Brian Keene

It’s that time of year again. That time of year when writers whom I don’t know, have never talked to or haven’t heard from since this time last year suddenly decide that I’m their ‘friend’ and start lobbying me to vote for their book in the Bram Stoker Awards. Which is funny for many reasons, because a) I have not been a member of HWA for a very long time and therefore, cannot vote for shit, Stoker or otherwise, and b) when I was a member, my method was to vote against anybody who actively lobbied for the award, and c) I happen to think the word ‘friend’ has more meaning and connotation behind it than simply adding somebody to a Facebook or MySpace page.

During the last few long, cold winter weeks, I have once again faced down depression and death and found them not to my liking. I’m back now, ready to write and take care of business, but I can’t get to the business because my email inbox and Twitter feed are full of “Hey Brian, any chance I can send you a review copy of my book for consideration in the Stoker Awards?” and “Hey Brian, I see that Unhappy Endings made the preliminary Stoker ballot. I’ll vote for it if you’ll vote for mine.”

I fucking hate Stoker season in the same way I hate organized sports, racism, beets, child abuse, the current state of hip-hop, our two-party political system, and those god-damned zombie/classic literature mash-up novels. I have two Bram Stoker awards on my shelf, amongst other awards. I used to be proud of them. They used to mean something. But with each passing year, the Bram Stoker awards get cheapened by all of the constant whoring to the point where I consider selling those two haunted house statues on eBay and using the proceeds to buy something for my sons instead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if the HWA reformists are serious about repairing the now decades-long damage that the organization has suffered in the public eye, the first step should be to put the Bram Stoker awards on hiatus for at least three years. The current incarnation of HWA exists as nothing more than a life-support system for the awards. Both the organization and the awards are in desperate need of an overhaul. Imagine what the membership could accomplish if they didn’t have to worry about the awards for three years? After that, their second order of business could be issuing a public apology to Nick Mamatas and Lee Thomas…

So, over the last four weeks, I’ve suffered a severe case of bronchitis that hovered on the edge of pneumonia and refused to go away. I also suddenly found myself single again at age 42, and ended up moving into a small apartment and trying to assemble pre-packaged bookshelves.

Other than a few pages on a Friday afternoon, I haven’t written shit in over three weeks time, which leaves me with deadlines double-stacked. I intend to start digging my way out of that this week, now that I have an office to write in again (and thanks to Rhiannon and the staff of Seattle’s Best at Borders in York, for graciously allowing me to temporarily set up shop there until I found a place).

This Blog entry is the first thing I’ve typed from my new office, which is… cozy. Yes, that’s a nice word. Cozy. Makes me think of a fireplace and snow outside and curling up on the couch with some whiskey, a cigar and a good book by Joe R. Lansdale or Elmore Leonard.

Anyway, as I’ll be focusing on writing, my participation at The Keenedom and elsewhere will remain sporadic for at least another week. I’m currently working on Entombed, Vanishing Point, The Wanderer, and a non-fiction essay for a project Mark Morris is editing. I hope to have a new chapter of Deluge for you next Friday. Also, the second issue of the newsletter, which was supposed to ship this month, will ship next month instead.

And that’s pretty much it. Thank you for your continued patience and support, and thanks in advance for respecting my family’s privacy.

Contrary to internet rumors, I am not dying. Regular, daily service returns on Monday. Until then, let’s take a look at sporadic items you may have missed over the last few weeks.

I went to California and Missouri to sign books.

And I also got freaky with Cullen Bunn.

And I traveled in time to the year 2025.

Then I came home and went away for a while.

Darkness On the Edge of Town was released in bookstores nationwide, and I created this handy F.A.Q. for it, and Brandon created this nifty motivational poster for it.

Sheldon S. Higdon won the banner contest.

You got a peek at the cover for this summer’s Clickers III: Dagon Rising.

A German edition of Castaways was announced.

Those of us in The New Dead will participate in a nationwide signing event next week.

An update for lifetime subscribers.

John Urbancik has a new book coming out.

After turning things into an even bigger clusterfuck, the CEO of Borders stepped down.

The Rising won an award, the Dark Hollow movie got some press coverage, I’m teaching college again, and Mike Oliveri has a new book out.

In Clickers, it wasn’t safe in the water. In Clickers II: The Next Wave, it wasn’t safe on land.

This summer, it isn’t safe anywhere…

No, you can’t pre-order it yet. This is just a tease…

Now that Darkness on the Edge of Town is out, I thought I’d take a moment to answer some of the more common questions I see at The Keenedom. That way, instead of re-typing my answers over and over again, I can simply point readers to this Blog. Please note: If you have not read DotEoT, the following F.A.Q. may contain spoilers.

