Written Author Interview
- Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do outside of writing. What is a day in the life like for you?
- My name is Brian J. Smith and I’m 44 years old and I’m a native of Ohio. I’m the author of ten novels in the horror and mystery genre including Dead River, Consuming Darkness, and most recently a short story collection called Strange Discovery And Other Strange Discovery. I enjoy cooking, reading, fishing, watching horror movies and horror tv shows and listening to music and podcasts. I get up at 4:30 in the morning, go through my morning rituals (breakfast and coffee, a nice walk, shower and dress) and look at my next chapter for the day and try to get at least 3,000 words done. I’ll either get 3,000 or go for more.
- What inspired your first novel? What was the thing that got you into writing in the first place?
- I’d lost my mother and my uncle on her side of the family at the time I’d written my first novel and thought that the subject of death was something to center on. Death is like a snake in a high weed; we know its there but we don’t know the exact moment when it’ll come out and bite us. As a child, I loved to do headstone rubbings at summer camp and never got the chance to do them after that. I wanted to write a book that would combine the aspects of death, the supernatural and headstone rubbings and something else I thought was important but justice for the dead. Hence, my novella “Dark Avenues” was born.
- I used to tell my little sister stories before bedtime and I always told her fairy tales with the happy endings because I didn’t want to tell her the real ones and my parents said that I had a knack for that kind of thing. I used to write short stories when I was twelve to cure my boredom during school and my sixth grade teacher asked me to do some for extra credit.
- How do you come up with characters? Are they spontaneous or meticulously planned?
- My characters are molded from people I’ve seen in public or met or a family member but their intentions are purely fictional. I do, however, take the liberty of changing facial features, eye color, and whatnot and change them so I don’t offend the actual person themselves.
- I don’t think that anyone in my family are capable of the things that the villains in my novels do…unless they know something that I don’t and then I have a reason to kill them off in my books lol.
- What are some of your favorite genres to read? Are there any books you’d recommend to first time readers or people looking for something new?
- Paranormal, supernatural, body horror and crime noir.
- Off Season by Jack Ketchum
- The Rising by Brian Keene
- Chills by Mary SanGiovanni
- Red Station by Kenzie Jennings
- Night Shift and Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
- Maeve Fly by CJ Leede
- The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
- What’s the most difficult thing about being a writer?
- Rejection. It can make or break an author. All we can do is brush it off and keep going because it won’t be the first time. Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, H.P. Lovecraft and the authors I’ve named in my previous answer have all been rejected but they didn’t give up and they didn’t give up.
- What is your process to completing a novel from outline to final product?
- I don’t like to outline if I don’t have to but if I must then I won’t hesitate. I did an outline for the crime noir novella and the body horror novel I wrote this year. I did it simply because there were certain events that had to occur at a particular time in the novel that I couldn’t remember off of the top of my head.
- What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve written in your novel? Don’t worry, we don’t judge here.
- In my novel “Abbie’s Wrath”, the vengeful ghost in that book uses one of the three MC character’s dead parents to haunt her. She resurrects them as they looked like after the car accident they died in but she had her mother giving fellatio to her father and when it was time for her father to “get off” he sprayed a pool of maggots across her mother’s face.
- What’s one thing about being a writer that absolutely drives you up the wall?
- Single quotation marks. They didn’t invent “ for someone to use ‘. Everyone has their own style and I respect it but I don’t understand it.
- What does being a successful writer look like for you? What type of life do you want to live as a writer?
- To tell a good story that everyone will enjoy with a topic that the reader and the author can connect with; Abbie’s Wrath dealt with bullying, Dead River dealt with guilt and Bad Allergies dealt with something we all hate and that’s allergies. I want to live a life that is full of self-isolation with accomplishment and praise because at the end of the day we all want a way to leave behind the world that we deal with.
- Describe your writing journey. If you had to write a story centered around it, do you think you could pull it off?
- I think I could. A little bit of distraction that I’ve dealt with during my writing journey is mostly portrayed in my body horror novel. You can make some people happy and there are some you can’t and sometimes we just need to write to get through the pressure of that.
Follow and Connect w/ Brian J. Smith
About
Brian J. Smith is the author of nine novels, such as Dead River and Consuming Darkness and his most recent second short story collection “Strange Discovery And Other Strange Discoveries”. He resides in southeastern Ohio, drinks a lot of coffee, has too many books and buys more and considers Valentine’s Day to be Second Halloween. He can be found on Bluesky underbubbywriteshorror9, Threads and Instagram under horrorauthor9 and on Amazon under https://www.amazon.com/author/brianjsmith.
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