gore and violence - Brian Keene's zombie novels are great examples). So write gore according to your taste. Extremely gory novels attract a certain group of readers and tend to repel others. So, again, write horror the way you love to read it.

Writing descriptions: If you're writing suspense, keep descriptions to a minimum so you can keep the action driving at a fast pace. I describe settings in short paragraphs, then I start the action or dialogue. I generally interweave descriptions with the action. In SHADOWS IN THE MIST, I have a platoon take refuge in an abandoned Catholic church that's suffered a lot of war damage. I don't describe the church all at once. I give a brief description when the soldiers first reach the church. Then I describe a little more and a little more, as the soldiers explore the church with their flashlights. At some point the reader puts it all together and sees the big picture. When describing a setting, feed the reader a little at a time, so the setting becomes its own mystery--a place full of wonderful discoveries and hidden darkness.

We don't have to describe every detail. I like to allow the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps. Buildings like churches, castles, mansions, hospitals create their own image. If it's a minor scene, I'll just say my character entered a Catholic church. I describe more the action happening within the scene rather than paint the setting. When you allow the reader to use his imagination, in a sense you and the reader are co-creating the scene together in the reader's mind.

Writing emotions: Your ultimate goal is to evoke emotions in your readers and have them fall in love with your characters. But you can't contrive emotions or the scene will feel flat or trite. I first create characters that I, myself, fall in love with and care about. Then whatever happens to them evokes emotions in me. When I write dramatic scenes or scary scenes or action scenes where my protagonist is running for his life, I have to feel what's happening. I drum up those feelings of anger, fear, sadness, love, lust, and then write what my character is feeling. This happens naturally when I get into the story and I'm in tune with my character. The love scenes between my leading man and lady are by far the most fun to write. :) Again, don't hold anything back. Write about people you love and then write whatever you're feeling as they face conflicts with antagonists who will do everything in their power to stop the protagonists from achieving what they most desire.

I wish to thank Elizabeth H. from Syracuse, NY, for enquiring. I hope this helps.

Interview #1

2009-04-30T22:09:00.002-05:00

I just did an interview with Bookgasm.com. You can read it at

http://www.bookgasm.com/interviews/qa-brian-moreland/

Writing, writing, writing!

2009-03-27T16:04:00.005-05:00

This week I've been writing feverishly on my next novel, DEAD OF WINTER. I've started getting up between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. each morning. I rouse myself out of bed, blend a chocolate-banana smoothie, and off I go. I write for a couple hours before going to work my day job as a video editor.

It feels great to be back in the flow of writing. My muse had been on a vacation for a couple months (I think she went to Tahiti) and I barely got much written. Sometimes I go through periods where I get too caught up with other activities that fiction writing falls to the back burner. Now that my muse is back and stoking the fires of my imagination, I'm getting closer and closer to completing my second novel.

Dare to Dream and Make It Happen

2009-03-25T16:11:00.001-05:00

Working your dream job takes courage, commitment, and tenacity. When that dream doesn't earn you money right away, it’s easy to get discouraged. You might question whether following this career is worth the effort. It seems like a huge mountain to climb. And there are no immediate rewards in sight. I say start climbing anyway. Just go for it. There are rewards at every level. Start doing what you love now and the money will one day follow.

Since beginning my path as a novelist, I faced a lot of hurdles. It took eighteen years before I began earning money as a fiction author. I could have been successful much earlier, but several times I gave up on myself. I took advice from people who only looked at the practical side of life. They didn’t strive beyond their comfort zones. They didn't see the point of me writing manuscript after manuscript and not getting paid for all the hours I spent typing at a computer, alone by myself. So those people became voices in my head that slowly, over time sapped my passion to continue. I quit climbing the mountain to my dream. I focused on working other jobs that actually paid a salary. I was making money, but inside a part of me felt empty, and it was only when I got back into writing in my mid thirties and pursuing my real dream--being a published author--that I was happy again. My dream stood before me like a giant mountain, so daunting I feared I could never reach the summit, but I started climbing anyway.

I had the fortune of meeting bestselling author Robert Crais at a book signing. He had just landed a huge Hollywood movie deal for his novel Hostage which stars Bruce Willis. I told Robert Crais that I was writing a novel and I wanted to be sitting where he was one day. He looked up from autographing a book and told me, “Then I’ll give you some advice. Never give up.” Those words stuck with me. I have since rephrased the motto to: “Never give up. Keep climbing until you reach your goal. No matter what, stay persistent.” We can spend our whole lives making excuses, or we can start taking action now and just make it happen.

So I had a dream fueled by plenty of desire, but I still needed direction. I first listed my values. I asked myself, “What do I want most? What’s most important to me about my dream career?” I listed my values in simple words like: achievement, fun, seeing my books on bookstore shelves, sharing my writing with readers, receiving advances and royalty checks, hanging out with other writers, writing a bestselling novel, etc. And then I listed those values in order of importance. Prioritizing your values is key, because it causes your mind to focus on what’s most important to you. You feel an emotional boost. It empowers you and stokes your inner fire. Then as you begin taking steps toward doing what you love, you take the most important steps first.

Once I had my values listed, I had a new sense of purpose. A vision I could work toward. It was like filling my engine with rocket fuel. I was ready to blast off to a career that was more aligned with my truth. I posted my values on a wall so I’d see them every day. Then I wrote out specific goals, and chunked them down into small daily “action steps” I could accomplish easily. I continued writing, pushing myself daily, weekly, monthly to complete my manuscript. I read books on my craft and took classes so I could get better at it. I read books about other people’s success stories so I could believe that I could accomplish my goals, too. And I read about the publishing business. As a writer seeking to publish my novel with a major NY publisher, I needed a literary agent. I submitted query letters to countless agents over the span of ten years and received only rejection letters. At the time I felt like a failure, but I wasn’t. “Rejection,” as I later learned, is just a guiding post. Rejection guided me away from the wrong paths—the wrong people to do business with. In my vision, my literary agent was passionate about representing me and my books. Rejection is where a lot of people give up. I say, “Never give up. Keep climbing until you reach your goal. No matter what, stay persistent.”

I eventually self-published my first novel, just to get it out there on the market. More important, to make being an author more real for me. Being your own publisher can be a very time-consuming venture. It was also a huge financial investment. It’s not necessarily the path for all writers, because it requires a business sense and entrepreneurial spirit. It’s also a very high risk of ever seeing a profit. If you don’t mind taking risks and hard work, then I recommend self-publishing as an alternative to getting a book to the market. For me, self-publishing is how I jump-started my career.

Within nine months my novel went from polished manuscript to a soft-cover book I could hold in my hands. Through great marketing efforts in tandem with a publicist I hired, the book sold relatively well. I began to do book signings and realized I had achieved one of my goals: to be like Robert Crais, the author autographing books. It was an awesome feeling.

When you pursue your dream 100%, there can be wonderful surprises that happen along the way. My WWII novel Shadows in the Mist hit number one on Amazon.com’s Bestselling Mystery and Thrillers list, stayed there a couple hours, beating out Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code. That was very surreal, let me tell you, and a victory I would have never experienced had I given up.

Self-publishing turned out to be a great way to launch my career, but it was always just a path toward my bigger dream of landing a book deal with a major NY publisher. I continued to pursue literary agents and eventually found an agent who catapulted my career to the next level. She sold Shadows in the Mist to Berkley/Penguin in New York for a mass paperback deal, as well as to a publisher in Germany. In 2010, a German version of my novel will release in Europe. Within two years of self-publishing I became an international author. What was once a passionate hobby has finally become a career I take seriously. When you focus on your dream daily, you get there little by little. In fact, that has become a mantra in my head: “Little by little, little by little, little by little …”

We all have a calling. A life purpose. A reason we came onto this planet. What brings you joy? What do you dream of doing as your career? We can spend our days living mundane lives or we can do what gives us joy. My calling is novel writing and inspiring others to pursue their dreams. Life can be so joyful when you are doing what you love.

So if you're pursuing a dream that isn't paying you the big bucks just yet, keep going for it. Even if it’s just a hobby on the side. You may not see the top of the mountain right now, but keep climbing. Little by little. Focus a few hours each week on your dream career. Commit your weekends to it. You can accomplish anything with time and persistence. And when you reach the summit you can just smile to yourself and say, "I went for it, and I made it happen, and now I can do anything." Whatever your dream is, start climbing now and make it happen.

I also coach writers to be successful, and I'm available for one-on-one personal coaching. Contact me at Brian@BrianMoreland.com. On Facebook look up “Author Brian Moreland” and feel free to join my two groups, “Horror Shadows in the Mist” and “Coaching for Writers.”

Back in the Blogosphere

2009-03-04T10:48:00.003-06:00

It's been a couple months since I blogged. I've been in transition ever since the Christmas holidays. Also, I hadn't been writing much these past few weeks. My day job, which is video editing, became more demanding as I took on a documentary project. Now that that's complete, I've finally found some time to get back into writing on both my blog and my second novel. I've been working on DEAD OF WINTER for two years now. It's up to 400 pages, but still not complete. The novel is still challenging me in parts. I've got several subplots happening with a number of dynamic characters. I'm doing my best to keep them wrangled into one story line.

