6/9/26
New episode of Keeneversations dropped yesterday!
John Langan, Michael Cisco, Tim Waggoner, and Wile E. Young - Keeneversations - Ep 47
The "Old Guys" or just "The Guys"? That is the existential question as Brian, Tim Waggoner, John Langan, and Michael Cisco come to grips with where they now find themselves in their careers, and Wile E. Young gets some foreshadowing for what he can expect twenty years from now.
Available on Patreon, Spotify, and here on this site. As always, new episodes are paywalled for the first month.
~
Great first day of sales in Italy for the new Italian-language edition of NEMESAI by myself and John Urbancik. If you missed it:
English Language Paperback: Amazon - B&N - BAM - Waterstones
English Language eBook: Kindle
Italian Language Paperback: Amazon US - Amazon Italy
Italian Language eBook: Kindle US - Kindle Italy
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 53
The Keeper by Sarah Langan
The dreams of a dying rural town are haunted by the town pariah—and soon become waking nightmares—in this novel from the Bram Stoker Award–winning author.
The formerly prosperous paper mill town of Bedford, Maine, has fallen on hard times. With the mill closed, nobody’s making ends meet. What’s worse, lately the people are dreaming about Susan Marley, a young woman fallen from grace whom they pity and fear.
No one talks about the dreams even though they all share them. It’s a delicate balance. An unspoken devil’s pact. But when Susan mysteriously dies during a weeklong rainstorm, those nightmares start to come true. Only the guilt-riddled people who once loved Susan can guess at what’s happening, or act to stop it.
Originally released in mass market paperback (here in the US) and trade hardcover (in the UK) back in 2006, Sarah Langan’s The Keeper is one of the most memorable debut novels of that glorious decade of 2000s horror fiction. A customer at Vortex, who attended Sarah’s signing for her novel Good Neighbors, had missed out on The Keeper back in the day, and was considering purchasing the vintage paperback I had on the shelf. When he asked me to describe it, I paused and then said, “Imagine if Peter Straub had been writing Bentley Little novels for Zebra back in the day.” The customer’s eyes widened. He bought the book. And next time he came in the store, he was very pleased.
Sarah’s literary voice is on par with Straub’s best, as well as that of our peer John Langan (no relation), but she has a way of dissecting blue collar middle-America in a supernatural fashion that is reminiscent of classic Little (i.e. The Town, The Summoning, and The Store). She intimately knows these characters. Moreso, she intimately knows the town. And that’s important because the town is as much a main character in this novel as any of the other souls who populate it. I know these people. I know this town. I grew up with both, and it is very easy for me to tell when a fellow writer doesn’t “get” it. Sarah not only gets us — she, like the antagonist of the novel — knows all our secrets. Even the ones we keep from ourself.
A supernatural tour-de-force that firmly, masterfully, and gleefully rides the line between horror fiction and something more, The Keeper is a keeper. A new edition (with a faux-vintage cover that would have been right at home on one of those old Zebra paperbacks and that I vastly prefer to the original), The Keeper is available in paperback and eBook from Open Road Media.
