As the newest member of the Crazy 8 Press team, the first I heard of this Crimson Keep dealie was at the group breakfast we held at last summer’s Shore Leave in Maryland. I learned that it was the setting for “Demon Circle,” a short story co-written by the pre-me Crazy 8 writers at 2011’s Shore Leave as part of a fundraising effort for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The idea in 2013 was to create an anthology of Crimson Keep stories to be available at Shore Leave 2014 in celebration of the imprint’s third anniversary.

The ever-efficient Bob Greenberger made sure that we were all provided with a copy of the short story and a mini-bible of its characters and situations, set the deadlines to assure a Labor Day weekend pub date, and off we went to the races.

The thing I took away from “Demon Circle” was the humor. The set-up involves a group of students apprenticed to the magical Master of the Crimson Keep, a castle rumored to have one thousand rooms and one hundred staircases…more or less. The Keep changes, whether by whim or necessity, no one is quite sure, and the apprentices themselves range from braggarts to incompetents to straitlaced, dedicated warriors. Stories could be about any one or all of the above. I went with a solo story about Belid, the wise guy braggart.

Those who know me won’t be surprised by the selection of Belid for my story. Like me, Belid is a terrible student, a dedicated procrastinator, and an unrepentant wiseass, all of which offered me the opportunity to do one of my favorite things: write funny. I don’t mean comedy writing per se, but rather writing with a light touch that lets the reader in on the absurdity of the situation without any outright mockery. Kind of like Douglas Adams, just sans stepping outside of the story to provide observationally wry commentary. It’s the approach I use to write my Leo Persky, Weekly World News reporter of the weird stories for R. Allen Leider’s Hellfire Lounge anthologies (three stories and counting, in volumes 2-4, published by Bold Venture Press) and it’s a wonderfully refreshing break from the more serious voice I usually take in prose.

So, what happens when Belid attempts to evade an upcoming test for which he isn’t prepared by deliberately getting himself lost in the ever-shifting corridors of the Crimson Keep? In this case, he finds himself locked out of the castle and trapped in an enclosed courtyard between “The Wee Folk at the End of the Hall” and their jailers, the bird-like Shadowings. But even while avoiding class, the young apprentice winds up learning a valuable lesson, to wit: No good deed goes unpunished. The trick thereafter is living long enough to apply this hard learned lesson to life.

Tales of the Crimson Keep may have been my first exposure to the world of the Master and his apprentices, but here’s hoping it’s not my last. Like Belid, I’ve still got a lot to learn about this magical and ever-changing place.

Tales of the Crimson Keep will be available in print and digital editions on August 1.

Growing up in the 1960s, I was a diehard DC Comics fan. I was also a fan of Marvel and Charlton and Gold Key and Warren and the handful of other publishers than sharing space on America’s comic book spinner racks, but it was DC Comics that stood front and center in my heart. DC’s comics were slick and beautifully produced and, more importantly, they were home to the world’s greatest superheroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman (the only superheroes to survive in their own ongoing titles from the 1940s Golden Age straight through the Comics Wasteland of the 1950s), Aquaman, Green Arrow (who likewise survived the near-death of the superhero genre, albeit as back-up features), the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Adam Strange (just a few of characters which helped jump start the new heroic age of comics that exploded in the 1960s), and many more.

I don’t recall exactly when I realized that there were, somewhere, people who actually produced the comic books that I devoured by the dozens off the rack at the cigar store on Ralph Avenue or the candy store on Remsen Avenue and Avenue B, but by 1964 or so, I was creating my own comic book stories, written and drawn (badly in both instances) on lined loose-leaf paper and in composition books. I suppose it was Marvel Comics, which featured creator credits on page one of every story, that did the trick. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Sam Rosen et al were credited with different aspects of the creation of those stories. Writer. Artist. Inker. Letterer. While math was never my forte, it was easy enough here to put two and two together and see that making comic books was an actual job.

And I wanted it!

I knew I’d never make it as an artist, but coming up with stories was easy for me. I didn’t show these stories to anyone because I was fairly certain they sucked, but I knew I could do it. By the late 1960s I had also discovered fellow comic book fans and comics fandom. By 1971, along with friends Paul Levitz and Steve Gilary, I was about as deeply immersed in said fandom as one could get and, thanks to the exposure afforded me by the fanzines we published (The Comic Reader and Etcetera), more determined than ever to make the jump from fan to professional.

In 1975 that determination lead me to meeting the first of three editors to whom I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Another of those three, DC’s Julius Schwartz, had already left his mark on me through the insanely great comic books he oversaw there, including the aforementioned superhero age jumpstarting Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Adam Strange, and other titles he edited. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say (and even if it is, it’s my opinion anyway) that Julie was probably the most influential editor in the history of the medium. His (at the time) thinking man’s approach to comic book story telling was the foundation upon which later editors like Stan Lee were able to build an entirely new direction for comics.

