Author's Spotlight, New Releases

Russ Colchamiro Talks Angela Hardwicke

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With a new year comes a new sci-fi mystery from Crazy 8 Press inmate Russ Colchamiro, featuring his intergalactic hardboiled private eye Angela Hardwicke. Part Doctor Who, part Blade Runner, part Philip Marlowe, Hardwicke is back again in Fractured Lives.

As Hardwicke gears up for another mystery, we sat down with Russ to discuss this noirish sci-fi tale and his long-range plans for the character:

Crazy 8 Press: You say Angela Hardwicke is an intergalactic private eye. What’s her turf?

Russ: Hardwicke’s turf is Eternity, a galactic realm in service of the design, maintenance, and construction of the Universe. Eternity—or E-Town, as it’s known—is to the Cosmos what Hollywood is to the movie business. At street level, Eternity looks and feels much like our Earth, but a bit more futuristic. Not quite Blade Runner, but not entirely modern Earth either. Somewhere in between.

C8: What was the inspiration for Hardwicke?

Russ: I’ve always loved private detective stories and noir. And I love science fiction and fantasy. Hardwicke first appeared in two of my previous novels Genius de Milo and Astropalooza. I immediately fell in love with her and knew we’d be together for a long, long time.

C8: How does the intergalactic element fit into her cases?

Russ: After her initial appearances as a tertiary and secondary character, I’ve since written five Hardwicke short stories and two novels. Some of Hardwicke’s adventures are down and dirty at street level, while others take place in various corners of the Universe. Most take place in both within the same story. My goal, particularly with the novels, is to juxtapose the workaday, dangerous, grind-it-out necessities of being a tough and thorough investigator, with the complex, fascinating, and unpredictable nature of the Universe, and the beings who populate it.

C8: Hardwicke has a young protégé, Eric Whistler, and a cast of supporting players. Are they back?

Russ: You bet! Whistler wants so badly for Hardwicke to respect him both as a PI and a person, so he sometimes tries a little too hard. But he’s learning!

C8: So what’s Hardwicke up to in Fractured Lives?

Russ: Whereas the first Hardwicke novel, Crackle and Fire, had more of a thriller vibe, Fractured Lives is a more personal, emotional story for Hardwicke. A woman named Wanda Fyne comes to Hardwicke saying that her teenage daughter, Darla, a galaxy design prodigy and freshman at a prestigious design school, is having some sort of nervous breakdown that does not conform to or results from mental illness or stress. Wanda contends it’s far worse and insidious—that someone has stolen a piece of Darla’s soul.

There are also rumors about a nefarious character known as the Scarlet Raj, who is some sort of urban legend. I’ll let you discover whether or not the two are connected, but the mystery takes us all over E-Town, including to this specialized University, the local art scene, construction sites, and a semi-secret organization that makes repairs in the Universe.  

The intersection of these elements is further complicated by Hardwicke’s five-year-old-son, Owen, who may or may not have special abilities of his own. Ultimately, Hardwicke is forced to reconcile how—or if—she can continue to be a badass intergalactic private eye and a mother. Her life is often in danger, both on-realm and off, and is off the grid on a rolling basis. As a result, the two key sides of her life collide, and don’t always work out the way she wants. 

C8: Great cover, by the way! It’s so striking.

Russ: Thanks! It took several iterations to get it where I wanted, but once you read the novel, the imagery will make perfect sense.

C8: Do you have additional plans for Hardwicke?

Russ: Absolutely! I just started writing the third Hardwicke novel, which will be out September 2022. I will be writing at least five Hardwicke novels, one a year through book five. At that point, depending on fan enthusiasm, I’ll either keep going, or jump into the spin-off series I have planned. I’m not ready to decide just yet how I’m going to handle that. I’ll see how things are going when I get there. But yes, if you’re a fan of Hardwicke, and I hope you are, there will be many more Hardwicke adventures to come, including new short stories which will continue to pop up, and maybe even a collection at some point.

C8: Do we need to read the Hardwicke mysteries in sequence?

Russ: Each Hardwicke mystery is completely self-contained. You might miss a little character development if you read the novels out of order, which is true of any ongoing series, but it doesn’t matter where you start. I reintroduce the world building and the characters in each novel so you always know where you are.

Fractured Lives is on sale now!

Author's Spotlight, New Releases

Two Rights Don’t Make a wrong

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Superheroes all have origin stories, right? So do writers’ publishing collectives. Crazy 8 Press was born outside the restrooms on the ballroom level of the Hunt Valley Inn hotel north of Baltimore, at a Shore Leave convention a little over a decade ago.

That’s the historic spot (nope, there’s no commemorative plaque there) where a half-dozen of us science fiction/fantasy writers frustrated over the state of Big Publishing decided, “Well, why the heck don’t we publish our own books and sell ‘em directly to readers?”

