Author Interview with Brian J. Smith
1. When did you start writing?
I was thirteen when I began writing and I did it mostly out of boredom because I wasn’t popular in school. I was, as Jordanna Brewster’s character Delilah pointed out to Elijah Wood’s character Casey in the movie The Faculty, “the geeky Stephen King kid.” I wore dark clothes and wrote in my notebooks and stayed in my own little bubble sort of. I felt comfortable being in my little fictional world but I never had anything against my graduating class.
2. What was your journey towards becoming an author like?
It was difficult. I’d get rejection after another and another and another and it got to the point where I thought I wasn’t going to be good enough to do this thing that I grew to love and considered walking away but to coin another phrase, “my momma didn’t raise no cowards.” I knew that the first thing I had to do was change my writing style so I read a lot of books about writing and read other authors besides Dean Koontz, Jack Ketchum, Stephen King and Bentley Little. I learned how to balance narration and dialogue to craft a good style; it’s not always great but it’s good.
3. What can you tell me about your latest book? (Feel free to include an excerpt.)
My latest book is something near and dear to me: short stories. I love them, I breathe them and I covet them and I know I’m not the only one. I read Stephen King’s Night Shift when I was twelve, watched every horror anthology shows and movies I could find.
My first book was a short story collection called Dark Avenues (which includes the novella of the same name), and loved doing it because of my love of multiple author anthologies or single-author collections. I’ve been honored to be included in a lot of anthologies and now I get to release my second short story collection this year.
It is called Strange Discovery And Other Strange Discoveries and it will be published on July 29, 2024. When I say there are “strange discoveries” in this book, I’m not lying. There’s bleak horror, sci-fi horror, paranormal horror, coming of age horror and etc. I even have a playlist on Spotify of songs that have a tie to the stories in this book.
“A blanket of thick stale air drifted throughout the house, tossing the mixed smells of wax and a thick coppery odor across my face. Faint shafts of sunlight sifted through the crop-top green curtains draped across the window above the sink, spilled across and over the blue-tiled countertop, glinted off the stainless-steel appliances and pooled along the linoleum floor.
I rubbed my eyes with the edge of my right hand until they adjusted to the gloom and drew thick clouds of stale air deep into my lungs. Jerry glanced over his left shoulder and nodded toward the countertop, his eyes wide and blanched with shock. I followed his gaze and peered at a long-stemmed wine glass sitting on the left side of the sink with a dark-red film coating the inside; an old crumpled box of RAT-B-GONE sat next to it.”
—An excerpt from my story “Patterson House” from my short story collection, Strange Discovery And Other Discoveries.
4. What sort of methods do you use for book promotion?
Interviews (such as one like this), excerpts, podcasts interviews, sharing links and anything that is useful for sharing my (and other authors’) work. Do whatever you can to get some attention to your projects…well, not Only Fans, unless your idea of Only Fans was to read stories and then, yeah, go ahead.
5. Where do you get your ideas for stories?
Everyone has a “what if” machine. It’s called a brain.
Something that begs the question “what if…” I love my “what if” machine and sometimes I’ll even turn it up to “this would be a good story if” mode as well.
What if Trump fans loved him so much they were ready to hurt themselves just to prove it to him? This would be a good story if the wind made people go stiff and caused rigor mortis.
What if the people who carved their initials on trees received the same treatment in return, but on their bodies?
Anything from a “what if” to a “this would be a good story if…” can be a good idea for a short story. How, go write it. That’s all that’s left to do.
You’ll fix everything else later just get it out of your system and you’ll feel better.
6. What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a body horror novelette and I just recently finished the first novella of a three-book trilogy about two “supernaturalists” and I’m working on the second book. I’d like to work on a body horror novella that I’ve had my sights on, but I’ll start it after the novelette and thankfully I’ve got the outline to that halfway done.
7. Any advice for other authors?
Go back and read the last two paragraphs from Question 5.
Two more pieces of advice: write, write and write.
Be patient, keep your head on a swivel and always, ALWAYS remember: YOU are the creator so create and have fun.
ABOUT BRIAN:
Brian J. Smith is the author of Dark Avenues (novella and the short story collection with the same name), 1342 Lindley Road, The Tuckers, Consuming Darkness, Abbie’s Wrath, Bad Allergies and Dead River. He resides in southeastern Ohio where he drinks too much coffee, listens to horror fiction podcasts, has too many books and buys more and thinks that Valentine’s Day should be replaced by Second Halloween. He can be found on Facebook under Brian Smith, on Twitter under beardedauthor9, on Threads under horrorauthor9, on BlueSky under beardeauthor.bsky.social, on Instagram under horrorauthor9 and on Amazon under https://www.amazon.com/author/brianjsmith.