Brian Keene

“We're not going to make it," I said.The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me.”

“Levi," Maria called. "Come back. We're not finished yet."He paused"What, Maria?""You asked me what I believe in? I believed in you."He nodded his head sadly. "Yes, you did. And before you met me, you believed in nothing. But that's the thing with belief, Maria. It's easy to believe in something when it doesn't require anything from you. It's much harder, though, when the object of your belief requires something of you or asks for something you don't want to give. That's when real belief occurs.”

“Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.”

“In late 2001, I contributed a short story called 'Castaways' to an anthology called 'In Laymon's Terms,' which was a tribute to Richard Laymon, who had passed away earlier that year.”

“Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.”

“'Castaways' was a play on what if a reality show like 'Survivor' was unknowingly set on an island inhabited by a sub-human race of creatures? Readers have often asked me to consider turning the short story into a full-length novel. So I did.”

“They want to control humankind through what they call selective breeding. The Nazis started it, but now the nwo are continuing it. See, the only way to control population is to first get it back down to manageable size. They're culling the herd, same way the game commission does when deer population gets out of control. That's why we've got diseases like cancer and aids. You telling me that we can put a little goddamn skateboard-looking robot on Mars and have it send pictures back, but we can't find a cure for cancer? There's a cure. You can bet on that, boys. There's a goddamn cure. They just won't release it because cancer helps cut down the population.”

“'Ghoul' was what my world looked like, growing up in the late Seventies and early Eighties, and what I thought it looked like. A lot of my personal experiences went into it.”

“I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.”

“Jesus Christ-" "Is Not here right now," the man in black replied,"and even if he were, he could not save you.”

“Don't just rehash what came before. Find new things to do with it, in your unique voice.”

“Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.”

“I've been a fan of 'The Defenders' since childhood, and Devil Slayer was always one of my favorite members of the team - especially during J.M. DeMatteis' wonderful run on the series.”