Other news: I'm moving back to Dallas officially. I'll be returning to Maui next week to retrieve the rest of my stuff and ship it to my new home in Big D. It will be difficult saying goodbye to the island life and the wonderful friends I made there. But Dallas is where I need to be right now. At least here there aren't any beaches or jungle trails to distract me from writing. My goal is to complete Book Two within the next six months. And if I forget to blog for several weeks again, please send me an email and tell me to get back in the Blogosphere.

Catching a New Wave

2008-11-14T13:00:00.010-06:00

I've been through many emotional ups and downs, especially this past year, when I found myself jobless in Hawaii. My writing career suffered a setback when my second novel got declined for publication. It's been a most humbling fall season. Suddenly this overachiever was underachieving and, I must admit, I spent some time wallowing in self-pity. That dark time is over, though. As I'm learning what it means to be human, I'm also finding that your attitude toward life greatly affects your experience of living. Life can be hell or it can be an awesome adventure. You can see nothing but dark clouds or see that scattered showers lead to plenty of rainbows; it just depends on your viewpoint.

Living in both Texas and Hawaii, I have the best of both worlds. In Texas I'm surrounded by a large family, lots of friends, and I'm very grounded in the business world. In Hawaii I get a more spiritual perspective on life and get to escape the rat race for a little bit. I get to study with spiritual teachers, like Kahunas who are not affected by the ups and downs of the stock market. And they don't place one's self-worth on financial success. In Hawaii, it's much easier to live in the moment and experience peace in your heart. There are so many places to commune with nature--beaches, rain forests, mountains. Endless summer and eternal sunshine. Here there are a lot of surfers. Their bliss is catching the next big wave. Even though I have yet to learn to surf, I am gaining a lot just by watching how they live. They are showing me that even though life, like the turbulent ocean, can toss you around and send you plunging, the surfers just shake their mops of wet hair like a dog, smile big, and yell something like "Whoa, total wipe out!" Then they get right back on their surf boards and courageously face what life offers them next. Sometimes they catch the wave's peak and ride it smooth, feeling at one with the Universe. In the surfer's mind getting wiped out is just part of living. It's okay to make mistakes. Wiping out doesn't mean it's the end of the world. You can always catch the next big wave and next thing you know, you're riding high again. Kowabunga!

Following One's Bliss

2008-11-13T02:46:00.003-06:00

How to follow one's bliss? That is an existential question I keep asking myself as I explore the mystical woods of the Great Unknown. People often ask me what motivated me to move to Maui. What got me here was a strong determination to make a change in my life. Something big! Something positive! "Follow your bliss," I kept hearing from friends, teachers, books, billboards. I finally got the message that I was being nudged by the powers of the universe to change the way I was living life, even change my career.

Once I got it in my heart it was time to move, my radar was scanning the map for what places felt like they were pulling at me. Immediately cities across the U.S. began to shine on the map--Austin, TX, Ashville, NC, Phoenix, AZ, and ... Hawaii! I couldn't imagine moving that far away from Texas. No way. Austin, maybe, but never Hawaii. I did a lot of meditation seeking answers. I visualized living in each place and felt what that area of the U.S. might be like. I even considered Costa Rica for brief moment, then decided better to stay where I'm a citizen and know the language.

I listed my values--surrounded by nature, warm weather most of the year, lots of sunshine, spiritual community, plenty of activities that involve the outdoors, exotic locale, friends nearby, dolphins, bikini girls, etc. Then I went on a retreat in Hawaii and just fell in love with the energy of the islands. I had already been to Kaui twice, Maui three times, and the Big Island twice. The Hawaiian islands matched my values and more. A good buddy of mine and his girlfriend were already living on the Big Island and encouraging me to move here. While retreating on the Big Island I meditated some more just to be sure I was making the right decision. For me this was such a monumental decision, because it was my first move away from my family: parents, sister, grandparents, and cousins, most of whom live in Texas.

As I meditated, I got a strong inner feeling, a deep knowing, that this would be a good move for me. On a beach staring at the ocean, listening to the surf crash against the rocks, I made the decision. "I'm moving to Maui." Even though I was on the Big Island at the time, Maui was calling me very strongly. The rest was me overcoming all the fears and obstacles that wanted to keep me in Dallas, my comfort zone. I had a fifteen-year video business and several established clients I was leaving behind. My closest friends and clients all pulled at my heart strings to stay. You just don't realize how much you're loved until you tell everyone you're uprooting.

Leaving Dallas was much harder than I thought. I was raised a Texan since the age of two and thirty-six years later I was leaving behind my cowboy boots for flipflops and hula girls, oh yeah, and bikini girls, too. But more than just heading off to some kind of tropical paradise, this was a spiritual decision for me. I was on a quest of self-discovery and knew that staying for other people was not allowing me to grow. As I writer I felt it would be good for me to expand my horizons. So I sold everything, said many tearful goodbyes, and flew West to seven tiny dots on the Pacific Ocean.

I'm often asked, when following one's bliss, how does one know they are making the best decision? You meditate until your thoughts are clear and your inner voices have stopped chattering, and then you feel into your heart as you ask very specific questions. Also helps to get away from the noise of the city and commune with nature. When the true answer comes your heart fills with joy and the idea of doing this next new thing motivates you to hop out of bed in the morning. Following one's bliss is an ongoing exploration. It's not a destination to reach, but an attitude of just doing what makes you happy.

Road to Hana

2008-11-13T00:34:00.019-06:00

Aloha, it's been several weeks since I last posted. Like most people, I was affected by the downturn of the economy when the stock market took a plunge. Maui felt a huge hit on the tourist industry which has tightened everyone's belts around the island, especially the video industry, which I still work part time. While it's been harder to find video projects to produce, I also went into a rut creatively with my second novel (a.k.a. experiencing writer's block). I haven't been writing very much as of late. Frankly, I just haven't had the inspiration to write on my blog or the novel. It happens from time to time. My Muse takes a vacation. I'd love to always be in the flow of words and great stories, but I learned long ago I'm not a writing machine. Not like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. They write every day and output at least a book a year. That's phenomenal considering what it takes to stay focused. I bow to writers like them with up most respect. I have human characteristics that have kept me from being as prolific as I'd like. Namely, I get distracted easily and I don't always want to spend my time alone staring at a computer. I have another Muse, the Great Outdoors, which calls me often to come out and play. Not that I'm complaining. I'm grateful when my Writing Muse does flood me with fresh story ideas, adventures to explore, and new characters to flesh out. I'll get my groove back just as fast as you can say Lemony Snicket. So during times of adversity and downward turns in the economy, I find it's best to commune with nature. Clear the mind and boost the spirit. When you're out in nature, worldly problems seem to dissipate. Maui has plenty to offer in things to do outdoors. I especially love sharing the adventure with new and interesting people. I met a woman, Margeaux from Philadelphia, who was here on vacation. She invited me to Hana, so we drove the famous winding road which snakes along the north east coast of the island. It's about a three-hour drive from Kahului, so best to fill up the car and bring a picnic lunch. Here are some photos of our day trip to Hana. Most of these were taken by Margeaux.

We passed lots of waterfalls along the way.

In Hana there's a secret path that leads to Red Sand Beach. The path cuts through a Japanese cemetery. These graves are on the side of a cliff and I noticed a couple of tombstones had tumbled into the ocean. My imagination was running wild, coming up with short story ideas about Japanese ghosts haunting fishing boats who anchored near these cliffs.

Margeaux at Red Sand Beach. The water was so blue.

Next went to the Venus Pool. It's an oasis that has still water that's perfect for swimming. Because the water is deep, people jump off the cliffs. It's by far the most beautiful place I've found so far on Maui. You can find out how to get there in the book Maui Revealed. I also discovered a couple of caves back in the trees to the right of the next photo. I climbed into one of the caves by myself. At the back was an altar where someone had burned candles and performed some kind of ritual. On the ground there were piles of palm seeds that looked like shrunken heads. Freaked me out, I must admit. That's what I get for putting that kind of voodoo stuff in my books.

Next we went where all the tourists go: The Seven Sacred Pools.

Near the seven pools there's a park. While enjoying lunch at a picnic table, two mongoose decided to come nearby and forage for food. The mongoose, which are native to Africa, were brought over to Hawaii to handle the rat problem. Now we have fewer rats and a lot more mongoose. Wonder what predator they'll bring if the mongoose get out of control . . .

Cute, isn't he?

Just don't get too close, Buster.

Here's a banyan tree. I can't remember where we saw this, but there are several around the island. The largest and most famous you'll find in downtown Lahaina.

It was a full day. The long, winding road back offered plenty of spectacular views of the coast. By the time I returned home the market hadn't changed much, but I sure felt better. My horror writer's imagination was once again alive with Japanese ghosts, mysterious cave altars, and killer mongoose run amok. Perhaps I'll take a break from my novel and write another short story.

Now Available Online - Chasing the Dragon

2008-10-01T05:01:00.005-05:00

It's been almost two weeks since I last posted and some of my readers might be wondering where I went. I'm kind of wondering myself. Actually, for over a week I got immersed in writing my second novel, Dead of Winter. It's another historical horror novel, only this time set in the Canadian wilderness during 1845. Don't want to give away too much but my two main characters are a homocide detective and a Jesuit priest, who is also an exorcist. Together they battle some demonic forces haunting a remote fur-trading fort. It's based on true events. Stay tuned for its release. If you'd like to be kept informed, go to http://www.brianmoreland.com/ and get on my mailing list.

