Brian Keene's Blog, page 136

NECON 2013

I’ll be at NECON in Bristol, Rhode Island next weekend. I decided at the last minute, mainly because I don’t want to miss Thursday night’s gathering in honor of Rick Hautala, but figured I’d better mention it for those who might want their books signed. Complete details here.

LAKE FOSSIL II: THE FOSSILING (Chapter 1) – Guest Blog by G.B. Michaels

Note: Recently, Nickolaus Pacione (a man from Illinois who has stalked, threatened, and/or harassed a large number of professional and amateur authors and editors, including myself) put out a call for people to write fan fiction stories based on his works. Unfortunately, no one has yet taken him up on his offer.

So, when G.B. Michaels emailed me last week to tell me that he was returning to writing horror fiction, but was worried that he’d been away too long and wasn’t sure where to begin, I suggested he start by answering Nicky’s call for stories. And then, to pay tribute to Nicky for all the years of attention he’s showered upon me, I offered to host G.B.’s fan fiction effort right here on this website. And so, without further ado, I am happy to present Chapter One of a new ongoing e-serial – Lake Fossil 2: The Fossiling. 

 

Chapter One

“I am the one who is the one that was the one who will be the one in shadow that is darkness and not light and hidden from the dark yet in the dark and in and around the dark where the shadow falls on the dark where not light dwells and I…”

“Hey!” yelled the guy behind the counter. “Are you going to stand over there muttering like a fucking lunatic all day, or are you going to buy something?”

Nicolaus stopped muttering to himself while staring at the magazine rack full of pornography he so desperately wanted to buy, and approached the counter with a bottle of YooHoo and a candy bar. The guy behind the counter was still staring at him, no doubt wondering if he was going to start yammering things again, so Nicolaus thought that perhaps he should explain himself.

“Sorry,” he muttered while digging several well worn dollar bills from the pockets of his filthy and oddly stained pants. “I’m a writer, and was working on a story out loud. I do that a lot”.

The guy gave him an odd look (well, no odder than the looks he had been giving Nicolaus since he walked into the store, since Nicolaus looked like the sort of homeless guy that the rest of the homeless guys would point at and laugh). “A writer you say? Have you written anything I might have heard of?”

Nicolaus’s eyes lit up. A CHANCE TO PROMOTE MY WORK! he thought to himself. He straightened up from his normal bent posture, and asked “Have you ever read FORSAKEN STORIES OF A COLLECTED LANDSCAPE?”

“No, never heard of it,” the Counter Guy said.

“Hmm, how about LIBRARY OF UNKNOWN HORRORS SO UNKNOWN YOU WILL NOT KNOW THEM?”

“No, not that one either.”

“TORNADOES AND VOLCANOES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF DISASTROUS STORIES?”

“no”

“THE SHADOW THAT IS ON THE EYE THAT IS IN SHADOW? HOUSE OF SPIDERS? HOUSE OF SPIDERS 2: MORE SPIDERING? HOUSE OF SPIDERS 3: JUST AN INSANE AMOUNT OF SPIDERING?”

“No, can’t say I have.”

“Sir, do you even read horror?”

“Oh sure”, replied the counter guy, as he started to ring up Nicolaus’s vast number of purchases, “I like Stephen King. And that Brian Keene fella is usually pretty good”.

Nicolaus’s reeled back in shock “Keene? Brian Keene? That guy is a hack. I refuse to believe anyone would be entertained by that dreck!”

“Well, he’s usually pretty good. Sometimes he can’t end a story. And that thing with the possessed coyote or whatever in GHOST WALK was pretty fucking stupid.” He put the items in a bag and moved them towards Nicolaus, in a dire attempt to get him out of the store and out of this conversation. “Anything else I can do for you today?”

Nicolaus, still reeling from the fact that someone, ANYONE, could be entertained by Keene, managed to sputter out, “I do need directions to Lake Fossil. I’m headed up there to write a book about it.”

“Oh, OK. Well, it’s pretty easy. See that giant sign across the street with the words LAKE FOSSIL and the giant arrow below it pointing to the right? I’d head in that direction.”

