New novella CHRISTMAS EVE ON HAUNTED HILL

My new Christmas horror novella CHRISTMAS EVE ON HAUNTED HILL is now available on Kindle.

CHRISTMAS EVE ON HAUNTED HILL on Kindle

Ten years ago on Christmas Eve, Silas Herzinger donned a Santa suit and took an axe to 15 members of his extended family.  Luke Herzinger, his youngest son, was the sole survivor of the infamous Herzinger Family Massacre.  Now, after a decade away, a despondent and suicidal Luke has come home to face his past and battle the evil that still resides in the old family home on Haunted Hill.

68 KILL - The Movie

Here's some news I've had to sit on for quite some time. My novel 68 KILL is becoming a movie to be directed by Trent Haaga (director of CHOP and screenwriter of CHEAP THRILLS and DEADGIRL). Brought to you by Snowfort Pictures, the people responsible for WE ARE STILL HERE, CHEAP THRILLS, STARRY EYES, and numerous others. Trent's script is fantastic. The movie will kick ass.

Announcement link and story text from Bloody Disgusting below.

If you've never read 68 KILL, now would be a good time.  It's just $2.99 on Kindle:

68 KILL on Kindle

"One of our favorite genre director-writer-actors is casting up his next pic.

Trent Haaga, who previously directed Chop (pictured), and wrote Deadgirl, as well as the genre festival hit Cheap Thrills, is in pre-production on 68 Kill, says ScreenDaily.

Based on the crime novel by Bryan Smith, “the film centers on a hard-working guy who can’t say no to beautiful women which lands him in trouble when he agrees to steal $68,000.”

Shooting is set to begin in March 2016, with casting currently taking place.

Keep up with all of our AFM news as it breaks."

68 KILL announcement at BLOODY DISGUSTING

ALL HALLOW'S DEAD, new Halloween novel

My new Halloween-themed horror novel ALL HALLOW'S DEAD is now available in both Kindle and paperback editions.

ALL HALLOW'S DEAD on Kindle

ALL HALLOW'S DEAD paperback

Book description:

It’s Halloween week in Willow Springs, TN, and a mad slasher is on the loose!  Twenty-five years ago, a group of local boys did a very bad thing.  Now a masked killer is leaving a trail of corpses and bloody pumpkins all over town.  Brutal vengeance against his former tormentors and thirty-one dead for Halloween are the madman’s demented goals.  As the body count mounts, local law enforcement scrambles to track down the seemingly unstoppable killer and bring the carnage to an end.

Tale of a Mystery Solved

Back in my mid teens a local station used to show surprisingly graphic horror films in the wee hours on Sunday night. I'm talking the very early 80's. 1980, 1981, no later than that. So much time has passed that I couldn't tell you the names of most of those movies. But they were definitely above and beyond what was the standard for broadcast TV back then in terms of violent and sexual explicitness. This was before cable and satellite TV came to my neighborhood. We only had five stations, including the three major network affiliates at the time, the PBS station, and the independent WZTV (now a Fox affiliate). The latter was only a few years old at the time. Logic would seem to suggest the station airing these movies was WZTV, but I'm not positive about that. Some nagging sense at the back of my head makes me feel like it was actually one of the network affiliates. But who the hell knows, really? This was most of my life ago, after all.

Anyway, for decades the only one of these movies positively identified in my head was something called THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME. This was a good movie better known under its alternate titles DEAD OF NIGHT and DEATHDREAM. But there was a scene from another of these late night movies that seared itself into my consciousness and has stayed there ever since. I always had the vague impression that it was a vampire movie, but in later years I was only ever able to remember this one scene. In the scene, the bare back of a beautiful woman is shown in a dark setting. Another beautiful woman leans over her and bites her on the neck. A single trickle of red blood then slides down the bare back.

There's a very strong likelihood that one little scene exerted a subconscious influence on the more erotic elements in my own horror tales. As I said, however, later on I could never remember what that movie was or anything else about it. I would frequently ask people about it. No one had a clue. When the Internet came along, I posed the question in various forums, figuring some genre junkie would finally solve the mystery for me, but no one ever did. Most people suggested various early 70's Hammer and Euro horror films as possibilities. Turns out these people were on the right track, at least.

Recently I did a lot of movie browsing and shopping on Amazon, with a focus on obscure horror films from the 70's and 80's. As part of this, I watched a lot of trailers on YouTube. Some of the movies are even available in full on YouTube and I skimmed through several trying to get a feel for what they were like. In the process of doing this, I stumbled across the scene that has haunted me all these years and decades.

The movie is THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE from 1972. There's a relatively cheap DVD edition on Amazon. Oddly, the full film is also available as one of the extra features on the blu-ray of DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, another cultish piece of early 70's Euro horror.  I bought the DVD and the DOD blu-ray, because I'm weird like that.  Anyway, this isn't exactly an unknown movie in horror circles. In retrospect, I'm a bit stunned that none of the horror junkies I queried over the years were ever able to identify it for me. But that's beside the point.  I watched THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE last night and was pleased to find I quite enjoyed it. It's wickedly subversive, particularly for its time period.

In closing, it feels a bit weird that a mystery that endured this long should end in so random a way, but I won't argue with it.

BLOODRUSH

My long unavailable vampire novella BLOODRUSH is back in a new Kindle edition for just $2.99. Now featuring 16,000 words of bonus content. The bonus content includes lengthy excerpts from unfinished stories and notes on the stories. All writers have unfinished fragments of stories or partial novels stored on the hard drives of their computers and usually that's where they stay. I've chosen to share some of my fragments, along with insights into why I didn't finish them and why one (or two) of them may yet be resurrected.

