Tag Archives: Murder & Mayhem

Love, Murder & Mayhem: Read it Now: Reboot of Jennis Viatorem

Karissa Laurel’s “The Reboot of Jennis Viatorem” tells the story of a freighter pilot who retires from service to rescue her widowed son, a single father and chef on an entertainment vessel, accused of murder. A murder that may in fact be covering up an even bigger conspiracy, and revealing secrets that have torn their family apart for decades.

Here’s an early look:

The Reboot of Jennis Viatorem

By Karissa Laurel

What had first appeared as a distant prick of light on Jennis Viatorem’s view screen had grown into the oblong, riflebullet shape of the Fête. Light from a nearby star reflected off the cruise ship’s sleek surface, giving it a blue, spectral glow.

According to the transmission Jennis received as she initiated docking protocols, more than 5,000 guests and several hundred staff members currently resided aboard the luxury cruiser. Jennis drew in a deep breath and held it as she approached the docking bay. Compared to the open expanse of deep space she’d been roaming for nearly two years, she suspected joining the crowds aboard the Fête would make her feel like a particle of dust jammed in the nucleus of a comet. Continue reading

Love, Murder & Mayhem: Read it Now: A Goon’s Tale

Kelly Meding’s “A Goon’s Tale” chronicles Rocky Mills, a down-on-his luck insurance adjuster who just may be on his road from villain … to super villain. Where does it take him?

To find out, here’s an early look:

A GOON’S TALE

by Kelly Meding

“Got a live one for ya!”

Dick screeched out the words the moment Rocky Mills barreled into the office with coffee on his shirt and a lot of steam in his head. After an intensely crappy morning, Rocky wasn’t in the mood for another bad lead.

Rocky stopped in the middle of the small office space he shared with Dick Smalls at City Fields Insurance and took a deep breath so he didn’t snap at the guy first thing. Dick had been transferred into Rocky’s two-man division that handled Supersrelated insurance claims six months ago, after Rocky’s previous coworker was accepted into the Heroine Society as an apprentice, and Dick was a talkative pain in the ass. Constantly nattering about how much he loved this job, loved meeting clients, blah, blah, blah. He had no clue Rocky had taken the job out of necessity, not love. Continue reading

Love, Murder & Mayhem – A Note on “The Note on the Blue Screen”

By Mary Fan

When Russ first invited me to participate in the Love, Murder & Mayhem anthology for Crazy 8 Press, I was in the middle of publishing a Sherlock Holmes retelling, The Adventure of the Silicon Beeches, that takes place in the space opera future and reimagines both Sherlock and Watson as young women.

I could get on my feminist soapbox as to why I gender-swapped both roles, but I’ll save that speech for a Tweetstorm (or not… diatribes are so time-consuming, and I have fiction to write…)

Anyway, I’d written the Adventure of the Silicon Beeches as a standalone novella, but had so much fun that I decided I’d follow the Sherlockian tradition of writing multiple little mysteries starring the crime-solving duo. So when I first saw the prompt for Love, Murder & Mayhem, my mind immediately went, “Perfect! I’ll have Sherlock and Watson solve a murder mystery!”

The obvious thing to do would have been to introduce a deadly crime of passion and have the girls chase down the brokenhearted culprit. But that sounded cliché before I even started hammering out a plot. So I considered how far I could stretch the prompt and wrote to Russ asking, “Hey, does it have to be romantic love?” Continue reading

Love, Murder & Mayhem – Confessions of Angela Hardwicke, P.I.

  1. Confession time.

Our new Crazy 8 Press anthology — Love, Murder & Mayhem — came about for purely selfish reasons. And her name is Angela Hardwicke, but I’ll come back to that.

It was my turn among us Crazy 8 Press authors to run the new anthology. My theme was that each story (there are 15 total) had to include at least one act of love or romance, at least one murder, and mayhem welcome … with every story set within a science fiction setting.

I also opened up the doors (as we have been doing) to outside author friends of ours, and I insisted that the lineup include about an equal mix of male and female writers.

The stories are all one-shots … so there are no interlocking characters or inter-connected narratives. Each author delivered his or her own story, in their own distinct Universes.

But why this theme?

For the uninitiated … among works of fiction, I am the author of the three-book scifi backpacking comedy series that includes FINDERS KEEPERS, GENIUS DE MILO, and ASTROPALOOZA (the final book in the series, which launched earlier this year). Continue reading