That was what my daughter, Caroline, asked me after I finished reading her my (then) new novel, Tigerheart. A reworking and reinterpretation of Peter Pan, Tigerheart told the story of a young boy named Paul who had a grand adventure. And Caroline–seven years old at the time–was apparently quite taken by it. At the end there were allusions to further adventures, and Caroline wanted to know what they were.
“You should do a story about his sister, Mary,” said Caroline without waiting for me to answer the question.
“Okay, well…what would you want to see happen to Mary?” I asked.
And she proceeded to tell me. She told me all the major story elements she wanted to see. The mythical country; her conveyance; Purl; Hunter. All this and more came from Caroline’s boundless imagination, including the core concept: Mary’s best friend’s imagination runs off and Mary has to go find it for her.
Every night I would read another chapter to Caroline and then get her thoughts for what happened next. I came up with some of my own notions, but Caroline continued to be a font of ideas. And over a period of time, Fearless came together.
You don’t have to have read Tigerheart to understand it, although I’d certainly recommend it. Of all my novels, Tigerheart holds a special place in my heart. And Fearless is right there with it.
Look for more details about Fearless, coming in print and digital formats later this month.
NEW YORK, N.Y. June 3, 2013 — Award-winning and best-selling science fiction and fantasy writers collective Crazy 8 Press has expanded its roster of contributing authors with Paul Kupperberg, whose upcoming comic-book themed mystery novel The Same Old Story debuts through Crazy 8 Press in August.
The author of more than two dozen books, Kupperberg is best known for his Archie Comics young adult novel, Kevin, featuring the first openly gay character in Archie Comics’ history, as well as Kevin Mad Libs (both published by Grossett & Dunlap). He is also the writer of the 2012 Eisner Award nominated ongoing Life With Archie: The Married Life magazine for Archie Comics, which featured the bestselling marriage of Kevin Keller and Dr. Clay Walker.
“Paul is a terrific author whose work fits in perfectly with our collection of science fiction and fantasy-themed novels and short-story collections,” said Robert Greenberger, a Crazy 8 Press founding member, who along with fellow founding members Peter David and Michael Jan Friedman recently contributed back story to the Will Smith/M Night Shyamalan science fiction movie After Earth.
“We’re all big fans of Paul, from his solid run as a writer on several iconic comic book characters to his ground-breaking work at Archie Comics, not to mention the contributions he’s made to Crazy 8 Press already,” Greenberger added, noting that Kupperberg is a co-creator and contributor to ReDeus: Divine Tales and ReDeus: Beyond Borders, two science-fiction/fantasy-themed short-story collections published through Crazy 8 Press. ReDeus is co-created and co-edited by Greenberger, Kupperberg, and C8 co-founder Aaron Rosenberg. “Paul’s ReDeus stories were really well received, so we figured it was time to open up the asylum doors all the way and welcome another creative maniac into the nuthouse. It’s the way we like it.”
Kupperberg joins fellow science fiction and fantasy author Russ Colchamiro as the newest official members of the Crazy 8 Press team. Colchamiro’s rollicking, action-packed science fiction adventure Crossline debuted with Crazy 8 Press this spring.
As part of his extensive writing career, Kupperberg has contributed to the young adult story series Latchkeys (Crazy 8 Press), the Hellfire Lounge books (Marietta Publishing), and has written close to 1,000 comic book stories, including those featuring Superman, Green Lantern, Vigilante, The Doom Patrol, Bart Simpson, Scooby Doo, and many others. Kupperberg also contributed to Arion, Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate!, and Takion (which he created for DC Comics), has contributed to the Superman and Tom & Jerry syndicated newspaper strips, and has written children’s books, YA non-fiction, and even coloring books, as well as numerous articles, reviews, and short stories. You can follow him at Paulkupperberg.com and on Twitter @PaulKupperberg.