Check it out:

BLOODRUSH with bonus content on Kindle

New novel THE REBORN

After a detour into crime fiction, I am back into seriously twisted HORROR territory with my new novel THE REBORN.  Get the Kindle version at the link below.  A paperback edition will follow within the next couple days.

THE REBORN on Kindle

Murder. Sexual violence. Necrophilia. These are the things Josh Booker has fantasized about since he was a boy. For years the conflicted young man struggled to contain the dark urges growing inside him, but now he has succumbed and taken his first victim. In the aftermath, he alternately feels elation and despair. Now that he’s done it once, however, the urges are stronger than ever and he knows he will kill again. But then something unexpected happens. His first victim returns, alive again and in a pristine new body. For reasons unknown, Mia Holloway finds herself helplessly drawn to the man who killed her. Together they descend into a twisted nightmare of complications and bloody murder.

STRANGE WAYS Kindle Countdown

STRANGE WAYS, my horror novel about diabolical witches from last year, is currently on sale for 99 cents as a Kindle Countdown Deal.  The sale lasts through May 31.  After that, it goes back up to regular price, so grab it now.

STRANGE WAYS on Kindle

Newsletter launch

For some time I have done much of my online book promotion via my public Facebook page. However, Facebook's algorithms have rendered it difficult to reliably reach a large audience. I am therefore launching a newsletter to directly reach those interested in hearing updates about my books and upcoming projects. The newsletter will occasionally include snippets from works in progress and other random insights into my books. A first newsletter will go out at some point within the next week or so. Subscribe at the link below.

SUBSCRIBE to the goriest newsletter in the world

SURROUNDED BY BASTARDS

I have a new crime novel out on Kindle today.  It's just $2.99.  A paperback is forthcoming within the next few days, so keep an eye out for that if you prefer print.

For everyone else, you can get it here:

SURROUNDED BY BASTARDS on Kindle

Brian Keene on SLOWLY WE ROT

Brian Keene, bestselling author of modern horror classic THE RISING and numerous other books, has weighed in on my newest novel SLOWLY WE ROT.

"SLOWLY WE ROT blew the back of my mind out.  Hands down the single best zombie novel I have ever read."
--Brian Keene, author of THE RISING and THE LOST LEVEL

If you don't have SLOWLY WE ROT yet, you can get it here:

SLOWLY WE ROT at Amazon

SLOWLY WE ROT

My new novel SLOWLY WE ROT is now available on Kindle and in paperback from Amazon.

SLOWLY WE ROT Kindle

SLOWLY WE ROT paperback

“Shocking, emotional, and punctuated by moments of brutal savagery, SLOWLY WE ROT contains some of the most frightening scenes in recent horror fiction. If you enjoy zombie stories, you’ll love this book. If you believe there’s no life left in the zombie subgenre, Bryan Smith is about to prove you wrong. SLOWLY WE ROT is a searing, stunning triumph.”

--Jonathan Janz, author of The Nightmare Girl and Savage Species

A novel of the zombie apocalypse that's NOT about the zombies. Long after a plague that wiped out most of the human race, a young man named Noah resides in a remote mountain cabin. Several years have passed since he last saw another human being. The long period of isolation and loneliness has fostered a deep despair in Noah, who also struggles with suicidal impulses. But Noah is a man who was struggling even before the end of the world, a seemingly helpless slave to his addictions. When the vindictive sister he has long believed dead unexpectedly returns, events transpire that prompt him to leave his mountain refuge and embark on a cross-country trek to find the lost love of his life. It doesn't matter that she’s probably long dead. He just needs a purpose again and this is it. Along the way, he experiences moments of hope and profound tragedy. Soon Noah’s sanity begins to fray and his ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality starts to disintegrate. Through it all, he keeps trying to reach the one he lost long ago. And he’ll continue no matter what, even if it costs him his life, because it’s a big, empty world and this is all he has.

"Sure, there are flesh-eating zombies in Bryan Smith’s gut-punch of a novel, SLOWLY WE ROT, but in telling the tale of one man’s nightmarish journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape, Smith reminds us of the most brutal truth of all: the worst monsters dwell inside us."

– Tim Waggoner, author of LIKE DEATH and EAT THE NIGHT

“SLOWLY WE ROT sneaks up on you like the walking dead. It opens in familiar territory, and then, slowly and methodically, sheds the trappings of the genre… piece by bloody piece. Bryan Smith’s latest is bleak and brutal, an uncompromising and completely unpredictable genre-bender. As heartfelt as it is batshit, purple sky crazy, SLOWLY WE ROT belongs on the shelf next to Brian Keene’s THE RISING.”

--Mason James Cole,

Author of PRAY TO STAY DEAD and BUSTER VOODOO

"SLOWLY WE ROT isn't just the best book I've read in years. It might be my favorite of all time.  I can't remember the last time a story invoked such an array of emotions from me. When I was finished, I knew Smith had taken me on a brutal journey that I will never forget."--Kristopher Rufty, author of JAGGER and THE LURKING SEASON

CRIME SPREE BUNDLE

Announcing the CRIME SPREE bundle, which collects three novels for the price of one in a single Kindle collection.  Books included are 68 KILL, BLOOD AND WHISKEY, and THE KILLING KIND.

Buy here:

CRIME SPREE bundle on Kindle