[Letters From the Labyrinth] Brian Keene 12/11/16
Hi. My name is Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly email newsletter. If you're a new subscriber, previous issues are archived here.
The 2016 Maelstrom set in on sale now. For new readers, Maelstrom is my imprint via publisher Thunderstorm Books. Each year, I publish a three-book set featuring a novel length work by myself, a novella length work by myself, and a novel length work by a writer I think you will enjoy. These sets are produced for book collectors. Each set consists of three signed, limited edition hardcovers with high-end production values. They are sold together — three books for one price.
We had to bump up the price a bit this year to cover the ever increasing rise in paper costs. As a result, the print run is set a bit lower than previous volumes. This year’s three-book set is limited to 225 copies and costs $150.
This year’s set includes:
THRONE OF THE BASTARDS
by Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury
Rogan is back in this sequel to Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury’s award-winning KING OF THE BASTARDS, and this time, he’ll show no mercy. Learning that his family are in danger, Rogan returns to his former kingdom, now under siege from foreign invaders led by his bastard son. Now, the aging barbarian and his trusted companions, Javan and Akibeel, must forge an alliance new friends and old foes, mustering an army to retake the kingdom. Surrounded by savages, soldiers, demons, and dark magic, it will take all their cunning, skill, and courage to survive the war and determine once and for all who shall sit upon the THRONE OF THE BASTARDS.
SCHOOL’S OUT
by Brian Keene
Eight-year-old Alan doesn’t like going to school, but when a global pandemic leaves him orphaned, cold, starving, and lonely, he has no choice but to set out on a dangerous quest to return to his third-grade classroom. SCHOOL’S OUT, an all-new post-apocalyptic novella by Brian Keene, was suggested to him by his son, marking their first official collaboration, and is suitable for all ages.
COME TO DUST
by Bracken MacLeod
Ever since her mother abandoned her, five-year-old Sophie has had to depend on her uncle Mitch for everything. But he’s struggling. Restarting a life interrupted by time in prison is hard enough without having to balance work and single parenthood. Mitch is determined to make it work though, striving to keep their family together despite the obstacles in their way, because no matter how difficult things get, they are good for each other. And life for the two of them seems to be looking up. But when Sophie dies tragically, it all comes crashing down. Mitch descends into a crippling grief, coming to understand how little his freedom means without her to share it with. And though released from the sudden responsibility thrust upon him, all he wants is his niece back, safe and alive.
When he gets his wish and scores of children around the world begin to inexplicably rise from the dead—Sophie among them—everything becomes much harder.
Mitch rescues her from the morgue, determined to carve out a normal life for them no matter what, though it soon becomes clear that may not be possible. While the kids who’ve returned behave like living children, they still look very dead. And they can do something else that normal children cannot. Something terrifying. Beliefs differ whether the children’s return is a mercy or a sign of approaching judgment, and a congregation of religious fanatics determined to usher in the apocalypse has their own plan for salvation.
Now Mitch must find a way to save Sophie from an increasingly hostile world that wants to tear them apart and put her back in the ground for good.
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MAELSTROM VII – The perfect holiday present for the Brian Keene fan in your life. 225 sets. $150. CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Back in 2009, around the time writer/director Paul Campion (THE DEVIL'S ROCK) was first trying to turn my novel DARK HOLLOW into a feature film, I sent him a copy of my latest short story collection. Paul thought one of the stories, "The Siqquism Who Stole Christmas", would make a great short film, and wrote the first draft of a short film script called THE NAUGHTY LIST based on that story.
Now, that film is almost ready for release. You can view the teaser trailer on YouTube. I'm linking to it rather than embedding it, because I'm told embedding videos in email newsletters leads to chaos. So click the link, watch the trailer, and leave us a nice comment.
THE NAUGHTY LIST is about two American mobsters, Tony Genova and Vince Napoli, who are holed up in a remote wooden cabin on a snowy Christmas Eve, when there's a tinkle of sleigh bells, the sound of footsteps across the roof, and someone with boots and bright red pants starts climbing down inside the chimney. Soon Tony and Vince will discover if this really is Santa Claus, and what it really takes to get on the Naughty or Nice list...
