I’ve always been an outsider. Not by intention, of course, but by circumstance. I find myself often at the edges of crowds or alone in giant social gatherings. I don’t mind it. It allows me to observe and to listen and, i think, sometimes to see things people caught up in the swim of the social dance miss. I tend to write outsiders as well so when I was asked to join the PANGAEA crew I was thrilled to see how they planned to play their neanderthal population. For whatever reason they punched all my buttons hard.
What’s it like to be the only one like you in a city or a world of others? How do you make your way? What compromises do you make? What battles do you fight? How do carve out anything like a family or a decent life when you are unique and alone?
These things are of interest to me because they are part of real life. What also interests me is a good hard-boiled detective story. I think genre fiction works best when it seeks to illuminate rather than direct so that’s what I always attempt to do with my fiction. Pangaea affords the opportunity to do it in what I think is a truly unique environment.
I was happy to play in this world if for no other reason than it introduced me to Bemal which allows me introduce him to you.
Enjoy your stay.
Pangaea is now available in digital and print editions.
According to canon, the world was made in six days. In retrospect, the work does come off as kind of rushed, but seeing as it was the first time anyone had tried creating a whole new world from scratch, any defects can be excused. Well, some of them. But that’s neither here nor there.
In the span of the relatively small sliver of time that we’ve been around, many others have gone on to create universes of their own, sub-realities to real reality—Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Milton’s Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained, Burroughs’ jungles and hollow Earth, Howard’s Hyborian Age, Asimov’s Foundation, George R.R.R.R.R.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones—to name a few. In my own humble way, I’ve patched together a few worlds myself over the years, most extensively in the early to mid-‘80s in the Arion, Lord of Atlantis comic book series for DC Comics (which I’ve extended into a pair of short stories and a novella in the works—with names and incidents suitably altered to protect myself from any corporately copyrighted reprisal—to be published in 2016 by Crazy 8 Press as Three Tales of Atlantis) and Crazy 8’s own ReDeus trilogy, whose deity infested world was built by Bob Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, and myself (long before Crazy 8, in fact, back when we were calling ourselves 3 Mountains or something like that…’cause (Fun Fact®) the “berg” in all our names is German for “mountain.”
I also had a hand in building the world of Pangaea. Well, maybe it was more like a finger…a part of a finger, really. A fingernail. Okay, it was all Mike Friedman’s idea and I kibitzeda bissel (that’s Yiddish for “I put in my 2¢”), reading a few drafts and tossing out a few suggestions, comments, and ideas. This wasn’t my and Mike’s first collaborative effort; I’d been his editor for several years at DC Comics on Darkstars and other titles so we’re comfortable working together.
The strange thing about world building is that even as its creator, you never know everything about it. In my ReDeusstories (available byclickinghere…I’ll wait while you go order them), set in a world in which every pantheon that ever existed returns at the same time and forces the world into worshipping them again as they had in the days of old while the Judeo-Christian deity remains silent and removed from the proceedings. There came a point in one of my stories where my protagonist, a Jewish-by-culture but otherwise atheist middle-age FBI agent is investigating a Catholic relic and, as he goes about his business, I realized I didn’t know what had happened to the Catholic Church, the institution if not the religion itself. I had to sit back and, within the parameters of the ReDeus bible and in consultation with my fellow world builders, come up with a plausible back story and resultant church structure. (It’s easier if you just read the stories for yourself, honest, so just click here…)
Kibitzing aside, I was a guest in Mike’s world of Pangaea, so I tried very hard not to spill anything on the rugs or break the furniture, sequestering myself to a single corporate farm somewhere out in the vast plains of Earth’s single mega-continent…with a side trip to the other side of the world. Even there, I found one hundred and one little details of everyday life that I had to invent on the spot, from what to call things, the slang used by the migrant farm workers, the politics of company and workers, as well as the politics of a most literal form of corporate warfare. Since no one else had beat me to the punch on establishing some of these details, Mike awarded me dibs and let them stand; other things, like the slang term used by the Homo sapien majority for Neanderthals were already set so the one I dreamed up was changed. On the other hand, my term for Homo sapiens used by my Neanderthal character was left as I wrote it.
(Oh, and Mike also chopped about fifteen hundred or two thousand words from my draft that really tightened the story up something fierce. Thank you, doctor!)
So, just six days to create a whole world? Not nearly enough time to do the job right. But it does explain the Kardashians.
Pangaea is now available in digital and print editions.
