Yes, I'm Really* Giving Away a Haunted House

UPDATE: With MFTH at 84 ratings on Amazon, I’ve decided to announce a whole mess of step goals on the way to 1M sales once I hit 100 ratings. So, watch this space for further updates!

The other day on Twitter, I had what passes for a brainstorm—the PERFECT promotion for my new haunted house novella, MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE (out now from Mutated Media and available in paperback/ebook!).

I should give away a haunted house.

Yes, you read that correctly. I’m planning to find a house for sale that the owners think is haunted, buy it, and give it away, which is actually a thing you can do. With one little caveat.

I need to sell one million copies of MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE (cue Dr. Evil-pinkie-to-lip pose).

Now, is that a ridiculous number? Of course! But giving away an actual haunted house is a very ridiculous idea, and it’s not going to happen without some ridiculous sales. I’ve also got some step goals for various milestones along the way (100k, 250k, etc.—hell, if I can sell 10k copies I’ll do something very fucking cool).

This contest is also going to be good for my entire lifetime, so it’s not like the book needs to sell a million copies in the next month or something stupid. If it sells its millionth copy twenty years from now—and I’m sure anyone who knows me is raising an eyebrow at the prospect of me being alive in twenty years—then BAM, haunted house giveaway starts immediately.

I’m not naive, the chances of a little indie book selling like that are miniscule. But not impossible, and not unprecedented, either. You know the old saying, you can’t win if you don’t play. That applies equally to sports, gambling, AND haunted houses.

So, fuck it. IT’S GO TIME.

New Short Story in KELP Magazine, "Stool Pigeon"

Excited to announce one of the weirdest and darkest stories I’ve ever written, “Stool Pigeon,” has found a home at Kelp and can be read RIGHT FREAKING NOW! Check it out here: https://www.kelpjournal.com/post/fiction-stool-pigeon
”So the other weird thing about Bruno Harbeck’s bar was he had this pigeon. It sat on a stool next to a vintage Philadelphia Flyers pennant with newspaper layered on the floor underneath to catch the bird shit. Bruno had put this little studded collar around its neck and tethered the thing to an eyebolt sunk in the wall.

As far as I know, the bird didn’t have a name. Everybody just called it the pigeon. Or the bird. It didn’t really matter. Anybody would’ve known what you were talking about.”

New Novella Out Now!

It’s October 20th, which means my bizarre new haunted house novella MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE came out yesterday!

For those of you who’ve read NUNCHUCK CITY or JAILBROKE, this is a bit of a departure. There’s still some humor, but it’s not slapstick, the stakes are higher, and the tone is—I hope—very unsettling. Funny, I initialed imagined something completely different, but without sounding too mystical about the whole thing, the book told me exactly what it wanted to be, and hopefully I’ve lived up to that.
Got a couple great blurbs so far, check them out:

"Brian Asman's Man, F*ck This House delivers an inventive take on one of horror's most tried and trusted genres. It's an off-kilter descent into madness and horror that'll leave you clutching your family close." -Zachary Ashford, When the Cicadas Stop Singing

"A whirlwhind of a ride...moments of mirth, moments of WTF." -Janine Pipe, author of Twisted: Tainted Tales

"Frenetic pacing, hilarious comedy, and inventive dialogue...[Asman] unleashes some suspense-building tricks worthy of King or Barker" -Nick Kolakowski, author of Absolute Unit
Intrigued? Go get it here or smash that MERCH button at the top of the page for signed copies.

New novella MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE out October 19th!

Sabrina Haskins and her family have just moved into their dream home, a gorgeous Craftsman in the rapidly-growing Southwestern city of Jackson Hill. Sabrina’s a bored and disillusioned homemaker, Hal a reverse mortgage salesman with a penchant for ill-timed sports analogies. Their two children, Damien and Michaela, are bright and precocious.
At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren’t what they seem.
Sabrina’s hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina’s already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine.
Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of 4596 James Circle, they’re far from its only residents…

Intrigued yet? MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE is my version of a haunted house book. It’s weird, off-kilter, but is definitely the most “traditionally horror” long-form work I’ve published. And I can’t wait for y’all to read it.

Ebook preorders are up on Amazon right now, but if you’d like a signed copy, just click that “Merch” button at the top of the page, I’ve got some smoking hot deals going on.
All right, that’s all for now, enjoy your spooky season and crack open a pumpkin-flavored beverage of your choice for me!

It's My Birthday, Buy My Books!

Today, I turn forty. As a kid, I could imagine turning INTO a 40 (Steel Reserve, natch) but turning forty actual years old?

Inconceivable.

Since it’s my birthday, and a milestone one at that, I’ll hope you’ll forgive a little self-promotion. My newest novella, NUNCHUCK CITY, is just BEGGING to hit #1 in Amazon’s “Humorous Science Fiction” category. It’s currently on sale for $2.99 (ebook) or $8.69 (paperback). Of course you can hit that “Merch” button and get a signed copy, too—there’s no wrong way to buy my books!

