After years of being out of print, I finally re-released my collection BLOOD SACRIFICES. This includes my three most terrifying novellas all in one book: The Witching House, The Seekers, and Darkness Rising. As a bonus, it also includes my short story “The Girl from the Blood Coven.”
This collection is now available through Amazon.
My latest short story “Incident on Saddle Road” releases today in an alien-monster-themed scifi-horror anthology MIDNIGHT FROM BEYOND THE STARS, edited by Kenneth W. Cain and published by Silver Shamrock Publishing. The book has lined up an impressive list of horror authors: Gabino Iglesias, Lee Murray, James Newman, Owl Goingback, Tim Curran, Meghan Arcuri, Ronald Kelly, Tim Meyer, Samantha Kolesnik, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Simon Clark, Janine Pipe, Jason Parent, Brennan LaFaro, Red Lagoe, John Lynch, Kristopher Triana, Stephanie Ellis and Chad Lutske, to name a few. Thirty-two stories in all with an introduction by Richard Chizmar.
I was fortunate to have short stories included in Silver Shamrock’s previous 2 horror anthologies, MIDNIGHT FROM THE GRAVEYARD (“Swamp Vengeance”) and MIDNIGHT IN THE PENTAGRAM (“The Corn Maidens”). During the fall of 2020, when I saw the announcement of a third anthology about alien monsters from outer space, I jumped at the chance to write a short story. It took me a couple of months to come up with an idea. I wanted to write an alien story that was different than anything I had written thus far. At first I started a story set on another planet, but it felt too much like a science fiction story and didn’t seem like the right setting. I decided my story would be an alien creature invading earth and that I’d make it personal to me.
The idea of setting the story on the Big Island of Hawaii came to mind. I have visited four of the islands and even lived on Maui for a year and a half. Back in 2007, I attended a couple of huna spiritual retreats on the Big Island. We hiked jungles and lava fields, swam with dolphins, meditated in caves, hung out with authentic Hawaiian kahunas, and learned a forgiveness practice called Ho’oponopono. That time of my life, experiencing the mystical nature of Hawaii, had a strong and lasting impact on me. Below are some photos of a Big Island trip when I was much younger.
While driving across the Big Island from Kona to Hilo, we traveled along a rural passage known as Saddle Road, which took about 3 hours. This is a very scenic road that passes between two volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. On part of the journey, we passed through a stretch of Saddle Road that was shrouded with dense fog. The once pictorial forest setting turned creepy and looked to me like we had transported to an alien planet. I remember passing a convoy of army vehicles and learned that the U.S. military had a number of bases on the island. The heavy fog, spooky setting, and heavy military presence gave Saddle Road an eerie mystique, which got my imagination going. We also stopped at a rest stop, enjoyed a picnic and fed wild pigs. I knew back then that one day I would write a story set here, with these elements. Thus, when I brainstormed for an idea for this alien-monster anthology, “Incident on Saddle Road” began to take form.
It’s interesting to me how characters get chosen for a story. When I start out writing a story, I usually have a working title and setting first, and then the characters seem to magically show up. For this story, I immediately imagined a divorced, single father, Jeff, driving his two daughters, Kai and Malina, across the island. Because their mother remarried and moved the girls to another island, Jeff desperately wants to treat them to a fun father-daughter weekend. But something otherworldly happens in the fog on Saddle Road that wrecks his plan and they find themselves in a struggle for survival. Huge thanks to Ken McKinley at Silver Shamrock Publishing for accepting my story and Kenneth W. Cain for editing it.
Look for “Incident on Saddle Road” in MIDNIGHT FROM BEYOND THE STARS. The kindle and paperback versions are now available to order on Amazon.
June, 29. 2021
I’m excited to share that today my new horror thriller, SAVAGE ISLAND, is releasing to the world.
Here’s the book’s description:
Terror in tropical paradise
On an isolated island in the Philippines, it patiently waits. A mysterious terror lurks in the shadows, stalking the poor stranded souls who visit the island. When a group of four tourists find their vacation quickly turning into a nightmare, the terror taunts them and comes for them one by one. The sandy beach and crystal waters of the lagoon will run red with blood if they can’t find a way off this savage island.
