Author, podcaster and fellow member Russ Colchamiro hosts a live panel to celebrate 10 Years of Crazy 8 Press, a consortium of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and adventure authors including Aaron Rosenberg, Mary Fan, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Michael Jan Friedman, Paul Kupperberg, and Peter David!
Angela Hardwicke, Intergalactic Private Eye
I love private eyes. Always have. Part detective, part crime stopper, part secret agent. And lots of mystery.
And yet Angela Hardwicke, my hard-boiled PI who has now appeared in eight of my books through Crazy 8 Press, seemingly came out of nowhere.
Then again, doesn’t that sound like a private eye?
An amalgam of Doctor Who, Blade Runner, and Philip Marlowe, Angela Hardwicke first appeared in Genius de Milo, the second in my Finders Keepers sci-fi comedy backpacking trilogy, which might seem an odd place for a private eye to show up in the first place.
Loosely based on a series of backpacking trips I took through Europe and New Zealand with a buddy of mine, Finders Keepers is a Bill and Ted-style romp about two loveable knuckleheads running around the globe having zany adventures, while simultaneously mixed up in a quest for a jar containing the Universe’s DNA.
Finders Keepers was supposed to be one and done, but I left it open-ended, and ultimately followed up with the sequels Genius de Milo and Astropalooza, with the scope of the three-book narrative far exceeding my expectations.
When Hardwicke first shows up in Genius de Milo, it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance, but I knew even then I was onto something, so Hardwicke played a much larger and significant role in Astropalooza. After that I was utterly hooked, and knew I’d be writing Hardwicke stories again.
Before I gave her a stand-alone novel, however, much less her own series, I put together an anthology for Crazy 8 Press called Love, Murder & Mayhem—I served as editor—collecting 15 stories from as many authors contributing a range of sci-fi mysteries. It was in this collection I wrote my first Hardwicke short story, “The Case of My Old New Life and the One I Never Knew,” about arson in a rock club in the galactic realm of Eternity.
Since then I’ve written a half dozen Hardwicke short stories, taking her from one end of the Cosmos to the other, with cases about a massive helix of the Universe’s DNA, rerouting Halley’s Comet, a whodunnit in a daycare center, and a case about an AI on death row, “The Case of Jarlo’s Buried Treasure,” which appears as a bonus story at the end of my first Hardwicke novel, Crackle and Fire, on sale today.
On the surface, Crackle and Fire has Hardwicke tracking down an intern from a galactic accounting firm who has disappeared with sensitive corporate files.
Yet the mystery, as these things do, becomes much larger than Hardwicke ever envisioned—she soon finds herself embroiled in a deadly case of lies, intrigue, and murder, clashing with vengeful gangsters, MinderNot rallies, and a madman who’s come a long way to get what he wants.
Dig even deeper, though, and you’ll find that Crackle and Fire is as much about Hardwicke having to make a critical decision—can she be an intergalactic private and all that comes with it and be a mother to her young son who, for reasons I won’t share now, is not in her care?
It’s a critical question for Hardwicke, and the answers don’t come easy.
As you can see, Hardwicke and I have been getting to know each other. It’s been a great relationship so far, but we’re just getting started. Hopefully you’ll come to know her, too.
Crackle and Fire is Hardwicke’s first novel, with many more deadly cases yet to come. I’m working on the sequel now, and it’s a doozy.
The only question for you is: are you ready for the ride?
It was 10 Years Ago Today
Ten years ago today, Mike Friedman had to pee.
While he was taking care of business, a gaggle of authors at Shore Leave, the premiere fan-run con in America, were lamenting the idiocy of publishers letting marketing people drive editorial purchases. As a result, ideas that got us excited were being met with, “we can’t pigeonhole that so can’t sell it”.
We were watching other authors begin to self-publish, with more than a few forming their own consortiums. By the time Mike came out of the men’s room, we buttonholed him, since he started this thread of thinking earlier. Before we knew it, a group was forming.
A year later, Crazy 8 Press made its triumphant debut at Shore Leave, with the authors publicly writing a round-robin novella that was our first release. Demon Circle was published at the beginning of fall 2011 and we have been going at it ever since.
We started with Mike, Aaron Rosenberg, Peter David, Howard Weinstein, Glenn Hauman, and Robert Greenberger. Others, who were part of the initial planning, bowed out, but we still called ourselves Crazy 8, because, why not? Soon after, Paul Kupperberg joined the band and a few years later, we welcomed in Russ Colchamiro. Two years back, we invited Mary Fan to the asylum. Kathleen O’Shea David and Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg both took turns trying to help our social marketing and wrangling the eight author cats. Silly them. But, both were welcomed to the party and each has contributed to several of our anthologies.
