Interview with Brian Keene

Interview with  Brian Keene; the italian version of this interview was published in the 2 issue of  H, L'Almanacco di Horror Magazine, recently released.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Before becoming a professional writer you've done many different jobs to pay the bills and to continue writing. Now that you've achieved success, what is writing for you? Is it a easier way to pay the bills, achieving of a dream, doing a kind of therapy on yourself? Are you trying to achieve other dreams?

[Brian Keene] It’s certainly not an easier way to pay the bills. On the surface, I’m sure it looks that way. I don’t have a boss, and I don’t have to commute and I work in my pajamas, and get paid money to sit on my ass all day and make up stories. But it’s a hard way to make a living. The checks never come on time, the way they do with a regular job. There’s no retirement or pension or health insurance (which most people need to have here in the U.S. And it’s a dreadfully lonely job -sitting there eight or nine hours a day and living inside your own head. I do it because it is still fun, most days. I’ve been writing since I was six years old, and have been making a living at it since I was 30 (I’m now 43). It is still fun, most days. And I’m a fan of the genre. Always have been. So it pleases me to know that I’m bringing other fans some enjoyment and entertainment. That’s what keeps me going.

[Alessandro Manzetti] To do your job, you recommend a creative writing course or a course of humanity? To write about hell as you do, you need technique or you must have done double shifts? How many people, emotions and horrors that you’ve met in real life actually filled your stories, your pages?

[Brian Keene] I think the only course is living life, and observing what is going on around you, and echoing those observations in your fiction. Everyone I’ve ever met, every relationship I’ve ever had, job I’ve held, thought I’ve had, is all fuel for a book or character. Every heartbreak, love, laugh, tear, word said in anger, sigh made in frustration -everything I’ve ever felt or experienced, is all grist for my muse.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your first success you owe it to the novel The Rising, which made you labeled as "zombie guy". What are your references of zombies in film and literature? The choice of this sub-genre, that you "resurrected" and that is all the rage today, has been dictated by passion, memories, opportunities, or by a special Musa that some writers say they have met?

[Brian Keene] As a teen, I was a big fan of Romero’s Dead trilogy, as well as books like Jim Starlin’s Among Madmen (an early zombie precursor). I didn’t have the opportunity to discover Fulci’s Zombi or the Blind Dead films or any of the other wonderful zombie stuff until the mid-80’s, when I was in the Navy and visiting places like Naples and Rota and Haifa. We couldn’t get stuff like that in the small Pennsylvania town where I lived. Here in the States, at least, zombies died off in popularity during the early Nineties. It had been almost a decade since we’d seen them in film or literature. So I decided to try my hand at a zombie novel, thinking there might be other fans like me who missed them. And apparently, there were. My novel The Rising came out around the same time as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. The first issue of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead followed soon after. And the rest is history. They say the three of us brought zombies back to their current level of popularity. If that’s true, then I feel very humbled and proud. But my only goal was to write the kind of book that, as a fan of the genre, I’d want to read.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Staying on your first novel, The Rising, creatures, demons can take any form of life, human and animal. The deads come back to life, but they are not the stereotypes of zombies, you let us to look beyond the images and emotions of The Night of the Living Dead by George Romero and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. What is for you the beyond? What was the first step to create The Rising?

[Brian Keene] Well, I didn’t just want to repeat what had been done before. Too many people do that -they cannibalize the ideas of the creators who came before them, offering nothing fresh or original. I think that’s our job, as artists. Certainly, we build off our history. We build off what those who came before us have done. But it’s each generation’s duty to expand the scope, to push those boundaries and directions. I didn’t want to just use the traditional Romero zombies because I couldn’t do them any better than he himself had done. So I used them as a starting point and then went beyond.

[Alessandro Manzetti] It is true that when Leisure Books proposed you the contract for the purchasing of the rights of The Rising you did not have an agent and you've ask advice to Jack Ketchum in a bar? What were his suggestions?

[Brian Keene] (laughs) Yes, that’s true. He was kind enough to pull out a red pen, right there in the bar, and make a dozen or so changes to my contract -things I didn’t know I could ask for, like more money and film rights. I’ve used his template ever since. And 20 books later, I still don’t have an agent (although I do have a foreign rights agent, the wonderful Betty Ann Crawford, who handles all of my translations).

[Alessandro Manzetti] The Stand by Stephen King, The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum, The Drive-in by Joe Lansdale. Can you tell us what you think of these novels? What was traditional and what was innovative in these novels?

[Brian Keene] I think they are probably the three most seminal horror novels of the modern era. I know they certainly had a huge impact on my development as a writer. They were books that made me want to be a writer. I think many other authors of my generations would say the same.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Let's go back to your novels, The City of The Dead is the sequel to The Rising. The last survivors of humanity are besieged in a skyscraper from an army of zombies. The demons use human and animal bodies as if they were cars, and interact with their memories. We are always in the new school of zombies, which goes over roads open by independent comics as DeadWorld. In your novel there are similarities with Land of the Dead by George Romero, released in the same period. Have you been inspired by this movie or the opposite has occurred? What does the The Rising reader must expect from The City of The Dead?

