Letters From the Labyrinth 268

Good morning. My name is Brian Keene and this is the 268th issue of Letters From the Labyrinth — a weekly newsletter for fans of my work. Previous issues can be found here.

Above is the new cover for the new Author’s Preferred Edition of TERMINAL. The cover is by Kealan Patrick Burke’s Elderlemon Design.

The book is available right now:

Paperback

Kindle

(Audiobook forthcoming, narrated by Chet Williamson)

Here’s the official cover copy:

For over two decades, fans of Brian Keene’s cult-classic novel Terminal have heard rumors of an uncut version that was never published. Now, for the first time anywhere, here is that version, as the author originally intended.

Tommy O’Brien once hoped to leave his run-down industrial hometown. But marriage and fatherhood have kept him running in place, working a job that doesn’t even pay the bills. And now he seems fated to stay for the rest of his life. Tommy has just learned he’s going to die young — and soon. But he refuses to leave his family with less than nothing – especially now that he has nothing to lose. Over a couple of beers with his best friends, John and Sherm, Tommy launches a bold scheme to provide for his family’s future. And though his plan will spin shockingly out of control, it will throw him together with a child whose touch can heal — and whose ultimate lesson is that there are far worse things than dying. Now, one man’s war with God may impact us all.

“A powerful, unique novel with a fascinating plot and characters, and echoes of Stephen King’s working-class voice.” — Ed Gorman

““If Brian Keene’s books were music, they would occupy a working class, hard-earned space between Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, and Johnny Cash.” — John Skipp

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That blurb from John Skipp is still my favorite cover blurb of all time. Yes, even more favorite than the blurb I got from Stephen King. As someone who celebrates the entire catalogs of Springsteen, Cash, and Eminem… well, there’s no higher praise than that.

I’m happy and relieved that this book is available again. It was the only one of my works that I didn’t control the rights to, and it feels so good to have those rights back again. That’s important to me, at age 54, when I’m trying to make sure my sons will benefit from all this hard work after I’m gone. Particularly after this previous week, in which six friends of mine (some from our industry and some from my private life) are all facing some pretty serious health news, and of course, Dave won’t be with us much longer, and I don’t know… I was thinking a lot about death this past week.

TERMINAL is a book about death. So, if you enjoyed this grim, dark turn that the newsletter just suddenly took, you’ll probably enjoy the novel, as well.

We could probably all use an emergency kitten break, right? I know I sure could.

There you go. Much better. Mary snapped this pic of Dallas and I taking a cat nap together on the couch earlier this week. His brother, Stripe, has bonded to my youngest son, but Dallas is pretty much my little shadow. I don’t know if he’ll still feel that way in another week or two, after I take him to get neutered. But we’ll see…

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Here is a press release from Wrath James White and myself, which we sent out earlier this week:

For Immediate Release

January 18, 2022

Splatterpunk Award founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene are pleased to announce:

*The nominees for the 2022 Splatterpunk Awards (honoring superior achievement in the literary subgenres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction published in 2021),

*The recipient of the fifth annual J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award (honoring individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field).

*The inaugural inductees to the Splatterpunk Hall of Legends.

The 2022 Splatterpunk Award nominees are as follows:

BEST NOVEL 

-- Don’t Go To Wheelchair Camp by David Irons (Severed Press)

-- Trench Mouth by Christine Morgan (Madness Heart Press)

-- The Maddening by Carver Pike (Independently Published)

-- The Devoured And The Dead by Kristopher Rufty (Death’s Head Press)

-- The Night Stockers by Kristopher Triana and Ryan Harding (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

-- Left To You by Daniel J. Volpe (D&T Publishing)

BEST NOVELLA

-- Midnight In The City Of The Carrion Kid by James G. Carlson (Gloom House Publishing) 

-- Only The Stains Remain by Ross Jeffery (Cemetery Gates Media)

-- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca (Weirdpunk Books)

-- A Roll Of the Dice by Matt Shaw (Independently Published)

-- Sacrament by Steve Stred (Black Void Publishing)

-- Talia by Daniel J. Volpe (Independently Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

-- “The Martini Club” by Aron Beauregard (from Beyond Reform, Aron Beauregard Horror)

-- “Fireflies and Apple Pies” by Thomas R. Clark (from The God Provides, St. Rooster Books)

-- “Sun Poison” by Stephen Kozeniewski (from Battered, Broken Bodies, Independently Published)

-- “Start Today” by Justin Lutz (from Teenage Grave, Filthy Loot)

-- “Abigail” by Daemon Manx (Terror Tract Publishing)

-- “Next Best Baker” by Jeff Strand (from Baker’s Dozen, Uncomfortably Dark)

BEST COLLECTION

-- Beyond Reform by Jon Athan, Aron Beauregard, and Jasper Bark (Aron Beauregard Horror)