Crazy 8 Press is unique in that it has a decentralized structure as authors publish as they see fit, and we all join forces to help market and support each new release. About six years ago, we struck on the notion that since most of us attended Shore Leave, it was an ideal place to launch a new title and hit on the themed-anthology idea in order to showcase all of our us. Then we started inviting our friends and we generated some excitement.
Last year, we decided this was working so well, that we’d shift to twice a year releases, timed to our appearances at Farpoint in February and Shore Leave in July. Covid-19 sort of threw a spanner in the works so that first release, Mike’s Pangaea III, got delayed. But, tomorrow, right on schedule, Mary Fan’s Bad Ass Moms arrives right on time. Since it is coming out at the beginning of our tenth anniversary year, it also sports our brand new 10th anniversary logo.
We have plans brewing for the next twelve months, including some new titles, some merchandise, and whatever else we can do while socially distance and keeping one another safe.
This looks to be an exciting year for us so stay tuned for our announcements.
Crazy 8 Press to Release ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman ’66 – Season One
March 16, 2020 – Crazy 8 Press announced today it has agreed to release ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman ’66 – Season One, Jim Beard’s celebration of the 1966 classic Batman television series. This new collection of essays creatively examines each episode of the ABC series which aired during the first half of 1966.
Edited by respected comic book writer and essayist Jim Beard, the 208-page Bat-tastic collection will be released by Crazy 8 in April, both as a trade paperback and eBook.
“There’s still so much to say about this legendary TV series, and this book sets out to prove it,” said Beard, who also wrote the opening essay examining the two-part pilot episode.
The worldwide Batman TV series phenomenon starred Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo, adapting the DC Comics series to the small screen, riding the Pop Art and Camp craze that were trends during the turbulent 1960s. The show spawned a feature film and a bonanza of merchandising the likes of which had never been seen before. Thanks to syndication, the show has rarely been off the air and in the last decade has spawned a fresh wave of merchandising.
Season one introduced viewers to Batman, Robin, Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon, as well as iconic villains including Julie Newmar as Catwoman, Frank Gorshin as The Riddler, Caesar Romero as The Joker, and Burgess Meredith as The Penguin. And, of course, the inaugural season thrilled fans with the Batcave, Wayne Manor, and one of the most heart-pounding elements of the entire franchise — the Batmobile.
“Crazy 8 Press is always on the look-out for kindred spirits, given most of our roots in comics,” said Crazy 8 co-founder Robert Greenberger, who has spent more than 30 years as a comic book editor and contributor for DC and Marvel Comics. “Previously, Crazy 8 released Rob Kelly’s anthology Hey Kids, Comics, a look back at the joys of comic collecting. It was high time we added to that portion of our inventory. Jim’s book project seemed a perfect fit. And as we still see today, Batman never goes out of style.”
The paperback ($14.99) and eBook ($4.99) contains essays from Crazy 8’s Greenberger and long-time comic book writer Paul Kupperberg, in addition to frequent Crazy 8 contributors Keith DeCandido, Will Murray, and Dayton Ward. Other ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! contributors include long-time Batman writer Chuck Dixon, comics historian Peter Sanderson, ComicMix contributor Ed Catto, 13thDimension.com’s Dan Greenfield, the Batcave Podcast’s John S. Drew, Rich Handley, Alan J. Porter, Pat Evans, Steve Thompson, Mark B. Racop, Joe Crowe, and, Chris Franklin.
“I’ve never ceased in being amazed and delighted at fans’ appetite for a show that lasted barely over two years back in the 1960s,” Beard added. “It‘s a testament to not only the character’s overall appeal, but specifically the unique take on Batman offered up in the series.”
Beard previously explored the television series in Gotham City 14 Miles (Sequart), an anthology of essays covering the length and breadth of Batmania. He is a regular writer for Marvel.com, an essayist for pop culture collections, and made his Crazy 8 Press debut in 2019’s Thrilling Adventure Yarns with a short story co-written with his late wife Becky.
He is already at work on ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! Volume two, exploring the complete second season, to be released by Crazy 8 Press in 2021.
ZLONK! ZOK! ZOWIE! The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman ’66 – Season One will be available for purchase on Amazon’sand Barnes & Noble’s sites,as well as various comic book, and mass media conventions.
ABOUT JIM BEARD
Jim Beard pounds out adventure fiction with classic pulp style and flair.
