Letters From the Labyrinth 377

Kick The Bucket Lists

Good morning from somewhere along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From The Labyrinth, a weekly newsletter for fans, friends, and family.

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Currently Watching: Survivor season 46 (Paramount+).

Currently Reading: Pay The Piper by George Romero and Daniel Kraus, and (rereading) Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail by Hunter S. Thompson.

Currently Listening: Sometimes Y by Yelawolf and Shooter Jennings

Finished The Day of the Door by Laurel Hightower, and were I still doing a Top Ten reads every year, this would be an easy contender for the number one spot.

These days, horror fiction that’s transgressive or political or needle-moving tends to be published via the indie scene. Sure, there’s plenty of great mainstream horror titles and authors, but the stuff that really hits you — the lifeblood of the genre, so to speak, most often comes out from the small presses. It wasn’t always that way. Dell Abyss had a fantastic and historic line of mainstream horror novels from 1991 to 1995. It collapsed along with the rest of horror fiction during the much documented ‘Nineties Crash’, but the books and authors they published forever changed the game, leaving a lasting impact whose reverberations can still be heard and felt today. Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Devereaux, Melanie Tem, Brian Hodge, Michael Arnzen, and many others made a name for themselves there.

“Why are you talking about books from the golden age of Horror fiction in relation to this book, Brian?”

Because Laurel Hightower would have been a mainstream star at Dell-Abyss. That’s why. The Day of the Door ranks right alongside the best by Koja, Brite, Hodge, and the rest of them. Sure, she could have found a home at Zebra or one of the other mass market publishers, but this book would have been better than most of what they were publishing. And yes, a decade later she would have been right at home with the rest of us at Leisure Books, but then this book would have risked getting lost amidst the two new releases per month schedule. And that would have been a shame, because The Day of the Door would have deserved a mainstream push unlike what Leisure was able or accustomed to supplying.

Much like Tom Piccirilli’s recurring “missing father” motif, there is an underlying theme of grief in much of Laurel’s backlist. That is at the forefront in this novel, and the trauma surrounding it is as powerful and horrific as any of the supernatural elements. You can’t help but feel it, and it rang very true for this reader. Her characterization is also at its strongest here, which is, of course, what makes the best horror fiction so effective. You don’t care what happens to the characters if you don’t care for them. Laurel gives us multiple fully-fleshed characters, foibles and all, and effortlessly invests us in them, making it all the more harrowing.

The Day of the Door is a triumph, solidifying Laurel Hightower’s place among the best of the best of this new generation of horror writers. If you miss the Dell-Abyss vibe, or if you miss those polished gems that Leisure Books would publish a few times a year, then do not sleep on this book. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

Available in paperback and for Kindle.

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Work this past week was 100% focused on THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: NEW TALES OF STEPHEN KING’S THE STAND, which we are supposed to turn in within the next two weeks. I’ll probably finish it up by next Tuesday or Wednesday evening, then send it to Chris for another look over. If he’s satisfied, then we’ll send it off to the publisher.

I also finished a few more commissioned LOST LEVEL stories, and wrote an essay every day for my Patreon. This coming week, in addition to the anthology, I really, really, really need to finish some copyedits that my publishers are very patiently waiting on.

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Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the IndieGoGo campaign for our new movie — DEAD FORMAT — so far. As of this writing (Saturday morning) we are 45% funded.

Filming will start this Fall. Casting will start before that. All of the details can be found here. You’ll note that there are all sorts of tiers you can choose from — everything from a signed Blu-Ray to a limited edition chapbook that will never be reprinted, mind you). A lot of thought went into crafting tiers that would fit each of your individual budgets and financial situations.

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I am pleased to announce that Steven L Shrewsbury and I have sold a new short story called “Within You, In Time” to Weird Tales. It appears in issue #368, on sale now in both print and digital.

I think selling a story to Weird Tales is probably on the bucket list of most horror or fantasy writers of a certain age. It was certainly on mine and Shrew's. But I tend not to think about Bucket Lists these days, because that way lies madness. At least, as far as writing bucket lists are concerned.

If we went back to 1995, the year I sold my first piece of writing (a newspaper article) for money, my bucket list would have looked something like this:

• Sell a novel.

• Hit the bestseller list.

• Have something I wrote turned into a movie.

• Sell stories to Weird Tales, Deathrealm, and Cemetery Dance.

• Meet Richard Laymon, Dean Koontz, Jack Ketchum, David J. Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen King, Skipp & Spector, Edward Lee, Brian Lumley, Clive Barker, Bentley Little, F. Paul Wilson, J.M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, Alan Moore, and Steve Gerber.

• Make enough money writing that it becomes my full-time job.

• Have a published backlist of books as long as F. Paul Wilson, Richard Laymon, Graham Masterton, and Stephen King.

• Make a lasting impact on horror and give back to a genre that has given me so much joy.

And when I sit back and look at that list, I accomplished every single thing on it. Well, except for meeting Alan Moore. And although I never got to meet Steve Gerber before his death, we did correspond via letters and email.

If I made a bucket list now, nearly thirty years later, it would look like this:

• Finish everything before I die.

That's it. I suppose some of my friends would add "Win a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award" to that list, but I've never much cared about awards. I mean, they're nice. I'm not gonna front. It's nice to be honored by your peers or your fans or the industry at large. And God and Cthulhu knows I've been handed a ton of awards in my career. Would an LAA be nice? Well, sure. It would be nice. I don't suspect i'll live long enough to get one, but I'll be honored and surprised if I do. But it’s not on my bucket list.

What I'd really like to do is finish everything before I die. Maybe part of that is because so many friends my age have already passed on, leaving behind a body of unfinished work. That I might do the same terrifies me in ways I can't even articulate. I often find myself thinking along these lines. If I pop tomorrow, who would finish THE LABYRINTH series? Who would get this long-delayed Levi Stoltzfus novel into publishable shape? Who would finish THE FALL (the final RISING book and the capstone on my career, as far as I'm concerned).  

My favorite thing about this job used to be when a new idea for a story or a novel or a comic book suggested itself to me. Now, when that happens, I am overwhelmed with a perverse sort of anxiety, because I know deep down inside I will never have time to get to them all.

"You're a young man, Brian" many are saying right now. And yeah, I am, relatively speaking. But I've also watched a dozen and a half friends who were also young men go before me, and I've led a dangerous -- albeit fun -- lifestyle that does not lend itself to sitting in a wooden rocker in my nineties. It might not happen soon. But it also might. There's a dread in that uncertainty, and either you dig that, or you don't.

I've prepared for my loved ones. My kids and my wife are taken care of when the time comes. But my unfinished works? Well, there's no real way to prep or plan for that, other than to keep typing, one word at a time.

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A reminder that if you enjoy this newsletter, you might also enjoy the Vortex Books & Comics newsletter, which you can read right here.

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And that does it for this Sunday. Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see you back here again next Sunday.

— Brian Keene