A Turbulent Start: From Juvenile Walls to Word Play
In this conversation, Brian Bowyer doesn’t dodge the hard stuff. He takes us back to a childhood shaped by a strict upbringing, rebellion, and a front-row seat to the rough edges of life in the 1980s.
“I was in and out of juvenile prison all throughout the 1980s.”
He didn’t fall into reading until a correctional officer-turned-horror-fan handed him Stephen King and friends every day in juvenile detention. That spark, paired with his early habit of writing song lyrics, grew into a lifelong habit: short stories, screenplays, and eventually novels. Bowyer’s origin story isn’t glossed up; it’s the gritty, unflinching soil that his horror and crime fiction grow from.
Haunted Houses, Real Ghosts, and the Making of a Writer
Bowyer’s lore isn’t just fictional, it starts with real places that felt alive (and unsafe) to him. He shares two haunted houses from his youth, including the first time he walked into a Victorian residence three mailboxes down from his parents’ place. Doors unlocked, cold air rushing out, and whispers that sounded like more than one voice.
“That coffee pot… shot across the room and shattered.”
These moments weren’t just spooky; they were the spark for his autobiographical and fictional work. The stories expand as he describes a ghost train, a fog that rolled through a house, and a coffee pot that refused to stay put when visitors partied into the early morning. The result is a writer who threads supernatural experience into crime and psychological horror with the same breath.
Craft, Combat, and the Creative Life you Can Live
“I write everything on my phone. I’m just watching them and writing down what I see.”
Beyond hauntings, Bowyer’s lifestyle speaks to a restless creative spirit. He’s a guitarist who wrote death-metal lyrics before fiction, and he later embraced screenwriting in Nashville before circling back to novels and short stories. He talks about the writing process as almost documentary: he observes his characters, then records what unfolds, letting the stories lead where they will. His book list runs the gamut from brutal crime-horror hybrids like Beneath the Smog to a haunted-house centerpiece like Autumn Gothic, and even to personal memoirs like Writing and Rising from Addiction. The thread tying it all together? A fierce honesty about where he’s been, what he’s learned, and how he keeps turning life’s chaos into compelling pages.
If you’re into gritty true-crime meets horror fiction with a strong undercurrent of recovery and resilience, Brian Bowyer’s story is gold. He doesn’t glamorize the past; he uses it to fuel fiction that feels earned, not easy. And the way he blends real-life hauntings with high-velocity storytelling makes his books worth a deeper dive. Grab a seat, lean in, and ride along with Bowyers’s remarkable, unapologetic journey.