So anyone here been to Ontario or Montreal? Those two locations are where my mind has been much of this past year. It's interesting writing a winter tale while living in the tropics of Hawaii. I really have to use my imagination to conjur up feelings of being trapped in a blizzard. I actually started this novel a year ago when I was still living in Texas, and we do occasionally get snowy winters there, at least a day or two of snow, but nothing like Canada. Certainly no blizzards. I look forward to traveling up to Ontario and Montreal some time soon and doing research.

The other exciting project I've been working on is a collection of short stories called Chasing the Dragon. I've been writing short fiction since I was in college and have always wanted to share my stories on the world wide web. Three of my stories are now available at my fiction blog DARK LUCIDITY. Read them for free and if you like, tell me what you think. I love hearing from people who read my work.

Dolphin Quest

2008-09-21T04:07:00.002-05:00

I went on a Dolphin Quest with my friend Elizabeth in search of dolphins to swim with. We went to La Perouse Bay on the south side of Maui, just past Wailea and Makena. The day we arrived, the dolphins weren't there--again. So I have yet to see them. But they're out there, these celestial beings of the ocean, and one of these days I'm going to swim with them. I did capture some photos of the lava-rock beaches of La Perouse. It was a gray day and there was quite a bit of vog (volcanic fog) drifting over from the Big Island.

Exploring the Island of Maui

2008-09-09T15:19:00.019-05:00

Wow what a week! I finally launched my debut novel and now it's out there selling in book stores and on the world wide web. I was surprised to discover that it's even selling as an ebook. I put so many long hours into preparing for the launch that I began to feel like an anti-social-homebody-workaholic. I wrote about my struggles with this in my blog post "Revelations of a Workaholic."

I needed a mini vacation and finally took one. Since I'm already living in Hawaii, a vacation destination, I decided to go out and explore some parts of Maui I hadn't seen yet. There are so many beaches, rain forests, sacred sites, and mountain vistas here it will probably take me a year to see them all. Adventure for me is more than just about the excitement of writing and publishing fiction. It's also about getting back to nature. One of my favorite things to do when not working is to go hiking and exploring new places. Here are some photos of two hiking trips I took last week with my good friend Greg "Magick" Bernstein.

That's Magick in the hat. He's a retreat leader here on Maui and knows about many of the sacred places to explore. First, we went hiking the Waihe'e Valley, a rain forest region located on the northwest side of Maui, just a short drive from Kahului.

The sky was an azure blue that day.

A very wise and ancient banyan tree watches over the trail.

We crossed several streams like this.

Two of the streams have swinging bridges.

The trail ends at waterfalls that flow into a swimming hole.

It's a great place to picnic and swim.

On September 2nd, the day my novel released, I celebrated with my buddy Magick by hiking Haleakala volcano. If you've been to Maui, you probably know about Haleakala. It's the peak where tourists go up to the top and watch the sunrise then ride bikes down to the bottom. The volcano is dormant, so there's no lava flow. That's only on the Big Island. At the top of Haleakala there's a vast wilderness with 27 miles of trails for hiking and riding horseback.

At the entrance to the Halemu'u trail

we were greeted by two Hawaiian Geese called "Nene."

The Nene is Hawaii's state bird.

Haleakala is literally up in the clouds. The beginning of the hike was a mystical experience because there was a constant mist. Just past those rocks was a sheer drop-off.

The crater has a barren desert side and a lush green side with lots of ferns. On this particular day, Magick and I hiked the lush green side. The first mile gradually descends to the valley.

There were plenty of breathtaking views.

We spent a good five hours hiking and had lunch overlooking the valley. At one point we watched an owl fly along the cliffs. It was a magical day.

When we got back to the car, the Nene were still there to bid us farewell.

If you find yourself feeling stressed-out about working long hours, I highly recommend a mini-vacation in your area. Explore the outdoors, get back to nature. I feel recharged and ready to get back to writing my next novel.

Special thanks to Greg "Magick" Bernstein for introducing me to such enchanted places. Not only is he a great friend, he's also an amazing life coach and retreat leader here on Maui. I've attended a few of his retreats that are absolutely fantastic. You can read more about him at http://www.sacredvoyages.com/.

War Hero Returns to Normandy

2008-09-01T13:41:00.005-05:00

Here is an article about my grandfather that I wrote and submitted to some World War II magazines. There are plenty of pictures. Immediately following the story are some video clips documenting our amazing trip to Normandy, France this past summer.

Sometimes life has a mysterious way of imitating fiction. A prime example is my relationship with my grandfather, World War II pilot, Captain Dawson “Hank” Moreland. When I was a young boy, I discovered he had a secret life before I was born. I came across an army footlocker that he kept secured with a padlock. Curious, I asked my grandfather what was inside the locker. “Just photos and documents from my war days,” he said. I asked to see them, and his eyes clouded over. “Sorry, Brian, but I can never open that locker. There are just too many painful memories.” Like so many veterans of his generation, he never talked about the war. Growing up, all I knew was that he flew C-47 airplanes and dropped paratroopers over Normandy. The rest of his story was left to my imagination.

My burning curiosity to know his secret life inspired me to write my WWII novel, Shadows in the Mist, a supernatural thriller set in Germany. My main character, Colonel Jack Chambers, has kept a dark secret from the Army for over sixty years. As nightmares of his platoon’s massacre begin to haunt him, he decides it’s time to reveal the truth. He gives his grandson, Sean, a German map and a war diary. “The map shows where my platoon was buried. The diary explains what really happened. Deliver these to General Mason Briggs at the U.S. Army base in Heidelberg, Germany.” Sean Chambers sets out on a mission to carry out his grandfather’s message. But Sean’s quest pulls him into a deadly race against those who wish to bury the truth forever. This leads to a military investigation that unearths a bizarre Nazi relic buried beneath a graveyard—one that could unleash hell on earth.

Shadows in the Mist is both a war story and horror novel that explores the Nazis’s historical fascination with the Occult. It is based on true facts about Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Waffen-SS, and his circle of Occultists who met secretly at the Wewelsburg Castle and practiced mystic rituals. My novel also explores the relationship between a decorated war hero who holds a painful secret from his war days and a grandson who desires to know his grandfather’s past.

I finished writing the novel two years ago and now it’s published. By strange coincidence, this year life began to imitate fiction as a relic from my grandfather’s past resurfaced. Two months before his ninetieth birthday, he received a phone call that his long lost airplane “The Snafu Special” had been found in Sarajevo, Bosnia. A French soldier found the Douglas C-47 parked at an airbase. Riddled with bullet holes from the Bosnian war, the plane had been abandoned in a snowfield. Curators from a D-Day museum in Normandy identified “The Snafu Special,” because the C-47’s tail number was still in tact.

The WWII relic might have been lost forever had it not been for a team of French enthusiasts who were determined to rescue the plane and return it to the battery museum in Merville, Normandy. Against all odds, the members of Team SNAFU, along with French and American diplomats, convinced the presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina to donate the plane to France. French engineers then disassembled the Snafu, loaded it up on three trucks, and transported the plane all the way from Bosnia to Normandy. Once it arrived at the museum in Merville, the curators restored the aircraft to its original glory and veiled it for a ceremony on June 7th.

My grandfather, being one of only two surviving pilots to fly “The Snafu Special,” was invited to return to Normandy to be honored with his airplane. This past June, my family and I got to go with him. For a week that I will never forget, my grandfather and I attended several events that featured him as the honored guest. We visited the Merville Battery Museum where his Douglas C-47 is on display. The French media treated Captain Dawson Moreland like a celebrity, snapping photo after photo. He did several interviews for the local news and a French documentary about his airplane. He got to paint a white stripe on the wing. Everywhere we went my grandfather was thanked for helping liberate France from the Germans who occupied the beach towns of Normandy back in 1944. Many of the local French people were brought to tears by his presence and asked for autographs.

When I asked him how he felt about the French treating him like a hero, he said, “I was never welcomed anywhere as great as I am over here.”

Together we toured D-Day museums, saw the Normandy beaches, and walked through the fields of white crosses at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. I could see that reflecting back on history was allowing my grandfather a chance to see the war from a new perspective.

At a French country farm, we bunked together in a small room attached to a barn. Surrounded by fields where paratroopers landed over sixty years ago, my grandfather began to open up and share his war stories. I learned that while in England he roomed with Norman Rockwell’s nephew “Rocky” and enjoyed riding English bicycles with the other pilots. They called Dawson Moreland by his nickname “Hank.” As a lead pilot in the 95th Squadron, he touched a part of history that involved missions in Africa, the Normandy invasion on D-Day, and Market-Garden. He dropped off paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st airborne. His squadron also dropped The Dirty Dozen. He flew supplies to General Patton and carried out POW’s. He earned seven medals. My grandfather would never call himself a hero. But I thought differently. As a pilot just doing his job, he had aided the Allies to victory.

