Letters From the Labyrinth 471
The End of The End
We start this week with some very sad news.
If you are a horror fiction fan over the age of forty, and you made friends with fellow horror fiction fans online, then you were probably aware of “Kresby” aka H Michael Casper — undoubtedly one of the biggest financial supporters and readers and fans this genre has ever known. His library was a marvel. Complete sets of every book ever published by Delirium, Bloodletting, Thunderstorm, Subterranean, Cemetery Dance, Centipede, Ash Tree, Midnight House, Necro, Gauntlet, Borderlands, and more. Complete bibliographies of authors such as myself, Bryan Smith, Mary SanGiovanni, Tim Lebbon, Weston Ochse, J.F. Gonzalez, Tom Piccirilli, Wrath James White, Jeff Strand, Cullen Bunn, Elizabeth Massie, Sandy DeLuca, Greg Gifune, Michael McBride, and many, many more. He had a love, knowledge, and passion for this genre that few have ever matched.
Back in the early days of the internet, before social media was a thing, fans and professionals alike hung out on message board forums like Horrornet, Shocklines, Masters of Terror, The Horror Drive-In, and Gothic Net. Later on in the decade, creators began launching their own similar platforms. H (or Kresby as he was known by his online handle) was active on all of them.
At the height of its popularity (circa 2007 or so), the Brian Keene Forums had over 70,000 valid, unique registered users — rivaled only by the equally popular Warren Ellis Forums. About the only difference between the two was that one focused on horror fiction and its fans and creators, and the other focused on comics and their fans and creators. On the Brian Keene Forums, about 30,000 of those users were active weekly. (The other 40K preferred to quietly lurk and read). Those forums were responsible for people falling in love and getting married. They were responsible fo the birth of children. They were responsible for upcoming and novice writers finding agents, publishers, and readers. They were a constant source of joy and celebration, and expertly moderated to keep them that way. And H was a big, BIG part of that. Everyone loved him. As I said before, he was passionate and knowledgeable, and he loved sharing that with other fans.
The very first time somebody wrote me about one of my books they read, it was H. He sent me an email about NO REST FOR THE WICKED. I didn’t know him. he didn’t know me. But I must have read that email 100 times. Before that, the comments had only been from my peers — other writers like Jesus or Weston or Tom Piccirilli who’d read something in one of the zines we all used to get published in, and would reach out in response. But this was my first such missive from a reader. And it was special.
H even tried his own hand at writing, penning an exhaustive and authoritative history of Delirium Books and its various spin-off imprints.
He also starred in stories in THE RISING: SELECTED SCENES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, EARTHWORM GODS: SELECTED SCENES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, the forthcoming THE LOST LEVEL: EXCURSIONS, and the novel HOLE IN THE WORLD.
The days of the forums are long gone now, and those users are scattered to the winds of the social media algorithms, but the one place most of them still gather is this newsletter every Sunday. Hello to Francesca, Brandon, Ed, Paul, Deb, Tod, Dezm, Val, Jen, Jamie, Cliff, Paul, Noige, and so very many more. Maybe today, we can all sit and read for an hour, in honor of H.
Rest in peace, pal, and thanks for everything.
Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth, a long-running weekly newsletter for friends, fans, and family.
Mary and I attended our nephew’s first communion yesterday, and my stepdaughter took this pic of us, which I think came out nice. It was the first time I’ve ever been to a complete Catholic Mass (unless you count a Navy buddy’s wedding back in 1990, but I was part of the wedding party and flirting with one of the bridesmaids and not really paying a lot of attention to the service itself).
Afterward, there was a big party to celebrate at the home of my brother and sister in law. I had to leave the party early, because on our way there, my mother called with terrible news. My grandmother, who is now closer to 101 than she is 100, fell yesterday afternoon. The prognosis, as of last night, was that she was awake and alert and her color was good, but she has a broken pelvis and several fractured ribs. My parents are at the hospital with her (about 5 hours from here). They’ve asked my sister and I to stay home for now. My son has an awards dinner tonight and his final concert performance for school this coming Wednesday. I do, however, expect that I may be even harder to contact this week than I am normally (which is saying a lot) so I hope — if you need to reach me — you’ll be respectful and mindful of that.
The End of The End
I was out for an extra long walk in the woods last Wednesday evening, and got caught in a thunderstorm that just sort of crept out of nowhere. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed. The truth is, I was so deep in my own thoughts that the storm could have crept up behind me, followed me for miles, and then finally clubbed me over the head and stole my wallet. And I wouldn’t have known until it was on me.