The following is meant strictly for entertainment purposes…well, entertaining to me anyway. I managed to work a favorite joke into The Same Old Story, my murder mystery set in the world of the comic book industry in 1951 (and available just by clicking here!). Fun fact: The character of Robert Konigsberg was loosely based (though greatly exaggerated) on prolific DC Comics writer Robert Kanigher, one of my favorite real life characters. And no real world comic book creators were harmed in the writing of this story…
Deciding that being only half-drunk after receiving the news from Murray was worse than being sober, Guy was desperate for coffee. We stopped at the Automat on 44th Street, feeding enough nickels into the slots for a couple of cups of joe and a matching set of doughnuts.
Guy was lighting a cigarette when Robert Konigsberg sauntered up to the table. Tall and handsome in a rugged Robert Taylor sort of way, Bob had been an editor at National before leaving to write freelance. He was, for all intents and purposes, the top writer at the top company, responsible for a large chunk of their super-hero and romance lines. And he knew exactly where he stood in the pecking order. In a brushed camelhair coat and always freshly blocked Homburg, a bright and natty ascot as a dashing alternative to a tie, Bob was a fashion-plate, a teller of self-aggrandizing tall tales, a playboy, an often surprisingly good and creative writer, and a certified lunatic. There were too many Bob Konigsberg stories to tell, but the least bizarre of his traits included his habit, while writing during his lunch hours while still an editor, of suddenly leaping up on his desk, brandishing an umbrella or cane as a sword and sprouting ersatz Shakespearean dialogue at the top of his lungs, then calmly climbing back down to his seat and resuming his typing. His office mates thought he was eccentric. The headshrinkers at a psychiatric facility in Valley Stream thought he was a danger to himself or others. Twice. Once for sixty days, then again a year later for five months.
He was, by all reports, not currently crazy, making me wonder how crazy you had to be to qualify for certification. I thought the guy was a fruitcake, but at least he was nuts in a way that made him interesting.
“Gentlemen,” he sniffed at us in his bored, affected nasal tone. “What’s the good word?”
“Down here on earth,” said Dooley, ”or up there on Olympus where you reside?”
“Jealousy of his betters aside,” Bob said, directing his question to me, “what’s his problem?”
“Pincus,” said Dooley, “was the best ribbon salesman in New York. You ever hear this one, Bob? About Pincus, the ribbon salesman?”
Bob sighed theatrically. Konigsberg had several talents, but humor wasn’t one of them. The man was incapable of understanding funny in any form other than the dry, smile provoking bon mot, which only he thought was humorous to begin with. Laughter was unknown to that sad, dark heart of his. So Guy liked to tell him jokes, the longer and more drawn out the better.
“He sold to every notions store in the city, he sold to Woolworth’s, B. Altman’s, everywhere. But he could never sell to Macy’s. The ribbon buyer refused to change ribbon suppliers, but Pincus kept badgering him. Finally, one day, the buyer says, ‘Pincus, I’m in a bind. I have a special order for a piece of ribbon exactly two and six-sixteenths inches wide, of the exact red of a perfect sunset, with a texture like a baby’s behind, and as long as from the tip of your nose to the tip of your penis. I need it tomorrow by noon. Find it for me and from now on, I’ll buy all my ribbon from you.’ Pincus agrees to the terms and off he goes.”
Bob tapped his foot on the Automat’s scarred linoleum, waiting with undisguised impatience.
“The next day, at exactly noon, the phone in the buyer’s office rings and it’s Pincus. ‘I got your ribbon,’ he says. ‘Meet me outside.’ So outside the buyer goes and there’s Pincus. . .with ten enormous trucks full of ribbon! ‘Pincus,’ the buyer says, ‘the width is perfect, the color is absolutely dead on, the texture so soft you could cry. But, Pincus, I said I wanted a piece only as long as from the tip of your nose to the tip of your penis!’
“’So?’ says Pincus. ‘The tip of my penis is back in Poland!’”
I laughed. Bob didn’t.
“You were saying?” Bob prompted me, as though Guy hadn’t spoken.
“Worldwide Distribution’s gone down the tubes and they’re taking Blue Chip and Feature, that we know of, with them,” I said.
Bob blinked. He stepped back. “When,” he said, “when did this happen?”
“Today. This afternoon,” I said. “You okay, Bob?”
I don’t think he heard me, just nodded out of reflex.
“Don’t set sail for Cloud Cuckoo-land on us now, Bob,” Guy said. “Remember, the guys you work for have their own distribution company. They’re the only ones don’t have to worry.”
“Were you writing for either of them?” I knew Konigsberg drew a nice salary writing exclusively for National, but I’d also heard the rumors that he wrote secretly, under a variety of pseudonyms, for other publishers.
“Hmm?” Bob shook his head and focused his gaze on me once again. He managed a smile, but it never quite reached his eyes. “Actually, between you, me, and the lamppost,” he said, nodding in Guy’s direction, “I did provide some unsigned material on the side for some of their adventure and romance titles. Adventures Beneath the Earth, My Strangest Journey, Young and in Love, First Dates and so forth.” He waved his hand. “Strictly for income my wife was unaware of, a little extra cash to keep a certain someone in the style to which I’ve made her accustomed.”
