Latchkeys #4, “The Bootleg War”, is now available for Kindle and Nook. Author Paul Kupperberg talks about the writing experience.

By Paul Kupperberg

For writers, ideas are like stacked up airplanes circling the fogged in airport. We want desperately to have all of them land safely, but some are going to have to stay up in the air a little longer than others until the weather clears or a runway opens up. As a result, we’ve all got lots of ideas circling our brains but no opportunity to bring them in for a landing on paper as quickly as we would like.

A few years back, Steven Savile, on a writers email list to which we both belong, suggested that a bunch of us join forces to take some of those high-flying ideas, throw them into a hat, and pick a few on which a dozen or so of us could work together. The idea was to hasten the development and writing of these various concepts by sharing the workloads. The result of Steve’s suggestion was a collective we came to call the HivemMnd.

While Steve has already related the secret origin of the HiveMind in an earlier post here on the Crazy 8 Press blog, the work of actually writing Latchkeys takes place not as a community activity, but in the individual workrooms, offices, and minds of our fourteen writers. The current episode, “Chapter 4: Speakeasy, Part One: The Bootleg War” began with a story by Kris Katzen, which landed on my desk for fleshing out and was a particularly fun story for me to work on. It incorporates elements that play to several of my strengths as a writer: It takes place in New York, the city in which I was born and about which I have an insatiable curiosity (I have shelves containing nothing but histories and biographies related to this, the greatest city on earth), and is set against a historic backdrop, in this case the Prohibition era of the 1920s (coincidentally, I recently read Daniel Okrent’s fascinating history, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition).

I love to pepper period stories like “Bootleg War” with interesting little historic tidbits, whether about its locale or some incidental information (did you know Converse All-Stars sneakers were introduced during the First World War?)…just enough to give it the right flavor and a dash of verisimilitude. Of course, stories have to come from out of the characters first, but those characters need to be rooted in a world that’s as real as they are. The use of the wrong slang or an anachronistic prop and the reader is yanked out of the moment and all the mood and drama the author was hoping to set up is ruined.

And speaking of characters: Latchkeys stars a roster of good ones. I was already familiar with two of them, twin sisters Mercy and Marguerite, from writing one of the later Latchkeys episodes (#13, “Emmett”), but “Bootleg War” gave me the opportunity to get to know a couple of the other fascinating teens who populate this world. I hope you’ll find their intelligence and resourcefulness as interesting as I did while writing them.

So, to torture my opening airplane analogy just a little further, bringing Latchkeys in for a landing has been, in some ways, a long and sometimes bumpy ride, but now that we’re safely home, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a moment of the trip. For readers, on the other hand, there’s nothing but clear skies and some good reading ahead.

From Pixies to Poe to the Roaring Twenties—

(and everything in between, below, beyond, beside)

By Kris Katze

My first reaction when Steven Savile sketched his concept for Latchkeys: WOW! WAY COOL!

My second reaction: me, too, please!

Steve graciously included me in with his diverse group of writers who are all scary talented.

Writing is so often solitary that when an opportunity comes along to collaborate with a bunch of pros on a project, it’s a great joy and a ton of fun. With everyone’s vastly different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives, we set out to fill in some of the blanks Steve had left and build a framework we all could use. It wasn’t contention-free, but all the debate and the back and forth made for something much different than any of us would have come up with alone: something exciting and unique to the Hive.

Which brings us to those Roaring Twenties, in the form of The Bootleg War, also known as Speakeasy Part One. This story contributed a piece to our shared world, but more than that, it served as the first half of a story to be concluded by a different author in the group.

James Reasoner.

James is a gentleman through and through. It was a huge pleasure to work with him. We consulted and planned, shooting questions back and forth, figuring out exactly what story we wanted to tell, then deciding how to break it down, and what pieces to put where. We hope we came up with a fast-paced thrill ride through the era of gangsters and molls and prohibition in New York City.

