What's on My Horror Bookshelves

I was asked by a horror magazine Ravenous Monster to write an article about the books on my bookshelves and to provide some photos. Throughout my life, since I first discovered reading as a young boy, I've been a voracious reader. I'm sure you've seen the image of a boy under the covers reading by a flashlight; that was me. I remember feeling both fear and exhilaration at the same time--too enthralled to close the book, yet too terrified to pull the covers off to see what might be lurking in the dark with me. Reading activated my vivid and wild imagination and made monsters and killers and imaginary worlds feel so real, I felt like they were happening to me.

I started out with comic books, but it wasn't long before I discovered the secret joys of reading novels--especially scary ones. I read lots of fantasy, horror, mysteries, and adventure novels. Today I still read a lot of those genres, although my reading has expanded into literary fiction, historical fiction, and lots of non-fiction that inspire me to improve myself or my life in some way. For the sake of this article, I'll share what's on my horror shelves.

In my home office, I have a tall bookshelf that's stuffed with books. My top shelf is comprised of many well-worn paperbacks by some of my favorite authors--Brian Keene, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, James Rollins, Jonathan Maberry, and Richard Laymon. As a writer always seeking to improve my craft, I like to pick an author and read several of his or her books at once. In college I studied Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, John Saul, and Stephen King. A couple years ago, I was reading every Richard Laymon novel I could find. Right now I've been reading lots of Clive Barker. I had discovered his Books of Blood series as a teen and they are still some of my favorite stories. I'm also currently reading Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastique, his compelling biography written by Douglas E. Winter. I recommend this book to any horror fan, because Clive Barker not only writes some of the best-written horror fiction I've ever read, his prolific career of writing, painting, performing in plays, and making movies (like Hellraiser) is a true inspiration to any artist or writer. 

My middle shelf is a collection of random paperbacks that I've enjoyed. A few books worth reading: Ronald Malfi's Snow, Adam Nevill's The Ritual, David Wellington's Monster Island, Charlee Jacobs' Haunter and The Descent and it's sequel Deeper by Jeff Long. Also on display is my first mass paperback copy of my WII thriller Shadows in the Mist. Next to it is a sculpture of the monster in the book. An artist friend of mine who had access to a 3D printer made the sculpture of the Nazi with the mask and glowing red eyes. He first designed a 3D model on a computer, then this machine that usually was used for making sculptures of skulls made the Nazi. It started out solid white and then my friend painted it for me. There's only one of it in existence and it's very special to me.

My third shelf is where I keep reference books and non-fiction books on the craft of writing. Three books I've referred to for years are my dictionary, thesaurus, and my Chicago Manual of Style for the rules of editing (the big orange one far right). I believe that even when you've established yourself as an author, it's always important to keep improving your writing. In addition to studying the styles of other authors, I read lots of non-fiction books on the craft of writing. When I first started out, I read books that focused an entire book on one technique: plot, dialogue, creating characters, theme, and the art of storytelling. The first book that I read that showed me how to structure a novel was How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. Also, Stephen King's On Writing is an inspirational gem. For any fiction writer I highly recommend three books by Donald Maas: Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel, and Writing 21st Century Fiction. For horror writers, I recommend: On Writing Horror, The Writer's Workshop of Horror, and especially How to Write Horror Fiction by William Nolan. The bobble-head of Dexter was a Christmas gift. I love me some Dexter.

On another shelf, I have a copy of Stephen King's Under the Dome and Nightmares & Dreamscapes (his photo facing me is a constant reminder that being a prolific writer and putting all your hours in typing up stories eventually pays off).

I also have a collection of signed copies of books by fellow Samhain Horror authors I've had the privilege of sitting next to at book signings. Some established and upcoming authors include: John Everson, Hunter Shea, Jonathan Janz, Kristopher Rufty, Ronald Malfi, Adam Cesare, Frazer Lee, Damien Walters Grintales, Russell James, David Bernstein, Mick Ridgewell, and W.D. Gagliani.

