For the first time in almost three decades, Michael Jan Friedman’s debut novel, The Hammer and The Horn, is available in paperback. Adorned with a heroic Caio Cacau cover, this handsome new edition from Crazy 8 Press introduces new readers to the immortal Vidar — a bastard son of Odin and one of the few Aesir to survive Ragnarok, the apocalyptic Twilight of the Norse Gods.

In the months to come, Crazy 8 Press will release the second and third parts of the Vidar Saga. Watch this space for details, Crazy Ones!

I learned a great many lessons from Dick Giordano when he was my boss at DC Comics. Perhaps the most invaluable one was that freelancers will always over-estimate the amount of work they can get done in a given time. On their best day ever, an artist will have drawn four pages. From them on, when opportunities arose, they would gauge their ability to fit in the work based on that never-to-be-repeated output. That way always led to danger.

Freelancers forget it was a one-time occasion, much as they never factor in holidays, conventions, illness, family obligations and the unexpected. When I made up the schedules at DC and Marvel I always factored in fudge time, revision time, and the like so people then would see a script due six or more months before publication and scoff. I cannot tell you how many times disaster would have been averted had people actual met my dates and not the ones in their head.

Personally, I think my best may have been a 6000 word day where I was adapting a script and things were flowing really well. However, I know myself and recognize I am good for 3000 word bursts. When taking on assignments, I tend towards being realistic so if an 80,000 word novel is offered me and I divide it by 3000 words, that means I need just under 30 days to write the book, but that’s once there’s a plot, a chapter outline, research, rewriting, etc. And I never have 30 consecutive days so that should be at least doubled if not tripled, meaning three months minimum.

Quite often, publishers want a book within six to twelve ACmonths so if I need three months and they offer me six, everyone should be happy. It’s when you need three months and the publisher is asking for it in two or less, you have to take time to assess if you really can push yourself this once. I know I can do more than 3000 words at a shot if pushed, if everything is working. I can’t do it consistently and I suspect the finished product will be rougher than I am happy with but it also means the deadline is met and there might be time for more polishing during copy editing.

Of course, here at Crazy 8 Press, we set our own schedules. Most of us have a good sense of how much we can write and take slots accordingly. Rarely do we need to meet a specific deadline but when that happens we make deliberate plans. As a matter of fact, we’re all at work on stories for an anthology debuting at Shore Leave in August as we celebrate our third anniversary. More on that later, but for now take comfort in knowing we’re all striving to deliver our personal bests.

In an effort to keep everyone better apprised as to our whereabouts, let’s take a moment and see what the Crazy 8 staff has on tap in March.

Next week, on March 8, Peter David will be conducting a daylong online Master Seminar on Writing Great Characters. This is part of a series hosted by former Marvel and IDW editor Andy Schmidt and well worth your time and attention. As it says on the website, “Join Peter for an in-depth look at getting to the core of the character, creating interactions and conflicts between characters, how to put your characters in the driver’s seat and let them guide you, and of course, scripting techniques to bring the heart of your character onto the final printed page.”

Over the weekend of March 21-22, I’ll be speaking on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College at Diplocon. It’s a small but growing show, with an emphasis on gaming and Anime but bringing me down means they’re ready for some comic book and science fiction love.

We keep getting asked this question over and over again: “Why do you call yourself Crazy 8 Press when there are only seven of you?”

There’s a reason. And we’re actually kind of surprised a smart person like you hasn’t figured it out.

It’s you, silly.

You’re the eighth person. You, yes little ol’ you, are the reason we do all of this.

Yes, we enjoy writing and telling stories, but what good is a storyteller without an audience? We can make stories that span galaxies, bridge eons, but it’s nothing if we don’t touch someone’s heart with it.

You make it all possible. You give us feedback. You laugh. You cry. You argue. You get angry. And you give us money for what we do.

As authors, we are very lucky people. We have found that there’s someone out there who likes the way we think, who enjoys hearing what we have to say. All you ask from us is a simple request: Entertain me. Make me happy to spend time with you.

And we love you for it.