Nicolaus looked out the window at the front of the store to see that yes, there was a sign out there just as the shopkeeper described. Pleased to now have a direction to walk towards, he reached out for his bag, then paused for a moment, as if he suddenly realized something. Most would assume at this point he was realizing he had not taken a bath in quite some time, but instead he pulled off the beaten backpack from his back and rummaged around among the indescribable (and trust me, you don’t want them described to you) contents inside, until he found a really beaten magazine. He placed that upon the counter, and said, “Here, a gift, a copy of my magazine PURPOSE OF TABLOIDS: A HORROR GAZETTE OF HORROR AND HORRIBLENESS.”

The guy behind the counter took one look at it, made sure not to touch it as there seemed to be similar stains on the magazine as there were on Nicolaus’s pants, and said, “Um, thanks. I believe I have a cat box this can be stored in.”

“I wrote all the stories in this issue,” Nicolaus proudly proclaimed, quite pleased with himself.

“Why am I not surprised by this?” replied the guy, who was now looking about for some sort of object, preferably sharp or at least really heavy, to use to persuade this idiot to get out of his store. But his fears were unnecessary, as Nicolaus gathered up his stuff, and headed towards the door, muttering something about a lake and creatures in it hiding in water shadows.

The counter guy watched Nicolaus cross the road, stare at the giant LAKE FOSSIL sign for a lot longer than any human really should need to do, and then trudge off in the direction that the oh so helpful arrow indicated for him. He waited until he was out of sight, then picked up is phone and dialed a number. The call was answered quickly.

“Yes, I have someone headed towards you,” the shopkeeper said. “Wake the Kraken…”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Coming up in Chapter 2: The Horror In The Shadow’s Shadow, or: Sleeping Bag of Terror!

G.B. Michaels writes non-fiction focusing on the horror genre, as well as the occasional short horror tale. His writing has appeared in Jobs In Hell, RLK – Richard Laymon Kills, Up From the Underground, and more. This is his first book-length work.

Critics say…

On THE LAST ZOMBIE: THE END #2:

“Keene has done no wrong… one of the best comics of the past 3 years… The story moves forward at a perfect pace, and man what an ending… I am also really loving the artwork of Chris Allen… I have said it time and time again, this series is solid, and so much fun to read. I have enjoyed every second of it, and as we come to a close in a few issues, I know it is something I am really going to end up missing when it is gone. - 4.5 out of 5.0″

Click here to purchase.

OPERATION: THUNDERBIRD

The following first appeared in my now out-of-print book, Leader of the Banned. I am revising it substantially for its appearance here. As for why it is appearing here, it’s Monday, which is when I usually run an essay, but I’m finally making headway on various works in progress (novel Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road is now in the editing process, for example), so this week, y’all get a rare reprint, and I get to keep writing.

UPDATE: Okay, it’s Sunday. Not Monday. I meant to save this post but hit publish by mistake. Enjoy it one day early! Without further ado, here’s OPERATION: THUNDERBIRD

A few years ago, me, Geoff Cooper, and J. F. Gonzalez were sitting around Coop’s kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking shop. This is something writers are prone to do. I suppose its the same way for friends employed in other professions, as well.

During the conversation, I mentioned my desire to write a big, sprawling, epic literary novel — something decidedly non-genre. Coop and Jesus asked what was stopping me, and I told them it was because I’d never be able to sell such a book. Coop called bullshit on that, and stated that at this point, I could sell my fucking laundry list as long as it had my name on it.

Naturally, I took offense at this, and proposed a friendly little wager. The three of us would craft the absolute worst book proposal ever, and then I would shop it around as a new novel by myself. When nobody offered to buy it, I’d prove that Coop was wrong.

For the rest of the afternoon, the three of us worked on a synopsis for a novel called Thunderbird. It was a weird western — the first intentional stumbling block, since it’s very, very hard to sell a mixed genre novel, especially one that mixes horror and westerns — to a big publishing house. The plot was ludicrous beyond belief, and we had a great time trying to top each other with it.

Thunderbird was the story of two Civil War deserters — one from the Union and the other from the Confederacy. They both abandon their posts and head out West together, taking along their trusty beloved cannon, which they’ve affectionately named ‘Betsy’. Eventually, the two men find work on a cattle ranch in New Mexico, and all is well until a pterodactyl comes out of a canyon and starts eating the cattle. With the help of a Native American medicine man, some aliens, and the ever-reliable Betsy, the men defeat the Thunderbird.

