[Letters From the Labyrinth] Official Brian Keene Newsletter 3/12/17
Hi. My name is Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth. If you're a new subscriber, previous issues are archived here.
I finished the final draft for a novel called HOLE IN THE WORLD this week. Although this novel serves as a prequel of sorts to THE LOST LEVEL, it is designed to be read as a complete standalone work, with no knowledge of the other Lost Level books required to enjoy it.
Basically, it's Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE crossbred with LAND OF THE LOST.
It's one of the books that fell far behind deadline between my heart attack and J.F. Gonzalez's death. He and I had agreed long before he ever fell ill that we'd take care of each other's literary estates -- making sure our heirs didn't get screwed over by New York or Hollywood, and finishing any unfinished work. So, I added his unfinished work to my already full schedule, and fell behind on everything. But in truth, I was starting to fall behind even before that. A heart attack and a struggle with your psyche will do that.
Oh, fuck you, Brian. Call it what it was. Depression. It's 2016. You're allowed to say it. "Struggle with your psyche." You sound like a douchebag. It was fucking depression, you idiot, and you broke up with your girlfriend and crawled inside a bottle for a year before finally seeing somebody about it and sorting yourself out, and during that time, you wrote shit. Well, okay, technically, the critics would say you wrote shit for the last twenty years, but fuck them, too.
Oh, look. There go some people unsubscribing from the newsletter again...
But I digress. Anyway, HOLE IN THE WORLD fell inexcusably behind deadline, as did novels SUBURBAN GOTHIC and INVISIBLE MONSTERS and novellas DEAD AIR and THE MOTEL AT THE END OF THE EARTH. The two goals I set for 2017 were to see all of those completed, and to get my entire backlist out on audiobook. I am making progress toward both.
My pre-readers will start going over the first half of HOLE IN THE WORLD this week, while I polish the second half. Then, once they've sent me their edits for the first half, I'll send them the second portion. Once everything is completed, I'll send the manuscript to Camelot Books, who have the rights to publish it as a signed, limited edition hardcover later this year. And then, in 2018, Apex will bring it out in paperback and digital. (It should also be noted that Apex will publish RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL this fall in paperback and digital, and Thunderstorm will publish a limited edition hardcover of that this spring).
So, yeah. A whole bunch of Lost Level books coming your way. If you haven't yet read the first one, click here and get started. It has dinosaurs and giant robots and snake men and the Bermuda Triangle's Flight 19.
With RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL and HOLE IN THE WORLD now finished, I'm turning my attention to DEAD AIR and THE MOTEL AT THE END OF THE EARTH next, as well as finishing editorial duties on CLICKERS FOREVER: A J.F. GONZALEZ TRIBUTE.
Speaking of which...
CLICKERS FOREVER: A J.F. GONZALEZ TRIBUTE is not just a Clickers book. Yes, it has a lost Clickers short story by J.F., and yes, it also has a bunch of brand new Clickers stories by other authors (including an original Clickers novella by Jonathan Janz) -- but the anthology is much more than that. There is a short story by Wesley Southard set in the world of PRIMITIVE, and another short story by Mike Oliveri that ties in to RESTORE FROM BACK-UP -- the novel he and J.F. wrote together. There are critical essays -- Matt Serafini on SURVIVOR, Nick Mamatas on THE CORPORATION. There are personal essays -- Wrath James White on what it was like to collaborate with J.F., Lesley Conner on what it was like to have him as a mentor. And there's a lot more than these, too.
Here is a sneak peek at the current table of contents. THIS IS NOT THE COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS. By that, I mean, there are things in this book that I'm not ready to announce yet -- surprises for J.F.'s fans that I'm going to keep secret until the book is officially announced and on sale. Consider the following a teaser -- a glimpse of some of what will be included.
Introduction – Brian Keene
Books with Bite – Jonathan Maberry
Captivity – J.F. Gonzalez
Vanilla Sunshine – Jonathan Janz
Moist Air – Adam Cesare
My Own Personal Jesus – Wayne Allen Sallee
On Dying in J.F. Gonzalez’s Back from the Dead – Mike Lombardo
Bangers and Mash – Matt Hayward
Garage Clicker – John Urbancik
Clickers vs. Mandibles: The Tale of an Unwritten Saga – Jeff Strand
Ten Secrets to Survival Clickers Don’t Want You to Know (They Really Hate Number Six) – Jeff Burk
On the Contributions of J.F. Gonzalez to Horror Literature – Mary SanGiovanni
Belief – Lesley Conner
A Birthday Party for Jenny Too Good – Gord Rollo
Grab – Jay Wilburn
Algorithms of the Heart – Mike Oliveri
WWJD: Collaborating with J.F. Gonzalez – Wrath James White
Gracias, Hermano: A Letter to A Man I Never Met – Gabino Iglesias
Only One Way to Write the End of the Individual: J. F. Gonzalez’s The Corporation – Nick Mamatas
At the Corner of Flanders and Phillipsport – Michael T. Huyck Jr.
Deep One Into that Darkness Peering – Stephen Kozeniewski
Surfing Is My Life: Fear and Loathing on the Northern California Coast – Gene O’Neill
A Bad Influence – Robert Swartwood
Bleeding Through – Charles Rutledge
Ku Klux Clickers – Wile E. Young
My Own Private L.A. Gangsta – Weston Ochse
The Survival of Horror: A Tribute to J.F. Gonzalez’s Survivor – Matt Serafini
TBA – Monica J. O’Rourke
Night Run – Kristopher Rufty
Clickbusters – Amber Fallon
Jesus and the Splatterpunks: An Oral History – David J. Schow, John Skipp, and Brian Keene
Throwing Books – Dave Thomas
TBA – Wesley Southard
To the Bitter End – Kyle Lybeck
TBA – Kelli Owen
TBA - J.F. Gonzalez
TBA - J.F. Gonzalez
*TBA stands for To Be Announced
Currently Reading: MONSTER MIX edited by Robert Arthur
Currently Watching: LOST (a re-watch of the series) and KONG: SKULL ISLAND
Currently Listening: ZZ-Top's AFTERBURNER
I missed MONSTER MIX when it was first published, because I was only two years old at the time. David Schow turned me on to it last summer, and gave me a copy. (I suspect David has a stash of copies hidden somewhere, just to hand out to people).
If you're my age, you remember the paperback anthologies of the Seventies that reprinted classic tales from Lovecraft, Bloch, Wellman, Dunsany, Hodgson, etc. and were specifically targeted at kids. MONSTER MIX is one of those, and it's a spectacular introductory volume to weird fiction. Nothing in it I hadn't read before (other than the editor's contribution), but nice to have the individual stories packaged together like this.
I took my sons to see KONG: SKULL ISLAND yesterday. I'm 49. My oldest boy is 26. His little brother turns 9 next week. All of us are fans of the franchise - KING KONG (1933), SON OF KONG, KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, KING KONG ESCAPES, KING KONG (1976), KING KONG LIVES, KING KONG (2005). All of us agree that SKULL ISLAND is the second best film in the franchise, topped only by the 1933 original. If you are at all a fan of this franchise, you need to see it on the big screen. It was so much fun, and I'm glad we got to share it together.
That's it for this week.
PATREON - Where I post new short stories, a serialized ongoing novel, and behind-the-scenes stuff.
TWITTER - The only social media outlet I still use regularly.
Take care.