My grandfather’s Douglas C-47, “The Snafu Special,” is a historical relic that brought together diplomats from France, Bosnia, Herzegovina, the United Kingdom, and the United States, among them the U.S. Ambassador to France. Colonel Merle Hart, Wing Commander of the 440th Airlift Wing of Pope Air Force Base, showed up to give my grandfather a flight suit and salute him for being a pilot in the 440th back in 1944. On June 7th, the Merville Battery Museum unveiled “The Snafu Special” as a new exhibit and honored my grandfather in a historical ceremony. My eyes whelped with tears as I watched him climb up into the plane and wave back to the hundreds of people applauding him.

After we returned home, I went to visit him. I felt a lot like Sean Chambers in my novel, who goes home to see his aging grandfather. Mine was a different a mission, as I took a video camera and interviewed him for a family documentary. When I asked him what it was like seeing his plane after all these years, he said, “It was good to sit in the cockpit again. But the thing I missed was my crew. I sure did miss them.”

In my novel, Jack Chambers misses his platoon, who vanished mysteriously over sixty years ago. He gives his grandson a war diary that reveals his secret past. Like life imitating fiction, my grandfather shared his stories after sixty years of silence. And as he pulled out war photos, maps, medals, and top-secret documents from Operation Market-Garden, I finally got to know the secret life he lived during his war days.

Here are some video clips from our trip to Normandy.

Excerpt for SHADOWS IN THE MIST

2008-08-27T15:28:00.000-05:00

I just posted the prologue of

Shadows in the Mist

at my fiction blog DARK LUCIDITY.

Farewell to Eli the Cat

2008-08-27T02:59:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow is my big move into my new writer's cottage. New adventures await! My feelings are bittersweet, though, for tonight is my last night housesitting for my friend. Over the past twenty days I've bonded with one of the most loveable felines I've ever met. So this blog is merely to say farewell to my newly adopted brother, Eli the Cat. Here's to all the good times.

The Lucky Seven

2008-08-26T10:12:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post, "On Writing Shadows in the Mist," I talked about how my novel started out as both a thirty-page screenplay and short story. The original had only four characters, all U.S. infantry soldiers running from something in the woods that had attacked and slaughtered their platoon. Two of those characters made it into the novel version. One is the main character Lieutenant Jack Chambers and the other is Private Hoffer.

When I took on the monumental task of expanding the short story into a ful-length novel, I decided to develop Jack's entire platoon. During that time I was reading Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. From reading that book I learned the thick bond that developed between soldiers who had to rely on one another for survival.

I also watched, and was blown away by, Saving Private Ryan. That movie was a completely visceral experience that made me feel like I was there. I decided in that moment that's what I want for my readers. Even though this story is a horror mystery, I want my readers to feel like they are in World War II. Like they are a member of the platoon. I want them to feel the bullets flying all around them, just as I had felt in the opening and closing battles of Saving Private Ryan.

I was determined to create a platoon of misfits that people cared about. And for that to happen, Lieutenant Jack Chambers had to care about his men. So I made it his mission to do whatever it takes to get his men out of the Hurtgen Forest alive. They call themselves "The Lucky Seven" because as a unit they have survived so many combats together, going all the way back to before D-Day, when they fought in Sicily together. These guys are as close-knit as they get. Because they've outlived so many men, they believe that they are charmed with some kind of strange luck. Two of them, Private Hoffer and Private Finch, are comic book writers. They believe that the Lucky Seven are invincible soldiers destined to be super heroes. They've all become superstitious. Each man of The Lucky Seven carries a good-luck charm and they do a ritual before every battle. Lieutenant Chambers believes his good luck comes from the silver watch his father gave him before he died.

In one of the early chapters, during the present-day portion of the book, Jack Chambers's grandson, Sean, flies to Germany. While riding in an airplane, Sean examines the mysterious war diary his grandfather gave him. A photo of a platoon slides out. On the back is written "The Lucky Seven" and the names of each.

Lieutenant Jack Chambers

Master Sergeant John Mahoney

Sergeant Buck Parker

Corporal Duece Wilson

Pfc. Gabe Finch

Pfc. Rafe Hoffer

Pfc. Miguel Garcia

While writing and researching this novel, I spent four and a half years with these characters. For each I wrote in-depth histories and had them write letters home to loved ones. None of that made it into the book, but it did help me get to know each soldier deeply. The platoon became like a "band of brothers" to me. The above photo is of my grandfather, Captain Dawson "Hank" Moreland. He was a pilot, but he also did routine field training. I came across this photo two months ago, long after I wrote the book. I never knew it existed. When I counted seven soldiers in the photo, I got goosebumps.

Revelations of a Workaholic

2008-08-21T11:01:00.019-05:00

It's 6:00 a.m. here in the Aloha state, and I'm rubbing the sleep out of my eyes as I start my morning. As far as work productivity goes, I've gotten a lot accomplished this week. I finished building two blogs, updated my website, spent an hour on the phone with my agent talking about my next book, art directed some cover art with my illustrator who's painting a cover for my next short story, updated my press release, and wrote a magazine article about how my grandfather, who is a WWII hero, inspired my novel. I'm getting ready to add that article along with some photos in my next post. I'll be sharing how I got to go to Normandy, France this past summer with my ninety-year-old grandfather and the amazing experiences we had.

In addition to all my publishing and promotion tasks, I've been preparing for my big move next week, calling the electric company, Internet company, shopping for a new mattress, and lining up a mover. I'm ready to end my gypsy lifestyle and live in a home that's mine with only my stuff in it.

I've been mostly working these last couple of months. Fun work, the kind that makes me leap out of bed in the morning. Work that I enjoy so much that ten hours will just fly by. And life would be just a bowl of cherries right now if work wasn't my only mode. I'm behaving like a typical workaholic, who puts work before everything else. Whew, I'm finally willing to admit it, look at the imbalance closely, and change it. This has been pointed out to me by a close friend, as well as my roommate, Eli the cat, who demands a lot of attention, especially while I'm at my computer type-type-typing away, and all he wants is some human affection, and my attention is zoned in on writing or surfing cyberspace.

I found myself getting angry a few times that the cat was all over me, motors running, loving me unconditionally. It was really pushing my buttons. I felt angry because this little fur ball of bottomless affection is breaking my concentration. After some deep self-reflection, I discovered I have a fear pattern running me. Afraid if I don't keep working, my first book is going to fail in the marketplace, I'm going to lose my writing muse, and the dream career I've been working on is just going to end in failure. So there it is, a fear of failure. On the flip side of that is that I've been driven by an extreme desire to be successful like Stephen King. I want to walk into a bookstore and see not just one of my books on the shelf but twenty, a body of work I'm proud of. And the idea of earning royalties off all those books makes me want it more. Because residual cash flow gives an author freedom to quit his day job and write more books. This is all great as a vision for my future, but what about enjoying the here and now?

Life happens in the moment, and it's easy to live out in the future, saying, "As soon as I reach this point, then I'll be happy, then I'll relax, or then I'll spend time with my loved ones or do those things I'm most passionate about." The other day while meditating I began to feel into the energy of being a workaholic. I had this vision that inside me were hundreds of gerbils running on metal wheels. As I examined them closely, I saw their little feet were spinning the wheels faster and faster. Their black beady eyes kept glancing at me pleadingly, as if to say, "How long do we have to keep this up?" I suddenly was overcome with a sense of compassion about how hard I've been driving myself. I took a deep breath, then in my meditation I reached over and pulled an imaginary lever. There was a metallic shriek, then all the wheels began slowing down. I blew the factory whistle. All the gerbils climbed down from their wheels, looked up at me smiling, then grabbed their tiny little lunchboxes and hopped on home.

I had a revelation during that meditation. To be happy, I don't have to work like some gerbil on a wheel. I decided it's time to find some balance between working and relaxing and having fun. Spend time with people I care about. It would also be good to get out and date again. Go out and share some spicy conversation with a special woman. Romance is something, that I admit humbly, is an area of my life I have neglected for several months. I always told myself I wouldn't become that person who gets so consumed by work that I would have no time or energy left for the people who matter.

So this is me turning over a new leaf. Today I'm only working the morning, and then taking the afternoon off. I'm also taking Friday completely off to go do something fun around the island. You know, one of those activities tourists do when they come here to pretty much do nothing but explore and play and frolic at the beach. So I'm going to go do some much needed frolicking. I might even flirt with some ladies and spark up a new romance. Hawaii is the magical destination where anything can happen. Especially when you can allow the inner gerbils to just relax and enjoy the moment.

New Fiction Blog Is Here!

2008-08-16T13:31:00.006-05:00

I completed my main goal this week, which was to launch my new fiction blog DARK LUCIDITY. This is where I will periodically publish short works of fiction and dark poetry. Here you can venture into the dark realms and come upon beings of both light and darkness.

Writing Like a Zen Master

2008-08-14T06:16:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a productive day! It's 12:30 a.m. and I'm still working.

This morning I got up at 6:00 a.m. and wrote a 14-page short story called "The Dealer of Insatiable Needs." I banged it out in about six hours. It's pure horror and creepy as hell. I was getting goosebumps just typing away at the keyboard this morning. I'm making the story available this week at my new blog DARK LUCIDITY. Tonight I built the new blog to publish my short fiction on-line. Check it out and read the "Welcome" page.

