Bio

John C. Bruening is an award-winning writer who’s been told on more than one occasion that there are eight million stories in the naked city, and that the archetypal hero has a thousand faces. In his world, these two pieces of information are not as random and unrelated as they might seem. Heroes and their stories are what his world has always been about.

He has enjoyed them ever since he can remember – in books, magazines, comics, on the big and small screens, in old-time radio’s theater of the mind, in the pages of history, and just about anywhere else. Over the past few decades, he has spun some engaging tales of his own.

He started his career as a newspaper and magazine journalist in the 1980s and later transitioned to marketing, advertising and corporate communications. He published his debut novel, The Midnight Guardian: Hour of Darkness, in the summer of 2016 on Flinch Books, the small press he co-founded a year earlier. Hour of Darkness is the first installment in the ongoing saga of a masked vigilante in the fictional metropolis known as Union City, written in the spirit of the classic pulp fiction of the 1930s and ‘40s.

In addition to the Midnight Guardian novels, his body of work also includes short stories and essays that have appeared in anthologies from Flinch and numerous other publishers: White City Press, Moonstone Books, Blue Planet Press, Becky Books, Stormgate Press and others.

John has written hundreds of articles and essays for Ohio Magazine, RetroFan, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Cleveland Scene, The Pittsburgh City Paper and other publications. His areas of specialty include the arts, history, science, industry and pop culture. His feature writing has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2000 and 2011.

When he’s not writing, he’s usually thinking about writing. But when he’s not doing that, he’s looking at the world through a lens that’s decidedly retro. If the pages are a bit yellow, he’ll feel compelled to read them. If the images appear in grainy black and white, he’ll watch all the way to The End. And if he picks up the scratchy echoes of some distant era, he’ll tune in and listen.

He lives with his wife in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Their two young adult children still spend time under their roof when they’re not away at college or out conquering the world.