BRYAN W. ALASPA

I could just tell you about how Ron Gavalik is a poet, but that would not come anywhere close to being the actual truth. As a writer, I respect other writers and always sort of respected poets. In general, though, I always kept poets at arm's length. Until I met Ron. Ron's poetry hits me in the gut the way other poets don't. I envision whiskey/bourbon-soaked bars in the mean streets of Pittsburgh when I read his work. I envision a steel town with large men in hard hats, drink

It’s interesting to realize you have developed a certain style of writing. I never really thought it would happen for me. I wondered, for years, if I would ever find my own voice or find my own way to write a story. Then, suddenly, years later, here we are and I think you can probably tell a Bryan Alaspa story from another story. I can mimic others, of course, it’s part of my day job, but mostly you can tell when it’s me. One of the things I like to do is flesh out characters

I've talked about this before, but it comes up time and again. People always want to know where the stories I write come from. What's interesting is the people you meet who try to tell you they have a great idea for a story. Hey, you should write about - XYZ. That would be a great book! I always appreciate that. My own father was a consistent source. In fact, from time to time, those suggestions are good enough to get stored away in my brain somewhere or a notebook. But for t

Scott Norman is the kind of a guy you often see called a "bear of a man." Hes tall. He's big. Everything about him is bigger than life. He has a loud laugh, loud way of speaking, and is a kind of force of nature when you meet him. When I first met him, it was my freshman year in college at Webster University in St. Louis. One of the first people I met and he and I became fast friends. Scott had ambitions to direct movies and I got to star in at least two of them. One of the f

Writing about dark subjects is something a lot of people ask me about. I have had conversations with other people who are just baffled at how dark some of my work is. How did you come up with that? What made you even think about something like that? Why do you write about such dark things? Why do you write about scary things? Can't you write about puppies, bunnies and flowers for once? Of course, I have had an interest in dark things since I was a kid. I tell people the movie

When I was younger, I was the kid who loved to read. I was not the daring kid who jumped around on rocks or climbed trees. Hell, I was the kid who stood out from everyone else because I had flat feet and couldn't wear sneakers. I was the kid wearing orthopedic shoes with a stacked heel at the age of four and five while riding my Big Wheel. I couldn't climb a fence or pull myself up onto a tree branch. There was one thing I loved. I loved being lost in my imagination. It start

I have been writing for a long time. The first time I wrote anything resembling fiction was when I wrote a three page work of terrible fiction in the third grade. I sat down at my mom's blue electric typewriter. It was a device I found fascinating. It hummed when you turned it on and there was just something cool about it. This was before word processors, folks, and computers in the home or that you could carry in your pocket. You had to roll paper into the roller and then th

I have been self-publishing for a while. Of course, there is part of me that wishes I could be everywhere, but I was messing with self-publishing before there were ebooks. I was doing Print on Demand publishing back in the late 90s and jumped on the idea of e-publishing even before there was a Kindle. For me, I always felt that ebooks were the future of reading and publishing, but there is still the thrill of holding a physical print copy of your book in your hands. There are

Over the weekend I saw a 60 Minutes piece where they interviewed the legendary spy author John le Carre. I have not read any of his stuff, but I have seen some of the movies made from them. He writes the very smart, realistic, spy novels that try to put spies in the real world. Intense stuff requiring a lot of research and the exact opposite of the cartoonish (but fun) stuff that James Bond does. I love seeing how other writers do their thing, regardless of if their stuff is

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

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

I think one of the things that surprise people is that I am not a full-time author. Sure, I have more than 30 books and novels out there. They do OK as far as sales, but there are people out there who do this as an indie writer full time and sell hundreds of books a day. I am not one of them. So, yes I have a day job. I long for the day when I can write my books and do nothing else, but that day is not here and it may never be. I think if you are a writer considering bypassin

Thanks to a writer by the name of David Gaughran, I now know that there is a new scam out there by unscrupulous indie authors who want to get their books into the Amazon lists by, well, cheating. There's no other way to call it what it is. It is not gaming the system. It is not finding something cool and running with it. If the people did not download, buy, or read your book in a legit way, then you're cheating. This new abomination is known as a clickfarm. I had never heard

There are a lot of writers out there and they have a lot of suggestions for marketing your work. The most popular thing I see advised to use for marketing your books is the use of an email newsletter. That direct marketing tool, they say, is like the Bible and indie writers left and right swear by it. When I ask them for advice and discuss what I've been using I find an interesting thin: a good percentage of these same writers have weak social media plans and very few of them

So, I take pride in being a guy who writes thrillers. If you have been to this site and visited my work before, you know I have an obsession with murderers, ghosts and alternate realities with shadow people and black-eyed children. I like scary stuff. I always have. So, you may wonder, where does the Deklan Falls hard-boiled detective series fit in and why the hell do I write them if they don't sell as well as, say, The Man From Taured or Vicious? Well, the answer is - I just

Sometimes I get people asking me about what it takes to be a writer. I mean, I do it for a living. I write all day, almost every day, and then I also write books and novels in my spare time. I think most people feel they have a creative streak, I think most people do. We all can imagine things when we are kids, but something happens to some of us when we grow up and that streak gets pushed aside for the practical stuff. Those of us who can hold on to that childlike feeling, w

When I was young, all I wanted to do was write for a living. For almost as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was be an author. In my mind, I would write these novels that would thrill and chill and keep people up at night and have nightmares and that would be my job. I was a weird little kid. I have achieved that, but there are, dear readers, many a day when I do not feel like I have. I mean, in my imagination, I wrote full time. I could and would work anywhere I wan

One of the things that you are going to have to do when you decide to self-publish is use social media. Get over your fear of Facebook and Twitter and learn how to use them. Those are the ones that I use the most and I have done some actual experiments where I did not post my links to my various books to Twitter and found that sales have gone down. You will hear a lot of people talk about all of the other areas and things you need to do. You'll hear about email lists and send

That scary-looking guy there to the left is a fellow author and a great friend. Yeah, he's trying to look mean, but he's actually a really nice guy (don't tell him I told you that). Patrick and I have become pretty good friends over the years and I consider him a brother from another mother. He has a new book coming out soon, but you should also check out his novel Progeny in the meantime. As part of my blog tour, I had a stop there writing a guest post all about writing YA s