![\"End](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/EndofRoad-web830x120.jpg?resize=830%2C120&ssl=1\")
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To get to New Orleans, you\u2019re pretty much going to have to drive across a bridge. That\u2019s what I was doing the morning of July 16, on my way to sign at Tubby & Coo\u2019s Mid-City Book Shop<\/a>. I was still thinking about warnings from dead friends, and about balance and patterns and nice fans and fires and the theory of Eternal Return. <\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t like bridges. I don\u2019t like them for the same reason I don\u2019t like flying. It\u2019s not a fear of heights. It\u2019s a loss of control. On an airplane or a bridge, your fate is taken out of your hands. When I drive across bridges, I tend to stick to the middle lane, as far away from either side as I can, and stare straight ahead, not looking down, not thinking about how I\u2019m fucked if there\u2019s a wreck or the bridge suddenly collapses. <\/span><\/p>\n Driving into New Orleans, it is impossible not to cross those bridges and think about the damage and devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly the seemingly post-apocalyptic aftermath. It\u2019s impossible not to think about the hundreds of thousands of people who sat there, suffering, waiting for the government to help them—only to discover that help was not forthcoming and they would have to help themselves. It\u2019s impossible not to think about the lawlessness and savagery on display in the weeks following that disaster—a brutality perpetrated by both civilians and the law enforcement and military who were there to ostensibly help and assist them. What we don\u2019t tend to remember is how it wasn\u2019t just New Orleans that Katrina devastated. Surrounding towns, parishes, and states were hit just as hard, but the media tended not to focus on them, because a flattened town of poor people in Mississippi isn\u2019t as telegenic and good for ratings as a flattened city full of trapped tourists. <\/span><\/p>\n I remember Katrina. I remember it because I listened to it happen. I was out on tour, just like I am now, driving from Rue Morgue<\/a> m<\/em>agazine editor Monica Kuebler\u2019s house in Toronto, Canada, to a signing in Chicago. I had satellite radio and I listened to coverage of Katrina during the entire long drive. I had friends in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. Some of them got evacuated. Others were trapped inside. Those who were trapped were irrevocably changed. <\/span><\/p>\n All because of those bridges.<\/span><\/p>\n Take a bridge away, and people become islands. That\u2019s what has happened in this country now. The bridges that used to exist between us have been swamped and destroyed. Those bridges are overrun. They are burned down and blasted. And now, all across America, every day is post-Hurricane Katrina. We are divided along social, political, and religious lines. We have formed our own little islands, dependent upon which team we identify with. With our bridges gone, so is our dialogue and any chance for mutual respect or middle ground. Now we\u2019re just islands. Law enforcement. Civilians. Black. White. Latino. Republican. Democrat. Conservative. Progressive. Christian. Muslim. Jewish. Atheist. Marvel. DC. Pepsi. Coke. <\/span><\/p>\n I got to the store a few hours early. Rather than stopping by and checking in, I decided to grab some lunch and check my email. Over a burger and fries, I learned that yet another signing had been cancelled—this time in Spokane. That feeling of impending doom returned. First I\u2019d been orphaned. Then a bookstore had cancelled on me. Now another venue had cancelled on me. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt least there aren\u2019t any more fires,\u201d I muttered.<\/span><\/p>\n When I got to Tubby & Coo\u2019s, I learned that the store had caught on fire earlier that morning. It was an electrical fire, and although there was no flame or heat damage, the interior smelled like smoke and there was no electricity. The owners were heartbroken and apologetic. I could tell they\u2019d been counting on this appearance to make some money. I knew there would be a crowd showing up. And I was goddamned if I was going to lose yet another in-store appearance.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCan you use your cell phone to ring up credit card transactions?\u201d I asked.