Tag Archives: Kathleen David

Conventions, New Releases

Crazy 8 Press Celebrates its 8th Anniversary at Shore Leave 40

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Way back in 2010, Mike Friedman walked out of the Men’s Room at Shore Leave and wound up creating Crazy 8 Press, making its debut at the show a year later. And here we are again, back with more news, new books and lots of fun.

As you know, we killed our co-founder Glenn Hauman. We did this with malice aforethought and everyone is now arguing who had the most fun. The discussion will no doubt continue throughout the weekend.

Russ Colchamiro, Peter David, Mary Fan, Mike Friedman, Bob Greenberger, the late Glenn Hauman, and Aaron Rosenberg will be participating in a variety of panels and events but you can also find the collective at the following events:

Friday

Glenn Hauman Wake, Hunt/Valley Rooms, 9:00-10:00 p.m.

Come pay your respects as we celebrate a life lived to its utmost, pissing people off, angering them into a murderous rage, suing him for all he’s worth (joke’s on them), and worse. The body will lie in state and members of the professional community will offer up eulogies.

Meet the Pros, Lower Lobby, 10:00 p.m.-Midnight

We will be selling our latest works including, of course, They Keep Killing Glenn, edited by Peter and Kathleen David; Order of the Chaos, the final chapter in The Hidden Earth series, by Peter David; Cabal and Other Unlikely Invocations of the Muse, by Mike Friedman, and Mary Fan’s first Crazy 8 title, Flynn Nightshade and the Edge of Evil. Everyone will be on hand to shake hands, sign autographs, take pictures, and sell you on buying and reading our books.

Saturday

Workshop 1: Worldbuilding, Noon-1:00 p.m., McCormick Suite

Bob, Glenn, and Mary will take teen writers through the process of creating a reality that suits the needs of your story.

Crazy 8 Press, 3:00-4:00 p.m., Salon F

Here we are at the 2011 launch panel.

They did it. They killed Glenn Hauman. He will be lying in state during their annual presentation so make sure you pay your respects. Learn what is coming, dead or alive, from your favorite writers. Peter David (M), Russ Colchamiro, Kathleen David, Mary Fan, Michael Jan Friedman, Bob Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Aaron Rosenberg

Workshop 2: Group Story 4:00-5:00 p.m., McCormick Suite

Mike, Peter, and Bob have been working together and will bring their collaborative experience to the teen writers as they walk everyone through the steps of creating a story on the spot.

Sunday

Workshop 3: Character Creation 11:00 a.m.-Noon, McCormick Suite

Aaron and Russ are joined by our fellow author (and teacher) Kelli Fitzpatrick as they teach teen writers what goes into making interesting, unique, and fascinating characters for your stories.

Author's Spotlight, New Releases

Love, Murder & Mayhem: Read it Now: This Mortal Coil

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“This Mortal Coil” from Peter David, Kathleen David, and Sean O’Shea asks the questions: Wouldn’t it be great to have someone sleep for us, because we have so much stuff to do? But what if a sleep surrogate discovers that one of the people he’s sleeping for is actually a murderer? Would he ignore it, report it …or investigate it himself?

To find out, here’s an early look:

This Mortal Coil

by Peter David, Kathleen David, and Sean O’Shea

My lover, whom I have never met, is dead.

I do not know her name. I have no idea where I might have met her. Her voice keeps changing every time I hear it, its tone shifting depending on what is being discussed. But she is beautiful and she is mine, and I can feel her moving beneath me as I thrust into her in an environment that keeps shifting around us.

Sometimes we are in a bedroom and sometimes on a beach and sometimes in a forest, oftentimes changing while we have sex, because literally anything can happen during that time. She is exquisite and beautiful and everything a woman could ever want to be, and I love her and I hate her. I know I hate her because I can see my hands wrapped around her throat, strangling her fiercely. Her eyes are bulging wide and there is pure terror in them. Does she know that I am about to take her life? What did she say to set me off? What could she have said, because I love her so much, and yet I despise her, the bitch.

She pulls away from me, somehow breaking my grip on her.

She staggers and I punch her as hard as I can, in the solar plexus.

She gasps, hurtles backward from the impact, and there is a window behind her. Her body slams against it, the glass shattering from the impact and she falls through it. I run to the window and look down, and I have only the briefest glimpse of her spiraling down, down toward the sidewalk. She hits it with a thud and, my God, there is blood just everywhere. People gather around her, screaming, shouting that someone should dial 911. No one does. They are all videoing her. No one is trying to get help for her. They are all racing to be the first person to post the video of her death on line, because that is the world that we live in now.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

And as she lies there, unmoving, bleeding profusely, her eyes snap open and she is looking straight up at me. I am now standing by her side, and she speaks in a shattered whisper. “Save me. Help me. Avenge me,” she says.