When we were finished, we’d put together something that not even the Sci-Fi Channel would want. The story was ridiculous. The history was muddled and full of inconsistencies. There was no way this book should sell. Except that I pitched it and a whole bunch of publishers said, “A new Brian Keene novel? Sure, we’ll take it!”

Looking back, I think that’s when my alcohol consumption really increased…

Coop and J.F. got a good giggle from the whole thing. We told Mike Oliveri about it later and he said, quote: “You asshole. Most of us bitch about not being able to sell a book. You bitch about selling a book.” And then, since Mike is one of my oldest friends in this business, I was overcome with guilt and proceeded to sell two books for him, and that is how I began moonlighting as an unofficial agent.

Writers can learn two very important lessons from Operation: Thunderbird.

1. Coop is always right.

2. The only person that will truly look out for your writing career is you. Agents, editors, publishers, peers — they all mean well (most of the time), but their priorities are different than yours, and as a result, their advice is geared toward what they think is best for you, and what they want for you, rather than what you think is best for yourself or want for yourself. The advice of agents, editors, publishers, and other writers must always be suspect. This doesn’t mean they are necessarily malicious. It just means that they are driven by factors that may not necessarily jibe with what you want. Author, know thyself, because nobody else ever really will, except maybe those in your audience who can read between the lines.

And now, here is the actual pitch proposal for THUNDERBIRD. Keep in mind, that Coop, J. F. Gonzalez and I were attempting to come up with the worst book pitch ever in an effort to prove that my publishers weren’t buying things simply because I’d written them. What follows is the synopsis that I then sent to several different publishers. The character of Two-Dogs comes from my favorite joke of all time, the punch-line of which is, “Why do you ask, Two-Dogs Fucking?” If you’ve never heard the joke, ask me to tell it to you sometime.

Author: Brian Keene

Proposed Title: Thunderbird

Length: 90K

Projected Manuscript Completion: December 2005

High Concept: A new twist on the weird western.

Clayton and Owen are tired — tired of the unspeakable things they’ve seen during the Civil War. During a pitched battle, they desert from their respective armies and make their way West, seeking a new life and new opportunities. They take only the clothes on their backs, their rifles, their beloved horses, and their good luck charm — a cannon named ‘Betsy’.

The journey brings them to New Mexico, a wild new territory on the American frontier. Along the way, they encounter the grisly remains of a wagon train. Mutilated bodies — human, horse and cattle, lay strewn about the valley floor. Wagons are broken into timber. Several have had their roofs torn off. Others look as if they were dropped from a great height.

Continuing on, they are hired by Rafe Callahan, a rancher. His land covers hundreds of miles, and his ranch lies beneath the shadow of “Thunderbird Mountain”. Clayton begins a tentative romance with the rancher’s daughter, Colleen. One of Callahan’s cowhands is an Indian named Two-Dogs. He informs Clayton and Owen that according to Native American legend, a Thunderbird sleeps beneath the mountain.

Callahan’s cattle begin disappearing. Some vanish without a trace. Dismembered pieces of others are found along the prairie — in the same condition as those from the grisly wagon train. Then people start disappearing, as well. A large, winged shadow is spotted in the night sky, and terrible, piercing cries are heard echoing over the plains.

The Thunderbird, a pterodactyl, has begun hunting along the prairie. For years, it was content to forage on the mountain, but with the arrival of the settlers and their plentiful herds (and the fact that it has a nest of newborns to feed) it is ranging farther from the mountain — right over the ranch.

When Colleen becomes one of the missing, Clayton, Owen, Two-Dogs, and several other men storm the mountain, determined to rescue her and to learn the secret of the Thunderbird. They find the nest, and slaughter the babies while the mother is away. They find a scrap of Colleen’s dress in the nest and fear the worst — but discover that she managed to escape, and is stuck on a ledge below. They rescue her, but the mother pterodactyl returns, furious at what’s happened to her brood. She pursues them back to the ranch, and in a final battle, they kill the Thunderbird with Betsy the cannon and the help of some aliens who had a base inside the mountain.

Week in Review: 7-7-13

I posted a history of my novel, THE RISING (following on the heels of a similar history for EARTHWORM GODS). These essays seem to be popular, so expect more.

There’s video of me reading new short story “Fetish” at New York City’s KGB Bar last February.

I posted an update on works in progress. And we took a look at two new projects from Bryan Smith.

