‘Vowing to defend the house from the jolly intruder in the red suit, Dallas hid in the tree, waiting for his chance to attack…’
Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate them. I’m Brian Keene and this is the 313th issue of Letters From the Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for friends, family and fans of my work. And that is Dallas, my favorite of the cats — a love-bug, troublemaker, and constant shadow.
I’m actually writing this week’s issue super-early. Normally I compose them on Saturday mornings, but this one is being written on Thursday. That’s because Mary and I are heading up to New Jersey for Christmas, and my laptop has finally died beyond repair, so I’ll have to queue this up early so it goes out to you on Sunday — as I’ll lack the ability to physically send it.
I’m hard on laptops, but this one lasted far longer than most. And it’s still a good unit — solid state drive and touch screen. But the keyboard is a vast wasteland of cracked or missing keys, and the USB port is shot so the wireless keyboard I’ve been using for the last year is no longer practical. The laptop still has life in it though, so it now serves as a stereo system, playing Brian Keene Radio in my office 24/7. For work, I’ve switched over to my brand new Mac desktop, which I purchased earlier this year specifically for Manhattan On Mars, but which has now become my defacto workstation. It took me a few months to get used to using a Mac, as I’ve been using Microsoft products since the 1990s, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, I like it. But I can’t haul a giant desktop computer to Mary’s parent’s house, so I’m doing the newsletter now (and if I want to work while I’m in New Jersey I’ll do so with a pen and a Moleskine notebook, both of which I always have on me).
We did Christmas with my parents, sister, and oldest son last weekend. And we did Christmas with my youngest son and his mom last night. I cooked dinner — something I always enjoy. I do most of our cooking, actually. It’s not that my mom or Mary or my ex-wife aren’t good cooks. They are all great cooks. But I’m no slouch either, and they all seem content to let me do it. Probably because it keeps me out of trouble.
Last night I made bacon-wrapped pork chops, asparagus spears, and stuffed mushrooms. And because it’s been a while since I did a recipe here in this space, and because many of you keep asking me to do more of them, here’s how I made that.
Buy some pork chops. You want fat, squat pork chops. Big suckers that you can cut with a knife. If you can’t find those, pork medallions will suffice. But try to find big thick pork chops. Also buy bacon, asparagus spears, baby bella mushroom caps, parmesan and mozzarella cheese, spinach, minced garlic, olive oil, and butter.
Once you have all of these things in your cart, stand in line with everyone else and silently scowl about the fact that the grocery store only has two cash register lines open. Ignore the lady behind you who loudly insists to everyone else in line that this is all Biden’s fault, and if the Deep State Lizard Illuminati hadn’t stolen the election, there would be no lines anywhere in retail America. Glance at the celebrity gossip magazines and grow uncomfortable when you realize that you don’t know who any of the people on the covers are or what they’re famous for. Sigh in quiet frustration when you realize that you also needed coffee, but forgot to put it in the cart, and you’ll be damned if you’re getting out of line now.
When you get home, wrap each pork chop with a single slice of bacon. Use metal pins to hold the bacon in place. One pin for each porkchop. Some people use wooden toothpicks, but it has been my experience that these can stick to the meat when you try to remove them. I recommend metal. Put all of these on a broiler pan.
Take a baking sheet, spray it with a fine layer of non-stick, and lay out your baby bella mushroom caps. Dice up the spinach until it is merely tiny green fragments. Stuff each cap to the rim with the cheese, garlic and spinach.
Turn on the oven to 400 degrees. When it’s ready, pop in the pork chops and the mushrooms. The mushrooms are going to take 10 to 15 minutes. The pork chops will take 20.
Put a skillet down on the top burner, pour in some olive oil, and then dump in the asparagus spears. Dump some minced garlic on top of that. Then drizzle some olive oil over the top of them. Finally, put some butter on top of all this. Sautee them at medium heat so that they are ready about the same time as the mushrooms. We like ours soft, so I wait until the asparagus is no longer bright green. If you prefer them crunchier, take them off the heat before they lose their color. Make sure you flip them around in the oil and butter so they don’t stick to the pan.
Check the mushrooms. If the cheese is golden or brown on top, then they are done. Pull them out, and immediately switch the oven over to broil on the High setting. Set the mushrooms aside and give them five minutes to settle. Take the asparagus spears out of the pan and into your serving dish.
Take the pork chops out of the oven. Those final five minutes on broil should have them just right, but cut one and make sure there’s no pink. Then — VERY IMPORTANT — remove the metal pins. The bacon should stay wrapped around them.
Then serve to your fiancee, your ex-wife, and your son, and agree with them that you are indeed an awesome cook.
There are few things that give me as much creative joy as writing, but cooking comes damn close. Over the years, I’ve tried my hand at podcasting, painting, music, and other artistic outlets other than writing. Some of them, like podcasting, I was good at. Some, like painting, I was terrible at. And some, like music, I was… pedestrian. Half-assed. (I can play Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home”, a few Billy Joel songs, and most of Prince’s “Condition of the Heart” on piano, but I’m no Josh Malerman).