-- Black Tongue And Other Anomalies by Richard Beauchamp (D&T Publishing)

-- Sinister Mix by Brian Bowyer (Independently Published)

-- Shattered Skies by Chris Miller (Death’s Head Press)

-- Twisted Tainted Tales by Janine Pipe (Pipe Screams Press)

-- May Cause Ocular Bleeding by Nikolas P. Robinson (Independently Published)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

-- Body Shocks edited by Ellen Datlow (Tachyon Publications)

-- Between A Spider’s Eyes edited by River Dixon (Potter’s Grove Press)

-- Bludgeon Tools edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

-- Gorefest edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

-- Baker’s Dozen edited by Candace Nola (Uncomfortably Dark)

-- Battered, Broken Bodies edited by Matt Shaw (Independently Published)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD* 

-- Clive Barker 

SPLATTERPUNK HALL OF LEGENDS INDUCTEES** 

-- Richard Laymon

-- Jack Ketchum

-- J. F. Gonzalez

-- Charlee Jacob

-- John Pelan

-- Gak

-- David G. Barnett

*The previous J. F. Gonzalez Award recipients are: David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, and John Skipp

**In 2017, authors Wrath James White and Brian Keene founded the Splatterpunk Awards to honor superior achievement in the literary subgenres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction for novel, novella, short story, collection, and anthology categories. In addition, they also created the J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, to honor individuals who, like Gonzalez, have made a significant impact on the Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror field.

Now, with the advent of the fifth annual Splatterpunk Awards, White and Keene are pleased to announce the Splatterpunk Hall of Legends -- honoring and spotlighting Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror writers, artists, editors, and publishers who have passed away.

The Splatterpunk Hall of Legends will be a physical memorial at every KillerCon event, featuring artifacts and ephemera related to the honorees, as well as a chronicle of their individual achievements, and an eternal flame burning for each. It is to serve as a place where genre fans both young and old can pay their respects and learn more about the creators who have shaped the field.

The initial honorees will be Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, J.F. Gonzalez, Charlee Jacob, John Pelan, Gak, and David G. Barnett (winner of the 2019 J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award). Their induction will occur at the fifth annual Splatterpunk Awards, taking place August 13th at KillerCon 2022 in Austin, Texas. The Splatterpunk Hall of Legends will be open to attendees August 12th through the 14th.

For further questions or comments, please contact the Splatterpunk Awards committee at splatterpunkawards@gmail.com

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Christopher Golden and I were finally able to get back to recording DEFENDERS DIALOGUE. On the latest episode, we discuss Astonishing Tales #25 and Marvel Spotlight #33, featuring the first appearances of the cyborg assassin Deathlok and the occult assassin Devil-Slayer! Listen for free wherever you listen to podcasts, or via this link!

Next week, we’ll be discussing the first Bronze Age appearance of Ghost Rider, in case you want to read along at home.

And speaking of podcasts, you may have noticed late this past week that both THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE and COSMIC SHENANIGANS are beginning to disappear from Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, etc. Don’t panic! That is my doing.

Basically, both podcasts have been over for a more than a year now, and while they still garner monthly listeners and monthly downloads, I can’t justify paying monthly storage fees and maintenance fees on two programs that are no longer earning money for Mary and myself.

However, I also want to keep the shows available, as I think they are some of our best work, and a notable achievement on both our parts. I want Dave’s voice to live on, after he is gone. I want interviews with departed peers like Jack Ketchum and Dave Barnett to be accessible to newer listeners and readers just discovering their work. And I want my youngest son to be able to go back and listen long after I’m gone, and hear him and his old man.

So, what I’ve done is migrate everything over to YouTube. There, I don’t have to pay monthly storage and maintenance fees, but everything will still be available. Thus, we now have complete archives for both shows.

The Horror Show with Brian Keene - The Complete Series

Cosmic Shenanigans - The Complete Series

I understand this move may upset some folks who like to listen on their phone or web browser via Spotify or another service, but I’d like to remind you that you can still listen to each show on your phone or web browser. I haven’t taken that ability away from you. If you listened on your way to work, you can still listen on your way to work. If you had it on in the background at home, you can still have it on in the background at home. If you enjoyed scrolling through the archives until you found a specific episode, you can still scroll through the archives until you find a specific episode. All I’ve done is consolidate everything at one location, to make things simpler, easier, and more cost-efficient for Mary and myself.

DEFENDERS DIALOGUE also has a playlist on YouTube, which you can find here. However, it is important to note that, since that show is still ongoing (it ends with episode 152), it will remain accessible via those other services as well, for at least the rest of the year. Then, around this time next year, I’ll fully migrate it, as well.

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Currently Listening: 1967-1970 by The Beatles, and Night Time by Killing Joke

Currently Watching: The Last Duel and old episodes of The Night Gallery

Currently Reading: The Second Shooter by Nick Mamatas

Actually, I finished reading The Second Shooter on Saturday morning, and I am full of thoughts, but I’ll try to be succinct.

