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-Inside the Mind of a Working Writer-

BRYAN W. ALASPA

The Wraith - Blog Tour - Hosts needed!

Bryan W. Alaspa

Jul 16, 2019
1 min

The Wraith - Blog Tour - Hosts needed!

So, I’m going out on a book tour this August for my horror novel The Wraith. Of course, being that I’m shy and don’t want to be seen in public, this is another virtual tour. I love doing virtual tours because I get to visit a lot of places, get in front of a bunch of people and I don’t have to travel (I am afraid of flying) and not dress up or anything. Great, so I am going on tour, but I need tour stops! I am once again teaming with the fine folks at Silver Dagger Tours who

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Read an Excerpt of The Wraith

Bryan W. Alaspa

Jul 4, 2019
10 min

Read an Excerpt of The Wraith

My latest novel - The Wraith - is coming July 9 in both print & Kindle editions. It's a companion story to my bestselling The Man From Taured. It's also set in my fictional town of Knorr, PA. The men from IDEA are back, first introduced in TMFT. The Wraith tells two parallel stories. One, about a man during WWII who discovers a portal into a new realm which seems to allow for teleportation of men and materials. The second story is set in modern times and tells the story of Kn

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The Wraith is just 99 cents

The Wraith - available for pre-order: companion novel to The Man From Taured

Bryan W. Alaspa

May 5, 2019
2 min

The Wraith - available for pre-order: companion novel to The Man From Taured

Proud to announce that you can now pre-order my new novel The Wraith from Amazon. Coming this July, The Wraith is a companion novel to the bestselling The Man From Taured. It is not a sequel, but deals with alternate realities and features the Agents of IDEA first appearing in TMFT. Some of your favorite characters from that novel show up here again. The Wraith is also set in my fictional town of Knorr, which has been the site of other novels like The Dead Phone and Sapphire.

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An interview with author TJ Martinson about his debut novel Reign of the Kingfisher

Bryan W. Alaspa

Apr 22, 2019
7 min

An interview with author TJ Martinson about his debut novel Reign of the Kingfisher

I love when I get to meet and chat with a new writer. I had the great fortune of being told about this new novel The Reign of the Kingfisher by a gentleman named T.J. Martinson. It sounded so interesting, I had to get it. I did get it for my Kindle and when I realized it was set in Chicago and Mr. Martinson was from the Chicago area, I had to reach out. Turns out T.J. Martinson is an awesome guy in general. He was willing to stop by this little blog and I sent him some questi

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Good news coming for fans of The Man From Taured this summer

Bryan W. Alaspa

Mar 22, 2019
2 min

Good news coming for fans of The Man From Taured this summer

It's one of those weird things that happens in the world of indie publishing. The kind of publishing I do. You put out a novel and you market the thing. The book sells pretty well at the start, then a little bit more when the audiobook comes out, but mostly it sits there. Then, out of the blue, four years later, the book just starts to generate a little buzz. Sure, you aren't exactly on the NY Times bestseller list just yet and Netflix (or some other streaming service - ahem)

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Cover & title reveal - coming in 2019

Bryan W. Alaspa

Nov 23, 2018
1 min

Cover & title reveal - coming in 2019

A new nightmare coming in 2019. Cal Trove is the reclusive billionaire in charge of a massive technology company. Everyone has a Trove phone, Trove TV, laptop or apps. Trove himself is a recluse, living on his large private island surrounded by hundreds of his acolyte employees who worship him like a god. Now, his friends from college have been brought to this isolated place so Cal Trove can unveil his latest creation: Revision. A way to actually change the past, alter realit

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The journey to S.P.I.D.A.R.

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 27, 2018
4 min

The journey to S.P.I.D.A.R.

One of the questions I as an author get asked a lot is - where do you get your story ideas? I have talked about my latest horror book S.P.I.D.A.R. and how it came to be, but there are some deeper things that happened along the way. I mean, spiders are scary all on their own, but why create a bunch of fictional half-robot/half-spider creatures that do the horrifying things they do to people like in this story? I have personally been afraid of spider for a long time. However, i

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S.P.I.D.A.R. is out today!

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 23, 2018
1 min

S.P.I.D.A.R. is out today!

