Ten years ago today, Mike Friedman had to pee.
While he was taking care of business, a gaggle of authors at Shore Leave, the premiere fan-run con in America, were lamenting the idiocy of publishers letting marketing people drive editorial purchases. As a result, ideas that got us excited were being met with, “we can’t pigeonhole that so can’t sell it”.
We were watching other authors begin to self-publish, with more than a few forming their own consortiums. By the time Mike came out of the men’s room, we buttonholed him, since he started this thread of thinking earlier. Before we knew it, a group was forming.
A year later, Crazy 8 Press made its triumphant debut at Shore Leave, with the authors publicly writing a round-robin novella that was our first release. Demon Circle was published at the beginning of fall 2011 and we have been going at it ever since.
We started with Mike, Aaron Rosenberg, Peter David, Howard Weinstein, Glenn Hauman, and Robert Greenberger. Others, who were part of the initial planning, bowed out, but we still called ourselves Crazy 8, because, why not? Soon after, Paul Kupperberg joined the band and a few years later, we welcomed in Russ Colchamiro. Two years back, we invited Mary Fan to the asylum. Kathleen O’Shea David and Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg both took turns trying to help our social marketing and wrangling the eight author cats. Silly them. But, both were welcomed to the party and each has contributed to several of our anthologies.
Crazy 8 Press is unique in that it has a decentralized structure as authors publish as they see fit, and we all join forces to help market and support each new release. About six years ago, we struck on the notion that since most of us attended Shore Leave, it was an ideal place to launch a new title and hit on the themed-anthology idea in order to showcase all of our us. Then we started inviting our friends and we generated some excitement.
Last year, we decided this was working so well, that we’d shift to twice a year releases, timed to our appearances at Farpoint in February and Shore Leave in July. Covid-19 sort of threw a spanner in the works so that first release, Mike’s Pangaea III, got delayed. But, tomorrow, right on schedule, Mary Fan’s Bad Ass Moms arrives right on time. Since it is coming out at the beginning of our tenth anniversary year, it also sports our brand new 10th anniversary logo.
We have plans brewing for the next twelve months, including some new titles, some merchandise, and whatever else we can do while socially distance and keeping one another safe.
This looks to be an exciting year for us so stay tuned for our announcements.