These are just a few of my books that have highly impacted my career as a horror fiction writer.

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Brian Moreland writes novels and short stories of horror and supernatural suspense. His books include Dead of Winter, Shadows in the Mist, The Girl from the Blood Coven, The Witching House, and The Devil’s Woods. The Vagrants comes out May 2014. Brian lives in Dallas, Texas where he is joyfully writing his next horror novel. You can join his mailing list at http://www.brianmoreland.com/

Guest Post about My Characters in The Witching House

Here's an article about my upcoming book THE WITCHING HOUSE. Today, I'm a guest author on the blog Oh, for the Hook of a Book.

In the article, I share details about my main characters, Sarah Donovan and her boyfriend Dean Stratton, who go exploring in an old abandoned house in the woods that's where something lives in the basement.

The Witching House releases Tuesday, August 6th. Download it to your Kindle, Nook or Ipad or order it at Samhain Horror.

http://hookofabook.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/brian-moreland-discusses-how-his-female-lead-character-overcomes-her-fears-in-the-witching-house/

Another Book Checked Off the List

As a working author, I have a lot of story ideas in my head and characters prodding me to tell their story. Heroes and heroines, villains and supporting characters--they all want to be cast in a book. I also have, filed away in the most darkest regions of my imagination, monsters that would love to star in their own novel or short story. It can get pretty noisy inside my head as I decide which novel, novella or short story to write next. I'd love to write them all at once, but we haven't mastered cloning just yet.

One story that has always intrigued me is based on a short story that I wrote many years ago called THE VAGRANTS, about a mysterious group of homeless nomads living inside an abandoned building. The original was a simple story about two mafia men who dared to try to force the homeless out of their building and discovered an unexpected horror awaiting them. That story sat in one of my computer folders for close to two decades, because I had moved on from writing short stories to novels. But the story stuck with me and I happened across it a couple months ago--while going through a folder of unpublished short stories--and decided THE VAGRANTS is a story I eventually want to share with the world.

But it needed a lot of work and my writing style has changed over the years. So this past June and first week of July, I quieted all the other voices in my head and focused on reworking this beloved story. The end result is that yesterday I completed a novella-length story that I'm super proud of. It's Gothic horror in the realm of H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker, two of my favorite authors.

The story is still unpolished and will now go through the editing phase, so I don't have a release date yet. I'm aiming for early next year, a few months after I release my novel THE DEVIL'S WOODS in December. I've also got some short stories I'm touching up and plan to publish, like THE DEALER OF NEEDS and CHASING THE DRAGON. So keep your eyes out for my firs short story collection.

Until then, here's a sneak peek at the synopsis for THE VAGRANTS:

Beneath the city of Boston, 

evil is gathering.

For six months Daniel Finley secretly lived under a bridge with homeless people to study their way of life. He slowly began to grow paranoid as he witnessed a strange phenomenon occurring. A fanatical nomad who calls himself a prophet of the Apocalypse is brainwashing the homeless into believing the  human race is about to be wiped out. Only the chosen will be saved.

One year later, Daniel’s life appears to be going along perfectly. He’s lives in a wonderful home, has a new girlfriend, and a book deal that will make his money problems go away. But Daniel’s troubled past quickly catches up to him, and before he knows it, he’s caught up in a war between those who control the streets of Boston and those who roam the dark tunnels beneath.

Season of the Witch

They come from mythology, folklore and fairytales and go by names such as crone, conjurer, necromancer and witch. Male witches are called warlocks and wizards, although the archetypal figure is predominately depicted as an ugly old woman--the hag. Some live as hermits in hovels in dark forests. Others gather in secret places and form covens. They operate in the realms of magic and have the power to cast spells and charm us. They can tell our fortunes or curse us with the evil eye. Old, wicked, beautiful, seductive--witches of all forms have enchanted our stories since the dawn of storytelling.