A native Toledoan, he was introduced to comic books at an early age by his father, who passed on to him a love for the medium and the pulp characters who preceded it. After decades of reading, collecting and dissecting comics, Jim became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since then he’s written official Spider-Man, X-Files, and Planet of the Apes prose fiction, Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic stories, and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history.
His prose work also includes Gotham City 14 Miles, a book of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series; Sg.t Janus, Spirit-Breaker, a collection of pulp ghost stories featuring an Edwardian occult detective; Monster Earth, a shared-world giant monster anthology; and Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure.
Jim also currently provides regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website.
Announcing BAD ASS MOMS
Too often in fiction, I’ve found myself asking: Where are the moms?
Dead moms are a long-established trope in stories, especially in sci-fi/fantasy. Mothers are, culturally speaking, meant to be nurturing figures who protect and coddle, and one of the easiest ways to force a protagonist to strike out on their own adventure is to get rid of the safety net that is Mom. I’ll confess that, as a writer, I’ve fallen into the same trap more than once (in my defense, I’ve killed off an equal number of dads).
When you look at stories—and the way we talk about stories—there’s this sense that when a woman becomes a mother, she ceases to be the heroine of her own story. Instead, she’s relegated to a supporting role for her children, who are now meant to be the center of her life and the only reason for her existence. There are exceptions, as there are in everything, but overall, we’re left with the impression that once a woman becomes Mom, her tale ends. She fades away and, often, disappears altogether. Or, if she does remain, her destiny is disproportionately influenced by her children when compared to their impact on Dad.
Mother figures also rarely figure into fiction the way father figures do. It’s not often that the wise or experienced elder sought out by a young protagonist is a woman who has established a reputation for herself.
Here’s the thing, though: Moms aren’t defined solely by their offspring, any more than dads or other parental figures are. A heroine doesn’t stop being a heroine because a kid came into her life—she’s still a heroine, but now with a kid.
A little while back, sci-fi author Paige Daniels and I were talking about the whole dead-moms trope, which we come across a lot when reading submissions for our young adult anthology series, Brave New Girls. One of us, and I can’t remember which of us said it first, proposed pushing back against the trope with a new anthology that would simply be titled, Bad Ass Moms.
And so when my turn came to edit the annual Crazy 8 Press summer anthology, I knew exactly what I wanted the theme to be.
Paige was on board. So was the Crazy 8 Press crew. So here we are. In addition to the usual inmates of the Crazy 8 asylum, we’ve got a great slate of guest authors (including Paige, of course!). There was only one criterion for stories: that they be about a bad ass mother or mother figure.
What is a mom, anyway? To me, that’s no different from asking, “What is a person?” The possibilities are infinite, and our stories should reflect that.
We’ve got moms across the age and experience spectrum, from grandmas to new moms. We’ve got biological moms, adoptive moms, and mom figures. A mom who runs a space colony, a hard-boiled detective mom, a witch mom, a coach who’s a mom figure to her students… and much, much more.
Oh, and we’ve got a cover:
Art by Sean “MunkyWrench” Eddingfield, design by Streetlight Graphics.
And no, it’s not poorly cropped. Those words are intentionally too big for the frame. Just as the idea of a mom is too big for any box.
I’ll be kicking off a crowdfunding campaign in February to bring this vision to life, and I hope you’ll come out to support us! More to come on that as we draw closer to the campaign launch.
In the meanwhile, here’s our story lineup:
“Mama Bear” by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
“What We Bring with Us” by Derek Tyler Attico
“Pride Fight” by T. Eric Bakutis
“The Hardwicke Files: The Case of the Full Moon” by Russ Colchamiro
“Mr. EB’s Organic Sideshow” by Paige Daniels
[Title TBD] by Kathleen David
“Krysta, Warrior President” by Peter David
[Title TBD] by Mary Fan
[Title TBD] by Michael Jan Friedman
“Shoot Center” by Robert Greenberger
“The Devil You Know” by Glenn Hauman
“Shape Up, or Ship Out” by Heather Hutsell
“Jupiter Justice” by Kris Katzen
“Come In, Sit Down, Have a Bite!” by Paul Kupperberg
“The Art of Crafting Resistance” by Karissa Laurel
[Title TBD] by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
“Perfect Insanity” by TJ Perkins
“DuckBob in: Running Hot and Cold” by Aaron Rosenberg
“Hellbeans” by Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg
“The Songbird and Her Cage” by Joanna Schnurman
“Raising the Dead” by Hildy Silverman
[Title TBD] by Denise Sutton
Add Bad Ass Moms on Goodreads.
