[Letters From the Labyrinth] Official Brian Keene Newsletter 5/14/17

Hello. My name is Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans of my work. If you're a new subscriber, previous issues are archived here.

This week's newsletter is just going to be a little different than what I normally send you. As you know, I've been converting my outdoor garage into an office, library and recording studio. I came into some money earlier in the week and was able to purchase the remaining lumber, paint, and carpet, so I've been knee-deep in that since Thursday. With luck, I should finish carpentry tomorrow, and finish painting by Monday morning.

Construction has never been easy for me. It's not something I've ever had a natural aptitude for. But I'll tell you this -- it was a helluva lot easier at 19 or 29 or even 39 than it is at 49. My evenings have been spent soaking in a tub full of lavender epsom salt and reading Kelli Owen's FLOATERS (which is a fantastic monster novel).

Anyway, I hurt. Especially my arms and shoulders. I've been perched on a teetering ladder, holding lumber up against rafters with my head while hammering in nails for the last two days, and typing is the last fucking thing I want to do right now.

Luckily, I did a lot of typing earlier in the week. I finished edits on END OF THE ROAD -- the book based on last year's nine-month series of columns I wrote for Cemetery Dance. The book includes those columns, but many of them are expanded from their original form. It also includes material that was never before published.

I genuinely believe END OF THE ROAD is the best thing I have ever written, or will ever write, perhaps even surpassing THE GIRL ON THE GLIDER, THE COMPLEX, DARK HOLLOW, and GHOUL. It's a book that, thirty years from now, my sons can hand to their kids and say, "Here. This is who your Grandpa was, and this is what he did."

The idea for the book -- write a modern day companion piece to Stephen King's DANSE MACABRE, focusing on the horror genre from the mid-90s crash until now -- percolated inside my head for three years. Hell, it may have been longer than that, even. I remember J.F. Gonzalez and I talking about that idea, and he's been gone almost three years now.

So, yes. The book draws inspiration from Stephen King's DANSE MACABRE. And since it took place during the Farewell (But Not Really) Tour, it also draws some inspiration from Hunter S. Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. And since it also goes heavy into a writer's memoir, and offers writing advice, it also draws a lot of inspiration from Richard Laymon's A WRITER'S TALE.

My guess is that if you like any of those three books, you'll probably like this. It's part horror genre history lesson, part road journal, part memoir, part writing advice, and part exorcism. it's an examination of love, grief, loss, pride, friendship, getting older, parenting, fear, determination, and addiction. It's 100% true, from the heart, and every single word in it is meant. I'm prouder of this book than anything I have ever written. But I am also apprehensive about it, and I'm not sure I understand or can articulate why.

Maybe it's because I put myself out there in this one -- in a way I haven't done in a long time. or maybe it's because so much of the book is really about J.F. Gonzalez and Tom Piccirilli, and I want it to honor them the way they deserve. Maybe it's the very real fact that -- immediately after I turned in the manuscript -- I felt a very large weight leave my shoulders and a shadow lift from my heart, and I'm not sure what that weight and shadow were, or what happens now that they are gone.

Or maybe I'm just a weird fuck.

Another prominent part of END OF THE ROAD is the time it spends looking at the new generation of horror writers -- the up-and-comers who didn't necessarily discover this genre via Stephen King or comic books, but through Goosebumps and Dorchester's Leisure Books paperback line. Gabino Iglesias is one of this generation's authors (his novel ZERO SAINTS is a wonderful melding of horror, crime, and noir), so i thought he'd be the perfect person to write the Introduction to the book. He did, and what he wrote made me tear up a little. I showed it to Mary and she said, "Wow. I don't know that I've ever met anybody outside of your immediate family who gets you the way he seems to get you. This is perfect."

And she's right. It is the perfect Introduction. Thank you, Gabino. I am truly honored.

I turned the manuscript in to Cemetery Dance earlier this week. They will be publishing it in hardcover later this year. We are currently discussing the possibility of digital and trade editions, as well, though haven't signed anything concrete in that regard yet.

I hope you each enjoy it when it comes out.

Back to the construction project now. Once that's finished, I'll be back into doing edits on HOLE IN THE WORLD and writing INVISIBLE MONSTERS and THE MOTEL AT THE END OF THE WORLD.

See you back here next week for a more regular-styled newsletter.

Brian

Oh, I almost forgot. That comic book page from last week's newsletter?

The correct answer was "Fade To Null"

A few reminders:

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.