Tag Archives: Crazy 8 Press

Sword & Sorcery & Schmaltz

July 20, 2018 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

The first sword and sorcery I ever read was Robert E. Howard’s Conan, in the books published in the mid-1960s in paperback by Lancer Books, with the soon to become iconic cover paintings by Frank Frazetta. My father had brought home a recently published paperback edition of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs that someone had left behind at his office. I recognized the Ape Man from the movies I’d seen on TV, but I wasn’t prepared for what I read. It was like I had discovered the real-life version of what was, essentially, portrayed as a grunting cartoon character in the movies. It floored me. I still think it’s a great novel, as close to literature as pulp fiction got when it was published in 1912. I reread it every few years.

My next trip to the library after that included a hunt for more ERB. I was rewarded with John Carter of Mars (so…score!), which was my gateway to sword & sorcery. As I recall, it was on a later library visit that I spotted Conan on the paperback rack, where the librarian told me I might find some more ERB books. Conan was hard to miss: a dark scene of a ripped barbarian in a life and death struggle with a gorilla wearing a startling crimson cloak!

Like toppling dominos, that library paperback spinner rack Conan (the best things in my childhood were sold on spinner racks!) lead to Michael Moorcock’s Elric and Eternal Warrior and Lin Carter’s Thongor and to L. Sprague DeCamp and Andrew J. Offutt and the rest of the 1960s explosion of S&S authors, including Fritz’s Lieber’s Fafnir and the Gray Mouser.

Fafnir and the Gray Mouser stood out from the barbaric crowd. First, they weren’t exactly barbarians. I mean, technically sure, the giant swordsman and minstrel Fafnir and his partner, the diminutive former wizard’s apprentice and swordsman hailed from barbaric roots, but they were more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than their loin-cloth wearing brethren. Fafnir and the Mouser were rogues and more true-to-life, characters who acted in the world instead of just reacting. Not only were Lieber’s stories witty, his characters had senses of humor. No grim and gritty angst-filled monologues for these cheating, brawling, larcenous, wenching adventurers. Their swords were for hire and life was good.

Unfortunately, when I finally got to create my own sword and sorcery character for DC Comics in 1982, I seemed to have forgotten the wit. The very first installment of Arion, Lord of Atlantis (appearing as a back-up in Mike Grell’s Warlord #55 (March, 1982) opens with steely-eyed warriors ominously eyeing the coming storm and angsty young Arion spouting his ominous feelings in pseudo-Shakespearean tones. The series (which was co-created with artist Jan Duursema and ran for eight issues in the back of Warlord, and thirty-five issues plus a one-shot in its own title) wasn’t entirely without humor; I always had a knack for witty dialog, but the tone of the series was dry and serious.

I fixed that but good in 1992 when I revived the character in 1992’s Arion the Immortal miniseries (with art by Ron Wilson). It’s 45,000 years later, Atlantis has long sunk beneath the sea (taking all but the most minute bits of powerful magic with it), and there’s a colony of surviving Atlantean deities living in modern-day New York City. Arion is one of them, the quintessential “you kids get off my lawn or I’ll turn the hose on you!” old man, wrinkled and frail looking. He lives in a one-room apartment over Carnegie Hall and makes his living as a three-card monte dealer in Times Square. His ancient foe owns a deli on the Lower East Side that he eats in all the time. And when the magic returns, making Arion young again, well, chaotic hilarity ensued.

These days, it’s hard to keep humor out of my writing, the more cynical or darker the better. That’s why when I was presented with the world of the Crimson Keep in which to write a short story shortly after being inducted into the ranks (you don’t know how rank sometimes!) of Crazy 8 Press, I had no problem coming up with “The Wee Folk at the End of the Hall” for the 2015 Tales of the Crimson Keep anthology. The world and characters in which this was set had been created by Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, and Aaron Rosenberg in “Demon Circle,” a round-robin story written live at a convention in support of the Comic Book Legend Defense Fund.

The Crimson Keep is home to an old wizard and his apprentices, but it’s not exactly a steady home. The rooms and corridors and stairways in the Keep are constantly shifting and changing. Stray from well-used routes between familiar rooms and you can be lost for days or weeks or forever in the infinitely-possible layout. And, seeing as how my Crazy 8 comprades are no slouches at the funny themselves (except for Hauman, but we take care of him in They Keep Killing Glenn…now on sale!), there’s ample opportunities for wit built right into the concept.