I was among that original group, but life being what it is, it’s taken me this long to actually present a book bearing the Crazy 8 logo. And it’s not science fiction—it’s a historical novel called Galloway’s Gamble.

I’m “best known” (if I’m known at all) for four decades of writing Star Trek stories. The original TV show inspired me to be a writer, and I was fortunate enough to sell “The Pirates of Orion” script to NBC’s animated Saturday morning revival in 1974 (as a 19-year-old college junior). I’d reached my goal of becoming a professional writer, and credits after that included many Star Trek novels, comics, and other science fiction.

As a 12-year-old kid in 1966, I was hooked by Star Trek’s optimistic view of the future, offering hope during the turbulent 1960s that humans could learn from mistakes and become better. 50+ years later, I’m no longer that optimist. Despite technological advances, it seems human behavior has actually regressed rather than improved. Examples: We’re further away from Middle East peace than ever. And those who disregard science in favor of heedless, headlong greed are ruining the only home planet we have.

So there I was, unable to write about an optimistic future I no longer believed in (and repelled by the bleak prospect of writing about a dystopian future). I had no idea what I wanted to write about.

That’s when I stumbled across the Encore Westerns cable TV channel. I’d grown up in the ‘50s watching westerns years before Star Trek. So I started re-watching old westerns I barely remembered from childhood, especially two of the best— Maverick and Have Gun Will Travel. And I found I still enjoyed westerns. (That’s me in cowboy gear, age 6.)

I’ve always been interested in history, both real and fictionalized. I love the PBS documentary series American Experience, and documentaries from director Ken Burns. If there’s a period drama on TV or in the movies, I’m there. So I thought: Why not tell stories set in the past? Instead of extrapolating about the unknowable, why not look back for clues about how we got from there to here?

And that’s how I landed on historical fiction. As I started my 19th century research, I was struck by how little people have changed in 150 years. That was both a little depressing, and a little exciting—historical fiction opened the door to commenting on life today by exploring the past. That could be both fascinating and fun.

Science fiction has to be plausible. Even fantasy has to make us believe that dragons, magic, or hobbits exist in a consistent “real” world. But historical fiction has to be accurate. Whatever time or place I write about, the details must be right—because somebody out there knows more about it than I do. If I’m wrong or fudge something, someone will catch me—and there goes my credibility, and my story.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up writing Galloway’s Gamble, published by plucky little Five Star Publishing in 2017—and winning a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award. Five Star asked for a sequel, which I’m working on now (unfortunately sidetracked by health problems and back surgery).

So when two sets of publishing rights—for paperback and ebook editions—reverted to me, Crazy 8 Press seemed like the right place to make sure Galloway’s Gamble is still available to readers. So here we are—with thanks to the Crazy 8 gang for putting out the welcome mat.

Author's Spotlight, New Releases

A Magic Tunnel, a Magic Rowboat…What’s the Difference? As Long as it Gets You to Yesterday!

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One of my favorite books as a kid was The Magic Tunnel, by Caroline D. Emerson. I read it when I was nine or ten years old, right around the time a paperback edition was released in 1964 (the book was originally published in 1940) through the Arrow Book Club, a service of Scholastic Books that brought book sales to schools around the country. My school was P.S. 233 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

The Magic Tunnel told the story of brother and sister John and Sarah who, on a New York City subway ride down to Battery Park to visit the Statue of Liberty, suddenly find themselves transported back in time to 1664, during the last days of Dutch rule over the city then called “New Amsterdam” before the new British colonial masters changed its name to New York.

I rode the subway all the time as a kid. We’d always ride in the first car so we could watch the track ahead as we sped through the tunnel. Now and then, we might catch a brief glimpse of an old, abandoned station my dad said were called “ghost stations,” or even dark, mysterious figures tromping along adjacent tracks, or hugging the tunnel walls as we flashed by. There was, I was convinced, magic in those dark and creepy underground passages. Anything could happen.

Of course, magic can happen anywhere. Emma’s Landing has a few things in common with The Magic Tunnel, including native New Yorker protagonists, a touch of magic, time travel, and unusual modes of transportation to achieve it, John and Sarah by train, Emma Candela by rowboat on a storm-tossed lake. And instead of the dark, ominous subway tunnels of New York, Emma makes her journey through the deep, dank Florida Everglades, where she’s been sent to live with her grandmother when her parents go missing on a humanitarian mission halfway around the world.

The Magic Tunnel by Caroline D. Emmerson. Bonus points for comic book fans, this 1964 Scholastic paperback edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by the legendary comic book and syndicated strip artist Jerry Robinson, co-creator with Bob Kane of Robin the Boy Wonder, the Joker, and much of the early Golden Age Batman mythos.

