So the gods have returned to Earth. Cool concept. Now what?

I was invited to contribute to the first two anthologies of ReDeus tales, but my schedule wouldn’t permit it. Asked again to participate in the third volume, and finally having a window of opportunity, I jumped at the chance. I loved the idea of the various pantheons of gods coming back to their ancestral lands and seeking adherents.

When I cast about for my story, I initially struck on the notion of exploring what it would mean to be an atheist in a world populated by actual deities. Interesting idea, right? Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t the only one who thought so: the redoubtable Dave Galanter had already tackled such a story in his “Tricks of the Trade,” which appeared in the first ReDeus collection, Divine Tales. So it was back to the drawing board.

In searching for another tale to tell, I asked myself what it would actually be like living in a world where the gods had made themselves manifest. Would most people interact with them, or would they simply see them on television and read about them on the Internet? The latter seemed more likely to me, but it also made me question what people would think about the gods and how that would make them behave in their everyday lives. Certainly the majority of human beings today are religious, but they generally worship an unseen, unheard god. Would it make a difference if they got to see and hear divine beings, even if from afar.

I imagined that if the gods descended on Earth, it would leave the bulk of the population—if not the totality of it—in awe. I’d heard the term “god-fearing” bandied about throughout my life, but I’d never quite made the connection between that term and the concept of a loving god. It seemed to me, though, that if deities suddenly appeared among us, fear might actually be a reasonable response. But the notion of being afraid of a god still felt awkward to me. How can you genuinely worship a being that frightens you? That feels too close to intimidation, which is pretty much a bad reason to do anything.

I thus discovered the rudiments of my story. I would show the return to Earth of a powerful god—in this case, the Native American trickster and spider-god, Iktomi—and explore the impact of his interaction with one particular citizen. I would also posit how the appearance of a deity could change the day-to-day life of the populace. Beyond all of that, I thought, lay the essence of my narrative: why do we worship, and should we?

What enfolded in the writing was a tale of murder. While readers will discover who killed who and why, it is the other questions that arise that prove the greater mystery. But then that’s precisely one of the powerful things about the storytelling milieu of ReDeus that Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, and Paul Kupperberg have posited.

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.

So the other day I was reading the first issue of a new comic book title–I can’t tell you which one since, like too many new comic book titles these days, it was another one of those  derivative post-apocalyptic concepts wrapped up in some flimsy new dressing that slips off my brain almost as soon as I’ve read it. Try to read it. Anyway, I got to the end of the issue (perseverance!) and found that the story was followed by several pages of text by the writer explaining the where and how of the creation of this piece of work.

You’ve read a hundred of them if you’ve read one: “It was a dark and stormy night when, like a thunderbolt, an image came to me. I didn’t know what that image meant until, days later I was talking to Sam Artist or Ann Editor and happened to mention it. They gasped. They cried. They genuflected. Didn’t I know what I had here? Well, let me tell you…!”

Okay, I admit, I’ve written my fair share of these “process pieces” over the years, but in my defense, I wrote ‘em for the bucks. At DC Comics, we got paid for writing text pages and, for a new series, it was either write some sort of blather about how it had come to be or forgo a couple hundred bucks for what was, essentially, a couple hours work. After a book was up and running and receiving mail from readers, it got even easier. Retype some letters, write some snappy responses, turn in your voucher. (And once OCR technology became affordable for the home user, it was just free freakin’ money.)

But, as I started reading this particular process piece, I realized how much I didn’t care. And not only because the series itself had fallen flat for me. It was because I shouldn’t have to care.

Whether the series worked for me or not, I shouldn’t need a two thousand word essay to tell me what I had just read. By coincidence–or, what on the internet would be called “irony”–a few hours prior to sitting down to write this process piece on why process pieces are unnecessary, I read Joss (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et al) Whedon’s “Top 10 Writing Tips,” which includes this:

“7. Track the Audience Mood

You have one goal: to connect with your audience. Therefore, you must track what your audience is feeling at all times. One of the biggest problems I face when watching other people’s movies is I’ll say, ‘This part confuses me’, or whatever, and they’ll say, ‘What I’m intending to say is this’, and they’ll go on about their intentions. None of this has anything to do with my experience as an audience member. (emphasis mine) Think in terms of what audiences think. They go to the theatre, and they either notice that their butts are numb, or they don’t. If you’re doing your job right, they don’t.”

Well, damn. When you put it that way…

Bob Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, and I created the ReDeus Universe and we, and a whole bunch of other writers, wrote a whole bunch of stories set in it. Read them. If we’ve done our jobs right, your butts are going to feel just great.

What else do you need to know?

ReDeus: Native Lands will be available in print and digital editions in August.

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.