Letters From the Labyrinth 311
Welcome back to the heart of chaos where — as detailed in last week’s newsletter — my office is still in disarray, my archives are in massive piles on the floor, and the cats are being less than helpful in keeping everything sorted and catalogued.
Except when they are doing this.
Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is the 311th issue of Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for friends, family and fans of my work. I’m typing this on Saturday morning. You’re reading it on Sunday morning. As you’re reading it, author John Urbancik and I are in a truck, driving down to Baltimore to Dave and Deena’s house to haul some stuff.
Work reached crisis point this past week, and I’m frustrated by it. I mentioned in last Sunday’s newsletter how crazy the workload had already been. This past week, more got piled on top of it. My intentions for this past week were to work on getting Lifetime Subscriber books shipped, the script for GWENDY’S BUTTON BOX, the first draft of SPLINTERED: THE LABYRINTH Book 3, a short story for a fundraiser that I don’t have a title for yet so I’ll call it PROJECT ANDY, an Introduction for a peer’s zombie novel, editing on ISLAND OF THE DEAD, editing on INVISIBLE MONSTERS, production on new editions of ALONE and THINGS LEFT BEHIND, production on a new edition of J.F. Gonzalez’s Shapeshifter, put some more of Dave’s books on eBay, Scares That Care stuff, and cleaning up this office. But then two things got added. Cynthia Pelayo asked me to write about Wrath James White for next year’s StokerCon Program Book, and Cullen Bunn reminded me that I owed him a short story starring Einar (the main character from ISLAND OF THE DEAD).
With Mary in New Jersey for a week, and Cassandra in New York City for a week, I figured I’d knock out a lot of this easily enough. At fourteen, my youngest son likes to do his own thing, and at 32, my oldest son has his own life. Neither of them need their Dad 24/7. I just have to make sure they know I’m here and available, and that I love them.
So, on paper, I should have been able to have gotten most of this stuff done. Instead, I was shown once again that I simply can’t work that fast anymore. The words and the ideas are all still there, but I just can’t type fast enough to keep up with them any longer. (And before someone asks, I’ve tried dictation and speech-to-text and those programs are great, but if I spend more than 15 minutes talking non-stop, the Bells Palsy likes to remind me that I still have it, and then my face gets all crooked again, at which point the speech modulators can no longer understand me anyway).
And I did manage to work on each and every one of these things. But all of them, with the exception of ALONE, are going to continue to slide into next week, and that’s very frustrating, because I’d hoped to have more of them completed. Usually, this is around the time of year when I head to the cabin in West Virginia for a week and write non-stop with no distractions, but in truth? I don’t think that method of getting caught up will work anymore. I mean, with the girls both traveling, I pretty much had that this week anyway. And I still didn’t get caught up.
I think what it’s going to take is I’m just gonna have to start saying “No” to any further incoming requests until I’ve whittled this current pile down some more. Probably have to cut back on interviews and such again, as well.
It gave me a panic attack halfway through the week. Panic attacks are weird because they feel like heart attacks, but aren’t. I have no time for panic attacks because they are not conducive to getting caught up, so I checked my FitBit, saw that Scott Edelman, Samantha Kolesnik, and a few other folks were ahead of me, and then I went for a walk in the dark — thus alleviating the panic attack by getting away from work for a few minutes and also increasing my daily step count, which will in theory allow me to live longer so that I can continue to work.
There are few things more calming to me than a walk through fog-covered fields and forests at night.
Anyway… that was my work week.
How are you?
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The latest book from Manhattan On Mars Press is a brand-new edition of ALONE — marking the book’s first time in paperback. It is also available for the first time as an Apple iBook. It is also available in audiobook and for Kindle, Nook and Kobo (all of those editions were previously released).
When Daniel Miller wakes up one morning, something has gone terribly wrong. The power is out. The phones are dead. The house is silent. The street is shrouded in fog. Both his partner and their adopted daughter are missing. So are their neighbors. And so is everyone else in the world. Daniel Miller is the last person left on Earth... or is he? From award-winning, best-selling horror writer Brian Keene comes this quiet, chilling, supernatural novella.