Which brings us to Tales of the Crimson Keep: The Newly Renovated Edition, featuring not one but two (count ‘em, two!) new stories. The first is “Glisk of the Keep” by the newest addition to the C8 crew, Mary Fan. The second is “Poor Wandering Ones,” a poignant round-robin tale by all eight of the Crazy 8. All that…plus an eye-popping new cover by the amazing Ty Templeton.

I’ve feel like I’ve come a long way since Conan!

Tales of the Crimson Keep: The Newly Renovated Edition will go on sale later this month.

Author's Spotlight

One Hundred Stories

September 13, 2017 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

“Smooth Talk” (Saturday, August 19, 2017) My father Sidney with a model at the Lincoln Terrace Camera Club

Here’s a little cautionary tale from the life of one of the Crazy 8 Press crew. Don’t worry, it’s not too long, you won’t learn anything of lasting value, and it’s illustrated with cool old black and white photos of New York City and old bums, and it has a link to free content. Who doesn’t like free content, right?

# # #

Today, I posted my one hundredth and final flash fiction story (well, really only ninety-nine of them are mine) on Tumblr, all written in the last one hundred and five days. (Click me! Click me! You can find all one hundred stories right here…or click on the pictures to go directly to those stories!)

Every morning since June 1, I awoke to a stack of old black and white photographs and a self-imposed task, the meeting of which only I had any reason to care about. No, I take that back. Even I didn’t have any real reason to care about meeting this ridiculous story-a-day deadline I’d inflicted upon myself, but once I got started, it was hard to stop.

What happened was, I was looking for some way in which to showcase some of the photographs taken in and around New York City more than two-thirds of a century ago by my father, Sidney (1921-1992). Sidney picked up a camera shortly after World War II, joined a bunch of camera clubs and photography organizations, learned how to process and print his own film, and over the course of the next decade and a half, took thousands of pictures.

“No Reservation” (Tuesday, August 29, 2017)

One of his favorite subjects was the area of lower Manhattan known as the Bowery, then a rough neighborhood overshadowed by the Third Avenue elevated subway line. The Bowery was, according to a 1919 magazine article, “filled with employment agencies, cheap clothing and knickknack stores, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging-houses, cheap eating-houses, cheap saloons,” with a reputation as the city’s “Skid Row.” The Bowery was little changed in 1950, an age in which there were no sympathetic synonyms for the vagrant population he recorded with his camera.

I’ve been looking at many of these photographs for my entire life. I’ve had a half dozen framed photos hanging in my home for decades, but it wasn’t until recently that I was able to gather them all in one place and look at the body of his work.

Now, show the non-writer type a photograph and their response is usually to the photograph, such as its subject matter, it’s location or composition, or the way light and shadow play against one another.

Not the writer, though. The first thing we do is zero in on the faces or the way someone is standing and think, “I wonder what his story is?” A picture, whether it’s a posed or a candid shot, is a moment frozen in time that can capture something of the heart and mind of its subject, making it worth the proverbial “thousand words.”

Not that we can ever know what was actually going on in their minds at the moment the shutter snapped and captured them for all time. But we can certainly see the raw, base emotion in their eyes and expressions and that’s all a writer really needs to get started.

“His Lucky Day” (Thursday, June 1, 2017)

Looking through the photos, I started to see the stories in many of them. The first story, “His Lucky Day,” written and posted on June 1, just about leapt out at me, a tiny moment in time, of significance to no one but the lucky man himself. Not every story came so easily; some photos I looked at every day for weeks or months until they revealed their stories to me. Others started off going in one direction, only to take a sharp turn somewhere along the way and become something altogether different. But all of them brought me back to a time and place that still bore a resemblance to the New York I remember as a little boy, even if the Third Avenue Elevated line was gone before I was born.

Among the stash of photographs are countless family snapshots, candid and posed, and shots of my father and his friends, clowning around on the street or in front of the neighborhood candy store. I started to include those in my story-a-day series, featuring my parents, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, even myself in one story, based on a picture of me with my great-grandmother.

