Letters From the Labyrinth 231 - Brian Keene
Howdy. I'm Brian Keene and this is the 231st issue of Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans of my work. Previous issues are archived here.
I'm typing this on Saturday morning. I've been up on and off throughout the night, checking on a nest of baby bunnies that are denned up deep beneath the ivy outside of our downstairs bathroom window. I Tweeted about the whole saga at length, so I won't repost it here. Suffice to say, their mommy is injured, and only comes to check on them sporadically. However, she is indeed coming to check on them, so in between her visits, it has fallen on me to keep the coyotes, stray cats, eagles, hawks and other predators away. Tin pie pans work great for everything except the coyotes, and my Remington 410 works great for them. Luckily, none have showed up yet.
I do worry, though. The mom has a big gash along her lower back. Looks like she tangled with something. And of course, I worry about the babies, too.
But so far, all involved seem to be doing fine.
You're reading this on Sunday. If it doesn't rain, later today J.F. Gonzalez's wife Cathy, authors Stephen Kozeniewski, Wesley Southard, director Mike Lombardo, and my former podcast co-host Dave Thomas will be coming over, along with their significant others.
Everybody attending has had two full doses of their vaccine, and are past the 14 day mark. Regardless, we are still going to keep the gathering outdoors. We have a big backyard, so that's easy to do. Since everyone has been vaccinated, I figure we can go maskless, as long as we keep a bit of distance between each other. If someone has to go inside to use the bathroom, I'll ask that they put on a mask.
Why the precautions if we've all been vaccinated? Well, that's easy. It's because my 13-year old son has not yet been vaccinated. People seem to think "Oh, well, I have my vaccine now, so it's all okay." But it is not all okay. The vaccine does not prevent you from carrying the virus and unwittingly infecting other people with it. And I don't want my youngest son to contract it, so we are going to continue to play it safe and use common sense.
My big fear is that we, as a country, are going to begin to relax as more adults are vaccinated, and we're going to forget about our kids, and no vaccine for them will be fast tracked, and then school is going to start up again in September, and everyone is going to be like, "We're all vaccinated. We can send the kids back to school and stop with remote learning." And then the virus is going to run rampant through our kids.
So, I will continue to proceed with caution.
But I am very much looking forward to seeing friends again, and being together. I'd considered inviting a bigger group of vaccinated folks. But again, caution is the rule of the day. The more people, the more risk. So we'll have those folks over next time.
Paperback and ebook editions of WITH TEETH are available for pre-order!
For a group of middle-aged friends, the trip into the forest was supposed to be simple. All they had to do was find a place to set up their criminal enterprise, and all of their financial problems would be solved. But now, night is falling, and with the darkness comes something else. Something fast. Something ferocious. Something...with TEETH!
From best selling, award-winning horror writer Brian Keene comes a vicious new novella WITH TEETH.
Release date is June 1. As I said, paperback and e-book can be pre-ordered direct from the publisher via this link.
There are no plans for a hardcover edition. It has been a while since I released something direct to paperback and digital, so I decided to with this book.
If you read the first draft of WITH TEETH that was posted to Patreon, be aware that there are some changes, including a pretty big plot point suggested to me by pre-reader Tod Clark.
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Speaking of pre-orders, if all goes as planned, you should see pre-orders for the paperback and ebook editions of SUBURBAN GOTHIC become available soon. As things stand right now, Dedite is promising a July release.
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Antarctic Press is having a 25% off sale, which includes the omnibus collecting my entire creator-owned comic series THE LAST ZOMBIE. Click here and enter AP25 as your sale code at checkout!
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The Italian language edition of THE RISING is now available in paperback, via Amazon Italy.
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On last week's episode of DEFENDERS DIALOGUE... Hulk! The Thing! Thanos! Iron Man! It's a Marvel Comics Bronze-Age Bonanza as Christopher Golden and I kicked off their coverage of Marvel Two-In-One! Available for free wherever you listen to podcasts, and also right here.
At long last, the CLICKERS series makes its way to audiobook for the first time ever!
CLICKERS by J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams is available via Audible and Amazon right now.
CLICKERS II by J.F. Gonzalez and myself is in production.
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Last week's work was primarily focused on Scares That Care stuff, but I did get a chapter of MONSTERS OF SAIPAN written, and several chapters of SUBMERGED: THE LABYRINTH Book 2. And also a brand new short story called "Pinatas".
This coming week's main focus will be THE DRIVE-IN: MULTIPLEX and PROJECT CASTLE. I anticipate that SUBMERGED should be finished within the next two weeks, as well.
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Currently Reading: 13 Views of the Suicide Woods by Bracken MacLeod (a re-read for me).
Currently Listening: Never Say Die by Black Sabbath
Currently Watching: Q - Inside the Storm. This documentary series on HBO is a compelling, compulsive binge watch — and the final episode, as “White Rabbit” plays over footage of the Capitol Insurrection, is as terrifying as any horror movie you’ll see this year. Highly recommended.
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This is the last week for the From Beyond Weird Fiction Storybundle is now live! Ten books for fifteen bucks, including THE DAMNED HIGHWAY by myself and Nick Mamatas, THRALL by Mary SanGiovanni, and many more!
Weird fiction spent much of the twentieth century as an acquired taste for people with peculiar taste. Not quite horror, only a quasi-science fiction, fantasies without consolation—it was a hard sell. But as the world got weirder, the weird made its move to reclaim its territory from the genres it inspired.
This bundle goes far beyond the classic modes of Weird Fiction. Sure, there's Lovecraftian and Cthulhoid stuff, but it's remixed and detourned, injected into the modes of thriller, of slice-of-life realism, of New Journalism and the avant-garde. Other aspects of the weird, from European decadence to punk rock outsider art, are also well represented, and expanded upon until every genre boundary gives way and every brain cell bursts.
Read more about the TEN books in the bundle here.
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If you have the Clubhouse app, don't forget about the Campfire Tales weekly reading series. I host them every Monday night at 9pm Eastern. Always myself and at least one other author. Sometimes I read, and sometimes I don't, depending on how many guests we have. Tomorrow night, director Kevin Kangas makes his debut, and both Jeff Strand and John Urbancik make their return.
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And that's it for this week. Take care of yourselves, and I'll see you back here next Sunday!