Jim Frenkel is gone from Tor Books.

When this news broke through the science fiction community, all I could think about was how he contributed to my joining up with Crazy 8.

I’m not entirely sure if I would have if it hadn’t been for Frenkel.  But you see, he was the editor on a trilogy of mine (two books so far) called the Hidden Earth trilogy.  It was designed to be a blend of science fiction and fantasy, and consequently was of no interest to potential publishers who asserted that such combos never sold.  The only publisher interested was Tor, and they bought it for a relative song.

The first book was put out with exactly zero promotion.  Bookstores in my own neighborhood carried no copies.  It was the worst distributed novel of my career and the low numbers helped tank sales on every subsequent book of mine.  Meanwhile the second novel was sitting on Frenkel’s desk, and it sat and it sat, unread, untouched, for nearly two years.  And when I pointed out to Frenkel that contractually the book had to come out within three months, and was that going to happen, he laughed at me.

I don’t do well with editors laughing at me.

In the meantime Mike Friedman was coming to me with a demented notion for self-publishing.  He made a convincing case for it.  I was in the midst of trying to sell a vampire satire called Pulling Up Stakes and was being given all sorts of reasons why it couldn’t be published:  Satire didn’t sell.  Vampire novels had to be written by women.  The protagonist had to be a young girl who was hopelessly in love with a vampire, not an unconfident vampire who was actually a vampire hunter.

At some point one gets tired of being told why he can’t succeed.  At some point publishers get tiresome with their reasons.

And so here we are several years later.  The Hidden Earth trilogy had been published.  Pulling Up Stakes had been published.  Within a short time Fearless, a sequel to my novel Tigerheart, will be published.

And Jim Frenkel, who reportedly has a reputation for sexually harassing women, is gone.

Life is good.

By William Leisner

I honestly never expected I’d be returning to Minnesota for another ReDeus story.

In the ReDeus universe, New York City has been established as the center of the action. This is where no one god or pantheon holds dominion, and where all the newly-returned deities are able to freely interact with each other. But “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” my story for Divine Tales (available now from Crazy 8 Press!) wasn’t a New York story, though; my account of David Anderson, an Everyman caught in the middle of the Olympian gods’ war to claim and seize American territory properly belonged in Middle America. I did have David, at the story’s end, send his teenage daughter Abby to safety in New York, and in the back of my mind, I hoped she might have been picked up for a future ReDeus tale in a cameo role. But as for David’s story, I figured it was just a one-off, and he and his little Olympian ministry on the prairie were too far separated from the heart of the action to be touched on again.

Flash forward a few months. Divine Tales was released to positive response, and Bob and Aaron invited me to contribute to the next two ReDeus projects — one a collection of stories with an international focus, and the other set in the U.S. Shortly after completing “Sestercentennial Day” for ReDeus: Beyond Borders (also available now from Crazy 8 Press!), I pitched an idea featuring an adult Abby Anderson, living in 2032 Manhattan. Bob responded to my email with the clarification that the stories in Native Lands were to be set in and around North America… exclusive of New York City.

Oops.

At Bob’s suggestion, I tried to rework my story so that Abby would have reason to leave New York and have her adventures beyond the city. But after a number of false starts, I decided that, rather than trying to force this story to fit the anthology, I’d be better off starting from scratch.

Though not entirely from scratch. In “Revival,” I indeed return to Minnesota, to find David Anderson still growing into his role as a High Priest of Zeus on American soil, navigating the landscape left in the aftermath of the Divinity War, seeking out new adherents for the Olympians, and facing off against the gods of the Ojibwe, who still hold sway over much of the upper midwest.

Hopefully the ReDeus audience will enjoy this follow-up. And if so, who knows? We may not have seen the last of the Andersons of Minneapolis, after all…

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.

By David McDonald

When mulling over ideas for Native Lands, there were a few themes that I wanted to explore. The first was the idea that the coming of the gods would make little difference to essential human nature. There would be those who would seek to follow the moral precepts of their gods and behave in a virtuous manner. And, then there would be those who see the Return as an opportunity for power, and be willing to follow whatever god promised the most, paying whatever price was demanded.

I also had the image in my mind of a man catapulted into this world, returning to homeland after the gods had returned with no time to adjust to a completely changed world and trying to work out whom he could trust.  How would a soldier, already reeling from the trauma of the battlefield, deal with this crazy new state of affairs? But, before I could address these themes, I had to decide what gods I wanted to use, and where I was going to set it.

I came to the realization my knowledge of Native American mythology was limited at best. I guess that is understandable given that I live almost as far away from North America as is possible while still being on the same planet and that my only real exposure to Native American culture had been via old Westerns and the occasional Hollywood movie – hardly the most reliable of sources! But, whatever the reason I knew that this was a state of affairs that I had to remedy, so I got to work doing some research.

