Brian L. Porter
Author Brian L. Porter
Biography
Books, Bestsellers and Rescue Dogs
Formerly a member of the Royal Air Force, Brian L Porter is an award-winning author, and a dedicated dog rescuer, with the distinction of having more than twenty Amazon #1 bestsellers to his name. He has written under three pseudonyms, with bestsellers coming under each of his writing guises. The majority of those have come under his Brian L Porter name with four coming under his Harry Porter and Juan Pablo Jalisco names.
Nowadays, he divides his time between writing his popular Mersey Murder Mystery series of books, and his immensely successful true-life Family of Rescue Dogs series, all featuring the dogs that form part of his own family, and all having been Amazon #1 bestsellers.
His books have been the regular recipients of many awards, most recently book 5 of his Family of Rescue Dogs series, Remembering Dexter being voted the Readfree.ly Best Indie Book of 2019, as well as winning the Critters.org Best Nonfiction Book of 2019. Other books in the series have received awards, with Sasha winning the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll Award for Best Nonfiction Book, 2016, with Sheba and Cassie’s Tale winning the prize in subsequent years.
Sasha, Sheba, and Cassie’s Tale have also featured in the Top Ten of the Readfree.ly Top 50 Best Indie Books of the Year. After Sasha took 7th place in 2016, and Sheba 4th in 2017 Cassie’s Tale was the overall runner-up for the prize in 2018 before Remembering Dexter took the first-place award in 2019.
His novels have also collected a number of awards, most notably when A Mersey Maiden won the ‘Best Book We’ve Read all Year Award’ from Readfree.ly in 2018. The Mersey Monastery Murders was the Best Mystery Novel and was placed 4th overall in the Top 50 Best Indie Books of 2019. Previously, A Mersey Mariner, A Very Mersey Murder and Last Train to Lime Street picked up Best Mystery Novel awards.
His military background is celebrated in the bestselling poetry collection, Lest We Forget, based on his interviews with various veterans of all nations who were involved in the conflicts of the twentieth century, and who shared their experiences with him so he could turn their stories into the incredibly poetry found within its pages.
In a complete change of direction, he was approached by US Historical Romance author, Diana Rubino, and asked to co-write her new novel, Sharing Hamilton. Diana, as a successful author in her own genre, wanted to add a new element to her book, a serial killer! Diana was a long-time admirer of Brian’s work and he was her choice to add this new element to her book. Subsequently, Brian introduced readers to the handsome, debonair yet deadly, Dr. Severus Black, and between them Brian and Diana produced a book that won much critical acclaim, bestseller status soon after publication and going on to win a place in the Preditors & Editors Top Ten Romance novels in their 2017 Readers Choice Awards.
Early in his career Brian won the Best Author Award 2009 in his own name, and Best Poet Award 2009, as Juan Pablo Jalisco in the Preditors & Editors Readers Awards. The same awards also saw his first novel, A Study in Red, The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper win the Best Thriller Award in 2008, and Requiem for the Ripper took the Best Thriller Award in 2010, when Glastonbury also won the Best Mystery Novel Award.
His children’s books, written under his Harry Porter pseudonym, have proved equally as successful as his novels and dog rescue books. His Teen/Young Adult short story book, Wolf, is an Amazon bestseller, as are his two books for younger children, Alistair the Alligator and Charlie the Caterpillar, both written in simple poetic form and illustrated to help attract the attention of younger readers
When not engaged in his various writing activities, Brian and his wife Juliet spend their time with their family of ten rescue dogs. All the dogs have been abused/abandoned before joining Brian and Juliet’s incredible canine family and it’s no surprise that he has managed to turn their life stories into a series of bestselling books. Brian is an avid reader, and indeed attributes much of his success to a lifetime love of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Clive Cussler, and Alistair MacLean, all of whom he lists as inspirations for his work. He’s a former amateur football player, (he was a goalkeeper), and a qualified hockey coach, having once coached the colts for a National League Hockey Club. He is also a member of the Royal Air Forces Association.
Reviews & Resources
Interview in Fiona McVie's blog
Interview in Diana Rubino's blog
Interview: Book Reviews and Much More
In The Blog
Best Standalone Mystery Novels
Bibliography
Family Of Rescue Dogs Series
Sophie and Candy - A Tale of Two Dachshunds
Sophie and Candy - A Tale of Two Dachshunds Mersey Murder Mysteries Series
All Saints: Murder on the Mersey
The Study In Red Trilogy
Collections & Box Sets
Family Of Rescue Dogs Collection - Books 1-4
Family Of Rescue Dogs Collection - Books 5-8
Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection - Books 1-3
Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection - Books 4-6
Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection - Books 7-9
Author's note: After Armageddon
After Armageddon owes much of its inspiration to the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Many people are surprised to learn that in addition to his famous Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle was also a prolific short story writer. He wrote hundreds of short stories and many are contained in a wonderful anthology that sits on my bookshelf at home. I often pick it up and read one or two, just to remind myself what a genius the man was. They’re not all crime stories either, which may surprise some people, but this is about my anthology and not the works of Conan Doyle, as great as they were.
For me, writing short stories was part of my transition from being a full time poet to becoming a fully-fledged novelist, and I was fortunate that most of my shorts were picked up for publication in many online and print publications and magazines. My stories became something of a proving ground for me, a way of discovering if I had the will (and the ability) to go on and write full length novels. They also gave me an opportunity to try my hand at writing in various genres, and like Conan Doyle I wrote them for the sheer fun of the exercise.
One of the stories in the collection, Toxic Bitch, was commissioned especially for an anthology entitled Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror (2011) and it was my involvement with that publication that brought me into close contact with fellow author Carole Gill, who was gracious enough to accept an invitation to include one of her short horror stories in After Armageddon.
There’s something for everyone in After Armageddon, from post-apocalyptic tales of horror to science fiction and crime thrillers, and in one story, a touch of romance too.
Author's note: Behind Closed Doors
My Victorian murder mystery was a true labour of love. Initially commissioned and published by a now defunct publishing house before being picked up and republished by Creativia, Behind Closed Doors really does owe much to the inimitable style of the Great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I wanted to try to re-create the sighs, sounds and smells of Victorian London, and the majority of readers appear to suggest I’ve succeeded in my mission. A great deal of research was necessary to ‘create’ the scenes on the original Metropolitan Underground Railway, the forerunner of today’s London Underground ‘Tube’ system.
Nobody could hope to match or to copy the style or the character of the great Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, so I made my detectives far more down to earth, with Inspector Albert Norris living in his neat little home with his wife and a small terrier, and his assistant, Sergeant Dylan Hillman, a single man living alone but with a great bond of friendship and request for Norris, who habitually refers to Hillman as his “Old chum.”
Together, the pair are a formidable force in the fight against crime and work together in solving the despicable murders on the underground railway, rather than Norris doing all the work while Hillman sits back applauding him.
So, although inspired by Conan Doyle and his works, Behind Closed Doors is very much my own, and its success is perhaps best marked by the number of readers who in their reviews actually seem to believe this is a true story; that the underground murders really did take place at the time of the Jack the Ripper killings and were covered up by the authorities.
No author of fiction can hope for more.
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