Kind of appropriate I’m promoting NUNCHUCK CITY today, because it’s very much a hodgepodge of things I loved as a kid—ninjas, video games like DOUBLE DRAGON and BAD DUDES, liquified cheese—and things I love now, like satire, gore, and yes, liquified cheese. It’s probably the most “me” book I’ve ever written. And based on the initial reactions, it might just be the most “you” book I’ve ever written, too.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out what some of the critics are saying:

"Nunchuck City is well-written, funny and so strange you can understand why you've never seen a martial arts story like this before. Asman has created the B-movie that everybody has truly wanted to see but without the so-bad-it's-good and instead just: it's good." -Babou 691

"If you're in the mood for over the top action and comedy to boot, you'll be grinning all the way through to its suitably bombastic finale" -Kendall Reviews

"Nunchuck City has ninjas, it has fondue, it stars a fun cast, it has romance, and it has a never give up on your dreams message. It has everything a good story needs." -As Told By Bex

"One of the funniest, most The Naked Gun-esque stories I have ever read...If you love great writing, slapstick humor, and a memorable, totally lovable cast...you're going to adore this book. I promise." -What's Under the Covers Book Reviews

"[A] frequently violent, always funny send-up of the martial arts genre...Asman (Jailbroke) has a pitch-perfect ear for the tropes of martial arts movies" -Booklife by Publishers Weekly

NUNCHUCK CITY—punch boredom right in its stupid face, today! My birthday. Yes, I’m going to continue harping on that.

NUNCHUCK CITY OUT NOW + REVIEW ROUNDUP

You better NUN-CHECK yourself before you wreck yourself!

That’s right, folks, my brand-spanking new martial arts comedy novella NUNCHUCK CITY hits stores today! It’s the heartwarming tale of a reluctant ninja who just wants to open a drive-thru fondue restaurant. When an old enemy kidnaps the mayor, he’s going to have to drop the spatula and dust off his nunchucks one last time.

The book is pretty heavily influenced by side-scrolling beat ‘em up games like BAD DUDES and DOUBLE DRAGON—as a kid I loved getting to fight a bunch of ninja on top of a speeding tractor-trailer, but I always wondered WHY? Why are these guys fighting? NUNCHUCK CITY is my way of answering that question, and it’s also a loving tribute to everything from TMNT to the AMERICAN NINJA movies to the incredibly brilliant THE FOOT FIST WAY.

So far, feedback’s been quite positive, but don’t take MY word for it—here’s a bunch of really kind words from some awesome folks.

Babou691

Kendall Reviews

As Told By Bex

Under the Covers Book Reviews

Booklife

MyIndieMuse

Ghostville Hero

Interviews:

MyIndieMuse

Fanbase Press

More to come!

NUNCHUCK CITY Out 4/20!

You better nun-check yourself before you wreck yourself!

Disgraced ex-ninja Nunchuck “Nick” Nikolopoulis just wants to open a drive-thru fondue restaurant with his best friend Rondell. But when an old enemy kidnaps the mayor, and a former flame arrives in hot pursuit, Nick’s going to have to dust off his fighting skills and face his past. Plus an army of heavily-armed ninjas, a very well-dressed street gang, an Australian sumo wrestler with a gnarly skin condition, giant robots, municipal paperwork, and much, much more! From the rooftops to the sewers, Nick and his ex-girlfriend Kanna Kikuchi are in for the fight of their lives!

Also featuring the backup story “Curse of the Ninja” by Lucas Mangum!

You can preorder the ebook version on Amazon here, or get the paperback via my new online store!

INVISIBLE MAN AND DOUBLE MUMBO-JUMBO

Spoiler alert: THE INVISIBLE MAN is one of my favorite movies of the year thus far in a year that’s been EXCEPTIONALLY strong (UNDERWATER, AFTER MIDNIGHT, GRETEL & HANSEL, motherfucking VFW, even SONIC THE HEDGEHOG have all rocked my socks off). The movie is tense, terrifying, and definitely surprising, and Elizabeth Moss turns in a brilliant performance. But that doesn’t mean the film is above criticism. While it didn’t stifle my enjoyment during the movie, only became a nit that nagged at me afterwards, there’s some double mumbo-jumbo in the movie and I think there didn’t have to be.

For those of you who haven’t read SAVE THE CAT, double mumbo-jumbo means that the script is asking the audience to accept more than one fantastical premise. The examples Blake Snyder uses aren’t great, so I’ll just create a hypothetical—imagine that in ALIENS, one of the Colonial Marines is a magic user. Single mumbo-jumbo is the Xenomorphs, but we can accept an alien like that in that world. But if you add in magic for some reason, we’re going to call bullshit.

THE INVISIBLE MAN asks us to accept the premise that a man can turn invisible, which isn’t all that far-fetched. But then it also asks us to accept the soap opera plot point of someone faking their death. Someone famous. And while occasionally people do try to fake their own death, it’s usually someone who’s not well-known who is facing some serious legal trouble—Samuel Israel III, for example. I have trouble believing that an Elon Musk-level tech celeb could get away with such a thing (and if you still think it would be easy for someone to do if they had enough money, why are mega-rich guys like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby sitting in prison when they could have faked their own deaths?).

And it’s not just that Adrian fakes his own death, he stages a suicide in a hotel room where he slits his wrists. If he’d disappeared at sea, okay, but a hotel? Think about it—the number of people who’d have to be in on the scheme is ridiculous. Adrian’s brother, sure, plus the hotel housekeeper who finds him, the EMTs, at minimum a couple uniformed officers and maybe some detectives, the coroner, the coroner’s assistant…that’s a lot of people to pay off and then trust not to tell their spouse, their priest or rabbi, or their friendly local bartender. Grand conspiracies usually fall apart under their own weight, because it’s demonstrably true that two can keep a secret when one of them is dead.

A quick fix to erase the double mumbo-jumbo would be for Adrian to be jailed, rather than fake his suicide. He could smuggle in his invisible tech, and continue to harass and stalk Cecilia. The plot point of people not believing her would work just fine, since her cop friend could even point to jailhouse CCTV footage that shows Adrian never leaving his cell. Sure, you lose the great urn gag in the brother’s office, but that’s the only thing that’s lost, and you’re not asking the audience to swallow too much fantastical stuff.