Many of the Latchkey‘s episodes showcase a particular character or two. Unlatched introduced Tanglewood not just to the readers, but to Matt as well. Kaitlyn played a major role in The Ugly Little Bloke and Jeremy took the lead in Nevermore. For this story, we wanted a team effort from the get-go. The rest of the Wardens are already seasoned adventurers. Matt’s fitting right in with them. James and I wanted the dynamic of all of them working together, showing how they all have fantastic skills, but together add up to so much more. Upcoming installments will give Mercy, Marguerite and Will—and even Amina and Emmaline—their due.

For The Bootleg War, though, I spread around the action and gave everyone plenty to keep them busy—and get them into a heap of trouble. Which I then passed to James to get them out of. He did a masterful job, but that’s for him to talk about next month.

For now, I can’t praise the rest of the Hive enough for all their contributions to the project, and for everyone’s incredibly helpful and thoughtful comments which improved my story immensely. I’m thrilled to be in such good company. Special thanks to Steve for letting me play in his sandbox, and to James whom I worked with most closely on doing the actual writing.

While James worked on part two, part one went to Paul Kupperberg for another look, so HUGE thanks to him for all his work and the immense help he provided as well.

Finally, any litany of thanks would be sorely incomplete without mention of the wonderful artist Vance Kelly and the lovely covers he’s done.

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If you haven’t figured it out yet, there’s been a slight hiccup in completing the third Latchkeys installment, Nevermore. It’s coming along and should be available for sale in the next week or two. These things happen, even with the best of intentions, and we apologize. The HiveMind, the 13 creators contributing the series, remain committed and eager to share the world with you.

We’ve been pleased with the early response to Unlatched and The Ugly Little Bloke but we’d certainly love to hear from more of you. And if you like what you’ve read so far, please tell your friends. It’s been a little mystifying in this viral world of ours that we’ve had some trouble making people aware the books are available.

Meantime, we’re incredibly proud of the work Vance Kelly has done on the covers. We’ll be getting him to talk about the process next month but for right now, we thought we’d show off some of the process steps in the creation of a cover, using Nevermore as an example.

The rest of us at Crazy 8 Press also have plenty of other projects in the works and in May we’ll have a number of announcements that should carry us well into the summer.

As you know, we have plenty of work we do elsewhere, such as Peter David’s recent novelization of Battleship and Aaron Rosenberg’s recent Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles for younger readers. My Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History is now available for pre-order so you shouldn’t miss out on that. And while Glenn Hauman hasn’t done much writing of late, it has more to do with the deluge of traffic ComicMix experienced during the recently completed March Madness event. Aaron and the Hivemind’s Paul Kupperberg are also among the contributors to Animal Planet’s Most Dangerous Animals graphic novel, which I edited and is now available.

By Debbie Viguié

I am not a short story person.  I don’t tend to read them and I hate writing them.  It’s ironic, but writing a short story takes me longer than writing a novel.  Also ironically when I do write a short story most people comment (correctly) that it sounds like the setup for a series of books.  It always is because I think about big, large plots that can’t be completely condensed down into a few thousand words.

What makes Latchkeys so cool is that even though I was technically writing a short story, it was more like writing a chapter in a novel.  There’s an entire world we have built, rich characters that we’re just starting to explore on paper, and miles and miles of plot much of which has only yet been hinted at.  It is awesome.  I basically wrote chapter three for this epic story that I helped to craft the outline for.

I hope that’s how it reads to people.  When you have multiple writers it can be difficult to control tone and voice and make something flow smoothly.  One of the points of creating the Latchkeys universe was a bunch of us wanted to do something as a group showcasing our ability to work together and our ability to shine on our own.  I think we’ve managed to do that.  There are continuing style elements that let the readers know this is all the same big story.  There are also ways and places in which we can shine individually and bring our own creative drives to our individual chapters, er, stories.

So, start from the beginning.  Keep reading until the end.  Because let me tell you, this is one heck of a thrill ride.