All posts by Bob Greenberger

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The Muse is an Elusive Creature

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Writers get ideas all the time. Put a dozen writers in a room show them an object or give them a line and you will get, easily, two dozen different ideas for stories. It’s exciting when a new idea forms, especially one fully realized and you can’t wait to write it and share the story with the world.

Crazy 8 Press exists because the membership believes our stories are worth sharing. After all, conventional publishing wisdom may not see the commercial prospects to some of our books because they’re following outdated and limited models. The digital realm unleashes the possibilities and we celebrate them here.

This summer, I was all set to devote my free time to completing my first C8 novel, selecting between two semi-completed works. I picked the one furthest along and re-read it only to discover something: the spark was missing. In looking over the story, I saw some flaws, knew some fixes I wanted to make and it was all technical stuff.

What was missing was the spark, the inner flame that drove me to complete the work. While ideas continue to flow and I still enjoy writing fiction, this was not the summer for it. Instead, it seems my attention was constantly being diverted as I hunted for a teaching position and the sustained period of free time I guess I needed for resuming fiction was missing.

I wasn’t idle, of course, helping edit and unleash the third ReDeus anthology and did my writing for ComicMix and Westfield Comics along with an essay for Sequart and an article for Back Issue! As a result, I don’t think it’s what some call Writer’s Block. Instead, it feels more like a change of emphasis from fiction to non-fiction. Short term that’s fine and I look forward to the day I wake up and feel the burning desire to tell a story.

In fact, this morning I woke up and realized this was the third time I dreamed a scenario with recurring characters, set a year apart. A single mother and her toddler daughter in a world where they fly giant birds rather than use cars. The remainder of the details is fuzzy but three times over a few months is significant. There just may be a story brewing in the subconscious and I am curious to see what shape it takes.

New Releases

Crazy 8’s First Non-Fiction Release, Hey Kids, Comics!

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By Robert J. Kelly

newsstand1951“Hey Kids, Comics!”

Growing up, there was no newsstand, supermarket, department store, or convenience store that escaped my laser-like gaze, hoping to see those three words (and exclamation mark!) on display. Those words mean comics are for sale, which means I would be walking out of that newsstand, supermarket, department store, or convenience store with at least one of them in my hands.

Back in 2007, I created a blog based on those memories, betting that there were other people out there that had similarly powerful experiences centered around their love of comic books. It didn’t take long for the stories to roll in, from all walks of life, about how comics profoundly affected their lives. As I read the each new story, I found them so compelling that a thought finally occurred to me: “These would make a great book.”

Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack features all-new stories of four-color obsession: Paul Kupperberg (Kevin Keller) takes us on a tour of DC’s classic 80 Page Giants. J.M. DeMatteis (The Phantom Stranger) talks about the time he headed out onto the cold New York streets, sick as a dog, just to get some Marvels from a nearby newsstand. Author Alan Brennert (Palisades Park) shares how a Dennis the Menace comic book helped guide his future. Master Cosplayer Roxanna Meta tells us the story of how she found love at a comic book shop. Sholly Fisch (Super Friends) reveals how a Marvel Treasury Edition almost got him killed!

These are only a tiny fraction of the funny, sad, embarrassing, and in some cases unbelievable true-life adventures that are contained in this book. Comic book legends, best-selling authors, Emmy-nominated TV writers, journalists, bloggers (even a real-life physicist!) share their stories and vintage photos of comic reading, collecting, obsessing, making Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack a must-read for comics fans of all ages.

On a more personal note, I pitched this book to dozens of publishers and book agents, all of whom turned it down because they didn’t believe it was “marketable enough.” They all thought that comic books were too obscure a subject for a book like this, and that people wouldn’t be able to relate. I don’t think that’s true. Obsession is universal—everyone has something in their life that affected them in a profound way. For many of us, it was—and continues to be—comic books. With films and TV shows based on comics raking in billions of dollars and millions of fans, I think now is the perfect time for a book like Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack. Read it and don’t be surprised if you see yourself in its pages. I know I did.

 Hey Kids, Comics! will be released in print and digital editions in September,

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After the Con

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C8 Shore Leave 2013The seven members of Crazy 8 Press got very excited at being united at Shore Leave last week. We met, plotted, cajoled, drank, and generally made very merry. The books debuted on schedule and we sold a bunch, spreading the gospel.

Then everyone went home.

Last week the momentum continued as people blogged about ReDeus: Native Lands and The Hammer and the Horn. Better yet, the fine folk at SF Revue gave ReDeus: Beyond Borders a glowing review. Additionally, the digital editions of Peter David’s Fearless are now available.

So, what’s happening next?