Today is the day! At long last, the hype is over and now it's just time to be terrified. My new horror book, and first book published with Beacon Publishing Group, S.P.I.D.A.R. is out today! In ALL formats, folks. Are you afraid of spiders? Many people are... If so, then this one will really scare you. SYNOPSIS: The town of Whittier is isolated in Alaska and the people all live within towers once used by the military. The tourist season is over and winter is on the way. Then

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Spider Facts: the Black Widow

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 21, 2018
3 min

Spider Facts: the Black Widow

There are few spiders in the world with a more fearsome, and undeserved, reputation than the black widow spider. They are just the epitome of "evil" to a lot of people. They are a shiny black with the bright red hourglass markings. They are notorious for being deadly poisonous and for eating their mates - giving rise to the idea of wives who kill their husbands being labeled "black widows." There was even a movie out in the 80s with that as a title about a vicious woman who d

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Scary Insects: The emerald cockroach wasp

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 19, 2018
3 min

Scary Insects: The emerald cockroach wasp

The world of insects... so much to truly be afraid of. Of course, most of it is at a very small level and most of the time you, as a full-fledged human being, do not need to worry about little wasps like the one above: the Emerald Cockroach Wasp or jewel wasp. Look at it. It's beautiful, and it's relatively small, and it poses virtually no threat to people unless a person were to grab it and hold it. If you're a cockroach, though, you would find the emerald cockroach wasp the

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Spider Facts: the Brown Recluse Spider

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 16, 2018
3 min

Spider Facts: the Brown Recluse Spider

For the most part, we are pretty lucky here in North America when it comes to spiders. If you live in Central or South America or some of the warmer or more tropical climates (or Australia - so many deadly things live there it's almost unfair) you may have poisonous spiders, ants, centipedes or giant spiders or other insects. However, in the U.S. and North America there are few spiders to fear - but there are a couple. One of the most infamous is the Brown Recluse Spider The

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New horror book: S.P.I.D.A.R. available for Kindle Pre-Order

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 15, 2018
1 min

New horror book: S.P.I.D.A.R. available for Kindle Pre-Order

The town of Whittier is isolated in Alaska and the people all live within towers once used by the military. The tourist season is over and winter is on the way. Then a body washes up on shore. A body that says it's from the government facility across the sound at Esther Island. With a storm coming, the citizens of Whittier have to deal with this on their own. They put the body in the basement of the towers, but their doctor wants to find out what killed this man. Was it a dis

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Zombie insects

Bryan W. Alaspa

Feb 13, 2018
3 min

Zombie insects

The world of insects is a generally terrifying place. As the Jeff Goldblum character in The Fly says - it is a basic and brutal place. This is true. There may be debate these days as to whether or not insects or other animals have any kind of emotion, but the fact is most insect species have set orders and duties for each member of the colony or nest to do. They attack other insects for food, raid nests, kill opposing nests and defend nests with a sort of insane brutality. So

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How my day job helped me write S.P.I.D.A.R.

Bryan W. Alaspa

Jan 31, 2018
3 min

How my day job helped me write S.P.I.D.A.R.

One of the things I have written about before is that I am a 'working' writer. This doesn't mean I make a living just writing my books. It means I write for a living and, in my case, this means writing blogs, website content and marketing materials. You may have thought I spent my days coming up with the demented stories I put out, but instead I spend my days writing blog articles to generate leads and writing high-SEO content for websites for a large international corporatio

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Book Trailer for S.P.I.D.A.R. - coming January 2018!

Word of mouth: How you can help me with Storyland

Bryan W. Alaspa

Sep 27, 2017
4 min

Word of mouth: How you can help me with Storyland

The fact is that the publishing world has changed. You can debate until the end of time if it's changed for the better or worse. I think it's changed for the better. I like the vast expanse of authors and works of fiction that I might not have had access to in the pre-Kindle world. I can go on and on about how I was there trying to push the idea of self-publishing before there was a Kindle, but even I can't inflate my ego that large. People have been self-publishing for centu

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Where do stories come from?

Bryan W. Alaspa

Sep 7, 2017
4 min

Where do stories come from?

The main theme of my new novel Storyland is discussing where stories come from. Of course, as a writer, I wonder where the "stories" come from. However, I think this is a question that can be extended into other creative pursuits. Where do paintings come from? Where do songs come from? Where do [fill in the blank] come from? We creative types have brains that I feel work differently from others and I love watching the creative process in someone composing a song, poem, or pai

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On Writing: about the dark stuff

Bryan W. Alaspa

Sep 6, 2017
4 min

On Writing: about the dark stuff

My new novel Storyland (available for pre-order now in print & Kindle formats- FYI) delves into some of the darkest territory I have yet to write about. I can't give too much away without giving away the ending, of course, but I can tell you a little. Our narrator, a guy named Ned, wakes up one day to find out his friend from childhood, Martin Brace, has brutally butchered four people who were camping in the woods - leaving just a young boy alive. This sends Ned down some ver

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OK - So what the hell is Storyland?

Bryan W. Alaspa

Sep 2, 2017
5 min

OK - So what the hell is Storyland?

You may have seen the announcement that my new novel, Storyland, is available for Kindle pre-order as well as in print. Both of them are at a special price for you early-birds. Technically, the official publication date is Halloween 2017 (October 31), but through various means, even you print folks can get early copies at a low, low price. OK - sales pitch is over... What is Storyland? Storyland isn't quite like anything I have written before. It's my first real attempt to wr

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