Brian Kirk

A Journey of the Imagination

Author: bkirk (page 7 of 9)

We Are Monsters Cover Reveal

I’m pleased to reveal the official cover for my debut novel, We Are Monsters, scheduled for release on July 7th. As you’ll see, we chose to go with a clean, simple, and iconic design.

We Are MonstersI’ll be honest, this took some work. Simplicity often does. Too often, people are inclined to cram as much stuff onto a cover as they can. More is considered more. For me, and my personal tastes, the cover is not meant to work as a movie trailer for the content inside. Instead, it should evoke a feeling or emotion similar to the one the reader can expect to experience while reading the book. It should pique one’s curiosity, not satiate one’s desire to know what the story’s about. That’s what the back cover, or inside flap, is for.

We explored two other completely different concepts in addition to this one. Both had their merits and limitations. All the while, I kept drifting back to this design. It made me feel uncomfortable for some reason. There’s a tension to it. A subtle sense of unease (or disease).

We Are Monsters is a story about our inner demons. The ones we face and fight every day. And a psychiatrist’s experimental drug that unintentionally casts them out into each character’s world, where they are forced to confront them. Some may call that bad medicine – anti-medicine, as the upside down staff implies. But it just may lead to the asylum we all seek from the monsters within ourselves. You’ll have to read the book to find out.

You can pre-order the Kindle edition HERE.

The trade paperback, and audiobook, will both be available soon.

A Guide to Atlanta for the WHC

Here’s a quick guide to some local places you may want to visit while in Atlanta for the World Horror Convention this May.

First of all, if you have never been to Atlanta before, welcome. You’re bound to have a good time. While the WHC will have plenty of activities to keep you occupied, I wanted to provide a list of some local haunts in case you want to go exploring. Just be forewarned, getting around Atlanta can be confusing as hell.

Here are a few of my favorite spots that tend to attract readers, writers, and creative folks in general. I offer them in no particular order.

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The Five Star Rating System Deserves One Star

I’ll admit, I can’t stand the five star rating system, especially for books. Actually, it’s not the rating system itself that I mind as much as the impact these ratings can have on a book’s ability to fail or succeed.

For one, the enjoyment of a book boils down to personal taste, which is both subjective and fickle. Not only is there a broad spectrum of individual tastes, but one’s individual tastes can vary over time. There are books I’ve started and put down because I wasn’t into them for some reason, but then picked up later and ended up loving them.

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GONE SOUTH

You hear people say: write fearlessly. I never knew what that meant.

What, write like someone is holding a gun to the back of your head?

Write like you’ll die if you don’t?Gone South

Sure, do those things. But that’s not what writing fearlessly means. It means writing what your heart tells you to knowing people won’t like it.

It means writing like Robert McCammon.

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When Fiction Becomes Reality

Everyone is afraid to die, but virtually no one is afraid to sleep. To dream. To drift off into some strange oblivion that no one really understands.

Where do we go when we dream? Into our subconscious? Some subterranean psychic chamber that stores everything we’ve seen and heard and are secretly afraid of.

Or, perhaps, our consciousness ventures into other realms that we assume are imaginary, but actually exist. Places where our minds can travel, so long as we leave our bodies behind.

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10 Documentaries for Artists

Inspiration can be hard to come by, and sometimes – just sometimes – we need to look beyond books to find it. Here are ten documentaries about art and creative expression that cracked my head open and filled it with magic juice. I hope they do the same for you.

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Mucho Mojo

I went to the Decatur Book Festival this year in Atlanta, the largest independent book festival in the country. No telling how many books they had for sale. Thousands for sure.

I bought one: Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale. I got the best of the bunch. Mucho Mojo

Now listen, I have read several Lansdale books, and will undoubtedly read many, many more. And, to be honest, I could have written this post about any one of them. They all stack up. Mucho Mojo just happens to be the book that led me to this laptop in a stiff-legged stupor and got me typing. It was either do that or give a standing ovation to an empty room.

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The End In All Beginnings

There is one word that sums up why this collection of novellas made it on my recommended reading list: craftsmanship.

No, fuck that. Throw fresh, fun, entertaining, and memorable in there, too.

But, craftsmanship comes to mind first.The End In All Beginnings

“The End In All Beginnings,” by horror vet, John F.D. Taff, is a well thought-out, finely crafted collection of stories that belong together. Mr. Taff is working with a theme here, exploring the greatest mystery facing mankind. Or it’s greatest curse. The fact that we die.

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Dead Harvest is Here

Dead Harvest AnthologyI’m pleased to announce that my story, “Seeds of Change,” was published in the Dead Harvest anthology, which just released this month. With nearly 700-pages of horrifying fiction, it’s a behemoth, sure to keep you reading well into the winter.

But it’s not stocked with much fluff. First time editor Mark Parker was able to curate a line-up filled with some of today’s finest, award-winning, horror authors. Names like, Benjamin Kane Ethridge, Ronald Malfi, Tim Lebbon, Greg F. Gifune, Richard Thomas, Jeff Strand, James A. Moore, David Bernstein, Todd Keisling, and Tim Waggoner just to name a few. And they hardly comprise half the contents. It’s a beast.

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The size of this book, much like the little pond at the end of the storied lane, is deceiving. There is so much more packed within these pages than one would guess by merely glimpsing it on the shelf. You must crack the cover to see the true scale of the world Mr. Gaiman has imagined. But beware. Do that, and you’ll fall inside. Screen Shot 2014-07-21 at 3.58.42 PM

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