About Paul Kupperberg
Paul Kupperberg is the writer of the 2012 Eisner Award-nominated Life with Archie comic book series, as well as close to a thousand stories for DC, Archie, Bongo, and others. He is also the author of Kevin (Penguin Books), and various other projects. In former lives, Paul has also been an Editor for DC Comics, Executive Editor of Weekly World News and Senior Editor of World Wrestling Entertainment’s WWE Kids Magazine. For more information visit Paul at www.paulkupperberg.com and follow him on Twitter @PaulKupperberg.
About Crazy 8 Press
Crazy 8 Press is a team of best-selling, award-winning science fiction and fantasy authors creating new fiction not available anywhere else. Founding members include authors Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Aaron Rosenberg, and Howard Weinstein. The author team also includes Russ Colchamiro and Paul Kupperberg. Crazy 8 Press publishes in multiple genres, particularly science fiction and fantasy. For more information visit www.crazy8press.com and follow them on Twitter @crazy8press.
We know how impatiently you’ve been waiting, and who can blame you? After all, we’ve been talking about this for weeks. But the moment is finally here, the wait is over–you can go out and buy ReDeus: Beyond Borders today!
Continue to thrill at tales of our world as it would be if all the gods had returned, and mankind was forced to adapt to the sudden, ongoing presence of all its pantheons as they battle for control. Buy a copy now and see how ReDeus creators Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, and Aaron Rosenberg—ably assisted by fellow authors Lorraine J. Anderson, Phil Giunta, William Leisner, Steve Lyons, Kelly Meding, David McDonald, Scott Pearson, Lawrence M. Schoen, Janna Silverstein, and Steven H. Wilson—portray a world where our every belief is challenged, and people must find new ways to be true to themselves even while obeying the rules and dictates of their restored gods.
ReDeus: Beyond Borders is available in print, as an e-book for the Kindle, and as an e-book for the NOOK. Join the gods today!
When Bob, Paul, and I first came up with the idea for ReDeus, we started with a single, simple question: “What if it was modern day and all the ancient gods returned all at once?” A simple question with a very big,very complex, very far-ranging answer, to be sure, but that’s where all the fun is, right?
We talked about what would happen to the world and its people when they discovered that the gods were real, that they were physically back, and that they were every bit as powerful as the old myths claimed. We talked about which pantheons we absolutely knew we would have to talk about—the Greeks, the Celts, the Egyptians, the Norse—because everyone knew at least a little about them, and some of the smaller, lesser known ones that would be fun to play with exactly because most people didn’t know about them as much, if at all. We talked about which countries and regions each pantheon would reclaim—or try to—and where the obvious fights for territory would occur (how many pantheons have held sway over England, exactly?). We talked about the rule of monotheism, what would happen to Judaism and Christianity and Islam when all these ancient gods returned—and the One God didn’t. We talked about needing a neutral ground somewhere, and how that should be Manhattan, and how that came about. We talked about a lot of things.
The one thing we didn’t talk about was what the gods were actually like.
Not because we weren’t interested—obviously we were dying to find out. Was Zeus really as much of an obnoxious womanizer as the old stories claimed? Was Thor really as much of a hothead? Was Set really that evil, or Loki? Of course we wanted to find out, that was part of the fun.
But we didn’t want to sit there going down the list and saying, “yes, he’d be this way and she’d be that way” and so on. We wanted to discover each of the gods and goddesses for ourselves as we wrote. That’s the way good writing works, after all. You have an idea of where you’re going with your story, certainly, but even the most rigorous outline gets fleshed out as you write, all of the actual details developing and flowing into place as you work your way into and through the story, breathing life into the whole. Why ruin all of our own fun by nailing everything down before we started the first stories? Far better to have a few basics in place and then see where the stories took us.
When we decided to open things up and invite other writers to join us, this proved to be a godsend.
Literally.
Because what we handed these other writers was all of the notes we’d made thus far, about which pantheons and which regions and so on. But nowhere did we say what any of the specific gods were actually like.