<\/span><\/p>\n They confirmed that they could. So I told them that I\u2019d be happy to sign books outside the store, and that\u2019s exactly what we did. This was mid-July in New Orleans. It wasn\u2019t just hot. It was fucking sweltering. But I didn\u2019t care and neither did my hosts. I sat out there in the sun and the heat and signed books and took photos with everybody, and by the end of the signing, the store had sold out of Pressure<\/em>\u00a0and The Complex<\/em>. We had a steady influx of people. Some were local. Others came from as far as Texas. I saw old friends and made new ones. I was given eight bottles of bourbon, a six-pack of craft beer, four books, a t-shirt, and a compact disc. I also got to see the interior of the store, and even though the power was off, and it was hot inside, and there was very little light, I was impressed. If you are ever in New Orleans, please do stop by and support Tubby & Coo\u2019s. It\u2019s a two-story building, and the second floor has been converted into an awe-inspiring children\u2019s section with a wonderful, curated selection of age appropriate horror, fantasy and science-fiction titles.<\/span><\/p>\n When the signing was over, I hopped back in the Jeep and headed out back across the bridge. I was facing an eight-hour drive to author John Urbancik\u2019s house. I was tired, running on caffeine and stubbornness, and wondering what else would go wrong, and how I would salvage it when it did. During that drive, I saw Trump signs and Clinton signs. I saw homes that had been foreclosed on and shuttered businesses. I saw four—four<\/em>—police cars parked behind a lone black man in a BMW along the highway, and several passersby who had stopped to film the proceedings with their cell phones. I saw gut-wrenching poverty and obscene wealth. I saw bumper stickers proudly proclaiming the driver\u2019s child was an Honor Student and other bumper stickers gleefully announcing that their kid beat up the Honor Student. I saw support for various professional sporting teams, but no support for each other as individuals. I was informed that #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter, and when I turned on the radio, I heard people arguing about which lives mattered the most. I saw signs telling me to repent because the end was near and billboards asking me if I knew Jesus Christ as my personal savior and graffiti telling me that there was no God and even if He had existed at some point, He was dead now.<\/span><\/p>\n I crossed many bridges between New Orleans and Tallahassee, but I crossed them alone.<\/span><\/p>\n Night fell and so did my spirits. Dread seemed to loom everywhere, suggesting itself in the most innocent of scenery. I became convinced that this tour was pointless, doomed to failure, and that nothing I did mattered. I thought about Charles L. Grant, dying broke in a hospice. I remembered when I was younger, and I\u2019d attended a party at author Matthew Warner\u2019s house. Myself, Mary SanGiovanni, Matt, Brian Freeman, and a few others of our generation had been standing in the kitchen, talking about how unjust Charlie\u2019s method of passing seemed to us. And I remember the absolute gravity and fear in Douglas E. Winter\u2019s voice when he stared at me and said, \u201cNow you know what keeps us up at night, kid.\u201d I thought about J.N. Williamson, dying in an old folk\u2019s home with only his sister, Gary Braunbeck, and Maurice Broaddus at his funeral service, which was presided over by a preacher who informed them that J.N.\u2019s life\u2019s work had served the devil. I thought about Richard Matheson, still trying to write even as dementia ate away at his ability to do so (or so I\u2019ve been told). I thought about Richard Laymon spending the morning writing and then collapsing in his kitchen. I thought about Pic and Jesus, and I thought about how it never ends well for us writer types. Nobody gets out alive, of course, but is it too much to ask that just one of us goes in our sleep with the knowledge that what we did actually mattered, and that we touched people\u2019s lives with our stories about zombies and ghosts and vampires?<\/span><\/p>\n What the hell was I doing out here? It was the middle of fucking summer and I should be at home, playing with my son. I was wasting my life writing stupid pulp novels that would entertain people for a few days and then languish on the shelf of some used bookstore, quickly forgotten. <\/span><\/p>\n I, too, was an island.<\/span><\/p>\n When I reached Tallahassee, it was well after midnight. John was awake and waiting for me. I\u2019ve known John over twenty years. He is one of my oldest and closest friends in this business. He was happy to see me. He had a glass of bourbon waiting for me. And he\u2019d made cookies. Five minutes spent in his company, and my gloom had passed. I hung out with my friend, talking and laughing, and enjoyed the bridge over troubled waters, a bridge that only the bonds of brotherhood can build—and that no storm can tear asunder. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Tub1.jpg?resize=261%2C350&ssl=1\")
(Photo Copyright 2016 Brian Keene)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Tub2.jpg?resize=261%2C350&ssl=1\")
(Photo Copyright 2016 Brian Keene)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"John](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Tub3.jpg?resize=350%2C263&ssl=1\")
(Photo Copyright 2016 Brian Keene)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n