Brian Keene's Blog, page 212
January 26, 2011
2010: The Year in Pictures
In going through my TwitPic account, I realized that while 2010 sucked in many ways, it also had some good moments. Here are a few that make me smile.
Cullen Bunn and me
Mike Oliveri
Nick Mamatas, Olivia Flint
Wrath J. White, Russell Dickerson, Mike Oliveri
Bob Ford, Kelli Owen, James A. Moore
James A. Moore, J. F. Gonzalez
Drunken Tentacle Team
Lovecraft's grave dirt
Mike Hawthorne, Bill Wahl
The last Borders end cap
Ron Malfi, Ron Dickie
Me, Mary, Martina, Nikki
J.F. Gonzalez, Geoff Cooper, Bob Ford
The F.U.K.U.
Assistants Big Joe and Jason
Lansdale, Williamson
Bob, Dezm, Mary
Me and Mary
Nick, Alexa, Liz, Mary, Me
Me and Richard Christy
Jack Ketchum
Jeremy Wagner
Coop, Michael T. Huyck, Me
Centralia Crew
Coop, Mary, Me
Jeff Heimbuch and me
Me and Mary
January 25, 2011
Calling all F.U.K.U.
John Skipp needs help financing his new indie zombie film Rose, and he's asking for the F.U.K.U.'s help. The details are here on Kickstarter. That's also where you can donate. We have 29 days to reach $250,000. If that goal isn't reached, no donations will be processed. Anyone who gives $1 or more will be thanked in the credits at the end of the film, but Brian Keene fans will get their own special block of thanks. There are all kinds of other bonuses and prizes as well. See the Kickstarter page for full information. You can also read more about it in John Skipp's section of The Keenedom. Let's make this happen, folks! Each of us can easily contribute a dollar. If each and every one of you will do that, we'll have no problem reaching the goal.
January 24, 2011
World Domination 101
In case you've been living under a rock for the last year, you're probably aware that almost all of my books went out of print last September when I and many other authors parted ways with Dorchester – Leisure Books over trivial things like them not paying us. Since then, readers have been asking when my work would come back into print in paperback. Readers have also been asking about the future of my digital editions, trade hardcovers, audio-books, foreign editions, and limited edition hardcovers.
Today, you get your answers.
Since September, I've been in talks with pretty much every publisher of note: mass-market publishers, small presses, and everyone in-between. I also looked into the possibilities of self-publishing like Scott Nicholson and J.A. Konrath have been doing. In the end, I decided not to go that route. While Scott and Joe (and others) have been very successful doing it themselves, I know myself and I don't have the patience or business acumen to self-publish. My hat is off to them and they have my respect, but at 43, (and after the year I've had) I want to work less, not more. And to reach Scott and Joe's level of success would take a lot of hard work and a level of commitment and energy that I just don't have in me right now. So that left signing with a new publisher. And so, after many conversations and emails and phone conferences and meetings, here's what I decided to do.
TRADE PAPERBACKS: Deadite Press has obtained the trade paperback rights to ALL of my Leisure back-list, as well as several other titles. They will be re-releasing them throughout the year, beginning with Urban Gothic, Clickers II, and Jack's Magic Beans next month, A Gathering of Crows and Take The Long Way Home the month after that, and The Rising, City of the Dead, The Conqueror Worms, Ghoul, Dead Sea, Dark Hollow, Ghost Walk, Castaways, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Kill Whitey, The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the Earth, The Conqueror Worms: Selected Scenes From the End of the Earth and others to follow. Some of these new editions will be released as "the author's preferred edition" and will (such as in the case of The Rising) include material that was cut from the published versions because of mass market editorial concerns. (And yes, Lifetime Subscribers will get copies of each of these).
In addition to obtaining the rights to my work, Deadite Press has also obtained trade paperback rights for various works from Edward Lee, Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, and Robert Devereux. Oh, yes. That's right. They've got most of Leisure's former hardcore horror line-up. Suck on that, Dorchester.