But cooking? I like that as much as writing. And I’m good at it.
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Speaking of podcasting, in the new year, I’m going to be having guest authors on the Patreon Livestreams. The format will be much like the interview segments on THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE. While they will be available for viewing to all (eventually) Patreon supporters get to watch them first and only Patreon supporters get to ask questions of the guest. So, if you’ve got an extra $5 a month, why not sign up for my Patreon?
Chris Golden and I are supposed to start a new podcast, as well, but that will be a very different animal if and when we launch it.
I doubt I will do the STORIES podcast I’d talked about earlier in the year. Why? Because while most people can no longer tell I have Bell’s Palsy, talking for long stretches of time aggravates it, and my speech starts to slur. That’s not a problem if I am conversing with someone else and have normal conversational breaks, but if it’s just me reading a story aloud? That’s going to present a problem by the end of the story. So, we’ll give it some time and see if things continue to improve. My ex-wife got me a heated eye massager for Christmas, and it’s supposed to help my left eye (which is what I struggle with the most still).
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We are fast approaching the deadline to register for Borderlands Boot Camp 2023. Learn how to make your short stories better with instructors Mary SanGiovanni, Jeff Strand, Maurice Broaddus, John Urbancik, Norman Prentiss and myself. (Plus advice on all other aspects of writing — novels, drafts, pitching, publishers, etc.).
If you desire to attend, you’ll need to reserve your spot soon. Full info here.
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I was very honored to be a guest on Philip Fracassi’s podcast, The Dark Word (produced by AudioHopper and Book and Film Globe). You can listen to via Apple or right here.
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Gage Greenwood has announced a 2023 Reading Challenge. You can win free signed books from all of the authors listed below, including myself. To be eligible, and for full details, make sure you join his Facebook group.


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Currently Reading: Notes On My Personal Undoing by Francis Setnocis, The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson, and Santa Muerte Claus by R.J. Benetti
Currently Watching: Tulsa King (Paramount+), Surveillance (Prime), The Humanity Bureau (Prime), Alien Code (Prime), and Messiah (Netflix)
Alien Code has a cheesy title, but is a smart, well-written, superbly acted, electrifying cosmic horror movie. I highly recommend it.
Messiah is a good — but frustrating — series. Good in that the premise — an activist might be the Second Coming of Christ or he might be a charlatan or a false prophet or maybe the Devil, and the CIA, Mossad, and various other groups have to figure it all out — makes for fantastic storytelling. Bad in that the writers pad the ten episodes comprising the first season with lots of unnecessary sub-plots and family drama that slows the narrative to a glacial crawl at several points. And bad in that Netflix canceled it after one season, and while it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, there’s no resolution whatsoever.
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For many years, at the end of the year, I used to publish a list of the Top 10 Books I read that year. I stopped doing it because people invariably fought online about the lists, and more than one publisher tried to game the system, and authors also tried to game the system — because apparently, my opinions used to carry some weight.
Anyway, now that I’m retired from the spotlight and no longer have to deal with anyone’s bullshit if I don’t want to, I’ve decided to bring back the Top 10 Books of the Year list. I’ll hopefully have that for you here, in next week’s newsletter, provided I have time this coming week to compile it.
And for those of you on Patreon, we’ll do a final year-end Livestream, as well.
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Now it’s Saturday morning, and I’m typing this addendum. While this part of Pennsylvania was spared the snow and much of the rain that battered large portions of the rest of the U.S., we had terrible winds yesterday. Our power was out for most of Friday, as power lines were down throughout the county. A huge tree took out my neighbor’s fence, shed, and the roof of my other neighbor’s boathouse. All of our households were prepared, of course, and everyone shared. One neighbor provided a generator. I provided fuel and water. Everything was finally restored some time after midnight, and no one was hurt.
The footage from other parts of the country is pretty harrowing, though. The fifty car pile-up in Ohio. The flooding in Boston and New York. The power outages in Texas. The people stranded on highways in the midwest. The utter chaos at airports nationwide.
I hope you are somewhere safe and warm, with people you enjoy being with. And if you are alone, either by choice or by circumstance, then I hope that this newsletter provided a moment of companionship or a brief respite. Thanks, as always. I’ll see you back here next Sunday. Take care.
— Brian Keene
You know, I once saw a studio of my favorite MMA podcast turned into a cooking space as the UFC Lightweight champ went into a cooking frenzy while being interviewed. Hands down the best episode ever for that show. How 'bout? I think a Kooking With Keene episode would go over so well it almost sells itself. And you could let your cooking do most of the talking. Worst case, you could have a sidekick commentating as you work your kitchen magic.
Merry Christmas to you and your family.