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Read a Preview of “The Hidden Earth: Height of the Depths”

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The long wait is over.

In 2007, Hidden Earth:  Darkness of the Light was released to critical acclaim.  Terry Brooks said, “Darkness of the Light…is another quirky, intriguing, wonderful tale, filled with adventure and unexpected plot twists. No one else tells a story quite like Peter David does.”  Publisher’s Weekly wrote in a starred review, “Peter David (Knight Life) is a master at juggling multiple characters and plot lines…(and) breathes new life into some well-worn mythic tropes.”  Booklist wrote,  “An entertaining adventure whose cliff-hanger ending confirms that it launches a series.”

Indeed it did, and now the second volume—after a long, strange trip—is here. The eagerly awaited second volume, Height of the Depths, will be released for Nooks and Kindles on Friday but right now you can read an excerpt by clicking here.

The Earth of the future is not one you’d recognize.  Creatures that had previously been thought simply myth—vampires, two-legged dragons, trolls, and nine other races—have overrun the planet and made it their own.  Humanity is nearly extinct.  But now the Twelve Races have discovered that their own fortunes are inextricably linked with the remnants of the human race.

As a result, a young slave girl named Jepp, who holds the key to the future of the world, is on her way to a fateful meeting with the most powerful creature on the face of the planet.  Except the question isn’t what will happen when she gets there.  The question is whether she’s going to make it there alive.

For fans of Darkness of the Light (newly available as a trade paperback and also, for the first time, as an eBook), Heights of the Depths introduces new races and answers questions about some of the previous ones, including the truth behind the mysterious Serabim, the dreaded Travelers, and even the Overseer himself.  For newcomers, you are about to enter an exciting world that is both comfortably familiar…and disturbingly nightmarish.

Here’s the back cover copy to give you a taste of what’s to come.

The Earth of the future is not one you’d recognize.  Creatures previously thought to be simply myth—vampires, two-legged dragons, abominable snowmen, and nine other races—have overrun the planet and made it their own.  Humanity is nearly extinct.  But now the Twelve Races have discovered that their own fortunes are inextricably linked with the remnants of the human race.  And so one of the last remaining humans, a young slave girl named Jepp (who holds the key to the future of the world) is on her way to a fateful meeting with the most powerful creature on the face of the planet.  Except the question isn’t what will happen when she gets there.  The question is whether she’s going to make it there alive.

Download the Preview PDF for Heights Of The Depths: The Hidden Earth Chronicles, Book 2 now!

New Releases, News

For This Is Hell: Third Time’s the Charm

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And now, a word from bestselling, award-winning author Steven Savile about his and Aaron Rosenberg’s newest collaboration, For This Is Hell, currently available for the NOOK:

“I’ve known Aaron a long time. We joke about being separated at birth, and given the date and time we came into the world it’s almost possible—I’m October 12th 1969, he’s October 13th 1969, and given time zones and such, I’m only a few hours older than him, so imagine a long protracted labour and a grueling transatlantic flight in between and you’ve got us. We’ve written loads of stuff together, but surprisingly little has actually hit the streets yet; in fact, For the is Hell is our first collaborative release, but far from our last.

So, three years ago I was on holiday in Carthage with the wife, wandering around, drinking in the history, and as we clambered back onto the tour bus to head towards the hotel I sent a sketchy email to my Transatlantic Twin with the beginnings of an idea that had hit me about writing something with an immortal hero, sort of a “my life of crime” thing where we have a recurring hero/villain across the ages, kicking off during the fall of Carthage and bringing it to the modern day by way of lots of cool historical moments. And wouldn’t it be cool if our hero was like the phoenix who kept renewing himself age after age? Aaron wrote back explaining, surprise surprise (we are very similar sometimes, right down to the ideas we play with, which makes for a good partnership) that he’d created a roleplaying game a few years ago called Chosen which revolved around mythical beasts like the Kraken and Phoenix being reborn in different times to fight an eternal struggle for supremacy. It took all of about ten minutes to think “ahhh hmmm wouldn’t it be cool then if we could merge these two very similar ideas into a story or three?”

I’d intended to actually set the story in Carthage, begin at the beginning and all that, have our hero “infected” by some sort of vampiric entity, but having a mythic beast “wake” was much cooler. We then started chatting about who throughout history did we think would make a cool fiery lead, and the first one we both hit on within about a minute of each other was Kit Marlowe— not least because of his links to Carthage via his play, Dido. Then it was a case of building an outline together, and doing some historical research to get it “right.” After that we set to work crafting the story itself, bringing Marlowe and his world back to life and injecting them with the proper degree of suspense, intrigue, seduction, and black magic.