People are writing, People are promoting. People are cogitating. And the website is being overhauled. We’re scheduled to unveil it in just under two weeks. We’ve seen preliminary design work and more under the hood work is being done. That’ll be our next release and we’ll be touting that when ready.

After that, we move into prepping our fall releases and turning an eye toward 2014. For all the new followers we’ve gained over the summer, we’d like to welcome you to our wacky, chaotic world.

ReDeus, Uncategorized

My Alien Abduction Story was on Native Lands

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By Robert T. Jeschonek

Native Lands front coverConfession time:  I’m still scared that they’re coming for me.

By “they,” I mean aliens…the kind who creep into your bedroom at night and whisk you away to their ship for tests or just outright torture.  The thought of it terrifies me:  that I might be lying there, helpless yet conscious, as they take me away.

I’ll bet it scares you, too.  Because it’s something that might just happen to any of us on any given night.  If eyewitness reports are to be believed, it happens all the time.

Not to mention, we’ve seen it happen again and again on TV and in the movies.  The alien abduction scene has been recreated so many times, it’s become ingrained in our collective consciousness.  When it’s done right, there’s nothing scarier.

For me, the best and scariest version was in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Just thinking about the scene in which the aliens keep trying to get into the locked farmhouse so they can snatch the little boy inside sends shivers up my spine.  No, really.

Long before that, there was the story of Barney and Betty Hill, who claimed to have been abducted while driving in rural New Hampshire in 1961.  This story also made a huge impression on me.  Decades later, in fact, when I was driving in rural New Hampshire myself one night, I thought I was doomed to repeat their experience.  Rolling around a bend in the road, I saw the edge of an illuminated disk hanging above the darkened forest.  White-knuckling the wheel, paralyzed with fear, I let the car drift the rest of the way around the bend…

…At which point, I saw that the edge of the disk was actually the upper edge of a hot air balloon sporting a Burger King ad.  Out in the middle of nowhere, I kid you not.

So much for my big Close Encounter.  But finding out that my flying saucer was just a big advertising balloon didn’t take away the fear.  It’s still with me to this day…lucky for you.

Because my fear of abduction inspired “Chariots of the Godless,” my story for ReDeus: Native Lands.  While brainstorming ideas for a story for Native Lands, I thought about things that are part of the quintessential American cultural landscape.  Alien abduction quickly came to mind.  The fascination with extraterrestrial encounters, from the Roswell incident to the Allagash Waterway abductions, is deeply ingrained in the fabric of our national imagination.

Would alien abductions still happen in post-Return America, in a country ruled by omni-powerful gods and roamed by mystically-attuned divine entities?  Better yet, could the gods and divine entities themselves ever be the victims of abductions?

I loved the idea right off the bat.  The thought of one of these godly powerhouses spirited away by alien beings, subjected to the same kind of terrified helplessness and violation as human abductees, seemed like new ground to cover.  It felt fresh, like something I hadn’t seen before.

“Chariots of the Godless” took off from there.  Along the way, it became an action-oriented tale, a race against time as the aliens carry off captive gods for mysterious, perhaps sinister, purposes.  It also became an unlikely love story, as a relationship grows between human abduction expert Dr. Nessus and the justice goddess Mayet.  Nessus and Mayet could not be more alien to each other, both in temperament and in terms of the worlds they come from…but they move past their fears and find strength in the very differences that fuel their alienation.

Maybe this will be our truest salvation when the aliens come to call:  recognizing that our fears of abduction relate most directly to our fear of the unexpected, of the stranger who sneaks into our lives uninvited and changes us in some deep way.  For the truth is, our fear is often misplaced; strange changes are not always bad and can lead us down unexplored roads we might never have dared travel if left to our own devices.

Though I, for one, will continue to watch for glowing disks hovering over the treeline when I drive through the woods at night.  And if I glimpse strange lights outside my bedroom windows, I will hold my breath and  pull the covers up just a little bit higher.

ReDeus: Native Lands is now available in digital and print formats.

New Releases, ReDeus

Steven H. Wilson Listens to his Perosnal Trinity About Native Lands

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By Steven H. Wilson

Steven H. Wilson ASo you’ve heard of three-part deities, right? The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost in the Christian tradition, the Triple Goddess Hecate in Greek Myth and the Wiccan traditions? Well, Crazy 8 has a triple deity of its own, personified by Bob, Paul and Aaron. This trinity edits ReDeus, reads our stories, and transmits to us via the divine email words of wisdom. You’re never sure which of the three is speaking, but the results are always awe-inspiring, enlightening, and delightfully snarky.

It was in one of these divine communiqués that a couple of throwaway lines in my story “Axel’s Flight” were transformed, as Io was transformed into the sacred cow, into a story of their own. Clever deities, these, even if you don’t know which is which. Ovid couldn’t have described a more wondrous metamorphosis.