So how did I go from unmotivated, procrastinating slacker to rampant motivation in just one day? Let's backtrack. As I shared in yesterday's post, I was so down on myself for not getting anything done toward writing or marketing. I was feeling guilty, like I was throwing my dream away. I literally sat on my bed and just stared at the walls, trying to motivate myself into action. I know I can be stubborn with other people. But it's a royal pain when I'm stubborn with myself. But sometimes it's like there's a little kid inside me who just won't budge. So I thought, well if I'm going to procrastinate with work, I might as well read an inspirational book.

I'm staying at my friend's house for a couple weeks and she has all these great spiritual books lying around. I picked up Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. You may be familiar with him, he wrote Power of Now and one of Oprah's favorites A New Earth. I start reading Stillness Speaks and it's comprised of short passages called sutras that help you slow down your mind and just relax. Be in the moment and breathe deeply. He talks about how all creativity comes from stillness. All we have to do is take a few moments to focus on nothing. I know that can be hard to do on your own, but this book guides you through the process. I kept reading the sutras and noticed that all my mental chatter just all of the sudden stopped. I reached this zen master state and just let go of all my attachments to getting work done today. The rest of the day I was so relaxed. I went for a workout at the gym then took a walk, noticing the sky, the clouds, the mountains. I know this sounds kind of woo woo, but I had a breakthrough. I went to sleep calm and, when I woke up, I was inspired to write and my short story just rolled across my computer screen as fast as I could type. I didn't even have think much about it. It was literally like the story was being told to me. As a writer, I don't always know where my creativity comes from, but I do believe I have a muse, and when I silence all the mental chatter, I get much more accomplished. Not only was I inspired to write, but as soon I completed my short story, I easily jumped to a whole list of tasks. Whew! Okay, now it's 1:00 a.m. and I'm going to force myself to stop and go to bed or I'll be too tired to wake up in the morning.

If you find yourself procrastinating on something that needs to get done, or if you're blocked creatively, I recommend taking the day off and stilling the mind. Read Stillness Speaks.

The Foam Demon

2008-08-13T04:16:00.005-05:00

Okay, so here I am housesitting for my friend, doing my best to take care of the place while she's traveling. I just went into the kitchen for a glass of water and discovered the linoleum floor is covered in foam bubbles that completely swallow my feet up to my ankles. What looks like an alien blob creature has oozed all the way into the den, threatening to swallow Eli the cat, as well. Evidently I put the wrong dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher and released some kind of foam demon into our dimension. But don't panic, the world is still safe. I slayed the bubbly beast with a roll of paper towels.

Procrastination Day

2008-08-13T03:30:00.005-05:00

Today was a challenging day. I could not for the life of me stay motivated. I got up at 6:00 a.m. and started the morning putting together my press release. I got bored with it really quick and called it a day by 8:30 a.m. Yes, I know. Slacker!

The press release is what my publicist sends out to newspapers and magazines so they can publish an article about me. The challenge is I have to write the content that goes into that article, so newspaper editors can just copy paste it into their columns. Journalistic writing is just not as fun as writing a chapter of a novel. I enjoy making stuff up, creating fantasy worlds and imaginary people. I'd much rather being immersed in a scene seeing what my characters are going to do next. I almost never know what they're going to do until I get into the scene.

The next novel I'm working on, Dead of Winter, has a whole cast of troubled characters, including two exorcists trying to solve the mystery of an unholy plague. Also I counted at least two love triangles. And there's a lot of sex in it. I'm not sure what's going through my head these days, but this book, which is set in Canada during the mid 1800's, is much spicier than my World War II thriller.

So today I got little accomplished and I'm feeling the pressure of my debut novel, Shadows in the Mist, releasing in three weeks. Back when I was only dreaming of being published, I thought when my first book releases I'd be kicking back drinking champagne on a yacht somewhere, enjoying the good life. But instead I'm having to work double time writing my blog, updating my website, writing press releases. No wonder I slacked off today. I'm feeling a bit overhwelmed. Oh, well, at least I got my blog entry in.

Recovering with a Deaf Cat

2008-08-08T12:39:00.002-05:00

Good morning and aloha,

This is my second morning back on Maui, and I'm still recovering from jet lag from the five-hour time difference between Texas and Hawaii. I'd love more than anything to write a scene or two for my newest horror novel, DEAD OF WINTER, but I feel too pressured to tackle my list of things to do: find a place to live, explore the island, go swimming, take surf lessons, take Salsa lessons, meet up with friends, organize my life. It's hard for me to concentrate on writing when I'm feeling disorganized and pulled in a hundred different directions. I've been on the road for over two months now, living out of a suitcase and wearing the same clothes over and over. All my cherished belongings are in storage. My strongest motivation to write is on my blog, which is a great outlet for me, until I can get settled and back into the swing of novel writing. I can't wait to finish DEAD OF WINTER and share it with the world. Just a hundred more pages to go. But for now I'm putting off fiction writing until next week. By then I should be more stabilized.

Okay, so first on my agenda is find a place to live. I've got just over two weeks to do it. Fortunately I have a place to stay in the mean time. I'm currently house sitting for a friend. It's actually quite nice here. The condo is in a beach town called Kihei and right across from the beach. I walked there yesterday evening after sunset and just listened to the tide rolling in. It was the first moment since I got back that I've felt a sense of peace. Can you hear the waves lapping at the shore?

Where I'm staying, my friend has a cute white cat named Eli who is completely deaf. He understands some sign language though. Like if you pat your chest, he knows that means "Come to me." I found my rooming with a deaf cat an interesting metaphor. I had suffered a hearing loss myself a few years back. I didn't go completely deaf but I had difficulty understanding most people. It was very frustrating. I lived in denial about my hearing loss for years. Only recently did I accept that this was a part of my life experience. Last month I finally got hearing aids and now hear everything loud and clear. Thank God for advanced technology! I used to be ashamed of my reduced hearing, but now I see it as a gift. I made a discovery the other day on the airplane where there was a crying baby. In noisy environments I can take out my hearing aids and escape to a more tranquil place.

So here I am at day two of my Maui adventure and rooming with a deaf cat named Eli. He stares out at the back garden a lot, gazing at the statue, so I'm guessing he's a Buddhist. Because he can't hear, my friend says he's extra sensitive and needs to be around people constantly. He has a tendency to cry in the middle of the night. The other night I tossed and turned while he mewled in the next room. He must have been loud, because I wasn't wearing my hearing aids and he sounded like he could raise the roof. I slept walk into the dark living room, searching for Eli. I spotted his white form in the darkness near the dining table and petted him. He immediately stopped moaning. I talked to him. Even though he can't hear, I'm sure he can read lips. I scooped up the furball into my arms and put him in bed with me, but he didn't stay there long. I'm sure the cat misses his master, who is an attractive woman. After that, the house went quiet again and I went back to bed. As I lay there, I wondered if Eli's crying in the middle of the night might also be some kind of metaphor. Maybe a part of me was sad that I had just left behind all my close friends and family and was starting a new life alone. I'm not really one to cry myself, so I guess that's why the Universe roomed me with a deaf cat named Eli who cries in the darkness. I'm certain he'll end up in one of my novels.

Well, I'd love to continue writing, but you know, I have that list of things to do tugging at me, so aloha for now.

Just Arrived Back on Maui

2008-08-08T12:35:00.001-05:00

I'm finally back in Hawaii. My home island, Maui, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I just spent ten weeks traveling. Went to France for a week to tour Normandy with my grandfather (more on this later). Next I worked a week in Marco Island, Florida where I edited videos at a business meeting. Video editing has been my day job to support my real passion--writing novels. Next, I spent eight more weeks in Dallas, Texas staying with friends and family, living like a gypsie out of my suitcase. It was an absolute blast and I got to reconnect with all the important people in my life. I stayed out in the country a lot at my parents's home near Lake Whitney.

While in Texas I didn't have much time to write fiction, because I was immersed in three big video projects. One of them was my trip to Normandy. I wrote, produced, and edited a documentary about my grandfather's tour in World War II. Today he's still alive and ninety years old. I got to interview him on film and capture his war stories. I'll go into detail about my film and our trip to Normandy in another post. I'll also include some photos and perhaps a clip from my video. After being away for ten weeks and flying eight hours from Dallas to Kahului, Maui, I'm totally wiped. Already feeling jetlagged. I'm signing off for now so I can go make a wake-me-up smoothie. Aloha!

Publishing SHADOWS IN THE MIST - Part 2

2008-07-30T15:12:00.002-05:00

After doing a goal-reaching exercise on being a published author, I began to list out my top ten values for my career. What was most important? At the top of the list were "launching a successful writing career," "seeing my book in print," and "sharing SHADOWS IN THE MIST with the world." While I was submitting manuscripts to agents, achieving these goals was completely out of my control. I had already spent years playing the waiting game with agents and was ready to waste any more time. So I made a key business decision: self publish.

In short, I formed my own publishing company Blue Morpho Publishing. I shifted my focus from seeing my novel as a manuscript to seeing it as a product to design and release to the market. This was an easy transition for me, because I've always been an entrepreneur by heart. I studied business in high school and college. I was already operating my own successful business as a freelance film/video editor. I was so excited to be taking over the destiny of my book, that I jumped right in. I got some financial backing. I hired an editor, Karl Monger, to give my manuscript a professional polish. I was determined to have a cover that I was not only proud of, but it had to compete for attention of millions of other books out on the market. The cover is where I focused most of my budget. I hired Kathy Dunn to design the cover and Les Edwards to illustrate it. Here's the evolution from sketch to finished cover.