2011 will also see trade paperback releases of mine from Dark Horse, Apex, KHP and others, in addition to this deal with Deadite Press. More on each of these when the time is right.
DIGITAL EDITIONS: I have signed with Cemetery Dance for the release of digital editions of Kill Whitey and Shades. Deadite Press will release digital editions of all the other books mentioned above (the digital editions will follow after the trade paperback publication).
TRADE HARDCOVERS: Cemetery Dance and I plan to do several original trade hardcover novels, the first of which will be published next year. I'm keeping mum on details for now, because neither Cemetery Dance nor myself want to announce anything until I've got the books written.
LIMITED EDITIONS: Maelstrom (my imprint at Thunderstorm Books) will be the primary source for limited editions from now on. This year's set will include A Conspiracy of One (my new short story collection), Alone (my new novella), and John Urbancik's Once Upon A Time In Midnight. In addition to working closely with Thunderstorm on the Maelstrom imprint, I will also be releasing limited editions this year through Camelot Books and Bloodletting Press.
AUDIO BOOKS: Dark Realms will continue to publish audio-book editions of my work. This year will see the release of Darkness on the Edge of Town, A Gathering of Crows, and several others.
FOREIGN EDITIONS: Books Crossing Borders is now my exclusive foreign rights representative. They will handle all foreign sales. This year will see translations in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere.
So that's where we're at. I thank all of you for your patience, and hope that you will be patient just a little longer. More importantly, I hope that you will support all of the publishers mentioned above (Deadite, Cemetery Dance, Thunderstorm, Camelot, Bloodletting Press, Apex, etc.). It is they (along with fine publishers like Subterranean Press, PS Publishing and others) that will drag the horror genre back from the brink… again. But they cannot do it without your help.
January 22, 2011
Weekend Update
Stay tuned for huge announcements on Monday and Tuesday. Until then, here is what happened last week on Brian Keene dot com…
First look at The Last Zombie: Inferno.
List of books that are almost gone for good.
An essay on zombies, characters, quitting and deliverance.
January 21, 2011
Deliverance: On Zombies and Writer's Block and Such
No Deluge this week, because I write new chapters on Monday and this past Monday I was flying to Portland. So instead, I thought I'd post the afterword to the recently released The Rising: Deliverance. It is edited for brevity (the complete version appears at the end of the book). You can read it without fear of spoilers. There are none (unless you haven't read City of the Dead). I like this afterword. I think it sheds some light on where my head was most of last year, and how I began to turn things around. Deluge will return next week, as we rocket toward the end of Part Two and the beginning of Part Three (and the return of Sarah)!
For a guy who keeps swearing that he's done with zombies, I sure do seem to still be writing about them a lot. In case you've been living under a rock or in a coma for the last decade, most critics and media-watchers agree that the current uber-zombie craze in pop culture (books, movies, comics, television, games, trading cards, clothing, food, philosophy, college courses, etc.) is at least partially my fault. The publication of my first novel, The Rising, coincided with the release of a movie called 28 Days Later. Both The Rising and 28 Days Later featured different kinds of zombies, which was okay with most people, since nobody else had done much with zombies for the decade leading up to the book and movie's releases. Both were big hits. City of the Dead, my sequel to The Rising, followed soon after, and so did a lot of other books and movies and comics. And they haven't gone away. Indeed, there seem to be more of them than ever. There are now publishing companies that publish nothing but zombie literature and authors who write about nothing but the living dead.
I had a chance to do the same. In truth, I could have probably made a very good living (i.e. a lot more money than what I make now) doing for zombies what Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton did for vampires, but doing so didn't appeal to me. I didn't want to become 'The Zombie Guy'. I wanted to write about other monsters and other situations. So I did. And a lot of other people came along and wrote about zombies instead and made a lot of money doing so, while I wrote about things like ghouls and un-killable Russian mobsters and giant, carnivorous earthworms. In hindsight, those other authors might have been a lot smarter than me.