This is a horror survival story that deals with some dark, personal themes and comes with a trigger warning of sexual assault. My main characters are two women in their 30s, Amy and Jasmine. They are cruising on a yacht with two men they’ve just met, and one of them is secretly a disturbed sexual predator. But he’s not the only predator on the jungle island they mistakenly thought was uninhabited. For those who have enjoyed my fast-paced novellas like DARKNESS RISING, THE SEEKERS and THE WITCHING HOUSE, I think you’ll have a fun time exploring this deadly island. There are plenty of thrills and scary moments. SAVAGE ISLAND is now available at:
I’m happy to announce that my latest horror thriller, SAVAGE ISLAND, is releasing on June 29th, 2021 through Silver Shamrock Publishing. I wrote this novella back in 2017. I’m a big fan of stories where people are stranded on an island with some kind of deadly menace. As a kid, I had loved watching movies like The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Island with Michael Cain, and Shock Waves. I also enjoyed horror novels like Richard Laymon’s Island and Greg F. Gifune’s Savages.
I had always wanted to set one of my books on a tropical island and make it a story about survival. I love the combination of a setting that appears beautiful on the surface but is actually concealing something dark and dangerous. In my latest book, two single women who are best friends, Amy and Jasmine, are enjoying a much-needed girls’ getaway vacation in the Philippines. Amy just wants to relax and enjoy hanging out at the resort, but Jasmine, who has been going through a bad divorce, wants to have an adventure. She meets a couple of wealthy single men who offer to take Amy and Jasmine cruising on a yacht and tour some uninhabited islands. Little do they know, the island they choose to explore happens to be inhabited. Here’s the book’s description:
Terror in tropical paradise
On an isolated island in the Philippines, it patiently waits. A mysterious terror lurks in the shadows, stalking the poor stranded souls who visit the island. When a group of four tourists find their vacation quickly turning into a nightmare, the terror taunts them and comes for them one by one. The sandy beach and crystal waters of the lagoon will run red with blood if they can’t find a way off this savage island.
Savage Island is available for purchase at:
After 3 years of researching Egyptian mythology and writing, my latest novel just released!!
TOMB OF GODS is an action-adventure thriller with horror and sci-fi fantasy mixed in for fun. Set in late 1930s London and Egypt, the story follows a team of British archaeologists and soldiers who explore deep into an Egyptian cave tomb full of horrors and wonders. Among them, Egyptologist Imogen Riley is searching for what caused her grandfather’s team to vanish in these caves during a previous ill-fated expedition. And why did her grandfather return insane and covered head-to-toe in mysterious scars. Also along for the adventure are archaeologists for the British Museum led by Dr. Nathan Trummel, American journalist and photographer Caleb Beckett, and cast of other characters. Every member of the expedition team will be tested as they face their darkest fears in a seemingly endless maze of caves that may contain one of the greatest secrets of the ancient pharaohs. The explorers discover quickly that they are being stalked in these caves. The horror scenes are scary, so this novel is not for the faint of heart. If you like Egyptian history mixed with tomb raider adventure, horror and sci-fi fantasy, then I think you’ll enjoy this book.
TOMB OF GODS is now available in paperback, hardback, and eBook on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com and through other booksellers.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088JKB1MH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tomb-of-gods-brian-moreland/1133987897?ean=9781787584129
I’m happy to announce that one of my most successful novels, THE DEVIL’S WOODS, published again this week and is now available on Amazon, in paperback, Kindle and KindleUnlimited.
In 2 weeks my latest novel THE DEVIL’S WOODS releases (Tues, Dec 3rd), and the reviews are starting to come in.
Here’s a glowing book review from Shattered Ravings.
“The Devil’s Woods is an awesome horror novel, filled with nerve-wracking suspense and thrilling action!”