That’s because I was thinking about the end.
Over on Patreon, the serialized first draft of FALLING ANGELS: The Labyrinth Book 4 is drawing to a conclusion over the next few days, with what will no doubt be the most shocking ending yet — not just of this series, but of all my many books. Enough so that I suspect people will finally quit breaking my balls about the ending to THE RISING.
(For new readers just now discovering me, The Labyrinth Series is my magnum opus — tying together all of the threads and elements scattered across my entire bibliography over the last 30 years. From day one, readers have known my works all take place in a shared universe. This uber saga brings that massive tale to a close. No, you don’t need to have read all of my books and stories to enjoy it or understand it. There’s a helpful appendix included in each volume that lessens that burden. But I do think the series will hit you differently if you have at least a passing familiarity with my work. It’s like reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower without having read The Stand, Salem’s Lot, or Insomnia. Or, if you prefer a different analogy, it’s like making The Avengers your first Marvel film, without having watched the movies that led up to that crossover. You’ll dig The Dark Tower or The Avengers, but you’ll dig them more deeply if you’re familiar with what led into them).
When the first book, THE SEVEN, came out in 2021, I said that the series would consist of six parts — THE SEVEN, SUBMERGED, SPLINTERED, FALLING ANGELS, HEAVEN AND HELL, and THE END.
But with Book 4 now drawing to a close, I’m seriously pondering whether or not six books are truly warranted.
Part of that is the story itself. There are only four major story beats and three plot locations left in the overall narrative. And while I thought that first major story beat would need most of a novel to tell, I’m now realizing that it doesn’t. It only needs maybe 30,000 words total. Maybe. I won’t know for sure until I’m in the middle of writing it. But I suspect that if I try to stretch it out over two more books, I’m going to end up unintentionally padding it a lot, and that is something I want to avoid.
The other reason I’m contemplating whether or not two more novels are required to finish the series comes down to time — and endings. To go back to Stephen King and The Dark Tower, he’s talked at length about the existential crisis — the absolute, gut-wrenching panic — that set in when he got hit by that van and woke up in the hospital and realized just how close he’d come to that series forever remaining unfinished.
I feel that more with each passing day. Not the immediate gut-wrenching panic, but a sort of creeping malaise — a little voice that whispers “You’re 58 and about half of your friends are already dead, and the life you’ve lived is finally starting to catch up with you, and it’s all downhill from here, health-wise, and you owe it to your readers to finish this thing before you’re finished. Because it could happen, Brian. It could happen today. You could go suddenly, like Dick Laymon or Dave Barnett. You could go piece by piece, like Jim Moore. Or you could go in the space of a few months, like Jesus or Weston. Or you could linger, the way Pic, Jay, or Dave Thomas did. Regardless, there’s going to come a morning where whatever you wrote the day before remains unfinished. It’s time to wrap this series up.”
But that urgency presents its own problems, because while I don’t want to pad things, I also don’t want to rush things. And so, that was the point of Wednesday night’s walk — plotting out the remaining story in my head, calculating how many words I thought that would take, and figuring out how to make it satisfying not only for my audience, but for myself as well.
I suspect that The Labyrinth series will in fact be a pentalogy (five books) rather than a hexalogy (six books). But I won’t know for sure until i start this next one, which should be this fall. The current plan, after wrapping FALLING ANGELS this week, is to finish THE LOST LEVEL: EXCURSIONS (the collection of commissioned short stories set in that world) and the collaboration Im writing with Laurel Hightower, and then begin the next Labyrinth book and return to the novel Weston Ochse and I were working on before he passed.
But yeah, my gut tells me we can wrap this thing up in five books, rather than six.
FALLING ANGELS: The Labyrinth Book Four is currently available on Patreon. It will be published in hardcover by Thunderstorm Books later this year, and in paperback and eBook by Manhattan On Mars this December. For more on the first three books in the series, click here.
This week, for Women In Horror Year, I covered books by Ally Wilkes, Sonora Taylor, TC Parker, Elizabeth Massie, and Ruby Jean Jensen. You can read those (and all the others) via the index for Women In Horror Year.
Mailings continue for the first issue of the OF KEENE INTEREST zine. We are now down to the last 450 copies that have not yet been sent. My hope is to get all of those into the mail this week, but that will depend on the family factors I mentioned here earlier.
