Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, with more than 30 million books sold, writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang, and the Mary Jo Assassin series.

His monthly magazine, Smith's Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

For more information about Dean's books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com.

Bryant Street - Summer by Dean Wesley Smith

Bryant Street, a standard subdivision street outside of any city. Well-kept lawns, paint and roofs up to HOA standards, two- or three-car garages. Everything looks to any casual observer perfect and normal.

But inside those perfect-looking homes, the residents seem just a little off. A little twisted or confused or a half-turn out of reality.

Normal exists on other subdivision streets, but never on Bryant Street.

SUMMER is one of four books in the Bryant Street Surreal Stories Collection, each containing 10 fantastically strange stories for your enjoyment. If you like Twin Peaks or The Twilight Zone, take a delectably weird stroll down Bryant Street.

Bryant Street Series Introduction by Dean Wesley Smith

A long time ago, Stephen King said that he wrote about what scared him. For me, not much in the world scares me besides the fear of being trapped in a subdivision. If I find myself driving down a subdivision street, I start sweating and my hands grip the wheel and I search desperately for a way out. Weird yes, but very true.

So I started writing about the fear, going from house to house on a street I called Bryant Street, telling the story of the people I thought lived in each house. Twisted stories, Twilight Zone-like stories.

But all stories take place on Bryant Street.

CURATOR'S NOTE

I'm the lucky person who gets to read Bryant Street stories first. These stories are dark, but wonderful, taking place on a street that wouldn't be out of place in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. Each story has its own delightful shiver. There are four packed collections here, providing lots of shivers. Enjoy! – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

It All Might Be Seasonable

For years and years, actually decades and decades, I kept saying that one day I would do a Bryant Street collection or two, and I just never got around to it.

Finally, in the winter of 2023, I decided it was time and told the fine folks at WMG Publishing I was going to do this. Stephanie Writt came up with the cool street-sign logo and I was off.

I thought it would be cool to have Bryant Street be a television series with four seasons of ten episodes each season. (For those of you who don't know, a short story usually has enough story for a single thirty-minute episode of anything on television.)

So I sent the idea of four seasons to Stephanie at WMG and back comes the four wonderful covers using seasons of the year. I was about to object when it dawned on me that four seasons of the year would be a lot easier to explain than four seasons of a television show.

And these would act as ten episodes of a season, but each season would start on the first day of the named season. A full year of Bryant Street.

So I started with the forty stories together and then put them into seasons.

Often a story is set in the title season. Or the story is dark like winter. Or hot like summer.

Or a character in the last days of their lives like winter, or fading like fall. In one way or another, all the stories fit into a season.

But think of them like ten episodes per run. The winter season run, the spring season run, and so on.

Sort of like ten episodes per season of a series like The Twilight Zone television series used to be. Every episode different, yet every episode set on Bryant Street.

Wrong Turn

Bryant Street, where things just never seem right, never work right, never exist as expected.

I created Bryant Street a long time ago when Stephen King said writers should write about what scares them. Subdivisions terrify me at a deep level, so I created Bryant Street.

I lived this story far too many times in subdivisions. Luckily escaped with my life each time, but only barely.

* * *

Patrick Cutler was lost.

That simple. He was lost in his own subdivision.

He eased his rented Ford coupe over to the edge of the curb and stopped. He kicked up the air-conditioning a touch to fight off not only the heat of the late-July day outside of Las Vegas, but also his sweating from worry.

How could he be lost? He had bought the house on Bryant Street six months ago, spent a month in it in February, then had gone north to his home in Portland.

But he had a three-day business conference down here and even though he hated the intense summer heat here, he figured he might as well stay at his own place.

But he had never noticed when he bought the place and lived here that every house in this massive subdivision looked almost identical. Especially in the shimmering waves of heat.

All the homes were desert brown stucco, tile roofs, desert low-water landscaping that all looked identical. All had two-car garages, all had windows covered in blinds, and all had large numbers on the side near the garage that seemed to make no sense at all. When he thought the numbers were going up, he would go around a shallow corner and suddenly they would be different numbers and heading down in count.

And the street signs in this subdivision seemed to be almost non-existent, as if the designers had wanted people to get lost. And no street was straight. All of them curved one way or another, moving up and over small ridgelines and then back into shallow valleys, all the while the streets changed names as it turned out, without warning.

Patrick hadn't given that any thought at all. He loved his home outside of Portland, but the last few winters had been too cold for him and since he liked Las Vegas and could work from anywhere, he had bought a second home here.

He had heard when he bought the place that this subdivision alone had over four thousand homes in it. One of the largest built in the Las Vegas area. He just never realized how massive an area four thousand homes covered.

So for the last thirty minutes he had been just driving, looking for any sign of his house. And now he wasn't even sure he could get out of the subdivision to even try to start over.