We sold For This Is Hell as a limited edition hardcover novella to a publisher in the U.S., but they specialised in horror and when we realised this story was primarily historical with a splash of dark fantasy we sat down and talked with them and agreed it didn’t really fit with their list. Then we chatted to another start-up company, PenMonkey over in the UK, and they loved the idea and the story, but, as is the way with the world, folded before they really got going. We weren’t sure where to go next, but we had faith that For This Is Hell was too good not to find a proper home.

Then Crazy 8 came along, with Aaron as one of the founders and his humorous SF novel No Small Bills as their second release. They picked up the young adult horror series Latchkeys we’d created with Bob Greenberger and a bunch of others, so we already had a strong relationship going with Crazy 8, so we talked to them about For This Is Hell—and at long last it rose triumphant from the ashes, aflame, like the phoenix at the heart of the story…”

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Lost Whale: The Legend of Humphrey

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Notes from Howard Weinstein:

Awesome is a very overused adjective these days. I experienced the real deal on two whale watch cruises off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts some years ago. Watching the black bulk of a 40-foot-long humpback swim casually past a boat that suddenly seems much smaller…watching it flip its broad powerful tail flukes and submerge…and then leap completely out of the water in a twisting playful belly flop… Now that’s awesome!

This epic-scale screenplay is based on the riveting true story of the only rescue of a stranded humpback whale, using contemporary news coverage and the book The Great Whale Rescue as source material.

I got caught up in these events as they happened in 1985, and even in those innocent days before 24/7 news overload, this story made the daily papers and evening news for weeks – and captured the imaginations of people world-wide. Even Wikipedia describes Humphrey as “arguably the most widely publicized humpback whale in history.”

The ending knocks your socks off – just as it really happened. Proof of the story’s continuing power came in 2007, when a mother and calf pair of humpbacks incredibly retraced Humphrey’s path in California – prompting the same media frenzy and overwhelming public interest.

Lost Whale: The Legend of Humphrey was entered in the Motion Picture Academy’s prestigious Nicholl Fellowship screenwriting competition in 2007. The script was evaluated by industry-insider judges, and scored in the top 7 percent of 5000 entries.

Maybe this screenplay will actually become a movie someday. But for now, you can “see” it by reading this script. And it’s a free exclusive download – as Crazy 8 Press’s first-anniversary gift to our readers. Thanks for your support in our first year…and we have more great stories to come!

And now you can read the script by clicking: WHALEScript.Nov2011Crazy8.

Latchkeys

Meet The Ugly Little Bloke

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Steven Savile had no idea what he ignited. There were a baker’s dozen of us chomping at the bit to write something, anything, and when he suggested we create our own project, we went crazy. He gave us his Latchkeys idea and we glommed on to it, forming a cooperative that has gone on to sub-divide and create a few more projects, but the heart and soul remains Latchkeys. Once we agreed on the premise, we build a bible, populating it with characters and once we decided which ones we liked, we began pitching ideas.

I imagine this is very much like a writers’ room in television, just a virtual version with members contributing ideas from across America and Europe. We all tossed in ideas and kicked them around, seeing which ones excited the others and which ones might make the cut. Just about three years ago, we had roughed out the idea of a thirteen episode season that brought us to particular point, to be followed by a second season that went somewhere else, and so on. Thirteen writers, thirteen episodes…this just might work.

We began voting for the premises we most liked while Steve began assembling the batting order considering some of us have more writing experience than others and we wanted to support one another while still offering some commercial power at the beginning and end. Clearly, Steve would go first and if you read Unlatched, then you know he did a great job setting the tone and introducing readers to the world.

The second installment needed to go further, focusing on some of the other members of the cast, deepening the readers’ understanding of the premise and sowing the seeds for future character arcs and mysteries. We settled on a story taking us from the house to a fantasy land, but one just a little skewed from the typical locales.

As we voted on the premise, Steve tapped me to bat second, making us the table setters before the heavy-hitters came to bat. He knew I could write in other peoples’ worlds and could do so while adding a little something of my own. Once we voted on the premise and I was pencilled in, things seemed fine.

I finally was given the green light to write my tale over the summer which was delivered to the others in August. I got some great feedback making the story stronger and then Steve gave it an editorial polish to make certain it closely matched the lead off tale.

In just a few weeks, you will see for yourself what I managed in The Ugly Little Bloke, available March 6.  For now, just feast on Vance Kelly’s really fun cover.

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Latchkeys: Unlatched Now Available on Kindle

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The first installment of Latchkeys, a brand new series from a gaggle of writers herded by Steven Savile, is now available on Kindle, with a Nook version due in a matter of days. The series has been discussed here before and its worth noting that Crazy 8 Press co-founders Aaron Rosenberg and Bob Greenberger are contributing members.

Latchkeys is a series of standalone stories that as a whole tells a larger story. The first cycle of stories is projected to be thirteen parts in all, released roughly every six weeks going forward. The series will therefore be back in early March with the second installment, The Ugly Little Bloke, by Greenberger.

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