Suddenly, Emma is transported from the familiar landscape of New York’s skyscrapers and sidewalks to Land’s End’s dank, dark swamps and twisted waterways, lacking even the barest necessities of life, especially internet access and WiFi! And while Emma awaits word of the fate of her parents, she finds herself drawn to one of the area’s deepest mysteries, the strange, shadowy hermit of the Everglades known as P-Alonso who many believe to be immortal.

But it isn’t until Emma discovers the centuries old Candela family journal on her grandmother’s bookshelf that the truth behind her family history and the strange new world she’s inhabiting begins to reveal itself to her…and then a child’s cries in the night sends her out on the storm-tossed lake to row her way back through time to the 1780s. There she meets her many times great-grandmother and helps save the family home…and be offered the clues she will need to ensure the Candela homestead remains in the family far into the future!

Emma’s Landing combines my love for time travel stories and historic fiction that The Magic Tunnel instilled in me over fifty years ago. I’ve read hundreds of time travel adventures since, some better than others, but none better than that first thrilling story I encountered as a fourth grader.

Maybe Emma’s Landing will be the book that sets one of today’s young readers off on a similar lifelong journey of excitement and discovery. That would be the best kind of history I could ever hope to make.

Author's Spotlight, New Releases, News

HOWARD WEINSTEIN RETURNS TO Crazy 8 with western rerelease

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NEW YORK, NY – May 19, 2021— Author Howard Weinstein’s award-winning historical novel Galloway’s Gamble is shining up its spurs for a new romp through the Old West, with an assist from author collective Crazy 8 Press.

Inspired by high-spirited classics like Maverick, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting, Galloway’s Gamble tells the coming-of-age story of bickering brothers Jamey and Jake Galloway. After growing up in frontier Texas, they ride trails, rails, and riverboats on a rollicking odyssey, seeking their fortune at poker tables from New Orleans to ‘Frisco.

Originally issued by Five Star Publishing, Weinstein regained publishing paperback and ebook rights and is reissuing Galloway’s Gamble under the Crazy 8 Press banner and with a new cover.

“Galloway’s Gamble might have been a Crazy 8 title in the first place,” Weinstein said. “But now that the rights have reverted to me, I’m happy to be rejoining the Crazy 8 gang for this reissue. I appreciate their warm welcome back into the asylum.”

“Howie is a dear friend and a great writer, so we were thrilled to give Galloway’s Gamble a new home,” said Crazy 8 Press co-founder Robert Greenberger. “It’s a great book that looks even shinier now with the Crazy 8 Press logo emblazed on its spine.”

An original Crazy 8 Press co-founder, this is Weinstein’s first publishing venture with his old gang. Predominantly known for writing Star Trek and other science fiction tales, Weinstein’s love of westerns came pouring onto the pages of this funny, heartwarming, and exciting tale.

Galloway’s Gamble is available for sale in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

PRAISE FOR GALLOWAY’S GAMBLE

“Anyone who loves Charles Portis’s style of writing in True Grit…should look no farther than Howard Weinstein’s Galloway’s Gamble.”

–True West Magazine

“Galloway’s Gamble…is the whole package—entertaining, heartwarming, and historically accurate. Be prepared to have a new favorite author.” –Jeff Guinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Gunfight

“Howard Weinstein introduces the remarkable Cara Galloway and her two rambunctious sons, Jamey and Jake. Weinstein writes affable characters.”

 –W. Michael Gear, New York Times bestselling author of Flight of the Hawk

ABOUT HOWARD WEINSTEIN

Howard Weinstein writing credits include Star Trek: Mere Anarchy: The Blood-Dimmed Tide and six other Star Trek novels; 65 Star Trek comic-book issues from DC, Marvel, Malibu, and WildStorm; “The Pirates of Orion” animated Star Trek episode; story-development assistance on the classic Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; a biography of his childhood baseball hero Mickey Mantle; and Puppy Kisses Are Good for the Soul, a charming account of life with legendary Welsh Corgi Mail Order Annie.

Feel free to “friend”owieHowieSeSee Howard Weinstein on Facebook. Find more on his books, writing news, and occasional blogs at www.howardweinsteinbooks.com. 

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Pub Day: Progenitor

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By Christopher D. Abbott

I’ve always been a fan of period drama. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been enthralled by period crime fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, R. D. Wingfield’s Inspector Jake Frost, the list is endless.

When I started writing my own stories, all I could think about was writing a detective story. I created one in Dr. Straay, my Dutch criminal psychologist. Set in the 1930s, he had links to some of the greatest minds in psychology of the early twentieth century. I wrote two books with Straay. Sir Laurence Dies, and Dr. Chandrix Dies. They were Agatha Christie styled mystery books, because the model for Dr. Straay was the amazingly intelligent Hercule Poirot. Sir Laurence Dies later won the Reader’s Favorite Bronze Medal in the Fiction—Mystery—Sleuth genre, in 2014.

