We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Koscienski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Is there a lesson you learned in school that’s stuck with you and has meaningfully impacted your journey?

As a writer, the best thing I did in school was get a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting. How does that make any sense? Well, when I was in late high school, I went to a Star Trek convention with a few friends. I was having a great time and I decided to attend a panel where the speaker was a gentleman who had written a few Star Trek novels. (My biggest regret is not making note of his name, which I sadly can’t remember) As he gazed upon the attendees in the room, the first thing he said was, “I see a lot of younger people out there. How many of you are in school of some sort?” Quite a few of us raised our hands. His next question, “How many of you want to be writers?” Same number of hands. He then followed up with, “Do NOT go to school to be a writer. Getting a degree in writing gives you the opportunity to work three part-time jobs for 60 hours a week while eating boxed mac-n-cheese for three meals a day. You do not need a degree to be a writer. Get a degree in something that will get you a good, 40 hour a week job that allows you time to write.” There was an angst to his voice that let me know he was speaking from experience. But, I figured I was pretty good with numbers, so I majored in accounting. It did allow me a better job than cobbling together different part-time jobs to afford life’s necessities. Plus, when it came time to start the micro-press publishing company, I had no fear of money dollar number figures that so many people have.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As a writer, I’ll say what many artists say — I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. I’m an only child whose parents both had full-time jobs and went to school part-time while living at the edge of forest with no neighbors. I spent quite a significant portion of my childhood with whatever imaginary friends came into existence on any given day. So, I decided to try to make those voices in my head pay rent. About 20 years ago, one of my friends and I decided to join forces and become collaborators. One of the ways we wanted to learn about the writing process was to learn about the publishing process and industry, so we decided to start a micro-press publishing company called Fortress Publishing, Inc. Through experimentation, we’ve honed our craft as well as made different connections with other writers and publishers. A couple years ago, we brought on a third collaborator and have decided to rebrand ourselves as The Novel Guys (www.novelguys.com) which includes creating different pen names for the different genres we write in. I’d say one of the things that I’m proudest of is the number of Intellectual Properties we have and the direction we’re going in with them. I can easily say that the biggest struggle we have is using and navigating the different social medias available.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The freedom of allowing myself to be me. Whenever a notion pops into my head (probably from one of the many voices living in there), I can explore it by setting fingertips to keyboard and allow my characters to run rampant across the page. There’s always a satisfaction that comes from solving a problem, even if the problem is fictional and created by me. Sure there are a near infinite number of rabbit holes to fall down while researching a particular topic inherent to the story I’m working on, but I’m learning about so many different things — people, places, history, theories, science — that it all becomes different pieces of the puzzle of me.

How’d you meet your business partner?

So, despite this tale not showing me at my most stellar, the ways I met my business partners / collaborators were through ignorance and accident. First came Chris. He and I had been friends for ten years before we knew the other liked to write, and the only way either of us found out about the other’s fascinations with creativity was through a 3rd party. Yes, ten years of our shared communication was through troglodyte means until a mutual friend asked if either of us knew if the other person liked to write. Once that knowledge was shared, it took about four seconds for the collaboration to form, one of us asking the other, “So… Wanna work on a something together?” The details about how and why we formed the publishing company can be found by scrolling through our blog (https://theimbloglio.wordpress.com/). However, Jeff came into our lives because I stumbled into a writing group that he was running at the local B&N. About three years into Fortress, Chris and I decided to put together a collection of short stories (where he and I are the characters of horror stories) and knew well enough that we needed someone else to edit it. We asked Jeff and he accepted. And didn’t leave. For reasons only known to dark creatures lurking about the cosmos, Jeff continued to hang out with us and work with us. Finally, a few years ago, we decided to pull him into the madness and make him a full collaborator, thusly precipitating the need to rebrand ourselves as The Novel Guys.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.novelguys.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/novelguybrian
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brian.chris.jeff/
• Other: Slasher: @NovelGuyBrian

  (It’s a social media app for fans of horror)

Image Credits

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