You know how there’s this legend that the world was built in seven days? How about a story of creation that took nearly four years? Or the one about how something was built out of nothing in under a month?

In November 2008, Aaron Rosenberg and Paul Kupperberg had been kicking around some ideas for creating a shared universe. They came up with one so momentous that they needed a third hand to help bring this to life. They asked me to come play.  The ideas flew back and forth with intensity—and then, it seems, life got in the way.

At one point, Paul said he was too busy so bowed out, wishing us luck with the gestating universe. We still needed a third (sort of like a minion but without the membership requirements) so we talked to Steven Savile, who was busily hatching other ideas with Aaron, one of which became For This is Hell.

Some more work was done, including a three-month effort to raise some funding via Kickstarter. We were among the unlucky ones not to get the monies we needed, but that’s another tale. In any case, we turned to other projects for a while, conceiving, among other things, Latchkeys. But ReDeus continued to gnaw at us, an idea too cool to let go.

Finally, this spring, Aaron and I wrote our stories to get things rolling and Steve was excited. But he was also busy, so he bowed out. And lo, there came the resurrection of Paul to the mix. There began a new round of excited ideas, one of which was to take our three stories and combine them into a printed book to sell at Shore Leave, which represents Crazy 8 Press’ first anniversary.

It soon became obvious, however, that the economics were against a book with roughly 30,000 words. At which point, one of us said we should invite the pals attending the con to come play in this brave new universe. So in late June we put out a call and invited a host of demigods to join us. The catch was, in order to have hard copies ready for sale they would have to meet a rigorous early July deadline.

Rising to the challenge were Allyn Gibson, Dave Galanter, Phil Giunta, William Leisner, Scott Pearson, Lawrence R. Schoen, and Steven H. Wilson. Dayton Ward knew he couldn’t make the con, but thought the idea too cool to pass up so joined in the fun.

While they wrote with the red-hot fire of new life, we sought out others to craft the cover and even some interior illustrations which got everyone excited, making them write faster.

ReDeus: Divine Tales will be available at Shore Leave, August 3-5, then made available for POD sale via this website. Ebook editions for Kindle and Nook will follow in mid-month.

And exactly what is this new universe that has everyone so excited?  We’ll tell you that next time.