Letters From the Labyrinth 379

(with music by Jan Hammer)

The arrival of spring and summer has always meant two things for this newsletter: the rescuing and rehoming of feral cats, and gardening updates. There have been neither so far this year, and some of my friends have inquired as to why. They think these newsletters have gotten too grim. Too dark. “Let’s hear what’s going on with the cats!” they say. “What are you growing this year?”

Well, there is nothing going on with the cats, because after four or five years of very hard work, the entire feral cat colony is gone. (For new readers, we live in an area that attracts an influx of tourists during the summer. these tourists often abandon their pets when they leave, which ultimately led to a huge feral cat population in our neighborhood. Then the mother cats figured out that if they had their babies at my house, I’d help them). But no more. Each and every one of them, including the 9 adults and 38 kittens I personally rescued, and the other adults that neighbors rescued, has gone on to a new home, including my home (I adopted three kittens — Dallas, Stripe, and Bubbles — and one adult, Josie). Some nights, I’ll put some leftover chicken out in the yard just to see if we missed anybody, but the only thing it attracts are possums, racoons, and the occasional fox. When I go out on my front porch now, it’s just a front porch, rather than a lounge for stray cats.

I am proud and happy with the work I did rescuing them all. But I am also a little bit sad and more than a little bored. Ultimately, I should turn to gardening — something I enjoy and am good at. I always wait until the day after Mother’s Day to plant, to help with avoiding any late season cold snaps. Then I get the plants in the ground — beans, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and sometimes corn. But between finishing up THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (see last week’s newsletter), Scares That Care AuthorCon IV (the rest of the Guests of Honor should be announced next week), and daily operations at Vortex Books & Comics, I have not had time.

So… I have set aside this coming Monday and Tuesday to do nothing but gardening. Monday morning I’ll dig up and till last year’s garden plot, and add some fertilizer (cow manure works best — none of that store bought shit). I’ll also fill a secondary raised platform (that I built last year) with dirt, as well. I’m going to use the latter for cucumbers, since they need more room to sprawl than I’ve given them in past years.

My only other plan for those two days is to go suit shopping, because I need a new one for the Bram Stoker Awards at the end of this month. I’d like to buy something white and awesome, with perhaps a jaunty white hat to go along with it, but those closest to me keep vetoing that idea. It doesn’t help that all of the salespeople in Central Pennsylvania are familiar with my tastes. Pretty sure when I walk in they go, “Here’s the guy who always wants to look as if he just stepped off the set of Miami Vice, circa 1985.”

Which is a good excuse as any to break out this photo of me from Maurice Broaddus’s Mo*Con, circa 2010 or so. People like to laugh at this pic, but I feel no shame. I like the way I look in this suit.

Not long after this photo was taken, the jacket simply “disappeared” and the shirt had bleach “accidentally” splashed on it. My family professes their innocence but I suspect subterfuge. I still have the pants, though, and do still wear them, on occasion.

Anyway, looking forward to getting the garden started and buying some new clothes this week.

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.

(See, this is what happens when my friends threaten me with an intervention because my newsletter has gotten “too dark”. You then get gardening treatises and ridiculous fashion nonsense).

(And here’s a bonus photo of me, aged 17, wearing a similar suit. And also wearing more hair…)

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Robert Swartwood conducted an extensive, hour-long interview with me inside Vortex Books & Comics this past week. We talk “literary prepping”, bookselling, balancing, retirement plans, causing trouble, ‘The End’, and much more. Watch it for free here.

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Wanted to take a moment this week to direct all of you too some really excellent free reads. These are things I read this week moved me or made me think, and I think they will have the same impact on you.

First of all, my pal Wrath James White has a new essay up in which he thoughtfully and thoroughly answers the question “When is it okay for a Non-Black author to use the n-word in a work of fiction?”

Secondly, the legendary Ronald Kelly has a new essay up in which we discover that he’s been struggling with many of the same things many horror writers over the age of 45 have been struggling with the last few years. A beautifully written piece that put a lump in my throat.

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DEAD FORMAT (the new movie by Mike Lombardo, Samantha Kolesnik, Nathan Ludwig, and myself) is now more than halfway funded! Thanks to each of you who have helped make that happen. Still have a long way to go, though. Remember, you can add additional perks to your original pledge. Details here.

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Chris and I turned in the manuscript for THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT last Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were spent getting back to work on FALLING ANGELS: THE LABYRINTH Book 4 and some commissioned LOST LEVEL short stories. I’ll focus on those two things next week, as well, (after the gardening and suit-buying are done). I also anticipate Wednesday and Thursday being spent packaging and mailing a lot of things that I am very behind on getting in the mail.