Yes, it’s not always the smoothest of romances. How could it be? Sometimes we get moody, sometimes we think you’ve forgotten us, sometimes you get abusive when you think we aren’t paying attention to what you want. But still we keep coming back for more. If it sounds a little co-dependent, well, maybe it is. But we do depend on you. Trust us, we’ve been around, the list of exes who’ve just used us and paid us to do quickie little– well, best not to dwell. We’re talking about you.

Sure, we’ll lie to you on occasion, but we’ll be mostly honest. We may trick you, but it’s only to delight you. And although there may be other readers who find us and fall hard for us, you’ll still be in our hearts.

So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for everything.

But we still can’t meet your parents next weekend. We told you we have to work. We’re on deadline, dammit.

Not so long ago one of my Friends (we’ll call her Amy), who had just read my contemporary fantasy novel Fight The Gods, pointed something out to me that I hadn’t really thought about: Fight The Gods is a romance.

Amy, you see, isn’t the world’s biggest fan of fantasy adventure. It was only because her fiance–we’ll call him Blair–dragged her to the Farpoint con in Timonium, Maryland that she saw Fight The Gods sitting on my table and got interested enough to secure a copy. Her hopes for it weren’t very high, I think. But she liked it. And she did so purely because she had discovered a thread that, for her, made the experience worthwhile. “It’s a romance,” she told Blair when she was done. Told him unequivocally, I might add, because Amy is pretty firm in her opinions.

To be honest, I had never thought of Fight The Gods in that light before. I was all focused on the protagonist’s journey of self-discovery, on the conflicts that shape him, on the deepening mystery, on the whiplash-inducing, roller coaster action of the plot. I wasn’t really thinking about true love.

But it happened. Pretty much the way real love does, now that I think about. It comes out of nowhere, when you least expect it.

Mind you, the protagonist’s girlfriend, a New York City cop, is no freakin’ Disney princess. She’s tough, no-nonsense, even caustic at times. But she’s deeply in love with our hero and he’s deeply in love with her. And if not for that love, there’s no adventure, no mystery, no self-discovery, no roller coaster.

Of course, all the good stories are romances. Not just in the modern boy-meets-girl (or some variation thereon) sense of the word, but in the original epic-striving-for-a-higher-ideal sense of the word. They involve putting someone or something on a plane higher than oneself.

Except Amy wasn’t talking about the latter meaning. She meant the hugging-and-kissing thing, the emotional attachment so intense that someone would risk everything–life and more–for his or her significant other. And in the case of Fight The Gods, she was absolutely right. It was a romance.

It was about a guy who loved high and far and a gal who returned that love, and the way in which they redeem each other across barriers mortals seldom cross. And in the end…well, in the end, you find out what the beginning was about. Because the end and the beginning of a book have a love affair all their own, now don’t they?

So…Fight The Gods? A love story. Go figure. It just goes to show: You Learn something new every day.

So far my novelist career has been comprised of outrageous science fiction adventures, a mix of screwball comedies and multi-dimensional chaos.

But within those pages … are love stories.

In my scifi backpacking comedy Finders Keepers, Donald and Danielle are newlyweds in Eternity, who, through bizarre machinations, accidentally knock a jar of the Universe’s DNA into the still for
ming Earth.

As these two characters fret about the disaster they’ve caused, they individually go to great lengths to protect the other. As Donald says at one point of Danielle, “She’s not just wife, she’s my girl.” But when he says those things … that’s really me talking about my own wife, Liz.

We’ve been together now for more than 13 years, and have two children together. Yes, she’s the mother of my children and indeed she is my wife. And she’s my girl.

Switching gears to my scifi adventure Crossline, our hero, space pilot Marcus Powell, is displaced into a modern-day, parallel Earth, desperately trying to get back home to his wife and daughter. When he laments his predicament — that he is responsible, at least in part, for his own misfortune — he’s expressing his innate desire to be reunited with his girls. Nothing else to him matters.

When I wrote Crossline, it was always me — as a husband and father — thinking about how I’d feel and act if I was ever separated from my family, and what I’d be willing to do to be reunited with them.

My novels have been described in many ways, but no matter what adjectives one might use, I know that in my writer’s heart, there are love stories within those pages.