Fortunately, we live in an age where a wealth of information lies at our fingertips so it didn’t require me to make a trip to the States (though perhaps I should have tried to convince Crazy 8 Press to sponsor me? Haha). I soon realized that there was no homogenous mythology, but instead a rich and diverse set of beliefs, spread across the tribes and regions of the entire continent. To treat them as if they were interchangeable would be deeply disrespectful so I knew that I had to ensure that I used elements that were related to the region I had chosen as my setting.

As I read, I settled on the Navajo who are truly an amazing group of people. I learnt about everything from skin-walkers and the Changing Woman to the Code Talkers of WWII and onwards. It was obvious that I had found a mythos that I would love to write about. This set my story firmly in the South West, and helped me find a villain for my piece. The Navajo were not the only tribe who called the South West their home, and in the mythology of the Acoma I discovered a being that bore more than a passing resemblance to the evil entity of a religion more familiar to me. I won’t spoil the story for you, but I am sure you will agree that some creatures are universally disliked!

Writing this story has been an educational experience for me, as I have learnt about some wonderful cultures. Hopefully I have been able to them justice, and you will not only get a lot of enjoyment from this tale, but also a new appreciation of the rich tapestry of Native American spirituality.

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.

Insanity is Contagious

You’ve probably heard the definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.” But oddly enough, I’d done this before.

I started e-publishing back in the 90s, starting up one of the first e-publishing ventures ever (no, not the first. I walked the paths of other pioneers, and tried to avoid the pitfalls they ran into, finding new ones instead) with a company called BiblioBytes. We proudly outlasted a number of better-funded latecomers, but time and the Twin Towers took their toll on the biz, and I packed up shop in early 2002. So when Michael Jan Friedman said, “I want to start an e-publishing venture for our books, and I want you invovled,” I was trepidatious. That’s because my mother raised me not to say “Are you f%$#@! nuts?” to friends.

And yet– times had changed. In the decade since I stopped doing e-publishing full time, the Internet had become even more omnipresent in our lives, electronic readers had come out with wide selections and deep market penetration, print-on-demand was finally economically viable, and traditional publishing business-as-usual wasn’t cutting it. Clearly, a bit of madness was called for.

And to be fair, I’d already been dragged back into e-publishing with ComicMix doing digital versions of comics, so prose wasn’t that far of a stretch, and in many ways it was easier. So I couldn’t use “no more e-publishing!” as an excuse.

But more to the point, there were people who were willing to come along for the ride. The hardest problem in any startup is finding people who will share your vision, who will go in the same direction you are– people who are committed. With Aaron Rosenberg, Bob Greenberger, Peter David, and Mike, along with early asylum cellmates David Mack, Marco Palmieri, and Howard Weinstein, and later inmates Russ Colchamiro and Paul Kupperberg, there was a squad of people all ready to slay giants, even if they did look suspiciously like windmills to the uninitiated.

And we’ve done pretty darn well. With over two dozen releases in two years, and many more on the way, we’ve gotten far along the way to our plan to take over the world, all while wearing our Napoleon jackets and hats.

So doing the same thing and expecting a different result may not be insanity after all, it may just be… crazy.

By Dave Galanter

When tasked with writing my first ReDeus story, I knew that some writers were going to have some of the returned gods as actual characters. I wanted to avoid that my first time out. I wanted my story to be about an atheist who found he now had to deal with a world where beings proclaimed themselves deities and had the power to back it up. How was he dealing with such sweeping changes? But for my second ReDeus entry, I thought it was time to meet a god, up close and personal.

That’s what happens in “Helping Hand,” my second ReDeus tale, and I continue the same main character’s experience. In some ways, Jordan Tate is a stylized version of myself. I asked how I might deal with such a world as his? Like Tate, I like to know what the rules of the game are in my daily life. But when powerful beings–who can change the rules with a whim–are on the board, the game can change at a moment’s notice. Can Tate handle that? Well, that’s the story. That, and why a god may be interested in little-old-him.

Raven, in Native American mythology, is a trickster god (much like his Native American rival god Coyote). In my first story, Raven seemed to like that Tate had used trickery to meet his ends. In this new story, if we were going to see Raven in person, he’d have to fit that bill…but if the trickery were too overt, it wouldn’t be god-like, would it?
So I wanted to tell a story that was in some ways subtle, and explain why someone as important as Raven may want to have any sort of relationship with an electronics store owner like Tate.

It was also important for me to contrast the secondary characters from this story to the previous one. Tate’s cohorts the first time out still believed in the Judeo-Christian god that hadn’t returned. His friend Bankim in this story is Hindu and believes in the gods that have returned. He appeals to Tate to do something that his friends in my first story never would have: pray.

For Tate’s part, he knows he’ll never stoop to that. But it’s one thing know there are such things as “gods,” and another to have them interact with you on a level that can’t be ignored.

As a writer, to have the chance to be both Tate and his god-like foe was too good to pass up. One can’t ask for much more than that when telling a tale, and that’s one of the things that makes ReDeus a unique romp.

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.