Paperback:
Amazon
eBook:
Kindle - Nook - Kobo - Apple
Next up will be a new trade edition of THINGS LEFT BEHIND. We’ll release that in January.
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If you signed up for Borderlands Boot Camp, you should have received an email from Mary this past week. If you did not receive it, please check your spam folder. If it’s not there, then please contact us.
The deadline for signing up is January 1st. After that, we won’t be accepting any more students (because the instructors will need time to read everyone’s submissions).
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The latest issue of Phantasmagoria has a fantastic interview with David J. Schow. When asked what Splatterpunk means today, he says:
“It means the same goddamned thing it always meant – provoke by any means necessary, be unflinching and true, and disregard censure. That sounds politically incorrect, these days, but the great part is that splatterpunk by its nature is already inclusive and diverse.”
Amen to that, David. Amen to that.
The entire interview is great. Click here to purchase a copy.
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This Week’s Blog entry: Content Discontent (in which I talk about Shudder, the lay-offs at AMC, the state of streaming, and a word that most of us creatives hate).
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Currently Reading: The Bell Chime by Mona Kabbani, The Slappening by Jamie Benedi, and Small Short Stories To Read In One Shitting: A Bathroom Book by R. J. Benetti.
Currently Watching: Tulsa King (Paramount+), Survivor (Paramount+), Hired Gun (Peacock), and Cheech and Ching’s filmography.
Currently Listening: Brian Keene Radio (the only radio station NOT playing Christmas music)
We need to talk about Jamie Benedi and R.J. Benetti because they are the same author. I had the pleasure of hearing this kid do a live reading during the Gross-Out Contest at Scares That Care AuthorCon back in April, and he absolutely blew me away — so much so that the next morning, I stopped by his table and purchased every single one of his books. He’s got Edward Lee’s sense of humor, Ryan Harding’s delivery, and Carlton Mellick’s imagination and social commentary. If you like *any* of those authors, then I urge you to check out his work. The Slappening is a hilarious bizarro novel about a serial-killer in a retirement community. Small Short Stories To Read In One Shitting: A Bathroom Book is exactly what it says on the cover — one-page (mostly) stories that are a mix of humor, extreme horror, and bizarro (sort of John Urbancik’s Inkstains for people who like South Park or Adult Swim). I’m a fan.
If you are an eclectic music geek like myself, Hired Gun is a much watch documentary. One of the best films I’ve seen this year. The segments with former Billy Joel drummer Liberty Devito (always one of the most underappreciated drummers in rock) is worth it alone, as are Jason Newstead and Rudy Sarzo’s segments (particularly on the deaths of Cliff Burton and Randy Rhoads). You’ll walk away with major respect for Pink, far less respect for Billy Joel, and new appreciation for Night Ranger.
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Here are the latest items for sale from Dave Thomas’s estate:
Signed and personalized Charles L. Grant THE ORCHARD
Signed and personalized Brian Keene DEAD SEA
Signed F. Paul Wilson CONSPIRACIES
Signed J. F. Gonzalez and Mike Oliveri RESTORE FROM BACKUP
I’ll be putting more up this week.
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Wedding planning continues. Mary sent out the Save The Dates via email last week. Only two of them bounced, so we are assuming everybody got theirs. We are limited to 150 guests, and with that in mind, we had to be selective in who is invited. I am not allowed to be in charge of the actual invitations, but I did get Mary to agree to let me type up a special insert to be included with the invitations. The insert will have information on the nearest hotels, the nearest airports, the nearest train stations, the nearest liquor stores, other things to do in the area, and anything else people might text me to inquire about on our wedding day. Because people do that, and usually I grin and bear it, but I’m not running you to the liquor store on my wedding day.