But before I met Julie, there was Wally Green. In late 1974, after about a year of ghostwriting for friends who had proceeded me into the business, I screwed up my courage and sent off a batch of ghost story plots and a couple of sample scripts to Gold Key Comics, which at the time was publishing such anthology titles as The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery. Wally got in touch with me and invited me up to Gold Key’s New York offices to discuss my submissions (I have a vague recollection of them being on Park or Lexington Avenue, but that’s neither here nor there). Like their location, my memory of the exact conversation is lost in the haze of the last forty years, but Wally sat me down and, story idea by story idea, went through my submissions and explained exactly why he wasn’t going to buy them. He explained that there was nothing inherently wrong with any of them, just why they weren’t right for the Gold Key books he edited, and he hoped I would continue submitting stories to him.

Wherever those offices were located, I left them walking on air. I was two blocks away before I realized that I had been soundly rejected…but it didn’t matter. Wally Green, a professional comic book editor, had treated me, a 19-year old wannabe, with the same professional courtesy he would extend to his own stable of writers. And for me, as insecure about my nascent abilities as it got, it was a gift from the Muses. Instead of the standard rejection form letter that I’m sure most editors would have sent out and which would, likely, have left me crushed, I had been given an open, honest, face-to-face critique that was, far from being dismissive, an affirmation and encouragement of whatever talent I showed.

Thank you, Wally Green! You were, and remain in my heart, a mensch among men! (Later, Wally did work, briefly, at DC, at which point I was able to tell him the above story and thank him in person for his warmth and encouragement. His response was to be baffled that an editor would treat any talent, professional or, especially, wannabe, any other way.)

Wally’s encouragement gave me the courage to take those stories rejected by Gold Key and send them off to the editors of Charlton Comics in Derby Connecticut. Not too much later I received a letter from Assistant Managing Editor Nicola Cuti: “We’re accepting “DISTRESS” (See enclosed billing instructions)…The synopses sound good so do them up in script form and we’ll probably take them.”

And, just like that, I was a comic book professional. Charlton paid $5 a page for scripts in those days and the $25 I received for that first story (which was drawn by another relative newcomer named Mike Zeck and appeared in Scary Tales #3 in late 1975) remains the sweetest money I’ve ever received. And, as instructed, I wrote up the other synopses and Nick did take them, and, just like Wally’s professional treatment of me gave me the courage to keep going, Nick’s acceptance of my writing was affirmation that I could in fact make it in comics.

That was validated a few months later when I wrote my first story for DC Comics, a “World of Krypton” back-up for the Denny O’Neil edited Superman Family, my foot in the door at the Crown Jewel (in my eyes anyway) of comic book publishers. That first assignment lead to others, introduction pages for House of Mystery, short stories for anthology titles, an ongoing “Nightwing and Flamebird” back-up, a stint on Aquaman, the New Doom Patrol and, before I knew it, an actual career as a comic book writer.

But…no matter what I wrote, there was still a part of me that wouldn’t believe I had made it until I cracked the hardest and most prestigious nut in the joint: the editorial office of Julius Schwartz. That opportunity finally came by way of a backdoor opening thanks to DC’s licensing of a new toy line from Mattel, “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.” Editor Dave Manak had, for reasons I don’t recall, asked me to write the MOTU tie-in comic, which consisted of a three issue miniseries, a 16-page insert that ran in one of the company’s advertising groups, and an issue of the Superman team-up title, DC Comics Presents. DCCP was one of the Superman line of books then edited by Julie, but for this one issue he stepped aside to act as “consulting editor” while Dave took care of the bulk of the editorial work.

I guess I didn’t screw up my handling of Superman too bad, because the next thing I knew, Julie was in my face, growling, “You wanna write an issue of DC Comics Presents for me?”

Uhhh. Yeah.

For the next three or four years, until he gave up the Superman franchise with the coming of Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, I found myself a Schwartz office regular, writing dozens of issues of Superman, Action Comics, DC Comics Presents, Superboy, Supergirl, and the daily Superman syndicated newspaper strip. Being one of “Julie’s boys” was, for this fan of 1960s era DC, the ultimate validation. Getting to know this legendary curmudgeon (it was all an act!) was just the icing on the cake.

So thank you, Wally, Nick, and Julie. I’m fairly certain if not for you three gentlemen, I would have had a fine career as a high school English teacher, a valid and worthy profession to be sure…but imagine all the subsequent adventures I would have missed.