Millie Price asked me this past week for a list of recommended books to read before she dives into The Labyrinth series.

 It was my explicit intention from Day One that everything I wrote—be it a short story, a novella, a novel, or a comic book—would be set in the same universe. A shared universe, just like in those comic books I’d grown up reading. I began writing for publication around 1993. I sold my first story in 1997. I sold my first novel in 2002. All of them were connected in my head.

I’d be lying to you if I said I planned everything out ahead of time. I’ve never been that kind of writer. I work better when I have an opening sentence, a strong understanding of my characters, and a vague idea of what the plot is. Then I tend to make the story up as I go along. So, no, I didn’t have the entire Labyrinth Mythos mapped out in my head before I wrote my first story. But I did know that the Labyrinth existed, and that it involved quantum mechanics and string theory, and that my shared universe would deal a lot with alternate realities and timelines. But that was all I knew at the beginning. The Thirteen, Black Lodge, the Globe Corporation—all of that came later, via the act of making it up as I went along.

My other explicit intention was that I keep things simple for new readers. Yes, everything was going to be connected, but I didn’t want there to be an onus on the reader, or for the shared continuity to become a deterrent to them giving me a try. During his tenure as Editor-In-Chief at Marvel Comics in the 1980s, Jim Shooter had one steadfast rule that he imparted on all the writers and editors. They were to treat each comic they wrote and published as if it was someone’s first. That’s because it was. When I picked up The Defenders #33 and Captain America and The Falcon #196 back in 1975, both of them were serialized chapters in a much larger story. It was literally like coming into the movie halfway through, and then leaving before the film was finished. Despite this, as a reader, I had no problem at all in understanding what was happening, and who these characters were. I wanted the same thing for my own shared universe. If everything was connected, someone who read Castaways shouldn’t be penalized because they hadn’t read The Rising. A person should be able to read Ghost Walk without having read Dark Hollow.

So those were my two goals: ease of access, and everything was connected.

Around the time Earthworm Gods was published (under its 2005 paperback title of The Conqueror Worms) I realized that I should start taking notes on all those connections, because while it might be simple for the reader to figure out, I was having trouble keeping it all straight in my head. One fateful weekend, I was a guest at a convention in Ohio, and I met a guy named Mark Sylva, whom I had previously only interacted with online. Mark showed me a notebook he’d been keeping. In it, he had copious notes that tied all of my stuff together. He’d even found some connections that I—the creator—had completely missed. Flipping through his notes, I was stunned, staggered, and absolutely delighted. And it was then—THEN—that the rest of the mythos came together in my head. I wasn’t ready to write the book yet, but I knew, sitting there reading over Mark’s due diligence, that eventually everything would come together in an epic crossover event akin to Marvel Comic’s Secret Wars, DC Comic’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. And yes, these days, given the success of such storytelling at the box-office, the entire world is aware of the concept of shared universes. But back in 2005? That was still primarily a geek thing, and we didn’t yet rule the Earth.

I think you can read the Labyrinth series without having read any of my previous work, but for those who find that prospect daunting, I'll do my best here. Although it would be impossible for me to completely summarize the works that lead into the Labyrinth series, here's a list of what I feel you should read before plunging ahead:

The Complex
Darkness On The Edge of Town
The Cage
The Rising
City of the Dead
Earthworm Gods
Earthworm Gods II: Deluge
Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes From the End of the World)
Clickers II 
Clickers III 
Clickers vs. Zombies 
Dark Hollow
Ghost Walk
Blood on the Page
Love Letters From A Nihilist
All Dark, All The Time

So… hope that helps!

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Currently Watching: Survivor season 46 (Paramount+), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (theater), and Late Night With the Devil (Prime)

Currently Reading: The Unicorn Killer by Candace Nola and We Hide Our Faces by Ben Farthing

Currently Listening: Unearthed box set by Johnny Cash

Late Night with the Devil was enjoyable, but ultimately just okay. I liked the practical effects a lot, and there were some good performances, but ultimately, I’m afraid I didn’t love it nearly as much as all of my friends seem to. I wanted more from the ending than what we got.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is further proof that franchise films can transcend IP-upkeeping when in the right hands. Great script, and eye-popping visual effects. Seriously. Those of you old enough to remember seeing the first Jurassic park on the big screen? Remember how game-changing those effects were? This has a similar feel, particularly during the opening fifteen minutes, which involved some dizzying heights so realistic that my balls tightened up and I got dizzy. A worthy follow-up to the first three films in the reboot series.

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

— Brian Keene