Letters From the Labyrinth 473
Resilience
Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth — a long-running weekly newsletter for fans, friends, and family thatcomes out every Sunday morning.
My youngest graduated from high school with many honors last Friday night. As I wrote over on Algorithm Zero earlier this week, I remember the pensiveness and uncertainty we parents felt years ago when this class were navigating middle school during a global pandemic. I think we — as a society — often dread what effect that may have had on them, and the impact for them down the road. But as one of his fellow students said during the ceremony, it made them resilient, and that was surely on display during and after graduation.
Here I am with him.
And then with his older brother, as well.
This is one of the very few times in my life where I genuinely don’t have the words to express how I’m feeling. That’s a frustrating and disconcerting position for a writer to be in, and yet it’s true. I can’t properly articulate the absolute pride I have. It is my hope that he saw it in my expression, felt it in the bear hug I gave him afterward, heard it in my voice in the hours before graduation when he and I were fixing his stereo.
It occurred to me last night, as I was playing Fallout 76, that all three of my kids (four if you count Mike Lombardo*) are doing alright. My oldest son is a social worker who cares for adults — many of whom come into the facility violent or untreated. He excels at the job — a force of calm who has a knack for talking down even the most combative. My stepdaughter is currently traveling Ireland — doing the same kind of globetrotting I did at her age, seeing the world, experiencing the world, and thus learning more about herself and humankind in general. And now my youngest is a graduate, and in two and a half months he’s off to Colgate in upstate New York, the next step on his journey toward also being a writer. Except that’s not quite accurate. He’s already a writer. He has been since he was little — something we talked about on the podcast earlier this week. It is more apt to say, the next step on his journey through life.
*And yes, I do count Mike Lombardo, and he’s having his best year ever because, my god folks, wait until you see DEAD FORMAT…
The advice I’ve given all of my kids, regarding parenting, is this: Your job as a parent is to be better than your parents were. If you had terrible parents, then it’s an easy job. If you had good parents, then the job is more difficult. But that’s the job, regardless. I like to think I’ve been a good parent. I hope that I have been. But at the end of the day, it’s not me, or their mothers, or their grandparents who got them all to this point in their lives. We are a support team, but it’s their own resilience and determination and talent and intelligence that has gotten them where they are.
And I am so very proud of them all.
See what I mean? Not enough words — or not powerful enough words — to truly express it. <3
The Artist Formerly Known As Dungeonmaster 77.1 — KEENEVERSATIONS — Episode 46
The Horror Show with Brian Keene's "Dungeonmaster 77.1" joins us to discuss his writing journey, why he decided to follow Joe Hill's career path, his desire to not be seen as a nepo-baby, and what he learned growing up around writers and artists such as Paul Tremblay, John Urbancik, Kasey Lansdale, Stephen Kozeniewski, Wile E. Young, and Christian Jensen, as well as his father and stepmother.
Available on Patreon, Spotify, and Brian Keene dot com. As always, new episodes are paywalled for the first month.
All copies of OF KEENE INTEREST Volume 2, Number 1 are now on their way to subscribers. The final batch (group 2 of people whose first names begin with K through M, group 2 of people whose first names begin with E, and group 6 of people whose first names begin with R through T) are packaged and stamped and sitting on my dining room table waiting for the post office to open tomorrow.
OF KEENE INTEREST is a free zine featuring essays, fiction, games, and such. My hope is to publish it quarterly but for this year, it will be semiannual. You can subscriber for free here (but note that your subscription will begin with the second issue).
Next Friday and Saturday, June 5 and 6, I’ll be at StokerCon at The Westin Pittsburgh 1000 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. Please note that I am only attending to see friends, accept the award should Chris and I win for Best Anthology, and accept the award on Joe Hill’s behalf should he win for Best Novel. I have no readings or panels or signings. I am very happy to sign books for you, but I’m not bringing any with me, so make sure you bring them from home. And I’m very happy to talk, as well. I’m pretty easy to find. Track me down and say hello.
Later this summer, on July 21st, I’ll be signing at The Twisted Spine, 306 Grand Street, Brooklyn NY 11211. And Mary and I are supposedly guests at the GenCon Writers Symposium in Indianapolis, taking place July 30 through August 2. I say apparently because we aren’t listed on the website or on the convention Blog. Despite this, organizer Maurice Broaddus assures us we are.
I have begun to suspect this is all an elaborate prank by Maurice, and if so, well done, old friend. Well done indeed. But you know I’m gonna get you back, right? ;-)
In fact, let’s do that now. I would like all of you to reach out to Maurice Broaddus via the social media platform of your choice and remind him that Mary and I still aren’t listed for GenCon, and before you spend your money on airfare and hotel accomodations and gas and such, you’d like confirmation of such.
(Countdown to apoplectic text message from Maurice after he wakes up this morning and reads the newsletter in 3… 2… 1…)
This week, for Women In Horror Year, I covered books by Lisa Mannetti (including a funny story about a time she legit rescued me), Kenzie Jennings, Charlee Jacob, Kathe Koja, Mary SanGiovanni (with Edward Lee), Anne Rivers Siddons, and more. You can read those (and all the others) via the index for Women In Horror Year.
Bunch of stuff up for auction right now on the Vortex Books & Comics ebay page, and plenty more will be posted throughout the coming week.
Currently Watching: From season 4, Furnace, At Close Range (rewatch), Portal In the Pines, and The Home.
Currently Reading: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson
Currently Listening: The Immaculate Collection by Madonna, Dream Police by Cheap Trick, Get Lucky by Loverboy, and Somewhere In Time by Iron Maiden.
Rewatched At Close Range this week, because Mary and I were talking about the real events it was based on, and she had never seen it, and it had been maybe twenty years since I’d watched it. Starring Christopher Walken, Sean Penn, Mary Stuart Masterson, Chris Penn, and Kiefer Sutherland, it is set around here and based on a Central Pennsylvania rural crime family who were able to carve their own space out from the surrounding bikers, Greeks, Italians, and other organizations back in the 1960s and 1970s. Madonna’s ballad, “Live To Tell” is a recurring theme and musical callback throughout the film, and I’d forgotten just how frigging good that ballad is — one of her career best, vocally. Right up there alongside “This Used To Be My Playground” and “Crazy For You”. (Yes, whenever “Borderline” comes on, I can’t help but dance and sing along in a burst of nostalgic ‘Remember the Eighties’ joy, but her ballads were what I always really dug). So, yeah, her greatest hists collection was in rotation this week after that.
Still working my way through Game Wizards. It is a dense read, but fascinating. The more I learn, the more I think the Gary Gygax / Dave Arneson feud is way worse than the Stan Lee / Jack Kirby feud. Somewhere out there in the Labyrinth, there’s a level where Kirby and Arneson teamed up on a project in the Eighties.
That does it for this week. Thanks for reading. See all of you back here next Sunday.
That's one proud papa there. Love to see it. Realized earlier this week my eldest has five years left and then he leaves the roost. 5 years is a long time and now much at all. I got pretty freaked out about it.
I always forget about the ebay page.
Congrats to all your kids for pursuing life with enthusiasm. One parent to another, you clearly have been and continue to be a good parent.