[Brian Keene] (laughs) No. In fact, City of the Dead was published a full year before Land of the Dead. The first time I met George Romero, it was at a party in Baltimore. Greg Nicotero of KNB FX introduced us to one another, and we had a very nice chat, during which, I asked him what he’d been working on. He told me he was just getting ready to start filming Land of the Dead, and then he told me the plot. Then he asked me what I’d been working on, and I told him I’d just finished City of the Dead, and told him the plot of that. We both laughed about it. I think, if anything, the plots give you a glimpse as to what was going on inside the American psyche at that time (post 9/11, imagery of impregnable skyscrapers and megalomaniacal leaders out of control).

[Alessandro Manzetti] Your novel The Terminal comes out of the zombie stories and traditional horror genre, even though there still a touch of paranormal. This is an exciting thriller, action-packed as all your work, featuring a man doomed by cancer. How come you wanted to try a different genre?

[Brian Keene] Because I didn’t want to be typecast as just a guy who wrote zombie novels. Terminal was my third novel (I wrote it the same time I was writing City of the Dead) and I decided it should be completely different than anything I’d done up to that point.

[Alessandro Manzetti] I have finished reading The Conqueror Worms a few days ago, published in Italy by Edizioni XII (I Vermi Conquistatori). What can I say, I was very excited about the incessant rain, the atmosphere, the beautiful change of pace and scene, the flashback from the Appalachian Mountains and the anxiety of Teddy Garnett that takes us on a skyscraper to new characters, action in full force, pulp colors, mermaids and leviathans creatures. An apocalyptic vision that never ceases to amaze. You touch themes that can not fail to excite and skim deep chords, the unconscious fear of the end of the world, the stranger, love and death. No zombies this time. Tell us how you managed to imagine this second Great Flood, what inspired you, who is actually Teddy Garnett?

[Brian Keene] Thank you very much! I’m quite fond of that novel, as well. Teddy was based on my Grandfather. And Teddy’s friend was based on my grandfather’s friend. As for the idea itself, I wanted to write a big, insanely-fun pulp novel, and I wanted to pattern it after HG Wells War of the Worlds, in which the novel starts out with one character’s story, switches to another character halfway through, and then comes back around to the original character again. I wanted something that hadn’t been done before -no zombies or superflu or nuclear war. I wanted to end the world in a unique way. So I just started combining all these various pulp elements and ideas -giant worms, global flooding, Cthulhu -until the books was finished.

[Alessandro Manzetti] After The Conqueror Worms, Ghoul and the subsequent increasing popularity you've definitely taken off the label of "zombie guy". Then comes the moment of the Dead Sea, the zombies are back. The protagonist Lamar Reed faces with a difficult challenge of survival, it seems a metaphor for the difficulties of the modern world we face with every day and we must overcome. Thinking of The Rising and The City of The Dead, what's new in the zombie story of this novel?

[Brian Keene] I don’t think there’s anything new, really, other than perhaps the fact that the animals come back as zombies too, rather than just humans. Dead Sea was written with the fans in mind. They kept asking me to write a novel featuring the more traditional type of zombies, as popularized by the Romero films. So I did.

[Alessandro Manzetti] Speaking of the undead, survival, what makes you feel alive? What would be a waiver that you could not survive without?

[Brian Keene] My sons.

[Alessandro Manzetti] We come to The Castaways, you leave doomsday scenarios to deal with the theme of the reality show in your way. A group of reality show competitors facing in an island that is considered uninhabited, but which is home to creatures, humanoid cannibals. How much of Richard Laymon is there in your pages? The novel makes us think of a good film adaptation, are there any plans in this terms?

[Brian Keene] I think there’s a lot of Dick Laymon in those pages, since I wrote it as a tribute to him. Dick was a friend and a mentor, and I would not be where I am today had it not been for his help and guidance (as well as the guidance and advice of folks like Jack Ketchum, Joe Lansdale, and F. Paul Wilson). And yes, in fact, it was just optioned for film!

[Alessandro Manzetti] What do you think of the convergence of crime story and even the mainstream with fantastic fiction? The supernatural element has become the universal ingredient for success? Can we still speak of genres?

[Brian Keene] Genres are nothing more than convenient labels created by marketing people in order to easily sell more product. A good story is a good story. And a good story will always find good readers, regardless of what genre it is labled.

Interview by Alessandro Manzetti
HWA Co-ordinator Italy
Interview conducted for H, The Almanac of Horror Magazine -Issue 2


Author Profile
Brian Keene is the award-winning author of over twenty books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways, Kill Whitey, Ghost Walk, Dark Hollow, Dead Sea, Ghoul, The Rising, The Conqueror Worms and many more. He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer. His books have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have been optioned for film, one of which, The Ties That Bind, premiered on DVD in 2009 as a critically-acclaimed independent short. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine. Keene lives in Central Pennsylvania.  Brian Keene Website

Brian Keene - I Vermi Conquistatori - Edizioni XII

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