Letters From the Labyrinth 164

Hey again. I'm Brian Keene and this is the 164th issue of Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans of my work. Previous issues are archived here.

Yesterday, Rich Chizmar did a signing here in York. Authors Matt Wildasin, Wesley Southard, Robert Ford and myself showed up to support him. While we were there, we commiserated with Wes, who had just received his first one-star review. I was going to write about that here today, and share the advice I gave him, but I think instead I'll write about it on Patreon this week, and that will be this month's $2 Writing Advice essay.

The other reason I'm going to wait until later this week to write about it is that I woke up out of sorts this morning, and don't know that I have the head space to tackle it properly right now. Mary is in New Jersey and my youngest son is with his mom this weekend, and I'm home alone (unless you count the cats), and the house is way too quiet, so I've filled it with sound. I'm working indoors today, instead of out in my office, so that i can listen to records while I write. Currently, album 1, side 1 of Eric Clapton's Crossroads box-set is playing softly (yes, that's The Yardbirds stuff).

I woke up at five this morning from a dream that left me unsettled. I can't articulate why it left me unsettled. Indeed, I don't even remember many of the details, other than it involved a conversation with a woman who was my childhood sweetheart. I won't name her here, to protect her privacy. Suffice to say, she was the first great love of my life -- but it was a young love, and it did not last. I graduated high school and joined the Navy and traveled the world. She still had two more years of school left. And although we stayed in touch and wrote letters to one another all the time (letters which I still have), we were both young, and on two different sides of the world, and the inevitable happened. Which is a good thing, because if we had stayed together, I would have never met my first wife in my 20s and had my oldest son, David. And I wouldn't have met my second wife in my 30s and had my youngest son. And I wouldn't have met Mary and be where I am here at the beginning of my "golden years".

And I feel that maybe I should clarify something here. This isn't about me and Mary. I firmly love her and am happy and content with our life together. This isn't about wistfully thinking what might have been. This is simply me explaining to you who this woman I dreamed about was, and what her place was in my life, so that I can further articulate why this dream has left me unsettled.

So, anyway, it didn't work out. But for a few years there, when we were young, that love could have moved mountains, as young love often can. I've seen her off and on since then. Our paths seem to cross about every decade. And we're both very different people now than who we were as teenagers. But I think we're also both very happy with how our lives turned out, and certain that we are where we are supposed to be.

Which is why I never finished writing what, at one time, was supposed to be my magnum opus -- a lengthy doorstop of a novel called LOVE AND WORMS. It wasn't a horror novel, per se. It was a literary novel. A romance, if you need to apply a genre label to it. The story was about a serial killer attending his high school reunion ten years after graduation and rekindling things with his childhood sweetheart. It was about me and her, basically. I've never finished the novel for several reasons. The main reason is that I no longer remember what it's like to be in that head space. Sure, I can go back and re-read the old letters and I can look at pictures from high school. I can still smile any time "Take Me With U" by Prince comes on, and I can tell you about two teenagers kissing in a car parked outside a YMCA while "Still Loving You" by The Scorpions plays on the radio, but that was then and this is now, and time has a way of muting those memories. This 52-year old remembers the scenes and the sounds, but the emotions belong to a much younger man. It's like the early works of Stephen King. CARRIE, RAGE, and THE LONG WALK are the works of a young author. If he tried to write them now, in his 70s, they'd be very different novels. The same could be said of 11/22/63 or the stories in JUST AFTER SUNSET. Those are the work of an older author. Had he tried to write them as a young man, I don't think they would have worked.

I have attempted, over the years, to finish LOVE AND WORMS. I come back to it once in a while. I've tried aging the characters, so that when the serial killer finally returns home, they are middle aged. I've tried changing the point of view, going from third person to first person. But ultimately, it never works, because of the reasons listed above. I published an excerpt from it in APOCRYPHA a few years back, and legendary comic book writer and artist Keith Giffen has read the rest of what I've written, but that's it. LOVE AND WORMS will remain unfinished...

...because I waited too long.

And that's what the dream was about, and that's what has me unsettled this morning. In the dream, we were the age we are now. As I said, in real life, our paths seems to cross about every decade. In the dream, I told her that I was dying and had decided to go around to the people who were important to me throughout my life, and tell them goodbye. But that's not what the dream was about. It was about unfinished novels. That's what's churning around in my subconscious. It's the very real fear that I might have another heart attack tomorrow, or set the other side of my body on fire next week, and if that happens, there is stuff that remains unfinished. It's not about legacy. My legacy is sewed up. And it's not about my estate. My estate is in very good hands with Stephen Kozeniewski and Mike Lombardo. Should I die tomorrow, I absolutely 100% know that they will take care of my works and make sure my kids benefit from those works with the same passion and dedication I give for J.F. Gonzalez's estate.