There's a whole lot more that I did to prepare my book for the market that's too detailed for a blog post. If you are a writer and interested in learning more about the business side of self-publishing, email me at Brian@BrianMoreland.com for a free copy of my ebook PUBLISHING FROM MANUSCRIPT TO BOOKSHELF.

Most traditional publishers take anywhere from eighteen months to two years to release a book, from the day I decided to self-publishing, nine months later I was holding a bound copy in my hands. I'll never forget the feeling. Finally, after eighteen years, I had a bound novel with cover art and even a bar code on the back. It was ready to go to market. I originally released SHADOWS IN THE MIST in September, 2006. By October, it was on display at Barnes and Noble where I did two book signings. The goal-setting exercise I did paid off.

From there followed some immediate success. My book hit #1 on Amazon's bestselling thrillers list and had briefly, if only for a few hours, surpassed The Da Vinci Code.

During its first year of publication, Shadows in the Mist received some great reviews.

"Equal parts horror story and spine-jangling thriller. An adventure not to be missed!"

—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Map of Bones and Black Order

"Fast paced and tension ratcheting, Brian Moreland's SHADOWS IN THE MIST is a page-turner sure to satisfy even the most fickle thriller junkie! This one definitely won't be collecting dust on your nightstand!"

—Deborah LeBlanc, Author of Morbid Curiosity and A House Divided

“Shadows in the Mist is chilling horrorfest, written by a bright new talent in the horror genre. But more than that, this novel is a terrific page-turner that combines the best aspects of mystery, dark suspense, and the historical thriller. Well written. Well researched. And a gripping, haunting read from the opening pages in a creepy Nazi-occupied castle to the grand guignol of the last pages."

—Gary Braver, Bestselling Author of Flashback and Skin Deep

"Shadows in the Mist is one of the best books that I've read this year."

—Horror Bob, HorrorReview.com

“Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers meets Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code meets F. Paul Wilson's The Keep. With Shadows in the Mist, Brian Moreland weaves together the best elements of military, supernatural and religious conspiracy genres, staking out a new territory all his own.”

—T.L. Hines, author of Waking Lazarus

Self-publishing offered me the chance to do several book signings and a radio show and meet some incredible people along the way.

While I was I having some initial success promoting my book on my own, it was a lot of work, and I didn't get much novel writing done for about six months after I launched the book. I was wearing too many other hats--publisher, marketer, event planner. But I was having an absolute blast and finally experiencing what I had dreamed of doing eighteen years ago in college. I owe a lot of the book's success to my publicist Leann Garms. Here we are at my book release party at Barnes and Noble in Dallas, Texas.

In 2007 I had a key turning point. I entered my book into an international contest called the Independent Publisher Awards. Shadows in the Mist won a gold medal for best horror novel. Here I am in New York posing with author Riley Weston. Her novel Before I Go won a gold medal for the best novel overall. This is several months since my book launch, so my hair's a little longer.

The award helped my agent land a book deal with a major New York publisher, Berkley/Penguin. In less than one year after my book's release, and within two years of me deciding to self-publish, Berkley bought the rights to release Shadows in the Mist again in small paperback. Landing a book deal with a major publisher was my goal from the beginning. And now it's happening, with the book due to release nationwide in just a couple of weeks, on September 2nd, 2008. Check out the new cover.

That's my story of how I went from a discouraged writer to a self-published author to finally a traditional published author. I have no idea where my career will take me from here. Hopefully people will buy Shadows in the Mist and launch it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List. That, of course, is out of my control. Or is it? I believe we have the power to make our dreams happen. It just takes a lot of persistence, patience, and being believing the old saying "If you can conceive it, you can achieve it."

Publishing SHADOWS IN THE MIST - Part 1

2008-07-29T12:00:00.003-05:00

Publishing my first novel has been a long and winding road that spans eighteen years. If you read my previous posts then you know that I began my writing career in college with a little horror novel called THE DEGBA DYNASTY (later renamed SKINNERS) that never sold, and that my second novel, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, began as a short screenplay I wrote for a screenwriting class. Back then I had stars in my eyes about how my career as a novelist would play out. I thought for sure by the time I was thirty, I was destined to be the next Stephen King or Dean Koontz, with half a dozen bestselling novels, my books made into movies, and millions in the bank. It's great to have dreams. They just sometimes take longer to manifest than we wish.

Well, I'm thirty-nine now, approaching forty real soon. And my dreams and persistence are what have gotten me where I'm at today, on the verge of releasing my first novel in small paperback through my publisher Berkley/Penguin. I actually self-published this book as a large trade paperback in 2006 under my own company, Blue Morpho Publishing. Here is the original cover painted by award-winning artist Les Edwards.

I'd love to have more books to share at this stage in my life, but I hit a few road bumps along my path that included a brief marriage, sudden divorce, a few bouts of depression, focusing on my video editing career, starting up several side businesses, and doing a lot of soul searching. With the intention of finding myself, I backpacked for three weeks in Australia and New Zealand. Five times I ventured down to Costa Rica to do yoga and meditate in the rain forest. I also attended a number of retreats in Hawaii, searching for my purpose. A frequent question I continually asked myself was "Am I destined to be a career author or am I just kidding myself? If my passion for writing is my true gift to the planet, how can I be successful at it? How can I get my books published?"

During my eighteen years of writing and dreaming, I never gave up my vision of being a published novelist. The flames of passion have always been burning. They just ranged from cindering coals to volcanic eruptions of creativity at different stages of my adult life. But I never gave up.

I shared in a previous post, that I failed to sell my first novel, SKINNERS. I spent years submitting it to New York literary agents and received dozens of rejections without anyone ever reading my manuscript. Then I spent four and a half years researching and writing SHADOWS IN THE MIST. Again, I invested two years and a lot of promotional materials to get an agent. I sent out half a dozen query letters then played the waiting game for several months. I even went to the Maui Writers conference and pitched my story to an agent. She read a portion of the book then declined, saying she was already representing a WWII horror author. Why she just didn't say this up front instead of making me wait for her response, I don't know. Bottom line is in 2005 I hit my breaking point. I was on the verge of doing something I never thought I would do--quit this silly dream of being a novelist.

I took some time off from writing and publishing to get centered. Get to the core of why I'm here on the planet. And what kept coming up was I'm here to be a writer. A storyteller. A novelist. Writing is my innate talent. It's my gift and I need to share it, even if it takes years until my words reach the world. Even if I never get rich from it or achieve the fame and glory of Stephen King, writing is still my destiny. And I believe if we follow our inner calling, we will live a life that brings us the most joy. So that's what drives me.

Here is a mission statement that I wrote to keep me motivated.

MY MISSION:

I am writing exciting stories that invigorate my soul.

I am publishing novels that entertain millions of readers.

My books are made into blockbuster movies.

I am enjoying a prosperous career as a writer.

So now I had my life purpose and mission, I needed some direction. I needed someone to bounce off ideas and talk about where I was stuck. I started working with Life Coaches. I believe that hiring a personal coach is key to success. All successful athletes have a coach to keep them focused and motivated. There's so much that can distract us or weigh us down. It's easy to lose focus on what's most important. A life coach helps you prioritize the activities in your life that really matter and keep you focused on achieving your goals. I so believe in this that I trained to become a life coach myself, as well as a career coach for writers. If anyone is interested in personal coaching, email me at Brian@BrianMoreland.com.

So, here it was September 2005 and I'm down on my luck. I've got my life purpose--write novels for pleasure and profit and share my stories with the world--but no direction and very little gas left in the tank. During my coaching training, where I learned Nuero-Linguistic Programming (NLP), I used to practice techniques with my friend Mary-Helen. We did a goal reaching exercise where you write down in the present tense exactly what you want to achieve as if it's already happening, exactly the way you want it to happen, and then read it out loud to a partner with as much positive emotion as you can muster. I did this for my goal of seeing my novel SHADOWS IN THE MIST in print and selling in book stores.

To be continued on the next post . . .

Researching SHADOWS IN THE MIST

2008-07-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

Up to this point I had never done any WWII research. In fact, most of my knowledge had been through watching war movies. But I knew that if I was going to write a WWII-based novel and eventually publish it, it had to be factual. So I spent a good three years reading history books and articles on the Internet. I watched documentaries and movies to have a greater understanding of why we were fighting this war. I learned about weapons and war strategy and about the underground forces that assisted the Allies in sabotaging the Nazis.

I searched for a specific German forest for the story to take place. I found the perfect setting in the battle of the Hurtgen Forest (often spelled Huertgen). This took place in September - November, 1944 just prior to the Battle of the Bulge. The Hurtgen Battle is not discussed very much in history books, because it was a part of the war where the U.S. and British forces suffered a lot of casualties and gained little ground for months. I got really inspired by this painting from James Dietz called "The Huertgen Forest Patrol."

The Hurtgen Forest provided the best setting for my novel because it was always foggy and rainy. Infantry soldiers gave it nicknames like "The Meat Grinder" and "The Green Hell." It matched the setting I had created in my original short story. I saw the G.I. centered in the painting as my hero Lieutenant Jack Chambers leading his platoon into certain doom.

One of the biggest complaints of the G.I.'s who had to go into the fog-enshrouded forest was the mist was so thick they couldn't even see the Germans. This inspired me to change my title from "The Refuge" to SHADOWS IN THE MIST.