—Jeff Strand, author of Wolf Hunt
“Brian Moreland’s fiction is taut and spellbinding, often blending varied themes to form a dark genre very much his own. From his WWII occult thriller Shadows in the Mist, to the haunting chiller The Devil’s Woods, Brian’s work is at once versatile, original, and deeply engaging.”
—Greg F. Gifune, author of The Bleeding Season
“The Devil’s Woods is a force of nature. A complex, chilling foray into the darkness of a forbidden land, and man’s tortured soul.”
—Hunter Shea, author of Swamp Monster Massacre and Sinister Entity
“In Dead of Winter, Brian Moreland showed why he’s one of the strongest new forces in horror fiction. In The Devil’s Woods, he proves he’s as versatile as he is talented. The Devil’s Woods is fantastic–a terrifying and emotionally-involving read from cover to cover.”
—Jonathan Janz, author of The Sorrows and House of Skin
“Brian Moreland has created a new horror classic bursting with bloodshed, chaos, and truly disturbing creatures. Prepare to travel down a dark, terrifying, and twisted path that is The Devil’s Woods. Backwoods horror at its finest!”
—David Bernstein, author of Damaged Souls and Amongst the Dead
“Reading anything by Brian Moreland makes me understand how much harder I have to work as a writer to generate the level of chills he can deliver.”
—Kristopher Rufty, author of The Lurkers and A Dark Autumn
Today, I’m thrilled to be releasing my latest novella The Witching House. This is a book that I wrote last fall while staying at a secluded cabin in the woods of East Texas. The story is set there in the present day and was inspired by the old 1970s horror flicks I used to love. The Witching House is about a small group of adventure-seeking couples who decide to explore an abandoned old house in the woods that’s been boarded up for forty years. The house is rumored to be haunted because it’s where a coven of witches had been massacred back in 1972. You can read the prequel in a FREE short story called The Girl from the Blood Coven.
Below is an excerpt.
“Witchcraft, sacrifices, an abandoned house and a thing that has hungered for decades set the stage for this must-read expedition to The Witching House. The best advice anyone could offer a visitor is: Don’t go in the attic, don’t go in the bedrooms, but don’t, under any circumstances, go in the basement. You won’t come out the same…if you come out at all.”
—John Everson, author of NightWhere and Violet Eyes
“The Witching House represents Brian Moreland at his frantic, bloody best. He takes a clutch of highly-sexed characters and their dark secrets, plunges them into a historical house of horrors, and gleefully throws away the key as all hell breaks loose!”
—Frazer Lee, author of The Lamplighters and The Lucifer Glass
“The Witching House starts with fear, moves into terror and ends with a horrific explosion of sensory delights.”
—Maynard Sims, author of Stronghold and The Eighth Witch
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Excerpt from THE WITCHING HOUSE
“White Ceremonial Magic is, by the terms of its definition, an attempt to communicate with Good Spirits for a good, or at least an innocent, purpose. Black Magic is the attempt to communicate with Evil Spirits for evil purposes.”
—Arthur Edward Waite, The Book of Black Magic, originally published in 1898
Present day
The house that ate people stood within a coven of pine trees like an ancient god being worshipped. The high branches touched its shingled roof with reverence. Towering three stories, the rock house was far from being a flawless god. The moss-covered stones that cobbled its walls were pocked from years of rot and abandon. Fungus and creeper vines had spread across its facade, leafy tentacles invading cracks where boards covered the windows. The glass within their frames had long ago shattered.
The Old Blevins House, as it came to be called, was set miles deep within the East Texas forest and rumored to be haunted. The stone dwelling became a backwoods legend spoken over campfires and around beers at the roadhouse in Buck Horn, referring to it as “that house in the woods”. If anyone foolishly talked about ghosts or witchery, they were sure to spit the ground and cross themselves. Deer hunters wouldn’t dare hunt these parts. The deer wouldn’t come here either.
Otis Blevins, the caretaker of the property, knew all the house’s secrets because he had witnessed his family’s bloody massacre as a child. Now, decades later, the house often spoke to him in whispers and played violent memories inside his head. Some folk called Otis Blevins crazy, but he wasn’t. He just had a special bond with this house that ran deep as blood.