We left that up to them.
And, just as we’d hoped, our friends and peers surprised us. In the best possible way.
As we read over the outlines and then the actual stories, we discovered these gods. They came to life for us. And as more stories came in, their details overlapped, creating a more cohesive view of this newly changed world.
With Beyond Borders, that went one step further. Some of our authors decided to use gods who had appeared in the first book, Divine Tales. In some cases they’d already written about those gods and wanted to continue with them. But in others a writer was tackling a god someone else had already introduced, picking up where the other writer left off. Adding more depth and more detail.
Bob and Paul and I made sure that no one was stepping on anyone’s toes, that no one was outright contradicting what had already been developed. But beyond that we stayed out of the way. The whole point of the anthologies is to let each writer play in our sandbox, to allow them the creative freedom to develop their own stories, their own characters, their own little corner of the world.
We’re building a patchwork here. We’re stitching all of the pieces together into a cohesive whole, far greater than just the sum of its parts.
And so far, I have to say, it’s been divine.
ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats on Friday.
The interesting thing to me about getting older — or, as I prefer to think of it, “gaining life experience” — is the perspective it brings to my life and, by extension, how that perspective is reflected in what I write.
The other day, I was being interviewed for an article about Robotman and the Doom Patrol, a DC Comics’ character I first wrote in 1977 when I was twenty-two years old. The interviewer was asking me all sorts of questions about characterization and motivations, expecting, I guess, some sort of analysis of the character’s relation to the zeitgeist of its day … but which left me with the (not, in retrospect, surprising) realization that, at twenty-two, barely three years into a career as a comic book writer, I hadn’t actually had anything to say. I was writing a character who had lost everything, from his physical body to his best friends and comrades, and I had absolutely not clue one what loss of any kind felt like. I wrote what was, I hope (I’m afraid to go back and reread it to find out, knowing it’s probably going to be even worse than I remember) an adequate simulacrum of emotion, but the real deal? Naw. Wouldn’t have known how.
Just a few weeks back, I typed “end” at the bottom of “A Clockwork God,” my contribution to ReDeus: Beyond Borders, and after giving it a day or two to rest and settle, went back in to do final revisions and fixes before sending it out to my partners-in-theological-crime, Bob Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg. My process involves starting a writing session by revisiting and rewriting previous sections or chapters as a run-up to the new words I’ll be throwing at the paper that day, so I get this very tunnel-visioned view of a piece until I get to the end and go back in to look at it as a whole.
To me, it’s just plain commonsense that there’s a part of the author in every character they write. Man, woman, child, adult, good guy, bad guy, man or god, whatever they are, some aspect of the writer — even aspects you don’t want to admit to or even think about — is in them. I mean, who else is a writer going to write about? You can only be you, no matter whose voice you’re pretending to speak in, and while the job is to extrapolate how characters will act or react under certain circumstances, your jumping off point for those reactions is yourself. Your character may be a planet-sized amoeba with a genius I.Q. that shoots laser beams out its ass as it tries to conquer the universe … but you are in there. Last year, I wrote Kevin (now available in finer bookstores everywhere!), a young adult novel about the Archie Comics character Kevin Keller, the company’s first gay character. In the book, Kevin is a nerdy overweight middle school student with braces and bad skin who hangs out with a small group of fellow nerdy comic book fans, faces bullying, and is just coming to terms with his sexuality and his place in the world.
I never wore braces and I’m not gay, but other than that, I knew exactly what Kevin was going through in the story. I’d had pretty much the same life, only in Brooklyn circa-1970, not fictionalized Medford in the 21st century. His reactions were my adolescent reactions…and the best part about fictionalizing myself in service of Kevin’s story was that I was able to make Kevin the hero of his own struggle as he stood up to the bullies and accepted who he was, while I, of course, stuck in real life, had to wait a few decades before I was confident enough in myself to take my own stands.