Even though this is a supernatural horror novel, I wanted it to ring true and for the reader to feel a sense of realism. I wanted it to feel like you as the reader are experiencing the war as if you were a soldier in the platoon, and you can hear the explosions and feel the bullets whizzing by. To know what this felt like, I interviewed retired veterans who fought in the Hurtgen Forest. I learned what they ate and how they slept and what fighting the Germans was really like for them. I even traveled to Germany for three weeks by myself, with nothing but a backpack, camera, and journal, and walk through the very woods where the battles happened. Even today, the woods are creepy. Here are a couple photos I took.

To learn more about this story and see photos visit this page on my website: http://brianmoreland.com/wwiiresearch/hürtgenforestgermany.html.

SHADOWS IN THE MIST is a cross-genre novel, combining military history, espionage, with supernatural horror. The supernatural aspect is actually based on historical facts about the Nazis and their fascination with the Occult. To read more on this visit this page on my website:
http://brianmoreland.com/wwiiresearch/nazioccultmysticism.html.

Because of all the research, it took me over four and a half years to complete the novel. But through the process, I discovered that researching a novel is just as much fun as writing one.

On Writing SHADOWS IN THE MIST

2008-07-26T21:19:00.000-05:00

Looking back now at my days at the University of Texas, it was both my screenwriting classes and creative fiction writing classes that led me to writing SHADOWS IN THE MIST. The story started out as a short screenplay that I wrote for one of my assignments. It was originally titled "The Chapel." Our assignment was to write a script for our favorite TV show. Being such the horror fan, I chose to write an episode of Tales from the Crypt.

"The Chapel" was set in WWII Germany, in a foggy forest. Four U.S. infantry soldiers are running from something in the fog. They're shot up, dragging one of their buddies who has a wounded leg. They take refuge in an abandoned Catholic church that's just rotting away out in the forest. The four soldiers are frightened, confused, and screaming at one another. We learn quickly that their entire platoon was just slaughtered and something unearthly was chasing them through the woods. They explore the church's basement for a better hiding place and discover a Nazi bunker where the Nazis had been practicing the Occult. At that time, I knew very little about World War II and did zero research. I just wrote what I thought was a fun horror story, and for some reason, made WWII Germany the setting. I literally wrote this off the top of my head. I didn't know what the soldiers were running from until I got to the end of the story. I believe I got an "A" on my thirty-page screenplay. I thought about submitting it to the producers at Tales from the Crypt, but the show canceled soon after I finished.

I loved "The Chapel" screenplay, but didn't do anything with it while in college. I was more focused on writing a couple of novels, developing my craft. Because I changed majors midway through, it took me five and a half years to finish college. I finally graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Radio/TV/Film with a minor in English. While my friends were getting jobs that matched their majors, I looked at the career world and said, "Now what?" There was no firm out there ready to hire an aspiring novelist and pay a big salary, or even a small one for that matter. So I got into video editing, cutting together corporate videos, TV commercials, and documentaries. Did this for the next fifteen years. It paid the bills while I continued writing on the side. Video editing has actually helped my writing, because it taught me how to compose and edit a story, and think in terms of scenes. I also learned how to start and finish creative projects.

Okay, back to writing Shadows in the Mist. During my early twenties, I went through a period of writing short stories and poetry, as much as I could churn out. It was a very prolific time. I plan to share some of these early writings in a separate blog. That's one of my next projects, so be looking for it on my website http://www.brianmoreland.com/ in the blogs section.

So during my Renaissance period, I came across my script, "The Chapel" and dusted off the pages. It had just been sitting in a folder. I read through it and thought how it was one of my most inventive stories, and here I was doing nothing with it. As writers, we all have stories or poems that are just stored away, waiting to be read. I was really getting comfortable writing prose, so I decided it would be fun to re-write my WWII horror story in the format of a short story fiction. It was fairly easy, all I had to do was change the tense from present tense to past tense and put quotations around the dialogue. I changed the title, calling it "The Refuge." I added a little more depth to the soldier characters and the Nazi Occult mystery they were desperately trying to solve. I tried to submit "The Refuge" to a couple of magazines, including Playboy, but I couldn't get much interest in it. So back in the folder the short story went, and it was forgotten about for years.

I have to share that at this point in my writing career I was getting really discouraged. I wrote and re-wrote my first novel SKINNERS on and off for about eight years. I was doing everything I could to publish my first novel. Back then we didn't have the option of self-publishing, just the old fashioned way: submit your manuscript to a literary agent. The agent represents the author and shops the manuscript around the publishing houses up in New York. Problem was for the life of me I couldn't get a literary agent. That became my biggest barrier. I was waiting months and months and getting so many rejection letters before an agent would even read my manuscript. I was extremely frustrated and was just about to give up on this whole career of writing novels. I decided to just take a break from it all. I put SKINNERS on the shelf and stopped writing for awhile.

Then in the year 2000, nearly ten years after I wrote the original screenplay "The Chapel", a producer/screenwriter I was working with named Tim asked to read one of my short stories. I gave him the revised story, "The Refuge," and he loved it. Tim kept telling me it was such an original story and could easily be expanded into a full-length novel. Inspired, I read through my short story, trying to imagine how I could expand the story from thirty pages to four hundred. I asked myself questions, like what led the four soldiers to the abandoned Catholic church? Who were the Nazis they found dead down inside the bunker? I just kept thinking about the story, visualizing it in my head like a movie. Then one morning I got the inspiration I was looking for as my creative muse filled my mind with a vision of how the story could play out as a novel, and perhaps even a movie. I felt such a surge of excitement I started writing.

I added a dozen more characters. Instead of four soldiers, I now had a full platoon. I added depth to my platoon leader, Lieutenant Jack Chambers. I gave him some back story that explains how he earned the nickname, "The Grim Reaper." Every protagonist needs an antagonist, so I created Lieutenant Pierce Fallon, Jack Chambers's nemisis. The two fought together in a platoon unit in Africa before everything went hell and both men ended up in an English hospital together with severe burns. I'm a sucker for a good love story, so I also added Eva, the love of Jack's life, an English nurse he meets while recovering in London. Most of the book and it's supernatural mystery take place once Chambers and his platoon go on a covert mission behind German lines and come across the abandoned church and discover the deadly secrets down inside the Nazi bunker. I also came up with a cast of Nazi villains, based on real Occult Nazis who were part of a secret brotherhood called The Black Order. This is true historical fact. The novel's opening scene takes place at the Wewelsburg Castle in Westphalia, Germany. This place truly exists. I show the Black Order, led by none other than Hitler's second in command, Heinrich Himmler, gathered like kights of the round table, which they did.

I came up with the idea of starting the novel with Jack Chambers as an old man suffering from nightmares about what he experienced during the war. This inspiration came from my own grandfather who would never talk about the war. Captain Dawson "Hank" Moreland" flew C-47's over Normandy, dropping off paratroopers and delivering supplies. You can read his full story on this page of my website: http://brianmoreland.com/wwiiresearch/awarhero.html

As a kid, while staying with my grandparents, I once came across an army footlocker that was locked. I asked my grandfather what was in it. He said photos and letters from his war days. I asked to see them, but his eyes clouded over and he said he could never open up that locker. That filled my young, imaginative mind and I wondered what horrors my grandfather must have experienced. That he had this secret past life that he wouldn't share with the family. So the retired Jack Chambers is based on my grandfather. After a near-fatal heart attacked he is visited by his grandson, Sean Chambers, whom I based after myself. Jack Chambers finally decides to tell his grandson the secrets he's kept all these years. He gives him a war diary and it tells the whole story of the horrors that slaughtered Chambers' platoon back in 1944. Next I'll talk about I how researched the novel.

A Brief History of Writing Fiction - Part 2

2008-07-19T07:18:00.000-05:00

Spring semester of my sophomore year at U.T. I changed majors from finance to Radio/TV/Film. I knew I wanted to be a novelist first and foremost, but at that time (1989) there was no major for it, other than an English major.

I've always been a huge movie buff, so I studied film and screenwriting. I believe this helped my fiction writing, because I learned to write in scenes, and like movies, my novels are very scene-driven. I don't spend a lot of time with description or author monologues about philosophy. My characters play out scenes like actors; they do something to move the story forward, then I cut to the next scene. I like to keep the scene moving with dialogue. Being a film/video editor for the past fifteen years has helped me develop this concept of telling a story with dramatic scenes and intercutting them so they have a more powerful effect. I love cliffhangers and end my scenes with cliffhangers as much as I can to build suspense.

I also studied Creative Writing: Fiction, and learned how to structure and write short stories. My professor gave me some great feedback and I learned more that writing fiction is about crafting a story. It doesn't all get written perfectly in the first draft. I write many drafts, often thirty or more before I feel like a story or chapter is complete. I equate it to painting a picture. I'll write an initial scene from a place of inspiration. Write from the heart first and then let my logical mind work with it. I write it as I feel it in the moment, and that's my rough sketch of the scene. Then like adding details to a painting, I go back over the scene several times and add visual details, sound effects, tighten the action, and refine the dialogue to so it's efficient and powerful. Even though I write supernatural and horror, realism is very important to me. I don't like campy horror movies or books. I like horror that explores beyond the boundaries of what's seemingly possible and makes it feel real. I keep asking myself, "Does this ring true? Would the character really do this or say that? Can I make this scene even more riveting, more scary? Can I up the stakes? When writing suspense I often ask what's the very worst thing that could happen to this person? Then I put that into the scene.