“September 1955” (Saturday, June 24, 2017) Three-month old me with my great-grandmother, Becky Kupperberg

There are about a dozen photos for which I wrote a haiku or used a one-liner to satisfy my daily quota (because some days, I just needed a break!), but the one hundred flash fiction stories (some are more “flash” than others) based on one hundred photographs clock in at around 34,000 words, including the five hundred words of the one hundredth and final photo flash fiction story, a piece of memoir written by my father for a writing class he took during his retirement years, “Whistling in the Dark.”

“Whistling in the Dark” (Wednesday, September 13, 2017)

I thought it only proper Sidney should have the last word and picture.

Photographs by Sidney Kupperberg

Author's Spotlight

A Little Something from In My Shorts

November 24, 2015 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

The cake from my going away party at DC Comics when I left to join WWN.

A bunch of years ago, my friend Joe Gentile of Moonstone Books asked me to contribute a short story to an anthology called Vampires: Dracula and the Undead Legions. Out of that came a story called “Man Bites Dog,” starring Weekly World News reporter Leo Persky, better known to his readers as “Terrance Strange.” (“My real name is Leo Persky. But ‘Terrance Strange’ sounds like he’d be a big, strapping adventurer who travels the world seeking out the dangerous and, yes, the strange, while Leo Persky sounds like a middle aged, five foot, seven inch tall balding and bespectacled Jew who cowers at the slightest sign of danger. Seeing as how I am the latter but would rather readers believe I’m the former, I go with the macho name, not to mention a photograph at the top of my column of my paternal grandfather, Jacob Persky, who also used the nom de bizarre of “Strange” but who actually was a big, strapping adventurer who traveled the world seeking out the dangerous. Unfortunately, I take after my mother’s side of the family. Scrawny and whiney.”)

Weekly World News was a real publication–I was Executive Editor for its last year and a half of existence, along with Managing Editor, pal, and Crazy 8 colleague Bob Greenberger–even if everything we published was false. It was a great gig, and I thought it would be fun to write a character who inhabited a world in which WWN was a journal of truth, although a majority of its readers still believed it was all fake. I was right. It was fun. Here’s an excerpt from the third Leo story, “Shunning the Frumious Bandersnatch,” which you can read in its entirety, along with the other Leo stories, if you’re interested, in my Crazy 8 Press short story collection, In My Shorts: Hitler’s Bellhop and Other Stories.

My mirror misery began with Rob Berger, as is true of most of the woes life has chosen to inflict on me. Berger, the size of a grizzly bear, almost as furry, and about twice as ferocious, was the night editor of the News. It was a position for which he was uniquely suited insofar as it kept him separated from the vast majority of the staff who worked the day shift and who speculated that exposure to sunlight would cause him to disintegrate into a heap of dust. He was, to put it kindly, not exactly a people person.

In fact, I have some question as to whether he’s any kind of person at all, but as I rely upon him for my livelihood I was content to give him the benefit of the doubt. For all his flaws ⎯ and they were legion ⎯ he was a hell of an editor. Sure, he motivated through the twin tactics of fear and intimidation, but he knew how to cut to the heart of a story…as well as how to cut the heart out of a reporter who didn’t deliver on an assignment. The fact that I had survived under his despotic reign longer than any other reporter, since my humble beginnings as a wide-eyed and bushy tailed stringer while still in college, I considered myself one of his favorites. Which just meant that he was happy to allow me to continue to draw breath, as long as I was in some form of constant pain and/or discomfort. If by some fluke convergence of karma and good luck I happened not to be in either state, Berger could always be counted on to throw something my way to send me plunging back into the fiery pits of misery.

“So, what do you know about mirrors?” my esteemed editor growled even as my foot crossed the threshold into his den.

“That they’ve yet to make one that won’t crack under your beatific scowl?” I said, hazarding a guess and risking a large, heavy object being hurled at my skull.

He must have been in a benevolent mood because all he did was curse me and several generations of my ancestors for a general lack of intelligence and dubious paternity before saying, “Don’t you read your own goddamned newspaper? I mean the Mirror of the Third City, you moron.”

I swept to the floor the stack of books, manuscripts, and old editions piled on his single visitors chair that he kept there to discourage anyone from sitting down and staying any longer than was necessary.

“Uh-uh, and I’m supposed to know what you mean because I became a mind-reader exactly when?”