Since then, I’d spent a lot of time lost within another passion of mine, mythology. Specifically, Ancient Egyptian. I penned a short story for a publisher in London called Songs of Beast. A dark anthology that had to have the main protagonist as an animal. Later I found I was so enamored with it, I took that story and fashioned it into Songs of the Osirian. It was followed by Rise of the Jackal King, Daughter of Ra, and Citadel of Ra, which completed the series.

Throughout my ten years of publishing, I was blessed to meet and become friends with actress and activist Chase Masterson. She graciously penned a foreword for the first in my series of Osirian books, and through her, I was able to present myself to the public at a few conventions. That’s where I met Michael Jan Friedman. After that, my writing life changed.

Mike is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He not only helped me with getting out there, but he also wrote the foreword for my second Osirian book, Rise of the Jackal King. His advice and experience continue to help hone my skill. When I wrote my first pastiche story, Sherlock Holmes: A Scandalous Affair, he read through it and gave me fabulous feedback.

After a long period of writing Fantasy, I wanted to get back into something more period driven. I think the genesis of my idea for Progenitor came from a mixture of sci-fi, mystery, and horror. I love old films like The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and TV shows such as Tales From The Crypt, or The Invaders. There’s something about the early ’50s and ’60s TV shows that’s missing in today’s broadcasting. Character-driven stories and dialogue are what I’m all about. Without the benefit of special effects, older shows had to rely on actors to suspend our disbelief, and boy did they do it well!

Progenitor is my first book published by Crazy8Press. It’s essentially a 1940s period sci-fi horror. Set during World War II, we see an America under attack from strange monsters, with no one really understanding where they sprang from. A group of survivors, led by General William Marshall and a British Colonel, find solitude in Camp Detrick—a place set up specifically to deal with the type of disaster that has disconnected America with the rest of the world. Once inside, our heroes discover a far bigger threat in the work conducted by scientists led by a German, Dr. Hans Grunner. Without giving too much away, think Alien meets The Thing and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how awful their situation is about to get…

Author's Spotlight, New Releases

JSA RAGNAROK: Escape from Limbo!

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All writers have them, those stories or books that are written but for any number of reasons never see publication. Often, the reason is as simple as it didn’t sell. Other times, it can get a lot more complicated.

JSA: Ragnarok is one of the complicated ones, which explains why it was a long time in the publishing.

I signed the contract to write the first of what was supposed to be a trilogy of Justice Society of America novels in 2004 for iBooks, whose publisher Byron Preiss had a license with DC Comics to publish a line of novels. My first draft was delivered on July 27, 2005, and my revised draft in October; the book and its cover (a painting by Alex Ross as seen below) were designed and laid out by early 2006; the color printout I have of the original cover is dated February 16, 2006, even though according to the publishing information on the title page in the PDF I have of the designed book the “First iBook edition” date is given as January 2006.

But there was a good reason for the delays and confused timing.

On July 9, 2005, literally, while I was writing the final chapters of Ragnarok, I received word that 52-year-old Byron had been killed in a traffic accident on Long Island. I was told iBooks intended to keep going with its publishing program and that I should finish the book. In early February 2006, I was informed it would be going to go to press later that month. The paperback edition of the novelization of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman (which I edited on the DC side of things) made it through to printed copies. My book, next on the schedule, wasn’t as lucky. On February 22, 2006, iBooks announced its Chapter 7 bankruptcy, putting a halt to their entire operation. Even Crisis on Infinite Earths suffered, the publisher’s financial collapse putting a halt to the distribution of the majority of those printed copies.

It left Ragnarok trapped, appropriately enough, in limbo. The bankruptcy created a tangled web of rights with DC, the courts, and the legal entity which would later acquire iBooks’ assets in the bankruptcy sale. I made an attempt to unravel things several years ago, but it took until now to finally take the necessary steps to get JSA: Ragnarok into print.

But much like the JSA itself, Ragnarok couldn’t be kept in limbo forever. Sooner or later, it was bound to escape. And where better to land than here, at Crazy 8 Press!

It begins with the Wizard and the Injustice Society declaring war on Mister Terrific, Power Girl, and the rest of the members of the Justice Society of America in the modern era, then takes a deep dive into the closing days of World War II with the Golden Age Flash, Green Lantern, and their colleagues, before returning to today… but not before taking a deadly detour through Limbo!

Now, at last, Ragnarok is coming!

I hope it’s been worth the wait.

–Paul Kupperberg

Read a FREE EXCERPT from JSA: Ragnarok here on PaulKupperberg.com

Now available in paperback or eBook on Amazon or direct from the author for $18.00 shipped payable to PayPal.me/PaulKupperberg.

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