Next, I'll talk about how my first novel, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, came about. Stay tuned.

A Brief History of Writing Fiction - Part 1

2008-07-18T07:16:00.000-05:00

I discovered writing in college. At age 19, I decided to write a novel just for the fun of it. I also thought it would make me a millionaire quickly. Little did I know that becoming wealthy through writing novels was going to be a long and winding road.

So here I was attending the University of Texas at Austin Fall Semester, 1987. A Business Finance Major destined to be a banker or President of my own company. I didn't even know I had a creative side. Well, Christmas break of my Freshman year I had three weeks off and was staying with my parents, who then lived in Dallas. (That's where I grew up, by the way, in a little suburb called DeSoto).

While the Christmas season was in full swing, I brainstormed on becoming a novelist. Not to put out great literature, but because I thought it would be a profitable business venture. Back then I was a reader of mostly spine-tingling horror: Stephen King, John Saul, Robert R. McCammon and Dean Koontz. Stephen King was constantly on the bestseller list and every book he wrote became a movie. I wanted his success. I also read Dean Koontz's Watchers and Phantoms and I was a hooked Koontz fan for years. John Saul and Robert R. McCammon were also major influences. I loved reading mystery combined with fast-paced action and edge-of-your-seat suspense. I also loved stories that included monsters or ghosts. I enjoy the adrenaline of being scared or wondering what's making that strange noise in the basement. Just love it!

Anyway, I used to visit book stores and stare at all the cool book covers. Especially the small paperbacks. The artwork always captured my imagination and told me their own stories before even opening the book. I loved opening a paperback and smelling the pages. It was some kind of strange fetish I had, I guess, but it seemed like every time I was at a bookstore, I would flip the pages near my nose and inhale the words written there. Maybe that's how I became an author. I just inhaled the wisdom and creativity of those who came before me. Reading Marvel comic books also influenced my imagination.

So, back to my first horror novel at Christmas break. I started writing it in a spiral notebook. I came up with seven characters--all of them college students like me. The girls were hot and the guys were cool. I gave the book a really bad title called The Degba Dynasty. It was about seven college kids who spend Spring Break at a remote cabin in the Colorado wilderness. While hiking, they come across, of all things, an ancient pyramid in the Rockies that somehow no one has ever discovered. It was hidden in a thick forest where "man was never meant to go." At that time, I thought the concept could work. Now, after hiking near Boulder, and visiting towns like Aspen and Vale, I know there's no place in Colorado that man has never set foot. There are hikers and mountain bikers everywhere. Reality didn't matter back then. I was writing a horror novel for the sheer fun of it. I didn't need to get bogged down with whether or not the story was plausible.

Between Christmas and January of 1987, I defined my characters and outlined the plot. I returned to school for the Spring Semester and was pumped to write out the novel. We didn't have personal computers back then. But the university had a computer lab. I was there when it opened at 8:00 a.m. and they had to kick me out every night at 10:00 p.m. I discovered something about myself. I had a passion for writing fiction, and especially writing novels. I had never even written a short story. I just delved into my first novel and never looked back. I often describe writing a novel as visiting another dimension or a dream world. The fictional people around me seem so so real, so alive. I can see, touch, and hear everything around me. That's why I can stay in writing mode for six to twelve hours, only taking breaks to use the bathroom and maybe eat a little something.

Okay, I digress. The Degba Dynasty turned out to be a fun little story I wrote in about three months. It was violent, scary, and had some great sex scenes. I was a hormonal nineteen-year-old and didn't have a girlfriend, so I was living vicariously through my characters. I was also influenced by movies like Friday the 13th and Halloween. The basic premise was the seven college kids are out hiking and come across this undiscovered pyramid. It's buried underground except for the apex which juts out of the earth a couple stories high. They explore the pyramid's tunnels and discover some strange things in there (I'd rather not tell in case I decide to revisit this story and publish it later). Turns out there's a small town nearby with a bunch of hicks whose main role is to make sure no one ever finds the pyramid and leaks out that it exists. The backwoods hicks turn out to be alien half-breeds who can shape shift into seven-foot-tall creatures, something like werewolves, but with some alien features. I wrote this shortly after the movie Aliens came out. Both Alien movies blew me away and changed the way I looked at the horror genre forever. I was also blown away by one of my all-time favorites The Howling. So, I guess movies, even more than books, influenced my story telling. In fact, I'm often told that as people are reading my novels, they feel like their watching a movie in their heads.

Back to The Degba Dynasty. Once the college kids get caught exploring the pyramid and learn its true reason for being here, their lives become in jeopardy as the town of alien half-breed monstrosities wreak havoc on them. Then the book just becomes an act of survival.

My first version was a slight 120 pages, but I was proud of finishing a first draft of The Degba Dynasty. So proud that I paid thirty bucks to have it bound together with a solid black hardcover. I wanted to hold it in my hands and feel it as a book. Smell the pages. My mom and dad still have it sitting on their book shelf. Within four months I wasn't just a writer playing around with starting a novel. I had completed a whole manuscript. My story had a beginning, middle, and cataclysmic ending. It had romance, humor, scary scenes, tragedy, and incredible acts of heroism. It was horror, adventure, Sci-Fi, and mystery all rolled into to one book. Like I said, I was reading a lot of King and Koontz during that time.

After my real Spring Break was over and I got back to school, I wrote the second draft. By this point I was skipping all my classes and just writing all day long and into the night. My grades suffered that semester. All my finance and accounting professors wondered why my seat was always empty. Who had time to study? I was off in Colorado fighting aliens and saving the planet. I was also having the best time of my life. What more could a lonely, introverted guy ask for? My characters became my closest friends. A bit sad maybe, but I was a small-town kid trying to find myself at a university of thousands of students. I had grown up thinking that money and power were the pathways to happiness, but through my renaissance period my Freshman year, I was discovering that creative self-expression was the pathway. At least for me.

Well, I revised and edited my manuscript all the way until May. I was also reading a great writing book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. I started learning the structure of a novel, as well as improving plot, characterization, and dialogue. I remember that May, the last day of school was approaching. I finished my second draft and the book was even better than before. I had added new characters and scenes and gave more history to the town and why they were hiding among us and protecting this pyramid.

I saved my entire manuscript on one floppy drive that I treated like it was plated with gold. Then tragedy struck. One day I go into the computer lab, slip the floppy into the computer for another writing session, and the computer blips and the screen reads: "Do you want to format this disk?" I didn't know what format meant, so I hit "yes." It deleted my entire manuscript. My only digital copy. Six months of typing--gone. I was crushed. A night of heavy eating of pizza followed. I couldn't believe I had lost my entire novel. Back then I was very new to computers. It was the late eighties and computers were mostly IBM, green letters on black screens, with a single floppy drive. I didn't know about backing up files. I just knew how to boot up and start typing then save to my floppy. So it was a hard lesson about computers and formatting disks, but it turned out to be a godsend. Did I give up? No. A true writer keeps writing, no matter what. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

I had the whole story in my head. I knew the characters by heart, how they talked, their attitudes, beliefs, likes and dislikes. So I went back to page one and started typing. What happened after that amazed me. The story began to flow out easily and differently than before. I was coming up with new scenes that were richer. The plot went off into new, exciting directions. And new characters began to emerge. New villains that were even more sinister. And the title changed from The Degba Dynasty to Skinners. After writing two drafts, the third came out even faster. Just a few months after deleting my manuscript, I had rewritten the entire book and had it saved on multiple floppies. A savvy novelist was born.

Through the process of writing my first novel in college, I developed a belief in myself that I was not only a committed novelist, but destined to one day hold a paperback of my book in my hands, hold the book to my nose, and smell the pages.

The Adventure Begins!

2008-07-17T22:23:00.006-05:00

Hi, and welcome to my blog. In the past couple of years, I've begun to see some successes from self-publishing my first novel, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, to landing two book deals, one here in the U.S. with Berkley/Penguin and one in Germany. SHADOWS IN THE MIST is being translated into German. It is also finding readership in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. Three years ago I was losing all hope in ever seeing my manuscripts in bookstores. I now have a literary agent, an editor, and publicist. I've seen both sides of publishing, as a self-publisher and working with a traditional publisher. My second novel DEAD OF WINTER is coming along great, and I'm finally realizing my dream to be a working published author.

The dream began back in college twenty years ago. (I turn 40 November 28th.) Amazing how time flies. Hitting my midlife crisis at age 35 really pushed me to finally get myself to complete my first book and just get it out there, even if I had to do it myself. And I did. I believe that any writer can complete a manuscript and get their work published. You just have to push past all the internal and external obstacles and keep going for it. Keep believing in yourself. As a published author and success coach to writers, my mission with my blog is to inspire others to keep following your dream.

My intent is to reach readers and writers alike. And to inspire people to read, write, and go after their own dreams. I'll even share about life in Hawaii and Texas and my travels, if your interested. I'll do my best to keep you entertained as I share the adventures of a professional writer's life. Thanks so much for visiting. More entries to come very soon.