Q: Does DotEoT take place in the same reality as Ghost Walk?

A: No. In Ghost Walk, Levi defeated Nodens, sent him scurrying back into the Labyrinth, and then sealed the gate behind him. DotEoT takes place in a world where Levi lost that fight.

Q: How much difference is there between the limited edition hardcover and the paperback?

A: The hardcover is 60,000 words long. The paperback is 80,000 words long. This means that 20,000 words of extra story were added to the paperback. Scenes like the trip to the pet store did not appear in the hardcover, because I had originally cut them due to length considerations. Several characters who played merely a walk-on role in the hardcover are expanded upon in the paperback. There are subtle differences in the ending that take on a whole new context (and if you read carefully, you’ll realize they are two different endings).  Ultimately, I consider the hardcover and the paperback to be two different stories taking place in two different universes. Both have a subtle but important impact on my overall background mythos.

Q: Was this a homage to The Mist?

A: Not a homage in the way Castaways was a homage to Richard Laymon or Urban Gothic was a homage to Edward Lee, but DotEoT was certainly influenced by The Mist, and the novel proudly wears that influence on its sleeve. The Mist is one of the most important works of horror fiction in the last fifty years, and remains one of my personal favorites (it also influenced The Conqueror Worms).

Q: Who stole all the shaving cream?

A: We may never know.

Q: Dez mentions that he and the alternate-reality Levi fought Meeble. Will we ever see this battle?

A: I don’t know yet. But you will see Levi take on Meeble (or at least his minions) in this summer’s A Gathering of Crows.

Q: Plot-wise, DotEoT seems similar to Under the Dome?

A: In the sense that people are trapped inside a small-town, yes. But both are riffs on a much older theme, and DotEoT was published (in hardcover) a full year before Dome.

Courtesy of Brandon (who also gave us the “Yay, zombies!” banner). This will only make sense if you’ve read Darkness on the Edge of Town:

Remember last summer when I had some health problems and had to withdraw from the internet for a few weeks? Well, I’ve got to do that again. I’m not going to get into details (which will no doubt upset readers like ‘Mister Crowley’, who feels that I’m required to share all of the intimate details of my personal and professional life with him simply because he’s purchased my books).

What does this mean for you, the regular readers of my books and this Blog, who are not ‘Mister Crowley’? Well, Deluge is on hiatus for another week or so. My participation at The Keenedom will be limited for a week or so. The second issue of the newsletter, which I’d planned on shipping in early February, will be pushed back to late March (and it will be worth the wait because it has fiction by Gene O’Neill, poetry by Tom Piccirilli, Dezm’s lengthy examination of Ob, a sneak peek at A Gathering of Crows, more news on The Rising: Deliverance and Entombed, weirdness from Tomo and Meteornotes, and much more). Most importantly, if you send me an email, you probably won’t get a timely response, unless it’s business.

Rest assured, I won’t be goofing off at some tropical resort. In addition to dealing with this personal matter, I’ll be working on the next installment of my ‘Seminal Screams’ column for Shroud Magazine, an essay that I owe Mark Morris for an anthology (almost overdue), as well as Entombed and Vanishing Point and a few other things.

I appreciate your understanding. If you behave yourselves in my absence, I’ll write you a vampire novel when I return…

I’m happy to announce that the German editions of The Rising, City of the Dead, The Conqueror Worms, Take The Long Way Home, Dead Sea and the forthcoming Kill Whitey have now been joined by Castaways.

…ends up on the internet. Here is Cullen Bunn and myself sharing a dance. Photo courtesy of Geek Details, whom you should go buy things from.

“One year after taking over as CEO of Borders Group, Ron Marshall has resigned from the country’s second largest bookstore chain…”

On February 16th, many of the authors of The New Dead will be simultaneously signing in Kentucky, California, Maryland, Georgia, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas. (I’ll be signing in Baltimore). Here is the complete list:

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: James A. Moore
7:15 pm
Blue Elephant Book Shop
2091 N Decatur Rd
Decatur, GA 30033

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: Brian Keene
7 pm – 9pm
Barnes & Noble
1819 Reisterstown Road
Baltimore, MD 21208

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Christopher Golden, Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Hautala, Holly Newstein, and John Connolly
7 pm
Barnes & Noble
1 Worcester Rd
Framingham, MA 01701

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY: Derek Nikitas
7 pm
Morris Book Shop
408 Southland Drive
Lexington, KY 40503

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Aimee Bender and Max Brooks
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Dark Delicacies
4213 W Burbank Blvd
Burbank, CA 91505

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: Jonathan Maberry, MB Homler and David Wellington
7 pm
Borders
10 Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: David Liss
7 pm
Barnes & Noble
15900 La Cantera Pkwy
San Antonio, TX 78256

Heading back out on the road tomorrow to attend VisionCon. Hope to see some of you there. Remember, there will be no new installment of Deluge this week as a result.

