Letters From the Labyrinth 228 - Brian Keene
Hi. I'm Brian Keene and this is the 228th issue of Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans of my work. Previous issues are archived here.
Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate the holiday. This will be a rather short newsletter this week. Been dealing with some minor health stuff -- still -- the past week, and as I write this (Saturday afternoon) I'm not at 100%. But don't worry. It's all good. As I told my oldest son recently "You can't spend your life getting in fights and getting in bike crashes and getting in car crashes and drinking and smoking and eating bacon and sleeping around with many partners and jumping off cliffs and falling off roofs and shooting guns and swimming in the middle of the ocean and catching yourself on fire and not expect to start paying for it in your early Fifties."
Granted, he's thirty, so maybe it's advice I should have given him ten years ago, but since he doesn't do any of those things (except for eating bacon), I reckon I taught him by example.
Would I go back and change it? Well, I wouldn't have caught on fire. I would have avoided tobacco. I would have voided a few of those car crashes and maybe two of those fights. But hey, it's a life lived. Whaddya gonna do?
Mary has it in her head that I should spend my remaining years whittling wooden ducks on our porch. I have never whittled a thing in my 54 years, but she is insistent.
I get my second dose of the vaccine this coming week, so that will be awesome.
Every Monday night, I host a reading series exclusively on the Clubhouse app. Last week, our guests were Scott Edelman, Nina Perez, and Wile E. Young. My guests tomorrow night (Monday) will be Bev Vincent, Linda Addison, and Cynthia Pelyao. We have changed the start time to 9pm EST. Author Q&A always follows. I'm you are following me on Clubhouse and have your notifications turned on, you'll get a reminder when it goes live.
Today, I'll give away three memberships to Clubhouse. The rules are very simple.
Rule 1: You MUST have an iPhone. No iPads. No ndroids. iPhone ONLY. Why? Because the app is exclusive to iPhone only right now.
Rule 2: You must be willing to share your name and phone number with me, so I can text you an invite to the app.
Rule 3: You must be one of the first three people to correctly answer the trivia question below. To answer, simply reply to this email. If you win, I'll get in touch. If you don't hear from me, it means we already have three winners.
Trivia Question: True or False -- My novel ENTOMBED takes place on the same world/same reality as my novel DEAD SEA.
Speaking of Bev Vincent:
Inspired by specially curated mixtapes, Bev Vincent and Brian Keene present two new spine-chilling novellas...
As a blizzard descends upon the sleepy town of Bayport, Rhode Island, brothers Joey and Frank Shaw investigate the mysterious disappearances of several townsfolk. After the discovery of strange tunnels, tunnels that only Joey can see, the trio suspect something is lurking beneath the snowbound town. Something burrowing. Something hungry. And it looks like Joey might be next in The Dead of Winter.
Did you imagine the world vanishing to a flood or a comet, the hand of God or nuclear war? What if it started with something as innocuous as the Berenstain Bears, and something known as the Mandela Effect? Barricaded in a seedy motel room, one man makes sense of love, loss, and life as the end of the world looms. Do you see what he sees? Do you know what he knows in The Motel At the End of the World?
On Sale Now In Paperback!
Click here to order from Amazon or click here to order from the publisher.
The next Lifetime Subscriber shipment is expected to go out in May. It will contin paperback copies of SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, THE DAMNED HIGHWAY, END OF THE ROAD, DISSONANT HARMONIES, and STORIES FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC. Copies of the former are in house. Copies of END OF THE ROAD and DISSONANT HARMONIES will be delivered within the next two weeks, and will then need to be signed. Three weeks for THE DAMNED HIGHWAY. Signature sheets for STORIES FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC will be tipped in at the printer.
Currently Reading: KIRBY, KING OF COMICS by Mark Evanier (a reread for me)
Currently Listening: HELL FREEZES OVER by The Eagles
Currently Watching: THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER
I'm enjoying THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER for what it is. I was always a fan of Baron Zemo in the comics, and it's neat to see him getting more play, post CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. Ditto Sharon Carter (one of my first childhood crushes). And as a DEFENDERS fan, I particularly got a kick out of the Easter Egg related to The Headmen (which I won't spoil here but will probably talk about on the next episode of Defenders Dialogue).
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And that's it for this week. Like I said, short and sweet.
Take care of yourselves, and each other. I'll see you back here again, next week. And if I don't? Well...that's why I wrote END OF THE ROAD. ;-)
(I have to go pretend to whittle ducks for Mary now...)