Crazy 8 Press is following up on the success of its first Pangaea anthology with Pangaea II: The Rise of Dominjaron, which features an expanded and more diverse cast of writers.
A Kickstarter campaign was launched on January 24 and runs through February 25. Rewards for the $8000 goal run from prints of the cover by South American artist Caio Cacao to tuckerizations.
“This time we’re digging even deeper into the history of our fictional supercontinent,” said editor Michael Jan Friedman, “and we’re doing it with the help of four new writers–Ron Marz, Ilsa J. Bick, Kirsten Beyer, and Marie Lillian Vibbert. Ron will be a welcome name to pretty much anyone who reads comics, Ilsa’s a master of dark fantasy, Kirsten’s one of the top writers in the Star Trek book publishing program, and Marie is a rising star in the field of science fiction. I couldn’t be more pleased to let them loose among the civilizations we’ve established on Pangaea and see what kinds of stories they come up with.”
The anthology’s other writers are Michael A. Burstein, Peter David, Kevin Dilmore, Friedman himself, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Paul Kupperberg, Kelly Meding, Aaron Rosenberg, Lawrence M. Schoen, and Geoffrey Thorne.
Pangaea II: The Rise of Dominjaron, like the first Pangaea anthology, explores a world in which all of humanity is confined to a single landmass, and has been so confined for all of its recorded history. There is no imperialism, no reliance on fossil fuels, and a surviving Neanderthal population.
“It’s even more of a shared world this time around, so pretty much every story is something of a crossover. I can’t think of any format that’s more fun for the reader,” said Friedman.
Should the project successfully fund, the new book will be released in September.
Well, The Seekers and The Sword, the second book in my Vidar Saga, is now available for purchase as an e-book from either Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. Wouldn’t ya know it, just in time for the holiday rush.
Thanks to everyone who’s asked about Seekers, and the Vidar Saga in general, over the years. It’s my great pleasure to bring you this new volume, full of the epic adventure that began in the Saga’s first book, The Hammer and The Horn, and will–with a little luck–continue in 2016 in the third book, The Fortress and The Fire.
I’ll let you know as soon as Seekers is available in paperback. In the meantime, enjoy whatever holiday you celebrate and may you receive everything you desire in the coming year.
Over at his blog, Peter David showed off Robin Riggs’ cover to the rerelease of Sir Apropos of Nothing, the first novel in his original fantasy series.
The trilogy of novels — Sir Apropos of Nothing, Woad to Wuin, Tongue Lashing — were originally released as hardcovers from Pocket Books but have long since fallen out of print.
The series and character was popular enough for IDW to release a miniseries by David and Riggs.
Now, David retains all the rights and is embarking on not only releasing new print and digital editions of these stories, but is working on the fourth volume, Pyramid Schemes, due out sometime in 2016.
Peter, and the rest of the Crazy 8 Press team, will be discussing the future at Farpoint in February.
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:
By which I mean, crass commercialism and holiday insanity (pagan cup of Christmas-hating Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee anyone?) are in full bloom, making life, shopping, and social media things to be, if not feared, at least avoided.
And, seeing as I’m at a point in my life where I’ve been trying to divest myself of the endless cartons of stuff I’ve accumulated and have been schlepping around with me for almost fifty years, the thought that this time of year could bring new stuff to replace it is sort of disturbing. (My need to shed that useless tonnage of paper et al found voice, albeit in the extreme, in a short story “Unburdened,” found here.)
But never let it be said I was a holiday…I’m sorry, Christmas (‘cause I don’t want to be accused of waging a war against Christmas in this, a nation that’s about 85% Christian) buzzkill, and, c’mon, seriously, who doesn’t like getting presents? Especially books.
I love a mystery, especially the classics of the genre. I can’t recommend highly enough any or all of the works of James M. Cain, author of such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce (although the last, a fine novel in its own right, was turned into a murder mystery by the studio when it was filmed in 1945 starring Joan Crawford). A great introduction to this masterful writer can be had for about $20.00, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories (Everyman’s Library Classic, 2003).
