Free Where We Live and Die by Brian Keene Page A

around the living room, and sang along with the toy as I did.
    “Chugga chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”
     

    ENTRY 16:
     

    There was over a foot of snow in the driveway this morning, and when I went outside, I saw footprints in the snow. They started at the top of the driveway, came down to our house, circled both our cars, came up onto the porch, and then went back up the driveway again.
    My neighbor told me later that he saw what made them. It was a stray dog. A Husky, with a collar on. We’re going to try to catch it later, and find it a home.
    Just a dog. Nothing more.
    No dreams last night, and no work today.
    I’ve got more important things to do.
    I’ll work when I’m dead.

 

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    This happened to me last night, and I need to talk about it to someone, and since my publisher is after me to get a story turned in on time, that someone is you. Call it meta-fiction if you like, except that there’s not much fiction to it.
    It was just before six in the evening. My girlfriend had gone home at nine that morning, and I’d been writing non-stop all day. That doesn’t sound like hard work, typing words on a laptop for nine hours, and it’s not, in the grand scheme of things. I’ve had hard jobs—sweating in a foundry, moving boxes on the loading docks, driving a tractor trailer for fifteen-hour stretches. Writing is a breeze compared to those, and a lot more fun. Still, it was a lot easier to write for nine hours straight when I was in my twenties than it is in my early forties. My back hurt, my wrists ached, and my fingers were stiff with the onset of arthritis—a relatively new affliction that biology and genetics had given me for a forty-second birthday present last year.
    I decided to take a break, and while I was brewing a fresh pot of coffee, it occurred to me how quiet the house seemed, and how lonely I was. I’ve got my youngest son Mondays through Thursdays, and my girlfriend visits me when she can, but when the two of them aren’t here, I spend my time alone and spend my alone time writing. Writing is a solitary act, and it makes for a solitary existence. Hell, I should know. Writing is the reason I’m alone. I’m good at it—writing, I mean. I’m not so good at being alone, despite the fact that it’s how I spend my life. But I’m good at writing, or at least, that’s what my editors and publishers tell me. I sometimes suspect they only tell me that because I make them lots of money. People will tell you whatever they think you want to hear when you’re making them a lot of money. I’ve often wanted to purposely write a bad book, just so I can see their false praise for what it is, but I wouldn’t do that to my fans and readers. And I wouldn’t do it to myself. Because other than being a father, writing is the only thing I’m good at. It’s the only constant in my life. The only thing I can always count on.
    And all it cost me was everything else.
    For starters, writing has resulted in two failed marriages. One in my twenties, when I was living in a trailer with a young wife and infant son, working all day in a factory and coming home at night to try my hand at becoming the next Joe Lansdale or David Schow or Skipp and Spector. Another in my thirties, when I’d succeeded in my career as a writer, and was living in a nice house with a wonderful second wife and another infant son, writing all day and then writing all night, as well, just to stay on top of the heap of bills and keep a roof over our heads.
    Writing has also cost me friends—both from before I became a writer and after. Childhood chums, pissed off that I mined so much of our lives for fiction. Friends from high school and old Navy buddies who I no longer had anything in common with, who assumed that just because they saw my books in stores or my movies on television that I must somehow be wealthy and hey, could I lend them a few dollars or help them get