Bryan Smith Conquers The World

Bryan Smith is a dear friend, and one of my absolute favorite modern day pulp horror writers. (I look forward to his new releases with the same anticipation and fervor I used to have for a new Laymon title). But Bryan is also one of my main competitors.He and I share a sizable cross-section of our audience. People who read my stuff dig his stuff, and vice versa. (There are several publishers and authors who didn’t think this was true, but then they saw Bryan’s sales figures). But, even though we compete for audience share, I reckon its a pretty friendly thing.

Now, in conjunction with Thunderstorm Books, Bryan has launched his own imprint — Bitter Ale. It’s similar to my own Maelstrom imprint, which is also done via Thunderstorm. Click here for all the details on the Bitter Ale Series. I know I’m certainly going to sign up.

Bryan also released a new novel this week called 68 KILL. It starts with a couple of dead bodies and $68,000 in stolen cash, and as you can imagine, things go terribly awry for the characters from there. If you haven’t yet tried Bryan’s work, or if you sampled his earlier novels and want to try him now at the top of his game, this is the perfect introduction. Click here to download it to your Kindle.

Hmmm. New novel and a new imprint. I’d better get back to work. Bryan’s starting to catch up…

Things to Come (UPDATED)

Being an update on various works in progress: 

The new editions of City of the Dead and The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World will be delayed until late-Fall. This is my fault, and not the fault of the publisher. I’ve been focused on finishing up other projects and will not have them edited in time to turn in to the publisher for late-Summer release.

Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road (the collaborative novel between myself, Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, Nate Southard, Ryan Harding, and Shane McKenzie) has three chapters left to be written. Then we will begin the editing process. Look for it in late-Fall.

The 2013 Maelstrom set is in development. The Rising: Uncut Author’s Preferred Edition and A Necessary End by F. Paul Wilson and Sarah Pinborough are turned in. I’m finishing up the second draft of The Last of the Albatwitches. Cover illustrations for all three are underway.

As soon as I’ve finished that, I’ll return to the second drafts of The Lost Level and Hole In The World.

A Lifetime Subscriber package and the final batch of manuscript reviews should go out well before the end of this month.

UPDATE: Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road is finished and on its way to the pre-readers.

Things to Come

Being an update on various works in progress: 

The new editions of City of the Dead and The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World will be delayed until late-Fall. This is my fault, and not the fault of the publisher. I’ve been focused on finishing up other projects and will not have them edited in time to turn in to the publisher for late-Summer release.

Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road (the collaborative novel between myself, Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, Nate Southard, Ryan Harding, and Shane McKenzie) has three chapters left to be written. Then we will begin the editing process. Look for it in late-Fall.

The 2013 Maelstrom set is in development. The Rising: Uncut Author’s Preferred Edition and A Necessary End by F. Paul Wilson and Sarah Pinborough are turned in. I’m finishing up the second draft of The Last of the Albatwitches. Cover illustrations for all three are underway.

As soon as I’ve finished that, I’ll return to the second drafts of The Lost Level and Hole In The World.

A Lifetime Subscriber package and the final batch of manuscript reviews should go out well before the end of this month.

A Song and a Dance

“Nightstalker”, the first track on Bonebag’s Lost In Shangri-La, is inspired by my novel CASTAWAYS. You can listen to the track (and the rest of the album) here.

Last February, Nick Mamatas and I had the honor of appearing at the KGB Bar in New York City as part of the Fantastic Fiction series. I read a new story for the occasion — a tale called “Fetish”. Video of that performance has now been posted on YouTube for all to enjoy.

THE RISING – A History Lesson

Note: Following last week’s EARTHWORM GODS: A History Lesson, the following is an edited version of the Introduction that appears in the new Deadite Press edition of  THE RISING , on sale now in paperback. (Kindle and Nook forthcoming).

The Rising was first published more than a decade ago. It went on to become a cult-hit, and then a bestseller, and served as a major inspiration for the current zombie craze in our pop culture, and was translated into a dozen different languages, and was imitated endlessly, and had its ideas and concepts pop up in other zombie films and books, and was a trivia question on an ABC game show, and was cited by actors and other celebrities as being among their favorite books, and was the subject of several cinematic false starts and both and ill-fated video game and comic book adaptation. And yet, despite all of that, this is the first time you’ll read it the way I’d originally intended. 

