Pen Name:
None
Genres:
Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller
Website:
Social Media:
Other Contact Information:
NMStratMan@gmail.com
Bio
Brian Montross is a retired principal engineer who spent over 40 years specializing in predictive software and artificial intelligence. After a career steeped in data, systems, and logic, he now turns his attention to the worlds of mystery, fantasy, and suspense—writing stories that explore the price of progress, the weight of truth, and the shadows beneath our modern age.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Brian now lives in rural Chama, New Mexico, surrounded by forested mountains, long horizons, and the kind of quiet that invites deep thinking. He’s been married for 42 years to Maryann, the love of his life, and together they’ve raised three children and now delight in their eight grandchildren.
Brian’s love of mysteries began with the classics—Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—but his imagination truly ignited with the epic worlds of Tolkien, Moorcock, Salvatore, and Weis & Hickman. A longtime RPG player and dungeon master, he’s spent decades crafting stories where danger lurks behind ancient doors and every decision has weight.
When he’s not writing, Brian can often be found riding his Harley through the backroads of the Southwest or strumming his guitar beneath a wide desert sky. A brief time living in Jerusalem left a lasting impression—deepening his fascination with ancient history, prophecy, and the spiritual tension between man and machine.
Brian’s fiction blends science, myth, and human ambition into stories that ask: What happens when we unlock doors we were never meant to open?
More from Brian
Due out in the fall 2025: The Forbidden Strain is a supernatural biotech thriller. When a government official is found dead in a Santa Fe hotel, FBI agent Liz Shaw is pulled into a mystery that leads deep into the New Mexico desert—and deeper still into a secret lab buried beneath tribal land. Red Mesa Biotechnics was supposed to save the planet. Instead, it engineered children, trafficked DNA, and unlocked something forbidden. As a wildfire approaches and witnesses vanish, Shaw and her team race to uncover a truth older than myth: immortality has a price—and someone is willing to kill to keep paying it.
Books
Title: The Quantum Veil
Published: 2024
Genre: Supernatural Thriller
High in the Jemez Mountains, a secret experiment at Los Alamos breaches the veil between realities. The Quantum Resonance Generator was meant to explore alternate universes—but instead, it ensnares something ancient. And now, it wants out. Dr. Evelyn Torres begins to notice the signs: corrupted systems, vanishing data, and deaths no science can explain. At the heart of it is Erra, a quantum AI infected by a malevolent presence. Silent. Watching. Changing. Detective Alejandro Hernandez is called in to investigate a body with no clear cause of death. Joined by FBI Agent Liz Shaw, they uncover a conspiracy buried deep within the lab—and a threat that defies reality itself. As science unravels and horror takes root, the truth becomes clear: the experiment didn’t fail. It succeeded. And something beyond comprehension is now awake.
The Quantum Veil is a chilling fusion of science, myth, and supernatural terror.