At age forty-seven, Otis now lived on a pig farm ten miles away but still looked after the stone house. On this dewy morning, he checked the front door to make sure it was still locked. The padlock was badly rusted. He made a mental note to stop by the hardware store and buy a new one. As the caretaker walked the perimeter, he noticed that some of the symbols painted on the clapboards had smeared after last night’s storm. He shook his head. East Texas got too much rain this time of year.
Otis pulled a paintbrush out of a mason jar of hog’s blood and repainted a symbol of a triangle with stick-figure arms and legs. He heard scratching from the opposite side of the clapboards—something angry clawed at him from within the house. Whistling, Otis walked around the corner. The scraping nails followed him as he painted the same symbol on every boarded window. The scrapes turned to pounding. The house was in a foul mood this morning. Or maybe just hungry. The caretaker ignored the incessant knocks against the wood and performed the tasks that the house had given him.
When he was done, Otis returned to his truck. In the back, a large hog was pacing in a cage, making all sorts of grunting noises.
“Easy there, girl.” Otis opened the cage and snapped a leash on Bessie’s collar. The sow hopped off the truck and snorted against Otis’s leg. He patted her pink head and then walked her to the back of the house where a long chain lay coiled on the ground. He was mighty upset that it was Bessie’s turn. Otis loved this pig. The house reminded him that he had alternatives, if he was willing.
The caretaker hooked the chain to the sow’s collar and backed away. Tearing up, Otis sat in an old rocker and chewed a wad of tobacco as he waited. Not long after, the chain began to uncoil and went taut. The pig squealed and struggled to run as she was dragged into a dark hole near the house.
Otis left after that. He hated the sounds the house made when it fed.
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“Dead roads are bad omens,” Sarah Donovan’s grandmother used to say when Sarah was a little girl and her family traveled down a road littered with road kill. “You’ll find nothing good at the end of a dead road.”
Today, while riding through the backwoods of East Texas with her new boyfriend, Dean, and another couple, Sarah had counted a dead coyote, two mutilated armadillos, what might have been a possum, and buzzards feasting on a deer carcass. The carrion eaters took flight as the white Range Rover passed them and wound its way through the cloying pines.
Sarah’s nana, who was in to everything New Age, had preached that the universe always gives you signs if you watch for them.
Is this road trying to warn me? Sarah wondered. She looked at her boyfriend. Does this mean our relationship is doomed?
Dean seemed oblivious to the signs all around them. As he and his friends, Casey and Meg Ackerman, passed around a thermos of coffee and talked over strategy, Sarah remained quiet in the front passenger seat. Since they had left Dallas at dawn, she had seen a few truck stops and small towns along the way, as well as the occasional farm, but now mostly her view was empty road and endless trees. Civilization had dropped off since they turned off I-20 into what Dean called “redneck country”. In the backseat, Casey tried to be funny, mimicking the dueling-banjos tune from Deliverance, as if “redneck” meant inbreds. Dean was quick to correct Casey that inbreeding hillbillies were in Tennessee and West Virginia, not Texas. But rednecks were territorial and carried shotguns, and they lived by the creed “Don’t mess with Texas”.
It wasn’t the thought of encountering inbred hillbillies or gun-toting rednecks that had Sarah spooked. It was the legions of spiky pines, spruce and cedars pressing so close to the road. These weren’t the benign oak and pecan trees that stood in small clusters around White Rock Lake where she walked her dog on weekends. Out here, the trees crowded together, their branches intertwined in a constant battle for space. Choking out the gaps between the trees, thickets of brush and briars left no room for a hiking trail. Sarah’s father, the incurable nature lover, had taught her about things to watch out for in the wilds. Even from the moving vehicle, Sarah could spot the copses of stinging nettles and poison ivy that infested the overgrown forest. If only she had inherited her father’s love of exploring the untamed wilderness she might have been thrilled about where Dean and his friends were taking her.
THE CRYPT OF HORROR 