* Mike Oliveri’s new novel, The Pack: Winter Kill, is out now. Click here to buy one. It does for werewolves what The Rising did for zombies.

* Speaking of The Rising, the winners have been announced for Culture Geek’s ‘Best of the Decade’ awards. In the category of Best Novel/Best Novel Series, The Rising came in second (ahead of Harry Potter and just behind Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

* Press coverage regarding the film version of Dark Hollow (now in production) is ramping up. There’s a thread on The Keenedom where you can keep track of everything related to the movie.

* A reminder that I’m teaching another 8-week novel-writing course at York College of Pennsylvania. Same criteria as this semester’s class. Class is Tuesday nights, beginning March 9th and ending April 27th. Courses are classroom only, rather than online — at least for now. The fee for this program is $160 which covers the cost of instruction and supplies needed to complete the course. Payment can be made by cash, check (payable to York College of PA), Visa, MasterCard, or Discover. Register by phone: (717) 815-1451. Register by email: ocapd@ycp.edu Register by mail: York College of Pennsylvania, Attn: Office of Community Education, York, PA 17403-3651

* Finally, here’s a new mix to hold you over until I return.

Your copies of Darkness On the Edge of Town arrived today. I will sign them tomorrow. Normally, they would ship to you immediately after that, but since I’ll be in Missouri from Thursday to Monday, they will ship to you next week. Also included will be signed cover flats.

So I’m back home for two quick days. Just enough time to catch up on email and do laundry before hopping back on a plane again. The next time someone tells you that writers lead glamorous lives, punch them in the mouth and tell them Brian Keene says “Hi.”

Had a wonderful time in California. Thanks to Del and Sue at Dark Delicacies and Alan, Jude, and everyone else at Borderlands Books. And thanks to all of you who showed up and had us sign things. Always great meeting you guys. And extra special thanks to Ann Laymon, David Schow (and Kerry), Richard C. Matheson, John Skipp, Cody Goodfellow, Brian Emrich, Gene O’Neill, Rain Graves, Nick Mamatas, and Paul and Shannon Legerski for giving us homes and family away from our homes and family.

On the brutal slog back across the country yesterday, J.F. Gonzalez and I had a long talk about publishing and emergent technologies. And it was that discussion which prompted today’s Blog entry. Close your eyes. Picture a town. An average mid-sized American town. Perhaps the town of Walden, Virginia (from my new novel Darkness On the Edge of Town). Now picture that town in 2025 — fifteen years from now. It’s still the same assortment of Wal-Marts, Targets, Taco Bells, Home Depots and Bath & Body Works that cover our country like Triffids. But there is one thing that is different. There is one thing that has changed.

There are no book stores.

There are no book stores in the year 2025. Unable to compete with digital books, the big box stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble have gone the way of Circuit City and Ames. They are extinct. The retails spaces formerly occupied by them now host internet cafes where one can drink coffee and read things on a Kindle, which is ironic when you think about it since people go into Borders and Barnes & Noble right now and do the exact same thing.

As we walk downtown, to a street populated by curio stores and antique shops and little boutique restaurants, we notice something else. The used book stores are gone, as well. There are no dusty, dimly-lit hole-in-the-wall stores piled high with moldering pulps and Ace doubles and yellowed Seventies paperbacks, because all of those formerly out of print backlist titles are now available to read for free via Google Books, a division of Google Corp, who now own everything and insert their latest toolbar into our children at birth.

That is the year 2025. According to science-fiction, in 2025 we should have jet-packs and manned flights to Jupiter. Or we will live in a giant post-apocalyptic junkyard. I propose that it will be a little bit of both scenarios. We’ll have wonderful new technologies and we will revel in them, even as we wander through an apocalypse of our own making. Or maybe I’m just exhausted and punch-drunk after a whirlwind weekend of meeting readers and signing books in stores where the owners, employees and clientele still love the feel of paper and the comfort that only a physical book can deliver — a comfort that our grandchildren might never know, because physical books will be nothing more than curious oddities Grandpa rambles on about, much like vinyl albums, eight track and cassette tapes, movies on VHS, and American politics when you could tell the two political parties apart.

J.F. and I finished our discussion as we touched down in Baltimore. I considered expanding on that grim, book store-less future world and advancing the clock five more years to 2030, when some bastard sets off an EMP and wipes out everything, including everyone’s digital libraries… but J.F. was tired and cranky and I didn’t want to depress him. Instead, we drove home and listened to music on my iPod and called our wives from our cell phones, both of which came with Kindle applications.