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Josie Wales continues to adapt well to being a tame indoor cat. She still won’t let anyone but me get near her (although she’s decided it’s okay if Mary gets within a foot of her), but she adores being with other cats and is very loving to them and to me. She’d let me skritch her head all day long if I didn’t have work to do. She still won’t concede to sit in my lap, but we’re getting there. She runs to greet me now when I get home, and purrs very loudly. Here she is making herself at home.
A far cry from the feral wildcat who first showed up here two years ago.
I begin volunteering at the shelter in January, and I’m looking forward to working with the other feral cats and dogs they bring in.
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It is 8:38am as I type this. The woods behind my home ring with the sounds of gunshots and I have just discovered that on top of everything I listed at the start of this newsletter, I also owe Kristopher Triana, Aron Beauregard and Daniel Volpe a short story, as well. So now I’m having another panic attack and I can’t go out in the woods without risking being mistaken for a deer.
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And now another addendum, this one as of 5:21am on Sunday morning. Let’s talk about stress and panic attacks.
There’s a person who used to be in a lot of people’s social circles who is no longer in a lot of people’s social circles due to many long-term things that person did — one of which was to make fun of and deride supposed friends behind their backs. I’m aware now that this person used to do that to me, as well, and one of the main things they apparently made fun of was my attachment to the fictional character of Tony Soprano.
You know why I love The Sopranos? Because Tony’s struggle speaks to me. He’s a man caught between his job and his family, and trying to do right by both, and the two keep impacting each other. He’s also a man from whom every person he meets wants something. And he is also overwhelmed with work, and as a result, he suffers panic attacks.
“All due respect, you got no f-----g idea what it's like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other f-----g thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end you're completely alone with it all.”
Tony to Silvio
Panic attacks are no joke, so when I make comments like I did at the beginning of this newsletter, or the segment above, don’t mistake that for me making light of people who suffer from them. I’m not. I have suffered from them since I was in the fourth grade. The first one happened during a school play, while Myrna Pabon and I were in the middle of singing “Mah Na Mah Na”.
(Myrna was one of my first crushes. At the end of 4th grade, she and her family moved back to Puerto Rico and I never saw her again. I often wonder if she remembers the little white kid who passed out in front of everyone during our big number).
(And yes, Erica, Beth, Janelle and Marcia, if you’re reading this, and I know at least two of you are, you were all also my first crushes. It was elementary school. We all had crushes on each other and they changed like the wind).
But I digress.
I’ve had panic attacks all my life. In school. In the military. At various jobs. Once behind the wheel of a car. Once at the Stoker Awards and again right before I got my Grand Master Award. Sometimes I pass out. Most times (as an adult) I don’t. But I did yesterday. I passed out in the hallway between my office and Mary’s office, while thinking about Scares That Care and AuthorConII and Borderlands Boot Camp, and I cracked the back of my head pretty good. I was probably out less than a minute but when I came to, Josie and Dallas were standing on either side of me, looking down. Dallas was clearly concerned. I suspect Josie was wondering if she was allowed to eat me. The other cats were elsewhere in the house, doing cat things.
I’m not making fun of panic attacks. I just wanted to clarify that, because this is 2022 and everything you say can and will be taken the wrong way unless you add a metric ton of disclaimers like this.
Anyway, that’s it for this week. I neglected to tell Mary that I had a panic attack and passed out yesterday, so she’s going to wake up and read about it here and then call and be stern with me. So I need to get to work before that happens. As for you? Well, I hope this is your day off, and that you enjoy it. And if it’s not your day off, and you are working, too? Then solidarity, friend. Solidarity forever.
I’ll see you all back here next week.
— Brian Keene
I'm glad the cats are doing well, Brian. Did you get that lump on the head checked out? Please take care of yourself.
Ironically, I didn't get to read this Sunday morning because I woke up and had a minor panic attack. Stress sucks. And it is hard for me to say no to projects or added responsibilities too, I hear that. We all need to take care of ourselves though. Hope your week has gotten better.