Lost Days!

Anthony Borelli knew a lot more about Renaissance Italy than did most kids his age.
He knew that it wasn’t one country but rather a whole bunch of city-states. He knew that people spoke a version of Italian back then that was different from the Italian he had learned in school. And he knew about the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII’s attempt to wrestle holidays like Easter back to the seasons in which they belonged.

But Anthony never expected to find himself in Renaissance Italy . . . or to be fighting the kinds of bizarre, bloody monsters he had only read about in the mythologies of the ancients…or to be the linchpin in a grand, desperate scheme to save the world of Man from the beginning to the end of time.

How, he wonders, is he supposed to overcome the amassed forces of evil when he can’t even overcome the town bully?

Lost Days isn’t just about a calendar. It’s about demons. It’s about blood and death. It’s about magic, and courage, and crazy schemes . . . and in the end, the power of love.

And starting today, you can find Lost Days for yourself–either at Amazon.com (paperback or Kindle) or BN.com (paperback). So step right up, my friends…the Renaissance awaits!

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree that Christendom would no longer count time according to the old Julian calendar, which–over the course of centuries–had allowed movable feasts like Easter to slip back a week and a half. From that point on, Christians would follow a new, more accurate calendar, which–because Pope Gregory was the one who made it happen–would come to be known as the Gregorian Calendar.

Oh, one other thing. To put the holidays back where they belonged, Pope Gregory eliminated ten days in October, 1582. Friday, October 5th became Friday, October 15th. This made landlords happy and tenants grumpy, but there it was.

Now, you might say the erasure of those ten days was just a clerical formality, a logistical convenience. We didn’t actually get rid of those ten days, did we?

Or…did we?

What if something happened in the course of those ten days? Something so bad, so horrifying, so breathtakingly evil that the only way the world could survive was if those two hundred and forty hours were wiped from the face of the earth? Which, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is the conceit at the center of my new young adult novel, Lost Days — which Crazy 8 Press will be releasing on August 25, 2015.

Of course, Lost Days isn’t only about a papal decree in 1582. It’s about monsters and demons and blood and death, and magic, and courage, and crazy schemes…and even love.

So, you know, we’re setting out to explore this continent. This super-continent.

When you come up with an idea for a science fiction book–what promises to be a really good science fiction book–in that brief moment of birth, it’s perfect. A perfect, little gem of a reality. Later on you’ll see the flaws and the challenges, a whole bunch of them probably, but when the thing first takes shape in your head, it’s virginal, untouched. Pristine.

The question I’m asking myself and thirteen other writers, as we dip our paddles into those pristine waters, is…what if mankind had been born and developed during a period when the continents were all one? When there was no Europe, no Asia, no North or South America, but instead a single, contiguous land mass?

How might our civilization have been different?

The question is a tantalizing one. So many possibilities. So many chances to take the familiar and turn it into something intriguingly, maybe disturbingly, unfamiliar. After all, we’re still talking about our world, our people. And yet…not the people we’ve become.

But we can now think about exploring Pangaea only because we were successful in funding Pangaea. Remember, it’s an anthology. Back in 2014 when the notion first hit me, I had a mountain to climb. I couldn’t ask thirteen other veteran writers to harness their considerable imaginations for the chance that they’d see some money someday, maybe, way down the line if at all. They deserved better. And yet I couldn’t afford to pay them up front.

Hence the Kickstarter campaign that we launched in early February, beginning a stretch of thirty days in which we doggedly battled our way to our goal, slogging uphill each step of the way. There were stories in that campaign that will never be told but probably should be.

The stories of those who time and again refused to let us falter. The story of lloy, who crossed his fingers for us so hard he probably needs physical therapy. The story of Chuck, with whom I’ve celebrated his son’s smile not once now but three times.

My peeps from the Baltimore cons. Wonderful Lynda.

Mysterious champions who went by the names Knight of Words, Swordfire, Curmudgeon of Phoenix, The Angry Ant, and The Space Parasite.

The Scandinavian Horde. (If you can’t count on a Norseman, who can you count on?)

Those like Devin and Revek and Corey, who had supported me in the past and came to my aid again, constant as the sunrise.

And more. Literally hundreds more, supporting us with their words as well as their deeds.

Now we’re embarking on another kind of journey. Fourteen of us, a hand-picked company, charged with creating an entire world–and fully aware of the faith others have placed in us.

We’re not entirely sure yet where our journey will take us, or what hazards we’ll have to negotiate along the way. But we know one thing, and we’re jazzed about it: The super-continent awaits.