Every good story has it in some form or another. Characters you think can’t possibly be reclaimed, can’t possibly be brought back from the brink of the abyss, nonetheless find some measure of salvation from the burdens they’ve been carrying.

Burdens of guilt. Burdens of regret. Burdens they didn’t even know they were lugging around, sometimes. And when they’re relieved of those burdens at long last, we breathe a heartfelt sigh along with them.

Because we all have pasts. We all have memories of incidents we wish had turned out differently—and would have, perhaps, if we had made one choice rather than another. It hurts to know that we screwed up big-time at some point in our lives and now there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do about it.

Except…sometimes we can do something about it. Sometimes we get a second chance to make things come out right. And sometimes, unfortunately, we only think we’ve got that chance.

Which is the crux of “The Seeming,” my contribution to our maddeningly imminent Crazy 8 Press anthology, Tales of the Crimson Keep.

It’s a wonderful place, by the way, this Crimson Keep. So big and complex and ever-changing that almost anything is possible in its shadowy precincts. So redemption is always just around the corner. Or not. Depends on how you look at it, when you look at it, and whether you’re even inclined to look in the first place.

I haven’t yet mentioned the protagonist in my Crimson Keep story. He’s…what can I say…a demon. More specifically, the most puissant demon-warlord Koliander the Undying, whom we met in “Demon Circle,” and who was eventually–

Hang on a second. Maybe you’re one of the two or three benighted souls who haven’t had the inestimable pleasure of reading “Demon Circle” yet. In that case, I’d better not say what happens to Koliander. The last thing I want to do is spoil it for you.

What I will say is that the most puissant demon-warlord Koliander the Undying needs some redeeming. Lots of redeeming. And salvation too, scads of it. I mean, he’s a demon, right? If you knew nothing else about him, you’d imagine there was plenty of room for redemption in his life, and in my story he gets the chance to grab him some.

Not that he’s actually looking for redemption. He’s looking for something quite different—or thinks he is. In fact, he doesn’t know a whole lot more about what’s going on in “The Seeming” than you do. Which, when you think about it, is precious little.

But you’ll find out everything about everything, or at least everything worth knowing about Koliander’s fate, in the Crazy 8 Press tome The Crimson Keep, on sale at better on-line retailers in both print and digital formats this coming August 1.

Redemption—unlike payback, it’s not a bitch. Except when it is.

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

An open window. Moonlight. That’s how it came to me.

This is going back almost 25 years ago now. I kept seeing the scene. Two hands perched on a windowsill as a breeze blew the curtains in. And then the story took shape.

A single burglar sneaks in through a second story window, to rob the place. Yet while he’s in a supposedly empty house, he encounters, well…I don’t want to say too much, but what was intended to be a quick in-and-out job turns out to be so much more.

Essentially, I had a one-act play in mind, in three parts. It was a fun situation; it made me laugh. And yet…I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Fast forward to Shore Leave 2013, sitting at a local diner, and our Crazy 8 Press man behind the engine Bob Greenberger directed us all to do an anthology, The Tales of the Crimson Keep,so get your ideas together.

While I nodded and said okay, sure, anything you need, Bob, I’m in…on the inside I’m thinking oh, crud. I’m lousy at short stories. I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off.

And then it came to me. The Thief in the Night.

I had the scenario, I just needed the set up.

And now, in just over a month, this goofy comedy of errors I envisioned 25 years ago finally has a shape and a place to land.

It’s still fun, and funny, and maintains the integrity I always had in mind. But as often happens while clacking the keys, this story of mine started in one direction, and through its own momentum took me down some surprising corners, which is what happens when you write a tale about The Crimson Keep.

The world of wizards and demons doesn’t quite work like the one you and I know. It has its own rules, its own logic, and its own way revealing trap doors when you least suspect them.

Which is exactly what I wanted for The Thief in the Night. Because when you slip in through windows when the moon is full, you should never think that what you’re looking for is exactly what you’ll find.

