Thanks!
Thanks!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Thank You!
If you've ever wondered what THE STAND printed out single-sided on copy paper might look like, here you go...
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
That reminds me of something. Perhaps a tower.
"One day you're going to figure out that everything they taught you was a lie."
Was going through some old Word documents the other night and came across an interview/article I did with Brian way back in 2014. I don't think I've ever posted it here (it was part of my college internship assignments interviewing writers, and Brian was gracious enough to oblige) but thought I would in case anyone was interested.
For most people, the objects of nightmares—death, ghosts, serial killers, the great unknown, dank basements where the light always seems to flicker—are things to be feared, things to stay clear of at all costs. But that is not the case for everybody. For Brian James Freeman, these nightmarish subjects are the acquaintances that he spends his days (and, yes, nights) with. After all, how else would he manage to write stories that keep readers up at night without spending some time with the subjects himself?
Since 1994, Brian James Freeman’s short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, but, since 2010, with the overwhelming success of his novella, The Painted Darkness, Freeman’s stories are being eaten up by rabid audiences seemingly faster than he can write them. In fact, 2013 and 2014 will see the release of not one, but four short story collections in addition to the republication of his first novel, Black Fire, in 2014 by Cemetery Dance Publications.
Freeman sold his first short story when he was fourteen, but the spark has been present long before then. “The first ‘book’ I wrote was in library class in elementary school,” he says. “The librarian gave each student a College Blue Book used for essay tests, and we had to write a story using all of the pages. We could illustrate it, too, which I did very poorly. I have no skills when it comes to drawing, but my story was about a futuristic Air Force fighting time traveling dinosaurs.”
Although most of his teachers over the years in elementary and high school were encouraging in regard to such creativity, he says, “there was the occasional strange reaction to my writing from time to time (‘I don't get what you did here, but you did a very nice job!’ was probably the favorite note I received on a paper in school), and not everyone was pleased with my writing.” In fact, Freeman was inexplicably dropped from an Honors English class in high school. “The exact reason was never officially confirmed, but the hints I was given suggested that my writing wasn't ‘literary’ enough for the teacher. Too much of that ‘commercial influence’ for me to be taken seriously. Of course, I didn't want to be taken seriously. I just wanted to have fun and tell the best stories I could.”
With his past and recent successes, that ‘commercial influence’ may not have been such a bad thing after all. And with The Painted Darkness, it’s obvious he hasn’t left behind that childhood creativity either. Endorsed by Publishers Weekly as a “fast-paced, satisfying horror…that builds tension and evokes emotional response,” The Painted Darkness’ level of both horror and emotion is due in part to Freeman’s deft utilization of psychological elements. In one instance the reader finds the novella’s main character, Henry, home alone when unsettling noises begin to emerge from the basement. Is there really something in the basement, something equally terrifying and unexplainable, or is Henry losing his mind, plagued by the terror and grief of a childhood trauma? The way that Henry questions—and Freeman makes the reader question—his sanity is one of the enticing aspects that the story has to offer. What is it about this area, then, that is so intriguing to Freeman as a writer? “The way people react to situations based on their past and the way those situations affect who they become in the future has always been interesting to me,” he says. Of course, a number of his other works feature psychological elements as well. In order to convey the dread, tension, and horror that his stories often features, Freeman taps into his reading audience’s fears, believing that there are fears that people naturally share communally, citing the death of a loved one, a loss of control, or being powerless when faced with the unknown, as a few examples.
Though he has had—and continues to have—success with a writing career, Freeman’s involvement in literature doesn’t end at writing; rather, that’s only the beginning. As well as writing fiction, he is also on the production end as the managing editor of Cemetery Dance magazine, a specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense located in Forest Hill, Maryland. Before joining Cemetery Dance in 2002, Freeman worked as a freelance online publicist throughout high school and college. Now involved in aspects of book production from editing to design to distribution, the experience has enabled Freeman to work with literary heavyweights ranging from Stephen King to William Peter Blatty, and other acclaimed authors.
