A new year means a new round of convention appearances. Here’s where you can find Crazy 8 Press’ team between now and the summer:

Peter David

As you know, Peter is currently rehabbing from his stroke so his convention calendar is barren until he and his doctors are comfortable with him traveling. We expect to see him back on the road over the summer.

Mike Friedman

At present, the only appearance scheduled so far is Farpoint.

Bob Greenberger

I’ll be at Farpoint in February, followed by Lunacon in March. Without an I-Con this year, the spring will feel fairly empty. Still, I will likely next turn up at Balticon.

Glenn Hauman

As usual, Glenn can be found at Farpoint in February and then at Lunacon in March.

Aaron Rosenberg

Aaron will be at Farpoint, down in Maryland, over Valentine’s Day weekend–his wife is none too pleased about that!

Then he’ll be at ConCarolinas the last weekend of May.

Yeah, we know it’s not Wednesday. So sue us. Still, we wanted to jump on to the Should Be Reading blog’s Wednesday meme. First up, C8 co-founder Aaron Rosenberg offers up his list:

What have you just read?

The last book I read was The Belgariad, by David (and Leigh) Eddings. It’s one of my favorite epic fantasies, and every few years I find myself sitting down and rereading it.

What are you reading now?

Currently I’m reading The Hobbit–I haven’t read it since I was in junior high and we just saw the movie over the holidays so I want to refresh my memory, and see what changed from print to screen.

What is next on your To Be Read pile?

Probably Elmore Leonard’s Pronto, which is the first of the Raylan Givens novels. I’m a HUGE Justified fan, so I’m looking forward to reading the character in Leonard’s own words.

“I like the idea. No–I love the idea. But we can’t publish it.” That’s what one editor told me about  my proposal for a 21st-century Aztec murder mystery series called Aztlan. “Why not?” I asked.

Because, I was told, Aztecs don’t sell.

Because, though Aztlan is an alternate history, it will confuse alternate-history readers who expect to see the immediate results of the historical turning point–in this case, the failure of Hernan Cortes to conquer the Aztecs, which eventually leads to the modern Aztec empire of Mexica stretching from the Arctic to what we call Tierra Del Fuego. In the Aztlan books, that turning point is hundreds of years in the past; it’s backdrop. Detective Maxtla Colhua doesn’t think about it on a daily basis any more than you or I think about the Pilgrims.

Because, though Aztlan is a mystery, it’s set in the kind of world mystery readers aren’t used to–one in which an Emperor makes all the rules, people still worship the Aztec pantheon, and slave brokers are honest businessmen.

A big problem was that retailers wouldn’t know where to put it in their stores. My suggestion, of course, was that retailers put it everywhere in their stores. That didn’t go over well.

So traditional publishing couldn’t offer Aztlan a home. But Crazy 8 Press? Heck, that’s why we invented the imprint in the first place: To give readers access to quality, passion-driven projects that traditional publishing can’t afford to take a chance on.

Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven, the second book in the Aztlan mystery series, is now available as a Kindle or Nook e-book. And a couple of weeks from now it’ll be a paperback, also available through Amazon.

I heartily recommend that you try Aztlan: The Last Sun, the first book in the series, to see how different a mystery can be. Then pick up Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven. And then tell your friends about it, because we’re all in this post-traditional publishing world together.

Pulling up Stakes is now live…well, un-live…on Amazon Kindle, and in short order will be out on B&N as well.

Sick of vampires?  So is Vince Hammond, a vampire hunter who lives in a garrison of vampire hunters and has to keep his deepest secret from them:  that he himself is a vampire.  If his mom finds out, she’ll kill him, and if she fails, there’s plenty of other volunteers to get the job done.