Occasionally, I did indeed return to writing about zombies. I tried my hand at the traditional "Romero-style" undead (with Dead Sea) and returned to the world of The Rising with a collection of thirty-two original short stories that all took place in that world, called The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World. After that, I decided I was really burned out on them. Upon reflection, though, I wasn't so much burned out as I was written-out. I didn't want to just repeat the same story over and over again (which is the risk any author or filmmaker runs when dealing with the undead—or any other genre trope). So I proclaimed myself as 'DONE WITH ZOMBIES'. And I fucking damn well meant it, too…
…except that people kept offering me money to write about zombies one more time. It's hard to say no to money. I like money. I'm a big fan. With two ex-wives and two sons and a metric fuck-ton of debt, I have no choice but to be a big fan of money. So I've returned to zombies a few more times since then, but only when I thought I had an original idea (such as my comic series The Last Zombie, which deals with the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, after the dead are all dead again) and my novel Entombed (which takes place in the world of Dead Sea and deals with bunker mentality and the psychological ramifications of surviving a zombie apocalypse). But when I pause to consider those two works, it occurs to me that the zombies are nothing more than window dressing. They appear only briefly in Entombed, and don't appear at all in The Last Zombie (except in flashbacks). So maybe I really am done with zombies, after all.
What I'm not done with, however, is characters. The Reverend Thomas Martin has always been a personal favorite character of mine (along with a handful of other character such as Adam Senft, Levi Stoltzfus, Timmy Graco, Teddy Garnett, Whitey Putin and Tony Genova). I'm quite fond of Reverend Martin, and nobody was more surprised than I was when he died in the first few chapters of City of the Dead. I did not see that coming. I've written a lot of novels since then, but occasionally, I'd find my thoughts returning to Martin. I knew his story wasn't over yet, even though he was dead. I knew there was a lot more to him than what readers saw in The Rising and City of the Dead. I knew that some of the more interesting parts of his saga took place before the events in those books, and I'm glad I've finally gotten the chance to write about them.
This isn't a story about zombies. It's a story about people. And fate. And faith. And doubt. And all the other things that define us and make us human. It's a story of the things that shaped Reverend Thomas Martin before readers met him in The Rising. It's about the real reason he agreed to go with Jim in search of Danny. You might have enjoyed it. You might not have. But I can tell you that I enjoyed writing it. As I type this, it is mid-September 2010, and I have barely survived the Year From Hell. In the last nine months, I've gone through a second divorce, the slow death of a family member, a cancer scare, a nervous breakdown, absolute financial destitution at the hands of several publishers, the wholesale collapse (again) of the horror genre, and a host of other personal crises. On top of that, I've watched those closest to me suffer through their own personal tragedies, many of which dwarf my own, and all of which I'm powerless to prevent. As my faithful assistant Big Joe Maynard so astutely put it last week, "What did we do to piss off God this time?"
Truth time: I've been tempted to pack it all in, to quit writing and fuck off somewhere—Alaska or maybe Guam—reinvent myself under an assumed name in some remote location where nobody knows me and get a job tending bar or fishing or logging trees. There have been some days over the last nine months, when the going got especially tough, when that urge to quit was overwhelmingly strong, and you will never know how close I cam to acting on it. But instead of running away, I fled to the place where it all began—the world of The Rising—and returned to a character that has always been near in my head and my heart—the Reverend Thomas Martin. Writing about him restored my faith in what I do and gave me hope that it's worthwhile. Seeing him again, if only for this brief novella, gave me my own form of deliverance. And I needed that.
I hope it did something for you, as well.
Brian Keene
From a remote West Virginia cabin at the edge of the end of the world
September 2010
January 20, 2011
Meanwhile, at The Keenedom
The forum got a face-lift tonight, with separate sections for authors, publishers, and the general community. We've also added new official forums for Jeff Strand, Carlton Mellick III, and Deadite Press. Stop by and make them feel welcome.