Guy drained his coffee and rose to go after a refill. “Oh, Bob, you dog,” he said, deadpan, and left.
Bob shot his cuff and checked his wristwatch, making sure I got a gander at the gold band and jeweled face. “Well,” he said. “Speaking of which, I’d best be off. Don’t want to keep the lady waiting.”
I didn’t ask if he meant his wife or his girlfriend. I just said good-bye and returned to my doughnut.
Knowing that guys like Konigsberg would sail right through the current troubles with little more than an interruption in the quality of their adultery made me feel even worse for guys like me and Dooley. His kids could go hungry, I might have to live off my widowed mother or get a real job. . .but Bob Konigsberg might not be able to pay the rent on his floozy’s apartment.
At the moment, I couldn’t imagine a reason I could ever feel sorry for either Konigsberg or his floozy.
Anthony Borelli knew a lot more about Renaissance Italy than did most kids his age.
He knew that it wasn’t one country but rather a whole bunch of city-states. He knew that people spoke a version of Italian back then that was different from the Italian he had learned in school. And he knew about the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII’s attempt to wrestle holidays like Easter back to the seasons in which they belonged.
But Anthony never expected to find himself in Renaissance Italy . . . or to be fighting the kinds of bizarre, bloody monsters he had only read about in the mythologies of the ancients…or to be the linchpin in a grand, desperate scheme to save the world of Man from the beginning to the end of time.
How, he wonders, is he supposed to overcome the amassed forces of evil when he can’t even overcome the town bully?
Lost Days isn’t just about a calendar. It’s about demons. It’s about blood and death. It’s about magic, and courage, and crazy schemes . . . and in the end, the power of love.
And starting today, you can find Lost Days for yourself–either at Amazon.com (paperback or Kindle) or BN.com (paperback). So step right up, my friends…the Renaissance awaits!
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree that Christendom would no longer count time according to the old Julian calendar, which–over the course of centuries–had allowed movable feasts like Easter to slip back a week and a half. From that point on, Christians would follow a new, more accurate calendar, which–because Pope Gregory was the one who made it happen–would come to be known as the Gregorian Calendar.
Oh, one other thing. To put the holidays back where they belonged, Pope Gregory eliminated ten days in October, 1582. Friday, October 5th became Friday, October 15th. This made landlords happy and tenants grumpy, but there it was.
Now, you might say the erasure of those ten days was just a clerical formality, a logistical convenience. We didn’t actually get rid of those ten days, did we?
Or…did we?
What if something happened in the course of those ten days? Something so bad, so horrifying, so breathtakingly evil that the only way the world could survive was if those two hundred and forty hours were wiped from the face of the earth? Which, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is the conceit at the center of my new young adult novel, Lost Days — which Crazy 8 Press will be releasing on August 25, 2015.
Of course, Lost Days isn’t only about a papal decree in 1582. It’s about monsters and demons and blood and death, and magic, and courage, and crazy schemes…and even love.
Hard to believe it, but we’re turning four years old this weekend. To celebrate, the team will be scattered throughout the schedule but you can find us at Fridfay night’s Meet the Pros party, starting at 10 p.m. We’ll be debuting our latest anthology, Pangaea, which was a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.
Our panel, revealing what’s to come in the future, will be on Sunday at Noon in Salon F. You should attend, there will be cake.
In addition, we’re trying something new this year.we have developed a series of five short (1-hour) writing workshops aimed specifically at teenage aspiring writers. These will be scheduled throughout the convention weekend. Any teen attending all of them will receive a certificate and the chance to get a story professionally critiqued by these authors. These workshops are open to all teens (12-19 years of age).
All workshops will occur in the Derby Room
Friday, 7 p.m. Plot – Robert Greenberger, Michael Jan Friedman
Saturday, 4 p.m. Craft of Writing – Aaron Rosenberg, Michael Jan Friedman
Saturday, 5 p.m. Character – Russ Colchamiro, Glenn Hauman, Peter David
Saturday, 6 p.m. Dialogue – Russ Colchamiro, Peter David
I’ve always been an outsider. Not by intention, of course, but by circumstance. I find myself often at the edges of crowds or alone in giant social gatherings. I don’t mind it. It allows me to observe and to listen and, i think, sometimes to see things people caught up in the swim of the social dance miss. I tend to write outsiders as well so when I was asked to join the PANGAEA crew I was thrilled to see how they planned to play their neanderthal population. For whatever reason they punched all my buttons hard.
![Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000035_00029]](http://www.crazy8press.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/LostDays-cover1.jpg)
