Writers often like a challenge. When presented with a title, the mind begins to spin in different directions until finally rising in on the one that tickles the creative fancy the most.
When you get a title like Love, Murder & Mayhem (our new scifi-themed anthology from Crazy 8 Press), you see three different story elements and get excited about blending them into something fresh and frothy. When the title is then assigned a specific genre, you jettison so many possibilities and begin focusing.
In my case, science fiction immediately takes me to other worlds before thinking about things on Earth. So, I wonder to myself, what would cause there to be love, mayhem, and murder on another world? After all, new worlds often represent fresh starts. True, but we’re still humans and humans can get irrational. Especially when it comes to love.
What if, I wondered, there was a love triangle that has gone pear-shaped resulting in one corner wanting to eradicate the second corner, keeping the third for him/herself? Okay, so there’s love and there’s murder. Where does the mayhem come in?
Go back to that new world. You get a fresh start but not everything works. People have conflicting ideas as to what the next step should be or which is the right decision? From different ideologies can come conflict. Now, rational people may talk it out, debate and filibuster and protest. But, what if the decision being discussed is volatile enough to escalate feelings to the point where protests become violent ones?
And wouldn’t that be the perfect place for a lover to commit murder, under cover of mayhem?
Armed with that, I decided to keep things relatively near-future, researching the current theories as to how colonization of Mars, and putting my triangle on a colony suffering growing pains with wildly different notions of how best to expand. Honestly, reading all the different articles, journals, and reports was fascinating and made the story a nice reward for all that research.
Does the murder happen? Is the would-be murderer caught? Does the society survive the mayhem? Find out in July.
Love, Murder & Mayhem from Crazy 8 Press will be on sale both in print and digital formats in July. Stay tuned for updates!
Robert Greenberger is a writer and editor and founding member of Crazy 8 Press. He has worked for Starlog Press, where he created Comics Scene, the first nationally distributed magazine to focus on comic books, comic strips, and animation, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Weekly World News, Famous Monsters of Filmland, ComicMix.com, and is a founding member of Crazy 8 Press. His dozens of books, short stories, and essays include Hellboy II: The Golden Army, for which he won the IAMTW’s Scribe Award, and The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Murder at Sorrow’s Crown, co-written with Steven Savile. He is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and holds a Master of Science in Education from the University of Bridgeport and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing & Literature for Educators from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Find him at:
Website: www.bobgreenberger.com
Twitter: @bobgreenberger
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.greenberger
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/43771.Robert_Greenberger