So, you can imagine how much of me, a divorced, middle-aged atheistic Jew who grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, might have found its way into a character like Irwin Benjamin … a divorced, middle-aged atheistic Jew who grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn! Rereading “A Clockwork God” through in one sitting, I kept coming across myself in the most unlikely places, enough so that I even started editing “me” out of Irwin because I wasn’t comfortable with how real some of it felt.
And that’s when 1977’s The New Doom Patrol and 2013’s “A Clockwork God” kind of converged into my yin & yang of creativity. In other interviews I’ve given over the three years I’ve been writing the critically acclaimed Life With Archie magazine (featuring the Archie characters as twenty-somethings in two separate “what if?” story lines, one in which he’s married to Betty, the other where he’s wed Veronica), I’m often asked why I think the book has been so popular and successful. The answer I always give is, “Truth. I try to write the characters in as real and as truthful a way as I can.”
In The New Doom Patrol, I hadn’t yet learned the truth so I wasn’t able to write it. But “A Clockwork God” was about as truthful and honest as I could be in a fictionalized, fantastical setting … why was I trying to bowdlerize the very thing I was so proud of accomplishing in Life With Archie and Kevin just because my protagonist happened to be more like me than, say, a twenty-something Archie Andrews or Kevin Keller?
So I undid all those edits and left “me” in there. Of course, none of this should have any bearing on your reading of “A Clockwork God.” Whether Irwin is based on me or someone else is fundamentally irrelevant to what you take from the story. But life has taught me that truth really is stranger than fiction, even when that fiction involves the return of the gods and the remaking of the world in their images. Yes, the setting we’ve contrived for the ReDeus stories is a total lie, but that’s okay; readers will accept any set-up, any far-fetched or ridiculous situation the writer cares to throw their way, just as long as the characters in those situiations tell the truth about themselves.
When I was twenty-two, I thought fiction was the art of telling lies. At fifty-eight, I’ve learned that it’s actually the art of telling the truth with lies. And that’s a realization that takes some of the sting out of getting older.
I mean, “gaining life experience.”
ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats next week.
One of the things we found most interesting about bringing the gods back in the ReDeus universe was their interaction with man. As seen in Divine Tales, gods and goddesses deal with mortals but we also hear that some have cut off the Internet or curtailed various types of technology. Some, though, embrace it, leaving some countries in better shape than others, which has certainly changed the global economy.
But, I wondered, exactly how did some of the gods actually conclude what was kosher and what was treif?
Growing up, I admit to being drawn to the Norse myths thanks to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Thor. For the Tales of Asgard backup feature, as I understand it, Jack would thumb through a paperback he had of the Norse myths and adapt them into adventures for young Thor and the Warriors Three to engage in. While elementary and middle school mentioned the Norse, we were force fed the similar Greek and Roman myths, with few teachers acknowledging the breadth of mythology informing every culture.
All of this ran through my head when it also occurred to me that the origins of Santa Claus and many of the traditional Christmas traditions can be traced back to Odin and the Aesir. In fact, Father Christmas has been linked to both Odin and his son Thor. We had already established that Odin was among those who were among the more forceful in bringing his worshippers back to Scandinavia and Germany, where he once more rules.
This all swirled in my mind for a while which resulted in “The Wanderer”. In the story, we follow Odin essentially going walkabout in the first four months after The Return. He wants to feel the earth beneath his feet, see what has happened to man and to the lands he seeks to rule once more. What he discovers is not necessarily to his taste and his displeasure is made manifest.
It was trickier to write than I expected given the deadline overlapping my relocation from Connecticut to Maryland but thanks to input and support from co-editor Aaron Rosenberg and good pal Kathleen David, it all came together.
Odin is a fascinating mass of contradictions, both god of battle and poetry, and a figure I look forward to exploring in the future.
ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in digital and print formats later this month.
“What happens next?”
