Writing is, by and large, the loneliest profession you can undertake. It’s not like a typical office job where, if you run into problems, you can go to your supervisor and get some guidance from him or her. It’s not like your friends can inform you about a procedure you didn’t know about that will solve the situation for you. In writing, there’s you and the computer screen and that’s it. It’s your story to tell: Not your editor’s and not your fellow writers, neither of whom is in your office to pitch in any way.
The Crimson Keep stories haven’t been that way. Crimson Keep began when Crazy 8 launched a round robin challenge at Shore Leave many years ago. We took turns wedging our bodies (easier for the skinny guys; more problematic for me) into a space between two brick pillars and produced the very first combined Crazy 8 combined writing endeavor. Each of us had an hour to come up with our contribution, which naturally became more challenging the further in we went because there was more for each new writer to read. Should really have given the later writers ninety minutes, now that I think back on it.
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.