This is the first time that this edition of The Rising has been published. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only true edition.

The original manuscript of The Rising came in at just over 120,000 words in length. Unfortunately, publishing restrictions at the time mandated that I cut the book down to between 80,000 and 90,000 words. There were several reasons for this. First of all, I was a new author — The Rising was my first published novel — and the general consensus among booksellers was that readers wouldn’t embrace a long, doorstop of a novel by a first time novelist. I don’t know how accurate that is, but back then, I was just eager to get published. They could have told me the public wouldn’t embrace a novel by a writer with hair, and I would have shaved my head without pause. Of course, these days, I have to do that anyway to hide my baldness, but I digress.

Secondly, when The Rising was first published (in 2003) it had been quite some time since zombies were seen as successfully commercial in books, comics, or films. So publishers felt they were taking a gamble with the subject matter, and again, it would be easier to sell if it was a shorter length.

The third reason was that The Rising is a work of genre fiction, and by and large, most genre fiction novels (with the exception of fantasy novels) seem to come in at 80,000 to 90,000 words. I don’t know why that is. I don’t think publishers really know the reason, either. Personally, I’ve always felt horror fiction works best in novella form, but that’s an argument for another day.

Long story short, I cut a little over 30,000 words from The Rising before it was accepted for publication. I’ve always regretted that. While some of those words undoubtedly needed to go (if only because they slowed down the narrative) there were other bits that I thought were a lot of fun, and it saddened me that readers never got the chance to enjoy them. The good news is that I kept all of that excised material, and I’ve included a lot of it in this new uncut, Author’s Preferred Edition of the book. Some things have remained on the cutting room floor (such as an early scene in which Frankie tried to get to the Baltimore-Washington International airport), and I’m comfortable allowing them to lie there, but long-time readers will notice a lot of brand-new material here (such as Baker’s harrowing escape from Havenbrook, a new pre-zoo encounter with Frankie, expanded roles for secondary characters like Klinger and Haringa, and much more).

The Rising was first published in hardcover. A year later, it was published in paperback. Both editions were embarrassingly rife with spelling and punctuation errors, and continuity gaps — and to this day, I’m not sure why. Some of it was my fault, of course. Typos and misspellings creep into all manuscripts, be they your first novel or your fiftieth. So do continuity errors. This is why having a good editor, copyeditor, and team of pre-readers is so essential, but even with those, mistakes happen. But some of the mistakes that crept into the published version of The Rising were ones that we’d already taken steps to correct during the galley-proofing stage. Worse, those same typos have crept into all of The Rising’s foreign translations (of which there are many). So you understand why I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to un-fuck as many of those as possible this time around.

I said before that The Rising was my first novel. As such, I see all kinds of first-time novelist flaws in it, as far as style and voice are concerned. I have, for the most part, resisted the urge to re-write those portions, tempting as it might be to do so. Mostly, that’s only been done to smooth the transitions between the published text and the unpublished text that was originally cut from the book.

Something else that hasn’t changed is the ending.

Yeah, I guess we should talk about the ending. And if this is your first time reading this novel, you might want to skip these next few paragraphs. I’ll include a spoiler warning for you, and tell you when it’s safe to start reading again.

SPOILER WARNING

When The Rising was first published, roughly seventy percent of the reviews and comments from readers focused on the ambiguous ending. Some people thought their book was defective, and that pages were missing. Some people called it a cop out. Some people said it was a crass ploy to get readers to buy the sequel. None of these things are true. At the time, I hadn’t even planned a sequel (and resisted the idea of writing a sequel until a full six month’s after the book’s release in paperback. For more on that, I’ll refer you to the introduction of the Author’s Preferred Version of City of the Dead).

In truth, I thought the ending was pretty clear. Jim, Martin, and Frankie arrive at the house. Jim goes inside. Martin is reciting Bible passages about sons rising from the dead. There is a gunshot, followed by a scream and then a second gunshot. Fade to black. The End. It was set up as a classic ‘Lady or the Tiger’ ending, but all the clues were there. Jim went inside, found out that Danny was a zombie, shot Danny, and then himself.

The problem was this — I just wasn’t a good enough writer to pull that sort of thing off at that point in my career. As one of my mentors put it to me much later, “You went through the whole novel without flinching once. You showed the reader everything. But when you got to the end, you pulled away. That’s why people didn’t get it. It was a rookie mistake.” And he was right. It was a rookie mistake. And I got hollered at for it. Over and over and over again.