The passage thus selected was:

“The gods had curtailed a good deal of Hollywood’s output over the last decade, offended by the CGI special effects which made their miraculous powers seem commonplace. Only swift action by a consortium of gods of arts from various pantheons had prevented the outright destruction of the likes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and such films were rarely seen now by mere mortals.”

Not sure what about it grabbed the three-headed spirit of editorship. Perhaps, like Ganymede, it had really interesting thighs. Whatever it was, one, two or all of the heads said unto me: “Oh, and this would make a great story for Native Lands!”

When the god(s) speak, you don’t ignore them. Especially when they’re offering you money, a shot at a Hugo Award, and the privilege of sitting next to them on the autograph lines at several cons. Well… they’re offering one of those three.

And so I developed “Chinigchinix Nixes Pix,” a tale of a young(ish) screenwriter who’s working on a Summer blockbuster about the Angel of Death. If the title baffles you, it’s because it’s written in slanguage, otherwise known as Variety-speak–something akin to mystic runes. Our narrator, we’ll call him N, takes a meeting one day and discovers that Chinigchinix, or Quaoar as he’s more commonly called, the patron divinity of the Tongva people who once inhabited the hills of LA, has taken over the American film industry. He’s shelved all projects that don’t have the potential to glorify the gods (yes, even the romantic comedy based on Windows for Dummies that was to star Brad Pitt.) But he likes our hero’s story, Call Me Sam. He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s going to help with the re-write. That means he needs to spend a lot of time with our beleaguered protagonist, and that means they’re moving in together.

Hilarity ensues.

I set out to write a short, punchy tale about censorship, writing by committee, and the clash of cultures between humans and gods. It was to be a brief adventure in the style of Douglas Adams. As each volume of the Hitchhiker trilogy (all five of them) was short, so my little visit to La La Land would be a quick in-and-out, don’t-worry-if-it-offends-you-because-it’s-going-away-soon, not-long-on-the-plot jaunt. Did I mention it was short? I kept it under 10,000 words. If you know me, you know that’s not easy for me to do.

And yea, verily, the god(s) said, “It sucks. Make it longer.”

Gods. What can you do, right?

So I added fifty percent more words. (I discovered a box of them in the pantry, behind the Quaker Oats. They were past their expiration date, but I figured “What the hell? Who’ll know?” I poured them in, stirred, and now “Chinigchinix” is a lot longer. If the language is a little moldy and archaic in spots, that’s why.)

When it was done, I asked the Trinity how I was to deliver it unto them. They told me to put it on the altar in the back yard and burn it. (You have an altar in your back yard too, right? They told me it wasn’t just me.) So I threw the pages on the grill–er, the stone stained with the blood of countless sacrifices to Bob, Aaron and Paul–and touched the sacred Bic unto them. The wind did carry the smoke and ashes unto the heavens, where dwell the Three, and Chinigchinix is nixing pix in Native Lands, volume three of ReDeus.

Right guys?

I said am I right? You got the sacred ashes, right?

Bob? Aaron? Paul?

ReDeus: Native Lands, truly containing this story, is now available in print and digital formats.

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Plans for 2014 and Beyond Discussed at Shore Leave

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HammerandHorn cover2At today’s Crazy 8 Press panel at Shore Leave 35, the seven members met the public together for the first time. Moderated by first among equals Michael Jan Friedman, the panel announced several new releases for the remainder of 2013 and beyond.

In addition to the three books which debuted at the convention, later this month Friedman’s first novel, The Hammer and the Horn will be back in print for the first time in thirty years. Also this month, David’s eagerly anticipated sequel to Tigerheart, Fearless, will be out in print and digital.

Coming this fall will be Hey Kids, Comics!, an anthology of essays assembled by Robert J. Kelly and includes contributions from Greenberger and Kupperberg.

Friedman’s other novels in The Vidar Saga — The Seeker and the Sword, The Fortress and the Fire, and The Glove of Maiden’s Hair – will arrive on a roughly monthly schedule with all-new covers by Brazilian artist Caio Cacau.

ReDeusLogoAdditionally, Friedman announced he is writing an original novel, I am the Salamander, which will become a Kickstarter project later this summer. The superheroic tale will be written by Friedman with cover by Brazilian artist Caio Cacau.

Rosenberg will reteam with Steven Savile for October’s Haunted Summer while his third book in the DuckBob series, Three Small Coinkydinks, will close out 2013.

Coming in 2014 will be at least one additional ReDeus book along with a sequel to Colchamiro’s Finders Keepers.

Additionally, Peter David announced that he has regained the publishing rights to his three Sir Apropos of Nothing novels and will be bringing them back to print via Crazy 8 Press. He also promised a fourth volume to be written within the coming year.