“Around the time I emailed the background material to the smart phone this company pays a fortune to supply you with and which you’re supposed to have always switched on and check regularly for such items as emailed background material on things like the Mirror of the Third City, that’s when.”

I sat down.

“Oh. That Mirror of the Third City.”

He did what he did best and glowered at me.

“Who the hell said you could sit down?”

“May I?”

“Yeah. Have a seat. And answer my question.”

“Uh, you see, the phone fell in the toilet and…”

“Not that question, schmuck. The mirror.”

“Legendary ancient Atlantean artifact from the reign of Turmerac the Elder, made with sand from the shores of the Eternal Sea and silver smelted from the soul of his mother-in-law, Calthandra, who he had cast into the fire pits of Darkworld as punishment for conspiring with his son, Turmerac the Younger, to overthrow him in league with, what’s his name? The one-eyed king of the Gem City?”

“Rubic the Obese.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Papa Turmerac had his royal sorcerer whip up the mirror to entrap sonny’s soul in eternal torment on the razor-edge between this world and Darkworld because, I guess, even he wasn’t cruel enough to have thought of sending the kid to work for you.”

Berger elevated his left eyebrow a quarter of an inch, his version of a sardonic laugh. The only thing that elicited true laughter from him was human misery. Preferably mine.

“I would’ve taught the little bastard the meaning of loyalty, that’s for sure.”

“No doubt. Hell, that’s why you won’t ever catch me conspiring with any one-eyed fat guys against you.”

“Good call. Make sure you keep it that way.”

“So why the sudden interest in a mirror that no one’s seen since about 12,000 B.C. anyway?”

“Because, if you’d read my email, you’d know that it’s turned up again.”

That got my attention.

“No shit? Where?”

“On an episode of ‘The Antique Bazaar,’ shot in Lubbock, Texas. The idiot appraiser lied and told the owner it was a nineteenth century Art Nouveau design, worth maybe a few hundred bucks, and then tried to buy it from the guy after the taping.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh is right. The precious stones set into the frame are worth a few million alone, but the mirror itself is priceless…and deadly to anyone whose lies and deceit are reflected in its surface.”

“So the appraiser’s now sharing bunk space in hell with Turmerac, Junior?”

“Yeah, although you’ve got to admit, that’s a fitting punishment for anybody from a reality TV show.”

I couldn’t argue with that, but, as appealing as was the image of Honeybooboo and her clan and all their Jersey shore, motorcycle building, gold mining, storage unit buying ilk writhing on the devil’s pitchfork, I let it go in favor of journalistic inquiry.

“Okay, and then what happened?”

“Then a dwarf warrior with a sword stepped out of the mirror, cut off the lying antique dealer’s head, fought off a couple of freaked out security guards, then took off into the night with the mirror.”

“Gee, you’d think something like that would’ve warranted at least a mention in the local news.”

“It did. Only the authorities told a slightly altered version that fits better with accepted reality and local sensibilities. They blame the attack on a meth crazed illegal Mexican immigrant wielding a fireplace poker that he grabbed from a set brought in for appraisal by a gay couple from Amarillo.”

“Suus ‘facillimus ut sit credere quod suus’ facillimus ut credere,” I said with a shrug of rabbinical proportion.

Rob didn’t miss a beat. “It’s easiest to believe what’s easiest to believe,” he translated, then fixed me with a stare. “Two Jews who know Latin, go figure. Your mission, Persky, like I give a crap whether you decide to accept it or not…”

“Find the mirror,” I said, jumping in on the obvious cue.

“And make it quick, will you?”

“What’s the rush? You’ve got five days until the next issue closes.” I had taken out my smart phone and turned it on so I could get at my email. I’m not as such user friendly in that I’m not a friendly user. I don’t trust technology. Technology is just what we call the magic and alchemy of our age. Instead of witches and bubbling cauldrons, we now have scientists, engineers, and manufacturing to turn our thoughts and desires into something real for personal or political gain. And the magic, no matter what you called it throughout history was, though often triumphant, always corrupted. The Atlanteans called theirs “manna.”

“The rush is, numbskull, people are dying!”

In My Shorts: Hitler’s Bellhop and Other Stories is available:

Direct from me for autographed & personalized copies, or

Print or digital on Amazon.com!