But there’s a reason I pulled the camera away, and that reason is I knew Jim and Danny. Much of my work contains semi-autobiographical elements. It’s that way for most fiction writers, whether they admit to it or not. In my case, it’s usually little things. Sometimes (like in the case of Dark Hollow, Ghoul, or The Girl on the Glider) it’s a lot more. In the case of The Rising, Jim and Danny were sort of based on me and my oldest son. They weren’t really autobiographical sketches, per se, but he and I certainly informed the characterization, and as I wrote the book, I couldn’t help but see us in those roles. So yeah, when I got to the end, even though I knew what happened in the house, I chickened out at showing it completely.

Looking back, I sometimes regret that ending, but then I pause and consider that, if I hadn’t published that ending the way it was, I would have never eventually written City of the Dead, or The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World, or Clickers vs. Zombies. I would have never had the joy of revisiting these characters whom I love.

So, if you’re one of the people who hollered at me about the ending, thank you for that.

END OF SPOILERS

People often ask me if it bothers me to see some of the ideas from The Rising popping up in other zombie stories. I can honestly answer that, no, it doesn’t. If anything, I’m honored. I was a fan of the horror genre, and especially the zombie sub-genre, long before I ever began making my living from it. As a fan, I think it’s awesome to have contributed something that has influenced our genre in that way. I also firmly believe that in genre fiction, especially horror fiction, there are very few truly original ideas left. Everything has been done before, because as horror writers, we deal in tropes. Our job, the way I see it, is to put a unique spin on those tropes. Others have written about zombies, vampires, werewolves, or ghosts. The challenge for us, as authors, is to write about those things with our distinct voice, and put our distinct spin on them. That was what I tried to do with The Rising, and with the forty or so books (as of this writing) that have followed.

Readers who like to follow my overall Labyrinth mythos, which subtly collects all of my novels and stories into a broader meta-epic, will notice that I began planting those seeds with this first novel. The Rising takes place on Earth, but it’s not our Earth, as evidenced by bits like the Chinese landing on the moon and Palestine being an actual state.

Quite often, readers have also asked where I got the idea for The Rising. It started out fairly simple. My oldest son lived in New Jersey with his mother (who was nothing like the entirely fictional Tammy). One winter, I was driving from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to see him, and a snowstorm shut down the highways. The governor declared a State of Emergency, and a State Police officer told me I needed to get off the highway, or I would be detained. I told him I would, and when the cop was out of sight, I got right back on the highway again. As I drove, I thought to myself, “Okay, a blizzard and the threat of jail time won’t stop me from seeing my son. What would? Zombies? No, but that would make a really cool fucking story! I should try writing it.”

So, I did. I had an earlier, aborted idea for a novel called Cabin Fever, which was about a guy in a survival shelter during the zombie apocalypse. That guy turned out to be Jim, so I rescued him from that unfinished manuscript (and years later, rescued the idea of Cabin Fever and turned it into my novel, Entombed). And so, I wrote The Rising. I started it in 1999 and finished it in 2000. Originally, the novel was called More Than Infinity. It was much thicker (as discussed earlier). Richard Laymon and a few other heroes and mentors of mine were kind enough to read it for me and point out the bits that didn’t work. I fixed those bits to the best of my ability, and then submitted the book.

And you know the rest.

The Rising has never been my favorite of my works (those would be Ghoul, Dark Hollow, Earthworm Gods, Take The Long Way Home, and The Girl On The Glider), but it is certainly a favorite among many of my readers, and as such, both myself, my pre-readers, and the publishers of this edition have striven and endeavored to treat it accordingly. It is my sincere hope that our efforts have enriched the experience for you, and that you enjoy revisiting this world, and these characters. I know that I definitely enjoyed it.

My thanks, as always, for your support. As I wrote recently in a speech, the symbiotic relationship between a writer and their readers is a noble thing. Readers can be a source of strength and solace in a writer’s life. The books we write get our readers through study hall or their lunch hour or their commute or their bad marriage or incarceration or tour of duty or abusive relationship or their loneliness. And your support does the same for us, the writers.

So, thank you for that. You will never know how grateful I am to you.

Brian Keene

March 2013