So no, it''s not about those things. It's about not finishing the things I need to finish. I talked about chronic pain a few newsletters ago. That has slowed me down, considerably. I also make sure to spend time with my loved ones more these days. But those factors aside, I still spend a considerable amount of each day writing. And yet, there is stuff that remains unfinished. And when I finish one of them these days, there's a sense of relief. Not of accomplishment, but of relief. It's a "Whew. Okay, if I stroke out right now, at least this one is done."

But there are always more, waiting in line behind it. And short of spending less time with my loved ones, or getting addicted to painkillers, I'm not sure how to squeeze any more writing time out of the day. I could stop doing the podcasts. That would free up two days per week. And indeed, I almost did this year. I asked the Project Entertainment Network's CEO, Armand Rosamilia, what would happen if I stopped doing The Horror Show with Brian Keene when we reach episode 250, and he told me they'd go bankrupt. So yeah, I guess I can't stop doing that anytime soon. And while Defenders Dialogue will never be the ratings bonanza that The Horror Show with Brian Keene is, I enjoy doing it. It's one of the few moments every week where I can just relax and have fun for an hour, and get on the phone with one of my best friends, and talk about something that brings us both joy. So, no. I can't quit podcasting.

And no, I can't seem to get caught up.

And every day I get one day older, and every day, my body gets a little more frayed from 52 years of damage and destruction, and every day, the end seems to be creeping closer while The End seems to slip farther away.

Good morning. Happy Sunday to you.

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Yesterday, I finished editing THE SEVEN: THE LABYRINTH, Book 1. This involved copying and pasting all the serialized chapters from Patreon into a Word document, and then finding all the holes and problems. That's the downside of writing serialized fiction. You don't see the big picture until it's finished, and you can stand back and look at it as a whole. The Patreon version of the novel is 65,000 words. The manuscript I sent to pre-readers Dezm, Tod, and Macker yesterday is about 78,000 words -- mostly consisting of things I forgot to add during the serialization or things that needed further clarification. (For example, in the Patreon edition, Ob tries to convince LeHorn and Frankie to join forces with the Siqqusim, but there's also a reference that he tried to get Teddy to do the same -- except I forgot to actually write that scene, so...)

By the time I incorporate Tod, Macker, and Dezm's edits, I suspect it will be right around 85,000 words. Thunderstorm Books will bring it out in hardcover next year. After that, there will be a paperback, e-book, and audiobook release, as well.

This past week was also spent on edits for my collaboration with Bev Vincent, which is almost finished but it's about the Mandela Effect, and involves a LOT of fact checking on my part in order for it to be effective. And I also continued work on SUBURBAN GOTHIC, the sequel to URBAN GOTHIC. Still shooting for January/February to complete that one.

Speaking of collaborations, this week was the season premiere of THOR: METAL GODS.— written by myself, Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Jay Edidin, and Yoon Ha Lee, and voiced by Daniel Gillies. You can get the entire series for just $9.99 and start listening to episode 1 right now by clicking here.

Today on Twitter, I'll be giving away 10 free passes to the series. All you have to do is use the hashtag #ThorMetalGods. Once it is trending, I'll go through the hashtag Tweets and pick 10 winners at random.

I did a new interview on The Comic Conspiracy podcast, where I talked about working on the series, and what fans can expect from it. you can listen to that here.

And still on the subject of collaborations, I received my contributor copies for the mass market paperback edition of SHADES by myself and Geoff Cooper this week, and I filmed the unboxing so you can all see what they look like. Click here to watch.

Also, earlier in the week, I posted a video examining Wesley Southard's new book and an old Tom Piccirilli movie that most of his fans don't know about. Click here to watch that.

Okay, that's it for this week. Don't forget to hop on Twitter and win yourself one of those passes!

As always:

PATREON - Where I post new short stories, writing advice essays, two serialized ongoing novels, and behind-the-scenes stuff.

TWITTER - The only social media outlet I still use regularly.

YOUTUBE - Where I'm posting free stuff each and every day.

I'll see you back here next week!