Postings here and on Facebook will be sporadic over the next two weeks, as I’ll be crisscrossing the continent and typing from hotel rooms. There will be no new installments of Deluge (so now is a perfect time for you to get caught up). If you send me an email, you probably won’t get an answer. As always happens when I’m on the road, the majority of my ramblings will be posted on Twitter. So if you need me, try me there. Also, those of you from my college class who are expecting some feedback from me — you’ll have it sometime over the next two weeks. (And Carlton Mellick — if you’re reading this, I know I owe you a phone call).

So, yeah. Back out on the road, which means late nights, too little sleep, and too many cigars and glasses of bourbon. But I won’t be slacking. In addition to signing books and meeting you, there is business to be conducted and things to work on in hotel rooms and bars. These things to work on include Vanishing Point, Entombed, Hole In The World, a comic script, and the final draft of a Mad Max essay I’m writing for an anthology (the first line is, “When my father was young, he wanted to grow up to be Roy Rogers. I grew up hoping for a nuclear war.”) While I’m gone, buy a copy of Darkness On the Edge of Town.

Here’s the schedule. If you live in California or Missouri, I hope to see you there.

JANUARY 16 – Burbank, California

Dark Delicacies
4213 W. Burbank
Burbank, CA 91505
Signing at 2pm with Mike Oliveri and J. F. Gonzalez

JANUARY 17 – San Francisco, California
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Signing, reading, Q&A at 3pm with Mike Oliveri and J. F. Gonzalez

JANUARY 22 to 24 – Springfield, Missouri
VisionCon
The Clarion Hotel
3333 S. Glenstone
Springfield, MO 65804
Signing, reading, panels, Q&A with Mike Oliveri, Cullen Bunn, Wrath James White, Russell Dickerson, Mark McLaughlin… and the all-new Gross Out Contest.

Amazon.com has my new post-apocalyptic novel, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, in-stock. They began shipping it this morning. If you pre-ordered it from them, your copy is on the way. The book won’t officially be in stores until the first Tuesday of February. Click here to order it.

Click here to vote for your favorite (you must be registered for the forum and logged in).

swands

Sheldon S. Higdon

B-RAD

Monica

aephilpott

It was a very busy week here at Brian Keene dot com:

Obviously, the big story is this discussion on self-publishing, the state of the collectible small press, and where the future might go –  with over one hundred comments from fans, readers and professionals such as Ed Gorman, Robert J. Randisi, James A. Moore, Tim Lebbon, Wrath James White, Gord Rollo, Subterranean Press, John Skipp, Carlton Mellick III, Nick Mamatas, Paul G. Tremblay, J.F. Gonzalez, Nick Kaufmann, Lee Thomas, Maurice Broaddus, Joseph Nassise, Nate Southard, Michelle Lee, J.A. Konrath, Scott Nicholson, Russell Dickerson and dozens more. And the discussion continues, so feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

As a precursor to the above discussion, my old friend Drew Williams released his new novel.

There was also a new chapter of Deluge. This will have to hold you over for a bit, as I’ll be traveling for the next two weeks (with signings in California and Missouri).

The Polish edition of City of the Dead is in stores now.

Dark Faith, which features my new short story “I Sing a New Psalm”, is up for pre-order.

The New Dead, which features my new short story “The Wind Cries Mary”, is also up for pre-order.

There are all kinds of things going on at The Keenedom.

An update for the ten Lifetime Subscribers.

J.F. Gonzalez and Mike Hawthorne are looking for a home for Sophie Rose.

A reminder to those of you in California and Missouri. I’ll be at the following places on the following dates:

JANUARY 16 – Burbank, California

Dark Delicacies
4213 W. Burbank
Burbank, CA 91505
Signing at 2pm with Mike Oliveri and J. F. Gonzalez

JANUARY 17 – San Francisco, California
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Signing at 3pm with Mike Oliveri and J. F. Gonzalez

JANUARY 22 to 24 – Springfield, Missouri
VisionCon
The Clarion Hotel
3333 S. Glenstone
Springfield, MO 65804
With Mike Oliveri, Cullen Bunn, Wrath James White, Russell Dickerson, Mark McLaughlin… and the all-new Gross Out Contest.

We’re slowly re-adding the author boards, post-crash. So far, the forum is handling it. Cullen Bunn and John Urbancik are back up and running. More soon.

How dominant will digital books be by 2020?

Entries in the ‘Build Brian’s Banner’ contest.

Is the much-rumored 4X4 sequel finally going to happen?

Anticipation is high for Dark Faith.

Queensryche fused with Guns n Roses.