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

Writing a story for Tales of the Crimson Keep was something we bandied about last fall and committed to at Farpoint, meaning it would be my first fiction of note since becoming a fulltime English teacher. And sure enough, the idea of the Master, the ageless wizard teaching the kids how to wield magic, testing his charges was the first idea that occurred to me.

Initially, I wanted to call the story “Field Test”, sending two of the characters out of the Keep and into the world where the Demon War was still a serious threat. My idea was to take two teens that had been trained to practice magic and challenge them by having them complete an assignment without using their power.

Magic, like any weapon or tool, can become a crutch and a sign of how well people have learned is to take that away and see what happens. The Master, though, has seen to it the goal is fraught with obstacles that will force them to act or be injured. It is also a test of trust. Since, after all, this is a test during wartime where the conditions are vastly different than during periods of peace. Sometimes trust is the different between life and death.

With that in mind, I needed two students and it seemed fairly obvious that it had to be two of the three we introduced in “Demon Circle”. There was Belid, boastful, overconfident and the students’ BMOC (Big Man Of the Castle). Or there was Athis, a little bit of a doofus, a little awed by how east Belid makes things look, but a dedicated student. Then we have Klaria, perhaps the most accomplished of the current class but haughty, knowing she is better than most.

I decided to take the extremes, Athis and Klaria, and see what happens when they need to rely on one another’s skills, competence, and basic humanity. It was clear that Athis was smitten with Klaria so I wanted to see if that would get in the way or not. I then changed the title to “Assessment” and began thinking of the goal and backtracking, adding in the obstacles. The very first one was a true test of trust between the two, before they even leave the Crimson Keep, inspired to a degree from Martin Caidin’s Cyborg but under less extreme circumstances.

Once the beats were in place, the writing, largely done over a few sessions spread weeks apart, fell into place fairly quickly. What proved challenging was the tone, keeping it light at times, heavy at others, matching the prime story of our collection. Since I am editing the overall volume and crave others’ critical eyes, I asked Paul Kupperberg to give it the once over. And as you read this, he’s still at work so we’re all awaiting the results of my personal assessment.

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

Hey folks

2014 is off to a good start here at Crazy 8 Press. And we’ll be adding to the fun in coming months with several new releases. You want new books, and … we’ve got ‘em!

There are several more in the hopper from all seven of us, but first up we want to re-introduce you to Russ Colchamiro’s hilarious scifi backpacking comedy Finders Keepers. Russ launched Finders Keepers to big acclaim back in 2010, but after a necessary switch in distributors —he liked us way better anyway! — he officially joined us an official member of Crazy 8 press.

We gave Finders Keepers a bit of a soft launch late last year, and now we’re ready to do it BIG!

So … for fans of Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams, Finders Keepers is absolutely for you.

Finders Keepers is a raunchy, sci-fi backpacking adventure — think American Pie/Superbad meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

On a backpacking trip through Europe, Jason Medley and Theo Barnes stumble through hash bars and hangovers; religious zealots and stalkers; food poisoning and thunderstorms; cute girls; overnight trains; fever-pitch hallucinations — and the specter of adult responsibility!

But when a jar containing the Universe’s DNA falls from Eternity, these new friends find their loyalties put to the test . . . unaware that a motley crew from another realm is chasing them across the globe, with the fate of the Milky Way hanging in the balance.

Traversing Europe, New Zealand, and the backbone of Eternity, Finders Keepers is a raunchy, sci-fi backpacking comedy that not only tackles friendship, sex, commitment, and desire, but also God, reincarnation — and what really happened to the dinosaurs!

Buy Finders Keepers here.

View the Finders Keepers trailer!

View the Finders Keepers character illustrations.

Warning(s):

Finders Keepers is not recommended for people who dislike books that are both fun and funny. And are allergic to the Universe’s DNA — it’s potent stuff. Smells okay, but definitely potent.