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Have You Heard the One About…? It’s THE SAME OLD STORY

August 26, 2015 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

The following is meant strictly for entertainment purposes…well, entertaining to me anyway. I managed to work a favorite joke into The Same Old Story, my murder mystery set in the world of the comic book industry in 1951 (and available just by clicking here!). Fun fact: The character of Robert Konigsberg was loosely based (though greatly exaggerated) on prolific DC Comics writer Robert Kanigher, one of my favorite real life characters. And no real world comic book creators were harmed in the writing of this story…

Deciding that being only half-drunk after receiving the news from Murray was worse than being sober, Guy was desperate for coffee. We stopped at the Automat on 44th Street, feeding enough nickels into the slots for a couple of cups of joe and a matching set of doughnuts.

Guy was lighting a cigarette when Robert Konigsberg sauntered up to the table. Tall and handsome in a rugged Robert Taylor sort of way, Bob had been an editor at National before leaving to write freelance. He was, for all intents and purposes, the top writer at the top company, responsible for a large chunk of their super-hero and romance lines. And he knew exactly where he stood in the pecking order. In a brushed camelhair coat and always freshly blocked Homburg, a bright and natty ascot as a dashing alternative to a tie, Bob was a fashion-plate, a teller of self-aggrandizing tall tales, a playboy, an often surprisingly good and creative writer, and a certified lunatic. There were too many Bob Konigsberg stories to tell, but the least bizarre of his traits included his habit, while writing during his lunch hours while still an editor, of suddenly leaping up on his desk, brandishing an umbrella or cane as a sword and sprouting ersatz Shakespearean dialogue at the top of his lungs, then calmly climbing back down to his seat and resuming his typing. His office mates thought he was eccentric. The headshrinkers at a psychiatric facility in Valley Stream thought he was a danger to himself or others. Twice. Once for sixty days, then again a year later for five months.

He was, by all reports, not currently crazy, making me wonder how crazy you had to be to qualify for certification. I thought the guy was a fruitcake, but at least he was nuts in a way that made him interesting.

“Gentlemen,” he sniffed at us in his bored, affected nasal tone. “What’s the good word?”

“Down here on earth,” said Dooley, ”or up there on Olympus where you reside?”

“Jealousy of his betters aside,” Bob said, directing his question to me, “what’s his problem?”

“Pincus,” said Dooley, “was the best ribbon salesman in New York. You ever hear this one, Bob? About Pincus, the ribbon salesman?”

Bob sighed theatrically. Konigsberg had several talents, but humor wasn’t one of them. The man was incapable of understanding funny in any form other than the dry, smile provoking bon mot, which only he thought was humorous to begin with. Laughter was unknown to that sad, dark heart of his. So Guy liked to tell him jokes, the longer and more drawn out the better.

“He sold to every notions store in the city, he sold to Woolworth’s, B. Altman’s, everywhere. But he could never sell to Macy’s. The ribbon buyer refused to change ribbon suppliers, but Pincus kept badgering him. Finally, one day, the buyer says, ‘Pincus, I’m in a bind. I have a special order for a piece of ribbon exactly two and six-sixteenths inches wide, of the exact red of a perfect sunset, with a texture like a baby’s behind, and as long as from the tip of your nose to the tip of your penis. I need it tomorrow by noon. Find it for me and from now on, I’ll buy all my ribbon from you.’ Pincus agrees to the terms and off he goes.”

Bob tapped his foot on the Automat’s scarred linoleum, waiting with undisguised impatience.

“The next day, at exactly noon, the phone in the buyer’s office rings and it’s Pincus. ‘I got your ribbon,’ he says. ‘Meet me outside.’ So outside the buyer goes and there’s Pincus. . .with ten enormous trucks full of ribbon! ‘Pincus,’ the buyer says, ‘the width is perfect, the color is absolutely dead on, the texture so soft you could cry. But, Pincus, I said I wanted a piece only as long as from the tip of your nose to the tip of your penis!’

“’So?’ says Pincus. ‘The tip of my penis is back in Poland!’”

I laughed. Bob didn’t.

“You were saying?” Bob prompted me, as though Guy hadn’t spoken.

“Worldwide Distribution’s gone down the tubes and they’re taking Blue Chip and Feature, that we know of, with them,” I said.