We’re trying something different here at Crazy 8 HQ.  Pulling up Stakes will be released in two parts, each at the bargain price of .99.  First half is out now; the second will be out in December, same price.  A few months later, we will be pulling both halves from sale and instead release it as a single volume at $4.99 (and in paperback as well.)  We keep being told that fans are eager for bargain prices, especially in this economy.  And so Vince Hammond is going to be the canary in that particular coal mine.  If sales blow through the roof, we’ll see this experiment as a possible business model for the future.  If unit sales are the same as previous books, well…then I just lost a lot of money listening to the fans.  It’s not as if C8 has a massive marketing department buying commercials and ads; we need you guys to help.  We’ve listened to you by pricing Pulling up Stakes at the introductory price of .99.  Now we need you to spread the words so that others will listen.

Hard to believe that Crazy 8 Press is one year old already. Technically, our first anniversary was in July, but since we debuted at Shore Leave 33, we treated this past weekend’s Shore Leave 34 as our first anniversary celebration. To mark the event, we debuted ReDeus: Divine Tales as a print exclusive at the show before making it available for sale as a print edition and the eBook version is forthcoming.

Meantime, the convention organizers gave us a nice table and all our name plates had the C8 logo on them so we were easily identified if lost.

On Saturday, at high noon, we had a nicely attended panel where the founders discussed what we have accomplished, what we have learned, and what will be coming next. The audience was a mix of people familiar with us, and others who knew us as authors but not at C8 so they came to learn, which was gratifying.

We learned a lot this past year such as how long it really takes to assemble a digital file, how to negotiate with Nook and Kindle. The values of Print on Demand printers and where we can distribute our materials. We learned the need for better marketing and promotion but the question came down to where we can do that. One thing we did was ask Chuck Rozakis, a freshly-minted MBA to help us and he composed a simple survey to find out where you readers learn about new releases and where you actually make purchases. Now we’d like your thoughts and would appreciate it if you completed the form and sent it to greenbergerbob@gmail.com. Thanks.

We also talked about our forthcoming schedule and looking into 2013. In addition to the continuation of Latchkeys every six weeks or so, you can look forward to Peter David’s Pulling up Stakes Part 1 later this month, followed by Aaron Rosenberg’s Too Tall for Small in September. Mike Friedman comes back in November with Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven, the second installment in his new alternate reality mystery series. For those who still prefer print, there will be a Latchkleys Omnibus collecting the first six stories as well as an Aztlan Omnibus with the first two installments. In time for your Thanksgiving feast should be Pulling Up Stakes Part II. There are a baker’s dozen worth of books and projects also in the works and unscheduled so our future looks pretty bright.

We talked about making more of an effort to being a collective presence at conventions including several of us appearing at ComiCONN August 18 and then all five of us on hand at New York Comic-Con in October.

We cannot have gotten this far without your interest and support. Let us know what you think, and what you might want to see.

Roscoes in the night . . . Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? Well, it does if you grew up reading hardboiled crime fiction, like I did, and watching TV shows like The Untouchables. It conjures up images of snap-brim fedoras, blazing tommy-guns, and low-slung roadsters with running boards. Don’t know what running boards were? You can look ’em up. They were pretty cool.

The fact that the Wardens from Tanglewood can open a door in the House and find themselves in the Roaring Twenties is one of the wonderful things about the Latchkeys series. These characters can go anywhere in time and space, any place that ever existed . . . and some that didn’t. So in a series that encompasses fantasy, science fiction, and horror, there’s no reason Mercy, Marguerite, Jeremy, and Matt can’t find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a war between bootleggers in the New York City of 1922.

When Kris Katzen and I first came up with the idea for this two-parter, we envisioned a fast-paced yarn full of local color, humor, and plenty of action. With the able assistance of Paul Kupperberg, I think that’s what we have in The Bootleg War and Roscoes in the Night. Paul and Kris left me with a great cliffhanger at the end of Part One that had all of our heroes in serious danger of losing their lives. In order to get them out of that fix and allow them to defeat the bad guys, I knew that Part Two would need to feature action, action, and more action.

And sure enough, in Roscoes in the Night, thousands of machine gun rounds are fired, a bomb blows up, and there are wild chases both above and below the streets of Manhattan. Don’t pause to take a breath too often, or the excitement will blow right past you. I had a blast writing this story, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Look for this installment at month’s end!