January 19, 2011
The Last Zombie: Inferno
Sneak peek at the cover for The Last Zombie: Inferno #1, on sale Spring 2011. As the team continue their journey across America's post post-apocalyptic landscape, they find themselves caught between a state-wide wildfire and a melted down nuclear power plant. Planters struggles with PTSD, Warner fights to keep order and discipline in the ranks, and Ian hides a terrible secret from the others.
January 18, 2011
Good Things Come…
Typing this from my room at The Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon. The kind folks at Eraserhead Press/Deadite Press flew me out here yesterday to talk some business. In between business, we also sampled the local IPA and I taught them about whiskey. A wily reader might observe that I met with the good people of Cemetery Dance last week, and the folks at Eraserhead/Deadite Press this week. A wily reader might then surmise, "Hmmm. First Dark Realms Audio. Then a new foreign rights agent. Then Maelstrom at Thunderstorm. Then Cemetery Dance. And now Deadite. You certainly have been meeting with lots of people these past few weeks, Keene. It's almost as if you were locking down your limited editions, trade hardcovers, trade paperbacks, audio books, foreign translations, and digital editions."
Yes. A wily reader might surmise that… but a wily reader would only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. A wily reader will have to wait until all announcements are ready to be made. A wily reader will be rewarded for his or her patience. A wily reader should take comfort in the fact that I have spotted some mountaintops in the distance, jutting up above the sunken wreckage of the genre, and I am making final preparations to pull the ark over, get out, stretch my legs, and say, "We shall rebuild here."
Welcome to 2011. I'm your host, Brian Keene, and you should have killed me last year…
January 16, 2011
Low Stock Report
THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE ALMOST SOLD OUT!
[image error] Kill Whitey. Trade Hardcover. $25. Published by Cemetery Dance. The publisher reports there are less than a dozen trade hardcovers left in the warehouse. Once they are gone, the hardcover goes out of print forever! Not too bad for a supernatural crime novel about dock workers, strippers, and the Russian mob. Click here to purchase.
[image error]Terminal: The Play. Signed, Limited Edition Hardcover. $29. Published by Morning Star. Co-written with Roy C. Booth. Long out of print, Overlook Connection still has some copies of this stage adaptation of my novel. The original price was $45. Why pay more than that on eBay when Overlook is blowing them out at only $29? Click here to order.
[image error]The Rising: Death In Four Colors. Signed, Limited Edition Hardcover. $40. Published by Delirium Books. Also long out of print and commanding high prices on eBay, this beautiful collector's edition collects the ill-fated Rising comic book series, including scripts, Zac Atkinson's artwork, and a lengthy essay by me on the history of the project. Camelot Books still has them at cover price. Click here to order.
Brian Keene's Fear. Trade Paperback. $14. Published by Frequency Press. This hard to find graphic novel introduced hot new horror writer Nate Southard to the world, and has since become a much sought after collector's item. Nate adapts three of my short stories into comic book format: "Castaways", "Red Wood", and "The King, in: YELLOW". Overlook Connection has them at cover price. Click here to order.
The Last Zombie Collector's Set. $39. Published by Antarctic Press. Slipcase by Overlook Connection. There are only a handful of these special collector's sets left. Each one contains a beautiful slipcase designed to hold issues #1 through #5 of The Last Zombie. The first issue is signed by me. Click here to order.
January 15, 2011
Weekend Update
Previously on Brian Keene dot com…
Dezm had the flu and couldn't proofread this week's chapter of Deluge, so I rode Falcor instead.
A sneak peek at The Last Zombie #4.
I have three new mass market paperbacks out in Germany this year.
I'll be a Special Guest at WonderCon this year.
Cemetery Dance releases Legacies.
Ten topics of discussion at The Keenedom.
Everyone's favorite internet troll gets a new documentary and music video dedicated to him.