In Norse mythology there were the Norns, three immortal women who controlled the fates of gods and men. In Greek mythology, the Graeae were three old crones who shared a single eye. The hero Perseus met these witches on his way to fight the snake-headed gorgon, Medusa. These ancient myths most likely inspired Shakespeare to include three “weird sisters” in Macbeth. Even King Arthur of Camelot had his dealing with witches. One of his greatest enemies was an evil and powerful sorceress, Morgan Le Fay. King Arthur also took counsel from a wizard named Merlin.

As a child I remember witches from bedtime stories and movies like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and my all-time-favorite: the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. In stories, there are good witches who operate in the light--like Oz’s Good Witch of the North--and evil ones who practice black magic, such as the Old Witch in Snow White.

As I got older and started writing historical horror novels, I discovered that history is rich with stories about real witches. In Pagan times, witches honored the sun and moon, the winter solstice and the coming of spring. We owe our holiday of Halloween to the Celtic pagans who celebrated the festival of Samhain on October 31st at the end of the harvest season.

Witches are even warned about in the Bible in Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Exodus 22:18. Scriptures like "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" gave religious people a reason to believe that all practitioners of magick were evil. In Europe and America from the 1400s through the 1700s, righteous men went on witch hunts and burned men and women at the stake.

These fears of the terrifying witch inspired several horror movies in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. Films like Season of the Witch (1972), The Wicker Man (1975), Eyes of Fire (1983), Warlock (1991), The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Lords of Salem (2012) are just a few that come to mind. For the past decade or so, vampires and zombies have dominated books, movies, and TV, but there are signs witches are coming back into the spotlight.  

Already in the first half of 2013, there have been a number of witch movies to hit the theaters. Beautiful Creatures, based on the YA novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, is about a family of witches living in a small town in South Carolina and the secrets they keep. In Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, the brother and sister from the famous Brothers Grimm fairytale are all grown up and now hunt evil witches, which are depicted as monstrous hags.

This is also the year that Hollywood did a remake of one of my favorite horror movies of all time, The Evil Dead. It opens with a witch performing a ceremony and involves five friends finding a demon book that’s filled with witchcraft and evil spirits. I counted 13 new witch movies that will release later this year and next, including two that I find intriguing: The Last Witch Hunter and Lords of Magic.

Now this fall (2013) two new TV shows about witches will be starting in October. The first is The Witches of East End on Lifetime Channel, which has some sexy witches in it. And I'm really looking forward to the second show, American Horror Story: Coven, which airs on FX.

I don’t know if it’s happenstance or if something mystical is at play with all these witches making their way into current books and movies, but last year I wrote my own witch stories: The Girl from the Blood Coven and The Witching House. Both will release as ebooks this summer through Samhain Publishing. As a horror fiction writer, I like to combine history and legends with scary supernatural stories, as I did in my first two books, Dead of Winter and Shadows in the Mist. While both of those stories deal with mysticism and evil forces, it is my next two stories that allowed me to have fun creating my own legend about a coven witches living in the backwoods of East Texas.

My first story, The Girl from the Blood Coven, is a short story prelude to The Witching House. It’s the year 1972. Sheriff Travis Keagan is enjoying a beer at the local roadhouse, when a blood-soaked girl enters the bar. Terrified and trembling, Abigail Blackwood claims her entire family was massacred at the hippy commune in the woods. Sheriff Keagan knows that Abigail’s “family” is a coven of witches that inhabit the Blevins house. They’ve been rumored to be practicing blood sacrifices and black magic. When the sheriff and his deputies investigate the alleged murders, they discover what happened at the Blevins house is more horrific than they ever imagined.

My second story, The Witching House, is a novella that unravels the mystery of what happened to the Blevins Coven. It’s forty years after the massacre at the hippy commune. My main character is Sarah Donovan, a young woman recovering from a bad divorce and boring life. She recently started dating an exciting, adventurous man named Dean Stratton. Dean and his friends, Meg and Casey, are fearless thrill-seekers. They like to jump out of airplanes, go rock-climbing, white-water rafting, caving and do anything that offers an adrenaline rush. 

