{"id":8472,"date":"2016-09-02T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cemeterydanceonline.com\/?p=8472"},"modified":"2018-06-12T16:23:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T20:23:55","slug":"housekeeping-first-leg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/housekeeping-first-leg\/","title":{"rendered":"Housekeeping, First Leg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EndofRoad-web\"<\/p>\n

Housekeeping, First Leg<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re just joining us, this is End of the Road—a weekly column in which I detail my nine-month promotional tour for my new novels Pressure<\/em> and The Complex<\/em>. I write about what I\u2019ve learned out here on the road, and how the horror genre, our industry, our country, and myself have changed over the last twenty years. Last week\u2019s column<\/a> wrapped up the first leg of the tour. This week\u2019s column will be short—just a few notes and addendums and bits of housekeeping that apply to those first seventeen installments of this weekly feature. What\u2019s that? Yes, seventeen installments. There have been seventeen of these columns. If you missed one of them, you can find them all here<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

So far, writing this column has been an interesting exercise in time travel. The events I recounted last week actually took place on July 1<\/span>st<\/span>. You read about them on August 22<\/span>nd<\/span>. In my mind, sitting here typing this on September 1<\/span>st<\/span>, they feel like they just happened yesterday and they feel like they happened years ago. Back in the fourth installment<\/a> of this series (which offered a brief history of the World Horror Convention), I talked about the theory of Eternal Return—best typified by some of the works of Laird Barron, Alan Moore, and Thomas Ligotti, or Rust Cohle\u2019s \u201cTime is a flat circle\u201d<\/a> speech on HBO\u2019s True Detective<\/em>. I told you how it would be one of the major themes of this series, and how we would return to it eventually. And we did. And we are right now. And we will again. And all of these things will happen at the same time. Next week\u2019s column will be published on September 9<\/span>th<\/span>, and will detail events that occurred the week of July 9<\/span>th<\/span>. While you are reading about July 9<\/span>th<\/span>\u2019s events on September 9th, I will be putting the finishing touches on assembling a team to help me steal a\u2026well, you can read about it in November, unless of course my team and I get caught in the act, in which case you\u2019ll read about it in the news well before then.<\/span><\/p>\n

* \u00a0\u00a0* \u00a0\u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

I talked a lot in the third<\/a> and seventeenth<\/a> columns about the collapse of the mid-list and how it impacted prose genre, particularly horror. There\u2019s a similar yet different debate going on in the comic book field right now. If you want to read a bit about it, I recommend this essay by the always entertaining and always incendiary Jude Terror<\/a>. There\u2019s also a rebuttal by long-time comics journalist Heidi MacDonald here<\/a>.\u00a0Recently on Twitter, writers Cullen Bunn, Tim Seeley, and comic shop employee Aaron X were discussing Jude\u2019s piece, and our thoughts on it. I (mostly) agree with it. Tim (mostly) disagrees with it. Cullen is somewhere in the middle. My concern—and the reason I tend to agree with Jude—is that I see an awful lot of similarities between what happened to the prose mid-list earlier this decade and what\u2019s currently happening in comics. I also see a lot of similarities between the collapse of mass-market horror prose in the Nineties and the subsequent collapse of comics in the Nineties. We\u2019ve seen the market correction occur in prose. I strongly suspect we\u2019re going to see it occur in comics, as well, within the next two years.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s an entire column, and I\u2019ll write about it here at a later date.<\/span><\/p>\n

* \u00a0\u00a0* \u00a0\u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

My old pal Seth Lindberg reached out to me in regards to last week\u2019s column<\/a>, focusing on the gentrification of San Francisco\u2019s Mission District and how that correlates to the gentrification of the horror genre. The first thing he informed me of was that the \u201cQueers Hate Techies\u201d thing is by a well-known graffiti artist and tagger who follows the Gay Shame Movement—which, according to Wikipedia, is a <\/span>protest of and opposition to the over-commercialization of homosexuality, gay pride events, and the ever-increasing diverse portrayal of gays in media. Proponents attack what they view as \u201cqueer assimilation\u201d in what they think are oppressive social structures. As someone who has been fighting for gay rights since the 1980s, I can\u2019t get behind the Gay Shame movement. Thus, that certainly makes me reconsider my reaction to the \u201cQueers Hate Techies\u201d graffiti. I still think it\u2019s a great commentary on gentrification, but I\u2019m not crazy about the beliefs of the person spreading the message.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seth also said, in relation to last week\u2019s column, \u201c<\/span>What’s happening in San Francisco is really complicated. As someone who has lived here on and off since 1995, there’s a part of me that wants to assemble charts and go on rants while you patiently listen to\u00a0me, but I’m not sure it would help your piece in any measurable way. Obviously, things are always more complicated than they appear. But I will say, ‘”Gentrification”‘ is useful to people for good reasons and bad. The good reasons you know—the bad is that it gets used as a safety blanket for people who fear change. It is, like many things, a tight-rope<\/span>.'”<\/span><\/p>\n

Food for thought, and something we\u2019ll be revisiting later on in the series, as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

* \u00a0\u00a0* \u00a0\u00a0*<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, next week, the second leg of the tour begins. If you think the saga of the ISIS Psychic Suicide Bomb<\/a> is over, you\u2019re wrong. There\u2019s also, in coming weeks, a very real visit from a dead friend, a storm, disarray at a publisher, a car fire, a store fire, an incident on and off a mountain road—with a cow, alligators, Edward Lee\u2019s lizard hallucinations, a wedding, a road-trip with John Urbancik, and much more. If you\u2019ve enjoyed the first seventeen columns, the best is yet to come. And if you think you know where this is going, you\u2019re wrong. I know you\u2019re wrong, because I am traveling through time ahead of you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hang on to my hand, because shit\u2019s about to get really dark\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Keene<\/a>\u00a0writes novels, comic books, short fiction, and occasional journalism for money. He is the author of over forty books, including the recently released <\/strong><\/em>Pressure<\/strong> and <\/strong><\/em>The Complex<\/strong>.\u00a0The father of two sons, Keene lives in rural Pennsylvania.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Housekeeping, First Leg If you\u2019re just joining us, this is End of the Road—a weekly column in which I detail my nine-month promotional tour for my new novels Pressure and The Complex. 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