This novel contains a few scenes that might be considered naughty. So, yes … there are boobs. We’re not talking Caligula here, but if you are offended by some boinking, or the idea that getting it on is too Pagan, Finders Keepers probably ain’t for you.

Also … there are four letter words throughout these pages. Some readers protest that such language isn’t proper for fiction. Well … too late! Finders Keepers is just that kind of book.

Finally, you may want to sample before buying. The Finders Keepers prologue alone should give you a very good idea of what you’re in for.

I just saw an old clip from Late Night With David Letterman with guest Jerry Lewis. They were talking about Jerry’s comic persona, the troublesome, noisy nine-year old kid who couldn’t resist stirring up trouble. After Jerry had performed a particularly manic “Hey, laaaaady!” Dave said that the beauty of Jerry’s comedy was its “purity to the intent.” He likened it to (the then popular) Beavis and Butthead animated series: It was a thing that was always exactly what it presented itself to be, a comedic bit of business that never wavered from its purpose.

That phrase, “purity to the intent” struck a cord with me. That sort of creative intent is something I’ve found to be missing in so much of current pop culture. I watch the coming attractions for new movies and am left wondering exactly what kind of movie it’s trying to be. Trailers seem to be tailored to sell to specific demographics rather than to represent the film that’s been made. A couple or three years back, my son and I saw the trailer for a new George Clooney movie, The American, which looked like a great action/adventure shoot ‘em up. But when we went to see it, The American was anything but a great action/adventure shoot ‘em up; in fact, just about every bit of action, adventure, and shooting in the film had been gathered into the two minute trailer. The remaining 103-minutes was a contemplative study of an assassin facing life, love, and his conscience. Contemplative movies, even those starring George Clooney, don’t sell. Blockbuster shoot ‘em ups, especially those starring George Clooney, do.

The book world has more or less adopted the film industry model of shooting for blockbusters, publishing books that stress the quantity of readers over the quality of the writing. “Blockbusters” like Fifty Shades of Gray would have once enabled a publisher to subsidize twenty or thirty titles by lesser known authors that might not break even; today, with all the major houses owned by big corporations expecting the biggest return on every buck they spend, that is less and less likely to be the case.

One of the things that impressed me about Crazy 8 Press even before joining its ranks was the purity to its intent. Here was a group of writers with stories to tell but without an outlet through which to tell them. Some had begun series before the paradigm shift that they hadn’t been able to finish in its aftermath. Others had ideas that couldn’t find homes, and some, like my own The Same Old Story, were stories that we were going to tell regardless of whether or not said stories ever found a home. Nobody tells us what we can or can not publish. To paraphrase The Field of Dreams, we work on the principle that “if we publish it, they will come.” And we’re in it for the long haul; unlike new movies or TV shows, we don’t rely on a blockbuster opening weekend or through the roof ratings to determine success or failure. Our books are in print to stay.

The other day, Crazy 8 Press announced it would be publishing Hey Kids, Comics: True Life Tales from the Spinner Rack, a collection of essays by various and sundry comic book fans and professionals (including fellow Crazy 8 author Bob Greenberger and myself), edited by Robert J. Kelly. Talk about purity to the intent! I don’t recall how many years ago I wrote “An All-Star Collection of the Greatest Super-Stories Ever Published!” my piece for the collection, but I know at the time I did it, publication of the book was nothing more than a vague and distant hope. It didn’t matter, though. It was one of those stories I wanted to tell and I told it, even if all it ever ended up being was an entry on Rob’s or my own blog.

Science fiction. Fantasy. Mystery. Humor. Non-fiction. Crazy 8 will do them all, and as different as any one project is from any and all the others that we’re publishing, they all share one common bond: That of being exactly the things that we’d intended them to be from the start, pure to the intent of their authors.

Hey Kids, Comics: True Life Tales from the Spinner Rack will be available in print and digital editions in September.