I am screaming when I wake up, but I am making no sounds when I do so. My mouth is open, but all the shrieks that I want to emit are locked in my throat. I do manage to sit up so violently that I knock loose the Dreambucket. That isn’t what it’s actually called. It has some long, technical name that is typically abbreviated as DMBKT, and that’s where Dreambucket came from. It is an elaborate metal grid on my head, carefully fitted to a series of tiny implants that run along the base of my skull. My hair has grown over them so only a close scrutiny would be able to perceive them, and even then the observer might not know exactly what it is that they are looking at.

The techie is standing there, studying the readouts. Her name is Doctor Grace. Once upon a time she might have been beautiful, but somewhere in her life she forgot how to smile and that omission has permanently screwed up her face, turning it into a twisted remnant of something that was once a caring human being. Now all she is concerned about are her readouts. She squints and sees only my reactions as they are charted on the large electronic screens in front of her, either not noticing or not caring about my startled rise from slumber. “Rough outing, Mr. Martini?”

To read the rest of “This Mortal Coil” click here.

Author's Spotlight, New Releases

Love, Murder & Mayhem – When the Ideas Don’t Come … Until they Do

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“I have no idea what to write.”

That was what I told my wife, Kathleen.

People always ask where writers get their ideas. They never understand the simple fact: we become writers because our brains are wired in such a way that the ideas come to us with such ferocity that we are compelled to write them down, and then ideally distribute them to as many people as possible with—ideally—our names accompanying them in as large letters as possible.

But sometimes the ideas don’t come. Especially, for me, when it comes to something very specific. In this case, it was for Russ Colchamiro’s new short story anthology for Crazy 8 Press, Love, Murder & Mayhem. The story was to have a science fiction setting and involve love and murder. I had thought about it, pondered it, but nothing was coming, maybe because writing science fiction isn’t really my strong suit. Fantasy, yes. Star Trek, of course. Superheroes, definitely. But an SF themed story just wasn’t singing to me.

And Kathleen said, “Sean and I came up with a story idea ages ago. But we never wrote it.” Sean is her brother.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We were joking about how it would be great to have someone sleep for us, because we had so much stuff to do,” she said. “And that kind of led us to the idea of what if you could? And that led to the idea of what if one of the sleepers discovers that one of his ‘brains’ was a murderer?”

Immediately my mind raced. “Oh my God, that’s perfect. Can I take that?”

“Sure,” she said.

And I did. And I wrote it. And I credited both Kath and her brother in the byline.  Because sometimes you get your ideas from the people sitting right next to you.

So be sure to go out and buy Love, Murder & Mayhem so that you can read “Mortal Coil” plus a bunch of other great stories.

But mostly mine.  Well…ours.

Love, Murder & Mayhem is now available for sale both in print and ebook formats.

Peter David is a prolific author whose career, and continued popularity, spans nearly two decades. He has worked in every conceivable media: Television, film, books (fiction, non-fiction and audio), short stories, and comic books, and acquired followings in all of them. He is also a founding member of Crazy 8 Press.

In the literary field, Peter has had over a hundred novels published, including numerous appearances on the New York Times Bestsellers List. His novels include Artful, Sir Apropos of Nothing (A “fast, fun, heroic fantasy satire”—Publishers Weekly), Knight Life, Howling Mad, and the Psi-Man adventure series. He is the co-creator and author of the bestselling Star Trek: New Frontier series for Pocket Books, and has also written such Trek novels as Q-Squared, The Siege, Q-in-Law, Vendetta, I, Q (with John de Lancie), A Rock and a Hard Place, and Imzadi. He produced the three Babylon 5 Centauri Prime novels, and has also had his short fiction published in such collections as Shock Rock, Shock Rock II, and Otherwere, as well as Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Peter’s comic book resume includes an award-winning twelve year run on The Incredible Hulk, and he has also worked on such varied and popular titles as X-Factor, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Fallen Angel, Supergirl, Fallen Angel, Young Justice, Soulsearchers and Company, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Star Trek, Wolverine, The Phantom, Sachs & Violens, and many others. He has also written comic book related novels, such as The Hulk: What Savage Beast, and co-edited The Ultimate Hulk short story collection.

Peter is the co-creator, with popular science fiction icon Bill Mumy (of Lost in Space and Babylon 5 fame) of the Cable Ace Award-nominated science fiction series Space Cases, which ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon. He has written several scripts for the Hugo Award winning TV series Babylon 5, and the sequel series, Crusade. He has also written several films for Full Moon Entertainment and co-produced two of them, including two installments in the popular Trancers series as well as the science fiction western spoof Oblivion, which won the Gold Award at the 1994 Houston International Film Festival for best Theatrical Feature Film, Fantasy/Horror category.

Peter’s awards and citations include: the Haxtur Award 1996 (Spain), Best Comic script; OZCon 1995 award (Australia), Favorite International Writer; Comic Buyers Guide 1995 Fan Awards, Favorite writer; Wizard Fan Award Winner 1993; Golden Duck Award for Young Adult Series (Starfleet Academy), 1994; UK Comic Art Award, 1993; Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, 1993, and the Julie Award in 2007. He lives in New York with his wife, Kathleen, and their daughter Caroline.