Bob blinked. He stepped back. “When,” he said, “when did this happen?”

“Today. This afternoon,” I said. “You okay, Bob?”

I don’t think he heard me, just nodded out of reflex.

“Don’t set sail for Cloud Cuckoo-land on us now, Bob,” Guy said. “Remember, the guys you work for have their own distribution company. They’re the only ones don’t have to worry.”

“Were you writing for either of them?” I knew Konigsberg drew a nice salary writing exclusively for National, but I’d also heard the rumors that he wrote secretly, under a variety of pseudonyms, for other publishers.

“Hmm?” Bob shook his head and focused his gaze on me once again. He managed a smile, but it never quite reached his eyes. “Actually, between you, me, and the lamppost,” he said, nodding in Guy’s direction, “I did provide some unsigned material on the side for some of their adventure and romance titles. Adventures Beneath the Earth, My Strangest Journey, Young and in Love, First Dates and so forth.” He waved his hand. “Strictly for income my wife was unaware of, a little extra cash to keep a certain someone in the style to which I’ve made her accustomed.”

Guy drained his coffee and rose to go after a refill. “Oh, Bob, you dog,” he said, deadpan, and left.

Bob shot his cuff and checked his wristwatch, making sure I got a gander at the gold band and jeweled face. “Well,” he said. “Speaking of which, I’d best be off. Don’t want to keep the lady waiting.”

I didn’t ask if he meant his wife or his girlfriend. I just said good-bye and returned to my doughnut.

Knowing that guys like Konigsberg would sail right through the current troubles with little more than an interruption in the quality of their adultery made me feel even worse for guys like me and Dooley. His kids could go hungry, I might have to live off my widowed mother or get a real job. . .but Bob Konigsberg might not be able to pay the rent on his floozy’s apartment.

At the moment, I couldn’t imagine a reason I could ever feel sorry for either Konigsberg or his floozy.

That would change soon enough.

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Love Is A Many Splendored Thing

February 7, 2014 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

I love books.

I love to read them. I love to hold them in my hands as their stories and mysteries unfold for me with the turn of every page. I love to own them and to see them on the shelves of my bookcases. I especially love old books, the older the better, especially surprising little tomes from the 19^th and early-20^th centuries, often found for a few dollars at tag sales and library sales, books with solid, tooled covers over thick, luxurious pages, and engravings protected by sheets of vellum that have survived the journeys through the decades, many inscribed to recipients long, long gone.

I love books for the stories they tell and the worlds they open to me. And I love the people who write the books that I love so much. Some, of course, more than others.

Take F. Scott Fitzgerald. I fell in love with his Great Gatsby the first time I read it in high school. I loved it for its passion, for its power, for its evocation of a lost era (I was, I think, born a nostalgic), and, mostly, for its prose. (Although as much as I loved the book, I couldn’t–at the time–quite wrap my brain around why Jay Gatsby had it so bad for Daisy Buchanan. I mean, let’s face it, Daisy was a vapid twit, a thoughtless rich girl who could easily fit into a contemporary reality show. The Real Housewives of East Egg, anybody? But, I guess what Emily Dickenson wrote is true: “The Heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care.”)

I’ve probably read and reread The Great Gatsby close to twenty times since then; it’s a book I go back to every year or two, particularly when looking for an infusion of inspiration. It’s the book that made me love “Literature” with the capital-L pretentiousness familiar to every college English Lit major. It’s the book that lead me to other books, by Fitzgerald and by his contemporaries and by those who inspired his generation of writers, as well as those inspired by them. Ernest Hemingway. William Faulkner. Sherwood Anderson. Norman Mailer. Graham Greene. J.D. Salinger. Gore Vidal. Joseph Heller. Pete Hamill. Michael Chabon. Philip Roth!

I’d always been a reader, but most of what I read up until then was fantasy and science fiction (and comic books)…which isn’t to take away from either genre. I believe great swaths of both can stand beside the best “Literature” has to offer, from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. And next to Fitzgerald my favorite author is Jack London, whose great adventure tales like The Call of the Wild and White Fang pale in comparison with the depth of character and richness of The Sea Wolf and his two breathlessly brilliant autobiographical novels, Martin Eden and John Barleycorn.