Sarah, on the other hand, is scared of just about everything--heights, tight places, the dark--but today she must confront all her fears, as she joins Dean, Meg and Casey on an urban exploring adventure. There’s an abandoned house set far back in the woods, they say. The Old Blevins House has been boarded-up for forty years. And it’s rumored to be haunted. The two couples are going to break in and explore the mysterious house. Little do they know the Old Blevins House is cursed from black magic, and something in the cellar has been craving fresh prey to cross the house’s threshold.

Writing these two stories allowed me to research the long history of witches, from Biblical times, to Norse and Greek mythology, Celtic Paganism, the Christian witch hunts, as well as the modern-day practice of Wicca. In fact, Sarah Donovan’s grandmother is a Wiccan who practices light magic and becomes Sarah’s voice of reason as she is confronted by dark forces. I also studied the differences between White Magic and Black Magic, even combed through a 17th Century spell book for conjuring evil spirits. As with my other books, I have interwoven much of the historical facts that I learned into my stories to offer readers a richer reading experience. My short story, The Girl from the Blood Coven, releases in July as a free ebook, and my novella, The Witching House, releases August 2013.

Witches and witchcraft have been a part of storytelling for centuries. At times they sink below the surface of human consciousness, as other monsters take the stage in books and movies. Some years it’s werewolves, mummies or Frankenstein. For the past several years, we’ve seen a countless number of vampires and zombies. While these monsters are still popular, you can rest assure that witches are back for another season of witchery.

Here's a song that inspired me while writing my witch stories:

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Download The Girl from the Blood Coven at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Samhain Horror.

Pre-order The Witching House at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Samhain Horror.

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Brian Moreland writes novels and short stories of horror and supernatural suspense. His first two novels, Dead of Winter and Shadows in the Mist, are now available. His third novel, The Devil’s Woods, will release in December 2013. Coming in June 2014: The Vagrants. Brian lives in Dallas, Texas where he is joyfully writing his next horror novel. Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianMoreland. Visit: http://www.brianmoreland.com/

Hanging Out with a Famous Corpse

Life can be eerie sometimes. Back when I was in college and just starting to write fiction, I studied screenwriting at the University of Texas. One of my assignments was to write a 30-page screenplay for any television show I chose. At the time, Tales from the Crypt was airing every week on HBO and, since I've always been drawn to write horror, I chose to write an episode for Tales from the Crypt. If you've ever watched the show, you might remember the old corpse who hosted the show - the Crypt Keeper - used to say really bad puns like "Hello, boys and gouls" and "So glad you could drop in, kill-seekers! Don't worry about me, it only hearse when I laugh!"

Well, even with all the corny quotes from the Crypt Keeper, I loved the show for it horrific plots, campyness and creepy episodes that always ended with a twist that was punctuated by the host's sinister laughter. It was just good scary fun. So for my assignment, I wrote a TFTC episode called "The Refuge." Set in WWII Germany, it was about four U.S. soldiers running for their lives after their platoon had just been slaughtered by something in the foggy woods. They take refuge in an abandoned church and discover some Occult-obsessed Nazis have unleashed something evil into the war.

My professor loved my script and gave me an A. I later attempted to submit my screenplay to HBO, but never found the proper person to send it to. And then the show got cancelled. I eventually expanded my WWII horror story into my first novel, Shadows in the Mist.

Ironically, the first weekend of May 2013, I attended the Texas Frightmare Weekend horror convention in Dallas, Texas and did a book signing at the FEARnet.com booth. And guess who happened to be sitting beside me to pose for photos with all the boys and ghouls? The Crypt Keeper himself. It was an honor to autograph my books right alongside him. One of them was the WWII story he originally inspired.

Funny how events in life can circle back around years later. I had a blast hanging out with my favorite corpse that day. He was just as charming in person as he was on TV. As the Crypt Keeper would say, "Now, that's INTERRORTAINMENT!"