Crazy 8 Press is pleased to announce that starting January 15, we will be publishing novellas set in a brand new world created by a collection of writers, masterminded by author Steven Savile but including C8 co-founders Aaron Rosenberg and Robert Greenberger. To introduce you to this new concept, here are some comments from Savile:

Putting the Key in the Door

By Steven Savile

I can remember the day I came up with the concept of the House of Doors, which eventually became Tanglewood, the house that Matt Fisher stumbles into, with its miraculous living wood doors that open to neverwhere and neverwhen, everywhere and everywhen. I was teaching, so it’s at least a decade a go. I frantically scrawled notes in an old journal, filling it with ideal concepts like ‘the war between the dayside and nightside’ and a stage magician who was something like the Doctor (Dr. Who), a stone-headed troll and a stick-insect of a man who ran the house. Very few of those initial concepts survived into the series, Latchkeys, and yet they provide the underpinning for everything.

I actually wrote an entire novel in the house, had it test read in a couple of schools in the States, where the kids in question said it was their favourite thing since Lemony Snickett, which was pretty damn cool, but I couldn’t get any interest in it. This was pre-mad explosion of the Kindle and the ability to directly deliver your stories to a waiting audience… I ended up putting it aside midway through book two, I mean what was the point of doing more, when I couldn’t sell the first one? I left it to fester.

Then about two years ago, I threw a random comment out on a media tie-in writer’s mailing list about how with the immense pool of talent we had at our disposal it was ridiculous we weren’t trying to build our own worlds instead of just playing in those of famous tv shows and roleplaying games, etc. A bunch of folk got very excited and we formed our own little collective. We needed something to work on, so I said, “Hey, I’ve got this thing I sorta started but never developed properly… does it set your hearts on fire?” And we started bashing ideas about – the first and most important was in terms of structure – we wanted to create a series of stories in the same manner we’d develop a television series, so we looked at doing story arcs and mini-arcs spanning a first season of 13 episodes ending with one amazing finale, we’d have two-parters, comic relief episodes, episodes that were psychological, almost horrific, or fantastic. And then we looked for the right kind of team, really, properly world building. It was an amazingly collaborative experience in those opening months, with a coming together of 13 very creative minds… and what we got at the end was a story bible for Latchkeys… Continue reading Our Latest Addition: Latchkeys →