Crazy 8 Press celebrates its three-year anniversary this summer, and as part of the festivities they will showcase their first ever anthology, Tales of the Crimson Keep.

This collection will feature seven brand new stories from Crazy 8 Press authors Michael Jan Friedman, Peter David, Aaron Rosenberg, Russ Colchamiro, Glenn Hauman, Paul Kupperberg, and Robert Greenberger. Tales of the Crimson Keep, edited by Greenberger, will also feature an introduction by fellow author Kevin Dilmore, whose winning first line inspired the entire concept.

At Shore Leave 2011, Crazy 8 Press solicited opening lines to a story which would be written in round-robin fashion from the show floor. With a dollar donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, anyone was welcome to contribute a first line during that con’s Meet the Pros event. The following day, at the introductory Crazy 8 Press panel, the one-liners contributed were read aloud, with the audience voting for their favorite line.

Dilmore’s “There’s no way we’re going to get all of this mopped up in time!” was the hands down winner and over the next 36 hours, the Crazy 8 Press authors took turns in the tiniest space available, reviewing notes and writing what ultimately became Demon Circle. Friedman did a final polish and the completed eBook was released soon after with proceeds going to the CBLDF.

Now two years later, Crazy 8 Press is revisiting this spooky realm, with familiar and new characters in stories set before and after the introduction tale, which as an added bonus will be included in the Tales of the Crimson Keep collection. For the Crazy 8 Press authors who were not a part of the story’s creation, it presented an interesting challenge. “I had to be a quick study, tapping into the fiendish part of my writer’s brain.” Colchamiro said. “Wizards, demons, and The Keep itself. Okay, well … here we go.”

Tales of the Crimson Keep will be available in Kindle and Nook formats for $5.99 as of Friday, August 2. The print edition will debut during that evening’s Meet the Pros event at Shore Leave, and then be available through Amazon.

Crazy 8 Press has published more than thirty titles during its first years alone, with new offerings coming this fall, starting with Michael Jan Friedman’s I am the Salamander, the first Crazy 8 Press project to be funded via Kickstarter. As an expanded line of fiction, older works, long out of print, will be brought back beginning with Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David.

Additional details of Crazy 8 Press’ future will be unveiled at their panel during Shore Leave in Cockeysville, MD. They cordially invite all to attend.

And keeping with the tradition of The Crimson Keep, who knows what other surprises Crazy 8 Press will unveil …

Back when I was doing a lot of work for DC Comics, I had the good fortune of meeting editor emeritus Julie Schwartz, the man most responsible for the resurrection of superhero comics in the late fifties and early sixties.

Julie–short for Julius–was part of the original cadre of science fiction fans in America. He went on to become, among other things, the fledgling Ray Bradbury’s literary agent. But what he did most to shape my life was revive the popularity of the superhero in America, repackaging Golden Age favorites like Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom for me and my contemporaries. Life without superhero comics…I can’t even imagine it. And it was Julie who made sure I didn’t have to.

Comic book writer Mark Waid told me to visit Julie whenever I was at DC and pry a story out of him. I took that advice as often as I could. It turned out that Adam Strange and Space Ranger were the results of a friendly competition to see who could come up with the best new space character. Ray Palmer, the Atom’s alter ego, was named after Julie’s friend, a vertically challenged pulp magazine editor. And so on.

But when I saw Julie standing in the hall at a Lunacon one evening, I didn’t approach him just to squeeze some more DC lore out of him. The guy was past eighty, after all, and it was after eleven o’clock, and I wanted to make sure he was all right. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I’m just waiting for my ride to say his goodnights.”

Still, I hung around to keep him company. “So where do you live?” I asked him. 

“Queens,” he told me.

“I grew up in Queens,” I said. “Whereabout?”

“Near Springfield Boulevard and Union Turnpike.”

“No way. I grew up near Springfield Boulevard and Union Turnpike. Where exactly?”

“An apartment building. It’s called Cambridge Hall.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I used to deliver groceries to Cambridge Hall. Which building?”

He told me. I knew a half-dozen people who lived there. 

“Julie,” I said, “do you know how lucky you are?”

“Well,” he said, “I guess you could say I was fortunate. I’ve worked at things I’ve enjoyed, even loved, for most of my life. Not too many people can say that.”

“No,” I said, “that’s not what I mean. If I’d known Julie Schwartz lived in Cambridge Hall while I was growing up, I would have been knocking on your door every day. You never would have gotten rid of me. That’s what I mean when I say you were lucky.”

Which was right about the time Julie’s ride showed up to take him home.

Julie passed away a couple of years later at the age of 88. I went to a memorial service for him. He had selected the music himself.

I’ve met lots of inspiring people. Talented people. People to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for enriching my life. 

But none to whom I owed more than Julie Schwartz.