BOOK LAUNCH — MURDER IN MONTAGUE FALLS
Why commit murder? And why in Montague Falls?
That’s what Sawney Hatton, Patrick Thomas, and yours truly discussed as we thought about ways to do dastardly things to our protagonists — teenagers all — who, as far as we knew, never did anything to us. But hey, that’s just how we roll.
For a bit of history, Sawney and I (Sawney is a pen name) went to high school together, and shared a love of movies, dark tales, and other mischievous musings, including a student film Sawney wrote and directed and I starred in (no, seriously), which, if you want a very good laugh, is available somewhere on YouTube under the title “Light Chasm.”
Meanwhile, Pat has been a pal for at least a decade out on book tour, he and I known to each other as PT! and RC! We’ve collaborated before, and decided it was time to do it again.
Which brings us to MURDER IN MONTAGUE FALLS. Our new project, published through Crazy 8 Press, is a collection of three noir-inspired novellas (no sci-fi or fantasy here, all straight crime fiction) set in the fictional American suburb of Montague Falls, wherein our teen protagonists went to the same high school — Martin Van Buren High, to be precise — albeit during different decades.
My story, “Red Ink”, takes place in the 1980s, smack in the middle of the Reagan-era Cold War years; Sawney’s tale, “The Devil’s Delinquents” in the 1990s, at a time when Satan worship was gruesomely chic; and finally, Pat’s tale, “A Many Splendid Thing”, which goes back to the 1950s, when watching Uncle Miltie while eating first-generation microwave dinners and beating your kid in public were considered solid “parenting” techniques.
Each novella — averaging about 25,000 words apiece — has a different vibe, mine more of a thriller, Sawney’s dark fiction, and Pat’s probably the closest of the three to classic noir. For a synopsis on each, here’s what we got:
In Colchamiro’s RED INK, a paperboy with an overactive imagination witnesses a brutal killing on his route — or has he taken his fantasy spy games a step too far?
In Hatton’s THE DEVIL’S DELINQUENTS, a trio of teenage misfits in pursuit of success, power, and revenge practice amateurish occult rituals… with deadly consequences.
In Thomas’s A MANY SPLENDID THING, a sultry high school teacher enrolls one of her students to get rid of her husband. But will the young man really graduate to murder?
And if you want to hear something noirishly cool, check out the original song “You Kill Me”, written, performed, and produced by my pals The Turnback to accompany our new book! End credits, baby!
So come on in and join the murderous fun. Because once you visit Montague Falls, there’s no turning back.
MURDER IN MONTAGUE FALLS is available in e-book and print formats here.
About the Authors:
RUSS COLCHAMIRO is a member of Crazy 8 Press and author of the rollicking space adventure, Crossline, the zany sci-fi backpacking series Finders Keepers, Genius de Milo, and Astropalooza, editor of the sci-fi mystery anthology, Love, Murder & Mayhem, and contributing author for his newest project, Murder in Montague Falls, a noir novella collection, all with Crazy 8 Press.
Russ has contributed to several other anthologies, and is now finalizing the first in an ongoing SFF mystery series featuring his hard-boiled private eye Angela Hardwicke.
Russ lives in New Jersey with his wife, their twin ninjas, and their crazy dog, Simon.
For more on Russ’s works, visit www.russcolchamiro.com, and follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @AuthorDudeRuss.
SAWNEY HATTON is an author, editor, and screenwriter who has long loved playing in the dark. His published works include the Dark Comedy novel Dead Size, the YA Noir novella Uglyville, and the Dark Fiction short story collection Everyone Is a Moon. He also edited the Sci-Fi Horror anthology What Has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and Terrifying Table Manners?
Other incarnations of Sawney have produced marketing videos, attended chili cook-offs, and played the banjo and sousaphone (not at the same time). As of this writing, he is still very much alive.
For more semi-unseemly insights into Sawney, visit www.SawneyHatton.com or find him on Twitter and Facebook.
PATRICK THOMAS is the award-winning author of the beloved Murphy’s Lore series and the darkly hilarious Dear Cthulhu advice empire.
His 40+ books include Fairy with a Gun, By Darkness Cursed, Lore & Dysorder, Dead to Rites, Startenders, As the Gears Turn, Cthulhu Explains It All, and Exile and Entrance. His is the co-author of the Mystic Investigators series, The Santa Heist, and the Jack Gardner mysteries, and has had more than 150 short stories published in magazines and anthologies.
Visit him online at www.patthomas.net and www.patricktfibbs.com