Listener Mailbag II — KEENEVERSATIONS — Episode 44
Brian answers listener questions about awards, the works of J.F. Gonzalez, changing tastes in fiction, the enduring influence of George R. Stewart's Earth Abides, and more.
Available on Patreon, Spotify, and Brian Keene dot com. As always, new episodes are paywalled for the first month.
HOW TO SURVIVE 2025… IN 2026 (Part 1 of 2)
Jim Cobb, Dacia Arnold, and Brian Keene are back for a limited return engagement of everyone's favorite preparedness podcast. This week, they focus on dealing with the anxiety, depression, and other emotions many are currently experiencing, and offer realistic strategies for adaptability, mental toughness, emotional resilience, and gratitude.
Available for free on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Patreon, and more. Click here for links.
Below is the cover for the forthcoming paperback edition of BENEATH THE LOST LEVEL — the fourth book in my popular Weird Fantasy series — which will be available later this year. If you are new to the series, (which evokes my spin on the “lost world” stories popularized by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar, Sid and Marty Krofft Land of the Lost, Mike Grell’s Warlord, and many more), the first three books — THE LOST LEVEL, RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL, and HOLE IN THE WORLD — are now on sale as a bundle for one very low price, direct from the publisher.
This novel picks up exactly where RETURN TO THE LOST LEVEL left off. Aaron, Kasheena, and Patamoose explore the world beneath the world, encountering frog-people, androids, a mentally-ill A.I., and a very hungry Shoggoth. Aaron also finally begins to get some real answers on what the Lost Level actually is and how it came to be. It’s my fever dream homage to At the Earth’s Core, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, At the Mountains of Madness, and the 1980s run of Marvel’s Ka-Zar the Savage, all mixed together in that Brian Keene blender you folks seem to like so much.
REMINDER: Vendor tables for Scares That Care’s AuthorCon VII go on sale NEXT SATURDAY — May 23 — at 6pm EST. This is the link you’ll use to purchase them. In previous years they have sold out — on average — within three minutes, so plan ahead.
Currently Watching: Survivor season 50, The Boys season 5, and From season 4
Currently Reading: Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells (a reread) and Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC by Reed Tucker
Currently Listening: Geoff Tate’s Operation Mindcrime III, and in the truck (where I spent a lot of time this week) on Sirius/XM: Howard 100, Howard 101, Rock the Bells, and Ozzy’s Boneyard.
Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime is consistently and rightfully considered by fans, critics, and historians to be one of the greatest rock concept albums of all time — a powerful, towering sonic progressive metal masterpiece that tells the story of a low level criminal named Nicky and a nun named Mary, both of whom become pawns in a plan by Dr. X — a man seemingly intent on bringing down the U.S. government, organized religion, and more, reverting things to a state of anarchy and chaos.
Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime II is consistently and rightfully one of the most divisive rock concept albums of all time — a follow-up that follows Nicky upon his release from prison, seeking revenge on Dr. X, who in the years since the original story, has become a very wealthy man. To be clear — I have ALWAYS enjoyed the second album. I think many of the songs on it can stand equally along the songs on the first album. But I completely understand why many othe fans do not feel the same way. The story isn’t as complex. The recording was allegedly fraught with stress and fill-in studio musicians. And the production standards make for a muddier sound than the first album. But as I said, I still like it.
Geoff Tate’s Operation Mindcrime III is fine. The story takes place during the first album, but shows the listener things from Dr. X’s perspective. To be honest, that particular POV and storyline doesn’t really captivate me. Maybe that’s because, as of last week, full lyrics weren’t yet available anywhere, so perhaps I’m missing some nuance. Geoff’s voice is great. Indeed, I’d argue he sounds better on this album than he has on his last few solo efforts (and he was no slouch on those either, given the struggles that all aging metal vocalists eventually encounter). The band is solid. Production-wise, it sounds better than Operation Mindcrime II. But after repeated listens, it’s still just ‘fine’. There’s no ‘Holy $shit!’ moment like “Revolution Calling”, “Eyes Of A Stranger”, “Rearrange You” or “Fear City Slide”. End of the day, it’s a perfectly fine album, but it’s not going to set the world on fire.
That does it for this week. Thanks for reading. See all of you back here next Sunday.
I'm going to miss H. Uffda. Such a kind, supportive man. He introduced me to Paul from Thunderstorm and I'm forever in his debt for that. I last saw him in October when we shared a meal in Two Harbors, MN. We'd had a tentative plan to eat smelt from Lake Superior this spring...but alas.
I hope your grandmother recovers well and as painlessly as possible.