It now has the distinction of being my favorite novel by Nick. For years, that spot has been held by Under My Roof (and before that, Northern Gothic).

The premise, without spoilers, is simple. The protagonist is a freelancer writer researching a book on the phenomena of the ‘second shooter’. You’re no doubt familiar with that term. During nearly every mass shooting in America, the early reports will mention the possibility of a second gunman. That rarely ever urns out to be true. But what if it was…?

The Second Shooter is, in my opinion, Nick’s most commercially accessible novel, and will easily appeal to readers outside his normal audience, and also to readers who maybe tried him before, and thought he was too “weird” for their tastes. But the beauty of that is this — Nick achieves those things without giving up who he is or changing his voice. He’s written a popular fiction thriller along the lines of Michael marshall and Robert Swartwood that will appeal to the mainstream — but he did so with a style, voice and sensibility that remains firmly underground. That is a very hard trick to pull off, but he does so masterfully.

But there is another group whom the book will appeal to, as well.

Nick signed my copy “Art Bell Lives (I wish…)”. Now, younger readers might not know who Art Bell was. He was a talk radio host whose show, Coast To Coast, could be found on the AM dial all over America in the late-Eighties and throughout much of the Nineties. He specialized in conspiracies. And you must understand, this was a time when conspiracies weren’t a dirty word, and to call oneself a conspiracy theorist didn’t bring the immediate condemnation and baggage that it would today. This was a time when Bigfoot, the JFK Assassination, Area 51, the Loch Ness Monster, Project Blue Book, COINTELPRO, MK-ULTRA, and other such fare were talked about by folks from all walks of life. (And it’s worth noting that some of those, such as Area 51, MK-ULTRA COINTELPRO, and Project Blue Book have since been declassified and acknowledged by the gatekeepers).

Art Bell dominated the airwaves and conspiracy culture in a time before the rise of Alex Jones and his neo-right and far-right ilk co-opted all of conspiracy culture and twisted it into the wretched toxicity that it is today, where everything (including Bigfoot) is connected to FEMA camps and the New World Order, and all of it is being controlled by people who are different from them, meaning Democrats, the LGBTQ community, persons of color, and Jewish folks.

It enrages me what has happened to conspiracy culture. These same alt-right, nazis-with-facelift scumbags that have poisoned everything else in our society completely ruined the conspiracy community. And it was indeed a community. And indeed, they ruined it before moving on to everything else. Gone are the days of, as Nick puts it in the novel, “Stoners sitting around in a college town” discussing whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or what really happened at Roswell. Now, it’s just a bunch of pinheads who are scared of society changing around them and follow a Facebook post down into a rabbit hole of hate and paranoia.

But I digress.

If you miss Art Bell, you’ll love this novel. The Second Shooter will not just appeal to the general public, looking for a good thriller. It appeals to people like me — and maybe some of you — who remember the Golden Days of conspiracy culture, and loathe what it has now become.

A remarkable book. One of the best I’ve read in a long time. Available here in paperback, audiobook, and for Kindle.

And seriously, I could talk about this book for an hour, so read it, and then come find me at a signing or convention appearance this year, and we’ll discuss it.

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This Week’s Work Update:

Finished all of the new short stories set in the world of THE RISING (these were the ones commissioned by folks for Kristopher Triana’s fundraiser for his dog, Bear). Some folks already have their original manuscripts. The rest are on their way, via U.S. mail (so please be patient). And I turned each story in to Stygian Sky/Death’s Head Press, who will be publishing all eight stories as individual chapbooks, with cover art by Charlie Benante of Anthrax and S.O.D.! Look for those probably in late-Spring?

Have about three chapters of SUBMERGED: THE LABYRINTH Book 2 to edit yet, and then it’s off to the pre-readers. I’d hoped to send it to them this past week, but I expanded a scene between Ob and Bloom (folks who have already read it on Patreon will know what scene I am talking about) and that took a day.

This week my focus will be fully on PROJECT CASTLE, which is also almost finished. That will be my mornings, with those last three chapters of SUBMERGED in the evening.

And when those are done, I’ll turn my attention back to the last quarter of INVISIBLE MONSTERS, and the first drafts of BENEATH THE LOST LEVEL and notes toward the third Labyrinth book, which is either going to be called SPLINTERED or SHATTERED (I’m leaning toward the former). And Weston ochse is recuperating, so we’ll get back to MONSTERS OF SAIPAN soon, as well.

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And that’s it for this week, I think. I hope you are doing well, wherever you are, and surviving as best you can. Hang in there till next Sunday. I’ll see you back here then.

And hey, in the meantime, if you have the financial means, I sure would appreciate you checking out the new edition of TERMINAL in Paperback or for your Kindle.

As always, I appreciate it, and you.

— Brian