Letters From the Labyrinth 375
Soon...
Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From The Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans, friends, and family.
Just so you know, Mike Lombardo, Samantha Kolesnik, Nathan Ludwig and I will be breaking the internet next Tuesday. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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Saturday morning as I write this. Still recovering from a week away from home.
My Bram Stoker Award Finalist certificate arrived yesterday. This one is for THE DRIVE-IN: MULTIPLEX, which I co-edited with Christopher Golden. (The signed hardcover of which has shipped to customers and the paperback of which is available here). The certificates are sent out to all finalists every year, and are usually suitable for framing. Sadly, this year’s certificate arrived looking like the Fed-Ex driver had tried to turn it into a paper airplane at some point. But no matter. I intended to add it to the wall along with my other six Bram Stoker Award Finalist certificates, and all the other award certificates.
And that was when I saw this guy.
This chef statue is an award that isn’t listed on my website or Wikipedia page. You won’t find it mentioned in my bio. It is called the “F*ck It Award” and it was named that by Weston Ochse, who presented me with it at the first Horrorfind Weekend convention back in the year 2000.
Horrorfind was a search engine from the early days of the pre-Google internet. Back then, there were myriad search engines for different topics and categories. Horrorfind, as you might have guessed, was for horror. It was run by a guy named Mike Roden. In addition to the search engine, the site had other things, including a horror fiction section, for which I was the editor.
Mike and I lived on the road through 1999, traveling together from horror convention to horror convention, promoting the website. We almost always hung out with Ken Foree, Reggie Bannister, Michael Berryman, Tom Savini, and the crew from the then-new upstart magazine Rue Morgue. I learned a LOT about this business that year, and about how to run a horror convention — meaning I saw how everybody else was running theirs and had some ideas on how the experience could be improved for people.
Eventually, Mike decided that he wanted to put on a for profit convention. He asked me to help organize and run it, and I had an opportunity to put those ideas into play. We put together a solid team, including future Scares That Care charity members Joe Ripple (who ran security) and Brian Smith. Horrorfind Weekend quickly became one of the largest and most successful horror conventions of the early aughts.
If you’ve ever attended a Scares That Care event, particularly AuthorCon, then you know how busy I get. That’s how busy I was at the first Horrorfind convention, except I was much younger, and much less experienced, and as a result, when things went wrong, I said “F*ck it”. Those two words became my mantra throughout the weekend — making decisions on the fly and putting out six fires at a time.
Weston saw the stress that I was under. And so, he stole this statue from the hotel’s dining room, and snuck it up to a room party on Saturday night, and then called for quiet. And when the sixty or so authors, actors, and attendees had fallen silent, he presented me with this, the “F*ck It Award”.
I have countless certificates on the wall. And I have a shelf full of award statues. I don’t know what will happen to them when I die. Maybe my three sons and my daughter will divvy them up amongst themselves. Or maybe they’ll get donated to the University of Pittsburgh, where my papers reside.
But this silly chef is among my very favorite awards, and I want folks to know where it came from, and who gave it to me, and that we were important to each other during our time here on Earth.
Weston’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery was beautiful and powerful and suitable for him. And as Rain Graves pointed out, it happened on the same day as a solar eclipse and the passing of the so-called Devil Comet. He couldn’t have planned it any better. I wrote a bit about it on my Patreon, so I won’t repeat myself here. I thought I was done crying for friends, but “Taps” absolutely wrecked me.
After the service, we all went to a nice reception, and talked about who was going to be able to make it to the two memorials and receptions for Jim Moore. Because that’s how it’s going to be now. Since 1999, we’ve been seeing each other several times a year at conventions. Now, we see each other at funerals.
On Monday evening, I drove straight from the reception to Williamsburg, where I began setting things up for Scares That Care’s AuthorCon 3, which was very successful. So successful, in fact, that other organizations not affiliated with Scares That Care are now holding conventions called AuthorCon, which is a good way to not endear yourself to me forever.
I never get a chance to take many photos at AuthorCon. Here are the only ones I got.
Tickets for AuthorCon IV, taking place this October in St Louis, are on sale now. Vendor tables are almost sold out (as I write this on Saturday morning, there are only 4 vendor tables left). We’ll begin announcing Guests of Honor this coming week.
AuthorCon V will take place in Williamsburg again next March.
And there are rumors about an AuthorCon UK. I don’t know how those got started though. it couldn’t have been from Joe and I teasing it at opening ceremonies, or Gemma Amor and I huddled together talking very seriously…
You should get a passport, if you don’t have one already. But don’t panic and don’t rush. You have plenty of time.
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The paperback of ISLAND OF THE DEAD is up for preorder on Amazon. The book will be out on July 16th.
World Horror Grand Master Brian Keene returns to zombies in this relentless sword and sorcery horror epic!
Einar, an enslaved barbarian, plots his escape from a war galley transporting troops and a mysterious weapon to far enemy shores. But when an apocalyptic storm at sea leaves Einar and his fellow captives shipwrecked on a strange, uncharted island, friend and foe alike must band together against a ravenous, steadily growing horde of the undead... and even worse dangers.
Not even death is an escape from the... ISLAND OF THE DEAD.
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Things are going great at Vortex Books & Comics. A reminder that the tore has its own newsletter, so that I’m not devoting space in this newsletter to the doings and happenings at the store. You can subscribe to that for free here.
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Work this past week was focused on edits for LOVE AND HATE IN THE TIME OF COVID, and the first draft of FALLING ANGELS: THE LABYRINTH Book 4, and several commissioned Lost Level stories.
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Currently Watching: Curb Your Enthusiasm (Max), Survivor season 46 (Paramount+), and rewatching Boardwalk Empire (Max).
Currently Reading: The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen.
Currently Listening: Brian Keene Radio
Loved the series finale to Curb Your Enthusiasm. They had a chance to redeems themselves for the Seinfeld finale, and boy, did they! Sad the show is ended. It has been a bright ray of sunshine for me since its debut. If you are a Seinfeld fan and you’ve never watched Curb, you’re doing it wrong. That’s like watching Breaking Bad but not watching Better Call Saul.
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I don’t do social media at all anymore (other than for promotion). This newsletter and my Patreon my primary outlets for any real communication of substance. I Blog each morning on Patreon — just a few brief paragraphs that serve as a mini-version of this newsletter. You don’t need to be a paid Patreon subscriber to read them. They are accessible to everyone who subscribes to my Patreon, paid or not.
Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see you back here again next Sunday. And don’t forget to check my social media and/or website on Tuesday for a BIG announcement!
— Brian Keene
Island of the Dead sounds like a real corker. I'm looking forward to it's release.
Oh geez! Tuesday can't come soon enough!