When it comes to the comic book side of me, there’s a veritable stack of tomes that I’d like to unwrap on any one of the eight days of Chanukah. Most recently published as I write this is my old friend Paul Levitz’s Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel, a biography that focuses on The Spirit creator’s contributions to the birth and popularity of the graphic novel form and his impact on creators like Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Denis Kitchen, Neil Gaiman, and others. And while you’re looking, you might also want to check out Paul’s, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking (Taschen America, 2010), a massive 720-page coffee table book (actually, buy some table legs at the hardware and you can make into a coffee table!). Or, if you can’t handle wrestling this 16.9 pound behemoth (let’s talk “weighty tomes,” wot?), Taschen has also broken 75 Years up into several smaller books, including The Golden Age of DC Comics, The Silver Age of DC Comics, and The Bronze Age of DC Comics.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you towards the American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1970s, written by Jason Sacks. Jason knows the comics of the 1970s like the back of his hand and takes us all on an enjoyable look at one of the industry’s most explosive decades.
But if its comics history you want, the absolute greatest book on the subject ever published is, in my not so humble opinion, Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes: The Origins and Early Adventures of the Classic Super-Heroes of the Comic Book (The Dial Press, 1965). It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of this one 189-page hardcover, which consisted mostly of reprints of 1940s comic book stories surrounded by Feiffer’s brilliant essays on growing up with and entering the nascent field during the 40s, considered among the very first critical analysis of the form. Those reprints (at a time when such stories were never reprinted and the internet was still about thirty years in the future) and Feiffer’s personal creative journey through the four color fields awakened the creative instincts and inspired an entire generation of wannabe creators to pursue comics as a career. Between me and a couple of friends, we had it on almost continuous loan from the Utica Avenue branch of the New York Public Library for about two years until we could afford copies of our own. The Great Comic Book Heroes is long out of print, but I still have my original mid-1960s copy as well as a paperback reprint of just the Feiffer essays published by Fantagraphic Books in 2003.
Sometimes, the story sticks its toe in the dirt and tells you it’s not going to go where you want it to go. Most often, the story is right. It knows better than you do. Listen to it. It’s telling you this for your own good. It knows itself better than you do.
Now the backstory. Pay attention.
My original assault on the story that became known as “A Dearth Of Dragons” dropped dead at 2000 words and went moribund on me. If you had asked me on Monday whether it would ever be finished, I would have said no. But the deadline was knocking on my door and on Tuesday I elected to give it another shot. The story remained moribund. Again, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I was about to throw up my hands, even if that would have cheated a fan who had pledged a hundred dollars to have his name applied to one of the characters.
This is the problem: in my original take on the story, my protagonist, a teenage girl with a yen for storytelling, runs from the escaped convicts. Her boyfriend Partyka is killed. She is knocked out, and winds up adrift in a rowboat without oars, victim of a current leading her out to sea. She is doomed. As thirst and exposure drive her into extremes of delirium, she imagines the distant undiscovered lands of her fantasies, and ultimately dies thinking she sees a new continent on the horizon — a continent we already know, from the anthology’s very premise, must be a hallucination.
This story refused to be written. It kept grinding to a fault at the point where she met the convicts.
Then it suddenly occurred to me that the tragedy I had outlined was the problem; I simply had no faith in it. It was an exercise in futility that would take thousands of words to clumsily steer in a direction that would get less and less interesting the nearer I approached a downbeat conclusion. What ELSE could happen? What if her storytelling ability was not the inadequate comfort of a young girl drifting toward death, but the strength that would enable her to defeat the evil that faced her?
Wow.
After that, the tale flowed out at 3000 words a day.
Only in the first act does it resemble the story it started out to be. Then better stuff happens.
This is always a surprise to the writer; a welcome surprise.
I’ve always written formidable women. This one wanted to live.
Pangaea is now available in digital and print editions.
Crazy 8 Press is following up on the success of its first Pangaea anthology with Pangaea II: The Rise of Dominjaron, which features an expanded and more diverse cast of writers.
Sometimes, the story sticks its toe in the dirt and tells you it’s not going to go where you want it to go. Most often, the story is right. It knows better than you do. Listen to it. It’s telling you this for your own good. It knows itself better than you do.