A good story is a good story. Donald Hamilton, author of the Matt Helm novels (27 of them–and a reported unpublished 28^th–between 1960 and 1993), wasn’t trying to write literature; he was churning out pulp-inspired paperback originals to meet a specific market demand, but he was a hell of a storyteller and a balls-to-the-wall prose stylist. Elmore Leonard, who learned his craft toiling in the same paperback vineyards of the 1950s, was a similarly powerful writer whose work took decades to be accepted as “literature.” William Goldman, James Goldman, Frederick Exley, Rex Stout, Dennis Potter, Isaac Asimov, Ed McBain, Tom DeHaven, Damon Runyon, Madeleine L’Engel, Sidney Taylor, Ross MacDonald, John D. MacDonald…what difference does it make what genre they were writing in as long as their stories touched me, made me think, or made me cry? William Faulkner settled it once and for all in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “…The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

So, yeah, I love books, both for their physical form and emotional content…and for the path they led me on that brought me to a place where now I get to write them as well.

Talk about a love story with a happy ending!

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New Year’s Resolutions: A Sucker’s Game?

January 17, 2014 Paul Kupperberg Leave a comment

RobKelly-PK_9-13 copy — Crazy 8’s Paul Kupperberg and *Hey Kids, Comics!* editor Rob Kelly on the floor of 2013’s Baltimore Comic-Con!

The seconds tick down towards midnight. The old year is about to end, taking with it the previous 365 days worth of triumphs and regrets, hopes and fears. While we wait for the climatic moment, we think back on what was achieved in the year just past…and on our failures as well. But the turn of this particular calendar page is traditionally a time to wipe the slate clean and begin fresh. A new start in a new year.

Or not…

Once again, I take my turn in the Crazy 8 blog rotation as the voice of dissent. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; I figure there are enough disappointments in my life that I don’t have to set myself up for additional failure based on some arbitrary flip of the calendar. ‘Cause, I mean, really, what says “resolve” better than alcohol-soaked musings in the middle of the forced jocularity of New Year’s eve celebrations? The only New Year’s Resolution that I ever kept beyond January 3^rd was the resolution to stop making New Year’s Resolutions.

But whether it’s New Year’s Eve or some random Monday in July, there’s always room for improvement in our lives and goals we hope to achieve in the coming months or year. My list is ongoing, independent of the time of year:

• Write more.

• Write better!

• Take those four or five projects in various stages of completion and get them into shape so that I can either submit them to publishers or get them into print via Crazy 8 Press.

• Get at least two other Crazy 8 Press projects into print in 2014: a collection of my short stories, and to put together a mystery anthology based on a particular concept.

• Be more aggressive in my pursuit of freelance projects and work. I know from experience that most editors have more than enough on their plates without having to deal with submissions and bothersome freelance writers, but…tough. Bothersome freelance writers have to make a living too.

• Sell the original YA novel that I’ve been noodling with since my son was four years old (he’s about to graduate high school). (I’m determined 2014 is the shit-or-get-off-the-pot year for this project; in fact, the completed chapters and outline thereof are, as of last week, in the hands of an editor at a major publishing house with whom I’ve previously worked.)

• Get more comic book writing assignments, even if it means continuing to badger any editor who will answer their phone or open their email.

• Push forward on the new novel I started last year that seemed to stall out after the first couple of chapters.

• And, after a year or so of having my work in comics receive the most and best attention it ever has — including nominations in the 2012 Harvey and 2013 Eisner Awards, as well as making at least one list of “101 Creators to Watch Out For in 2014” for my work on Life With Archie — to use that momentum to do bigger and even better work than in any of my previous 39 years (!!!) in the comic book business.

New Year’s Eve isn’t any kind of magical time (well…depends on who you’ve got a date with that night, I guess), but I do understand the sense of renewal and beginning that the turning over of a new year can bring. It’s as good a time as any to set sights on the immediate future and set yourself some goals, major and minor. So…I guess I can, for the sake of harmony and the theme of this month’s Crazy 8 Press blog, at least go with the flow and be thus resolved!

Happy New Year, Crazy 8ers everywhere. I hope you achieve some of what you’ve been striving for, whether it’s been since the stroke of midnight, December 31…or just some random day in any random year that preceded it.

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