Although working at Cemetery Dance has left him unable to spend as much time as he’d like on writing, he doesn’t berate himself for it. “I'm too busy with my day job right now to lash myself if I don't get any writing done,” he says. “I make time on the weekends when I can to plug away at a new story.”
However vast his experiences in writing may be, editing continues to increase his knowledge and insight into what actually goes on in producing a publication including making him “acutely aware of how often certain ideas and themes pop up in submissions.” Freeman continues to notice this “not just after a theme anthology sends all of their rejection letters (the week after a ‘zombies in space’ anthology closes, we inevitably receive 50 to 100 submissions with that concept), but just in general. Obviously, there are only so many different ideas out there, which makes it a truly exciting event when you receive a story that really does something different from what you’ve read before.”
While Freeman and the team at Cemetery Dance are always looking forward to those gems, the process of sorting through submissions to find them can be frustrating. “90% of the submissions recycle ideas and concepts from other works in an unoriginal way and those are the first to go,” he says. “There are many well-written submissions that simply don't make it past our jaded first readers who have read every type of horror story thousands of times. If they see where the story is going on the first page, they get bored—and so would our readers.” Readers shouldn’t be discouraged from submitting, though. After all, “that doesn't mean the standard tropes don't have a place because there are some that we love when they're well executed, even if the idea is as old as time itself. If a story does something we've never seen before (in a good way), we can always find a place for it.”
Having spent time as both submitter and selector of stories for publication, Freeman is in a unique position to offer advice to fellow writers. For those still trying to break into the publishing world, he advises: “write as often as you can, edit your work the best you can, and then get someone else who knows more than you do to edit your work until it's as good as it can be. Also, don't take a break while you wait to hear back from editors and agents and publishers when you submit something,” he says. “Just start the next project.” For someone who has yet to be published, it sounds simple. But Freeman is proof that successes can happen with the right mixture of talent, ambition, and determination.
Although his day job keeps him occupied, Freeman (and his literary output), it seems, has anything but slowed. “I've been plugging away at mini-collections of my short fiction,” he says of his current writing endeavors. “The first one, More Than Midnight, was published earlier this year. Weak and Wounded will be out in November. The other two, Dreamlike States and Lost and Lonely, will be published next year.”
As if that’s not enough, he tells me “I have a new novel in the works and I'm also editing a series of anthologies for Random House,” he says, “but that's all too far off in the distance to discuss. It's bad luck to talk too much about a project when it's too far from the finish line.” It certainly seems that this finish line is just one of many more to come.
A NEW GAME BEGINS
Wanted
CD Carrie Portfolio 719
Dark Tower S/N LE's 171 or 203
ANY Stephen King S/N LE #171 or 719
A Storm of Swords #218 or 346
Ancillary Justice #455
American Gods (+ SC Reader copy) #624
Michael Whelan original art
DT VII: Michael Whelan Remarque
Yeah, I'd like to at least wait until the last artist is done signing the signature sheets. I rarely get my way, but my personal preference is to have all of the materials in hand before the official announcement. (This one is weird, of course, since everyone knows it's coming and there have been some opportunities to purchase it ahead of the announcement...!)
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
"Time traveling dinosaurs"!!! I love it!!! lol Mostly, Raptors yes? lol
28 in 23 (?)!!!!
63 in '23!!!!!!!!!!
My Collection: https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...ion-Merlin1958
The Houston Astros cheated Major League Baseball from 2017-18!!!! Is that how we teach our kids to play the game now?????
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Good to hear. I bought the Artist #'ed set and I thought - well, I won't need the gift editions. Then, Patrick offered to sell me a few of the past gift editions, I passed *AGAIN* and now, of course, I fully regret it ALL.
So if there's another open sale of The Stand gift, count me in! ha
But I would imagine that's going to be insanely hot of an item.
Is there lettered COM even out yet? How does this person have an unlettered traycase-less copy https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-City-of....m46890.l49292
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Thanks for the kind words!
A NEW GAME BEGINS
Brian,
When are we getting our lettered The City of Mirrors? It's been traycase in production for an entire year....
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!