I see that most authors have a bio page so I'll include a little personal information about myself.
I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I come from a large extended family from both West Texas near Lubbock and South Texas near San Antonio. I admit to having a pair of cowboy boots and enjoy two-steppin' and spinning a lovely lady around the dance floor. I love football and a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan. Since I graduated from U.T. Austin, I also bleed orange and root for the Texas Longhorns. Hook em'.
As a boy, I had an active imagination and loved reading scary stories. I read a lot of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Robert R. McCammon. I started writing when I was nineteen and never gave up on my dream of being an author. Ok, to be honest I got discouraged a few times, and questioned whether I could ever make a living as an author. I finally decided that writing novels is my calling, and even if I wasn't getting rich overnight, I was going write this books inside me. That determination propelled me to complete my novels and get them published.
My writing journey began over twenty years ago when I started my first novel and wrote a few short stories. I studied creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin. I attended a writing retreat in Rome with bestselling authors John Saul, Terry Brooks, Dorothy Allison, and Elizabeth Engstrom Cratty. I've taken a workshop with Brian Keene and learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful author. I've worked as a ghost writer and edited a number of books for other authors, both fiction and non-fiction. In my own fiction, I enjoy writing stories where realism crosses over into surrealism. That means I strive to write believable characters and that my monsters orginate from some historical truth.
Success for me didn't happen overnight. I put in thousands of hours of writing (seriously) and received a lot of rejections from agents and publishers in the beginning. As an entrepreneur, I decided if I was going to be a career author, I had to take action to get the ball rolling. So I originally self-published my first novel, Shadows in the Mist. I've had some unexpected successes with it. Within weeks of its release the novel hit number one on Amazon's bestselling Thrillers & Mysteries list. It held there for a few hours, and actually surpassed The DaVinci Code, which fell to #4, and I remember being awestruck. Shadows in the Mist was well received by most reviewers. It went on to win a gold medal for Best Horror novel in the 2007 Independent Publishers Awards. By late summer of 2007, the book sold to Berkely-Penguin/Putnam for a mass paperback deal and re-released in September 2008. In February 2010, a German publisher translated my book into German and released it in Austria and Germany where it still sells today under the title Schattenkrieger, which translates to Shadow Warriors.
I spent two years researching and writing my second novel, Dead of Winter, a story that is very dear to my heart. It took over a year to find the right publishere, but the wait was worth it because I found an awesome editor, Don D'Auria, who is a legend in horror publishing. He accepted my book in February of 2011 for his new horror line at Samhain Publishing, and my novel was chosen to be one of the first books released in October. The adventure of being an author just keeps getting more rewarding.
If you like supernatural short stories, I've published a couple that you can download. Check out "Chasing the Dragon" and "The Dealer of Needs."
I haven't always been a professional writer. While living in Dallas, I spent several years working as a producer and film/video editor. I edited the documentary Band of Champions, as well as hundreds of corporate videos. I traveled to Iraq twice with the Tostitos and the USO to film TV commercials with the troops. My commercials played during the 2010 Fiesta Bowl, the 2011 Fiesta Bowl, and the 2011 BSC Championship football game. One of my proudest accomplishments is a WWII documentary I produced about my grandfather. You can see it at MY GRANDFATHER'S STORY.
I've lived most of my life in Texas. For an amazing year and a half, I got to live in Hawaii, on the tropical island of Maui and learned a lot about myself. Today, I'm back living in Dallas. I am writing my next horror novel and editing and designing books for other authors.
I also write a blog, DARK LUCIDITY, about the exciting and often bumpy career of writing for a living. I'm also an amateur photographer, so I like to include plenty of photos of my outdoor adventures.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you get a chance to read some of my horror fiction and discover some terrifying creatures waiting in the darkness.
Sincerely,
Brian Moreland
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