As promised not that long ago, Steven Savile’s long-gestating Latchkeys idea has come to Crazy 8 Press. Steven has partnered with C8 co-founders Bob Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg and nine other authors to create a brand new young adult fantasy series.
The very first offering can be previewed right here: Unlatched teaser. The entire first installment will be available for purchase for Kindle and Nook starting next Sunday.
Give it a read and let us know what you think.
What happens when a group of writers, who happen to be friends, form a collective? As it turns out, it becomes Crazy 8 Press, which launched in early July. Interestingly, we had been talking about this for a year and despite all that, the final weeks still made us wonder if we would launch on time. We did, of course, because we are nothing if not professionals.
In case you missed it, we opened with Peter David’s acclaimed The Camelot Papers, which has garnered some lovely reviews. The weekend it was released, we gang-wrote The Demon Circle as a way to generate some publicity and to create a vehicle to raise some funds for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
After that, Aaron Rosenberg showed up with No Small Bills, a whimsical story that also seemed to find an audience. I re-released “A Matter of Faith”, a 2002 short story long out of print and then Mike Friedman turned up with his first original fiction in too long a time. Fight the Gods delved once more into his favorite subject of mythology and is worth a look.
Peter David rescued his The Hidden Earth series from publisher indifference and reintroduced it to a waiting world at a nice introductory price as a Nook exclusive. It will soon be available for Kindle and print on demand while the long-delayed second volume is poised for release early this year.
But first, Latchkeys debuts. A series conceived and executed by a dozen writers, it arrives with the first short piece by Steven Savile and then a new installment will arrive with clockwork regularity.
What else can you expect in 2012?
We’ll freshen the website design for starters. We’ll blog more often so you can keep tabs on our progress.
As for things to read, you can expect more new fiction from most of us, with Howard Weinstein making his debut in a few weeks, offering you all a freebie. Mike has a new series of novellas in the works while Aaron and I have a long-simmering fantasy underway.
We’re here to stay and hope you come along for the ride because we have only just gotten started. Thanks for your interest and support May you all have a Happy 2012, Mayan calendars be damned.
Crazy 8 Press is pleased to announce that volume one of Peter David’s epic fantasy tale, The Hidden Earth, is now available exclusively through the Nook at Barnes & Noble for the next thirty days. Darkness of the Light, which launched the ambitious series back in 2007, can finally be purchased as an eBook for the introductory price of $2.99. In January the book will go wide, offered both through Amazon and as a trade paperback. In short order it will be followed by the long-awaited sequel, “Height of the Depths.” Watch this space for further announcements and go HERE to begin the journey through the Hidden Earth.
Crazy 8 Press is pleased to announce that starting January 15, we will be publishing novellas set in a brand new world created by a collection of writers, masterminded by author Steven Savile but including C8 co-founders Aaron Rosenberg and Robert Greenberger. To introduce you to this new concept, here are some comments from Savile:
Putting the Key in the Door
By Steven Savile
I can remember the day I came up with the concept of the House of Doors, which eventually became Tanglewood, the house that Matt Fisher stumbles into, with its miraculous living wood doors that open to neverwhere and neverwhen, everywhere and everywhen. I was teaching, so it’s at least a decade a go. I frantically scrawled notes in an old journal, filling it with ideal concepts like ‘the war between the dayside and nightside’ and a stage magician who was something like the Doctor (Dr. Who), a stone-headed troll and a stick-insect of a man who ran the house. Very few of those initial concepts survived into the series, Latchkeys, and yet they provide the underpinning for everything.
I actually wrote an entire novel in the house, had it test read in a couple of schools in the States, where the kids in question said it was their favourite thing since Lemony Snickett, which was pretty damn cool, but I couldn’t get any interest in it. This was pre-mad explosion of the Kindle and the ability to directly deliver your stories to a waiting audience… I ended up putting it aside midway through book two, I mean what was the point of doing more, when I couldn’t sell the first one? I left it to fester.
Then about two years ago, I threw a random comment out on a media tie-in writer’s mailing list about how with the immense pool of talent we had at our disposal it was ridiculous we weren’t trying to build our own worlds instead of just playing in those of famous tv shows and roleplaying games, etc. A bunch of folk got very excited and we formed our own little collective. We needed something to work on, so I said, “Hey, I’ve got this thing I sorta started but never developed properly… does it set your hearts on fire?” And we started bashing ideas about – the first and most important was in terms of structure – we wanted to create a series of stories in the same manner we’d develop a television series, so we looked at doing story arcs and mini-arcs spanning a first season of 13 episodes ending with one amazing finale, we’d have two-parters, comic relief episodes, episodes that were psychological, almost horrific, or fantastic. And then we looked for the right kind of team, really, properly world building. It was an amazingly collaborative experience in those opening months, with a coming together of 13 very creative minds… and what we got at the end was a story bible for Latchkeys… Continue reading Our Latest Addition: Latchkeys
“Darkness of the Light, first of a series, is another quirky, intriguing, wonderful tale, filled with adventure and unexpected plot twists. No one else tells a story quite like Peter David does.”
–Terry Brooks
Thousands of years ago, a small number of extra-dimensional creatures—scarcely a hundred or so from twelve different races—landed on our world. Although they were quickly hunted into oblivion, they made an indelible impression on humanity, forming the basis for most every creature of myth and fancy that exist: Cyclops, vampires, dragons, fairies, trolls, mermaids and many more.
In the middle of the 21st century, they returned, not by the hundreds, but in the millions. The battle for survival was fierce and bloody and, in the end, humanity lost.
Now, in an undetermined time, humanity is nearly extinct. The Twelve Races are now locked in endless battle with each other, fighting for whatever scraps of survival remain on his planet they refer to as the Damned World. The few human survivors that remain are slaves, like Jepp, a young woman who is a helpless servant to one of the more fearsome races, the serpentine Mandraques.
But when, after a particularly lethal battle, Jepp falls in with a group of scavenging Bottom Feeders, her life begins to change. And those changes are going to wind up having a major impact on the Damned World, although whether they will result in the return of the human race or the ultimate destruction of all remaining life on what is nothing but a Hidden Earth, no one can say for certain.
Originally released in 2007 and now out of print, Crazy 8 Press is thrilled to be able to kickstart Peter David’s rich and complex trilogy. This will begin with the re-release of the debut novel, available as an eBook for the first time, and at the introductory price of $2.99. This will then be immediately followed by the release of the long-awaited sequel, Height of the Depths as an eBook at $5.99 and trade paperback at $15.99. Both will feature new covers by acclaimed artist J.K. Woodward. A wry combination of Game of Thrones, Supernatural and Planet of the Apes, Peter David’s The Hidden Earth is a must-have for fans of epic fantasy.
It has been suggested that the Fan/Pro Bill of Rights, which first originated on my website at www.peterdavid.net, should be made available as a downloadable PDF. Well, you asked for it, and we here at Crazy 8 are happy to provide it to you, free of charge.
Download the Fan-Pro Bill Of Rights 11×17 Poster Version Here.