My novel THE RISING was first published in 2003. It went on to become a cult-hit, and then a bonafide bestseller, and served as a major inspiration for the current zombie craze in our pop culture, and was translated into a dozen different languages, and was imitated endlessly, and had its ideas and concepts pop up in other zombie films and books, and was a trivia question on an ABC game show, and was cited by actors, politicians and other public figures as being among their favorite books, an was also cited by a generation of up-and-coming horror writers as their gateway drug into this genre, and was the subject of several cinematic false starts and an ill-fated comic book adaptation.
I never planned for any of that to happen.
I began writing THE RISING in the mid-Nineties. Back then, it had a very different plot and a different title — Cabin Fever. The plot then morphed into what you know it as, but the book still had a different title — More Than Infinity (a title I would have liked to have kept, but my editors at Leisure Books and Delirium Books voted The Rising).
When I started The Rising (or Cabin Fever, as it was then known) I was a much younger man, working a series of dead end jobs for very little money — anything I could do to pay my child support on time and have enough left over to eat while I worked on becoming a famous horror writer. Most of my friends were in the same position (meaning they were also working dead end jobs and broke most of the time).
My saving grace at that time was my friend Michelle. We’d worked together at one of those dead end jobs, and she dated and eventually married (and later divorced) one of those friends of mine. Her kids and my first son were the same age, and playmates. At a time in my life when I wasn’t so much living paycheck to paycheck as I was living bounced check to bounced check, Michelle let me live in her home. She had a spare room that I stayed in, and I gave her money towards rent and the bills and watched the kids for her when she was at work. And when I wasn’t watching the kids, or at one of my dead end jobs, I sat in that spare room and I worked on the novel you know as The Rising.
When I go back and re-read the novel now (something I rarely do with any of my work, but did with this one in advance of the preparation for the ten-year anniversary edition that was published a few years ago), I see Michelle’s influence all over that book. Indeed, she and her then-husband are even name checked early on, as friends of Jim’s who didn’t survive the Siqqusim’s initial attack.
Quite simply, without Michelle, without her kindness and grace and charity, there would have never been a novel called The Rising. And there would have never been all the other novels and stories and comic books that have followed. I owe my career to a lot of people. Michelle is definitely one of them. Without her help, I’d probably still be working a dead end job somewhere, and the zombies y’all love so much…well, who’s to say?
Michelle’s charity and kindness helped me become who I am today. Now, I’m asking you to give her some charity an kindness in return. Michelle suffered a series of debilitating strokes back in October (multiple strokes — the doctors don’t know how many for sure). Although she is now recuperating, the strokes have left her financially devastated. She has been unable to work since October, her savings are wiped out, an she’s not allowed to return to work until January at the earliest. Her medical expenses are in excess of $10,000 already and are still climbing.
Michelle has started a GoFundMe to help get her through this. If you have read The Rising, and you enjoyed the book, or you’ve enjoyed any of the nearly fifty books I’ve written since then, please consider donating if financially possible. Even a dollar or five or ten will help. Again, I can’t stress enough, without Michelle’s charity, I wouldn’t have a career today. If you’ve ever wanted to help me out, or thank me for writing something you enjoyed, then the best way to do that is by helping my friend.
And thank you.
Currently Watching: Nothing
Currently Listening: TRAPPED ON EARTH - Lost Goat
Currently Reading: RAGE by Stephen King
Stephen King's RAGE is such a young author's novel, and yet, it remains (in my opinion) one of his most visceral, as well as having some of his best early characterization efforts, outside of his short fiction. It's been a good fifteen years since my last reading of it, and this is probably the fourth time I've read it in my lifetime, but it has aged remarkably well.
Lost Goat is a band out of San Francisco. TRAPPED ON EARTH was (I believe) their first album. Sort of like what happens if Rush met Black Sabbath. Good stuff. Perfect for writing.
I think I'll stop there. New books on sale, a way to help an old and dear friend of mine, and a free movie trailer to watch. That should keep you busy for the next few days. As always, thanks for not unsubscribing. Be good to the people in your life, and I'll see you back here next week.