Tagged: Amazon

Pop culture continues to find new and innovative ways to plant itself on the web and two of our contributors, Aaron Rosenberg and Bob Greenberger, along with fellow novelist Steven Savile, are trying something new. ReDeus is a new fictional world that will come to life on the Internet as a subscription-based site that will offer, for starters, three serialized stories set in a shared world. Not only that, they’re fundraising in an unusual way too, through Kickstarter.  We wanted to know more, so we digitally sat down with the three for a conversation.

ComicMix: Where’d the idea for ReDeus come from?

Steven Savile: I was actually invited to the party after Aaron and Bob had already come up with the core concept of the gods and monsters returning, so it’s best I let them field this particular question.

Aaron Rosenberg: Me, it was all me! :)

No, seriously, it was Bob, our friend Paul, and I. We’d been talking about the economy, and writing projects, and the changing face of publishing, and we agreed that we needed to find new ways to get stories out to our audience. I had an idea about putting things up on the Internet, and Bob and Paul both liked the notion, so we ran with it. Then we started talking about the kind of world we’d want to build, something cool and unique and interesting with enough room for all of us to tell stories and then some. We all agreed that near-future was the way to go, and then the question was “how is it different from today? What changed?” I don’t remember which of us came up with “the gods were all real—and they’ve returned!” but the minute it was stated all three of us said “YES!!!” And we took it from there. Paul had to bow out, unfortunately, but Bob and I both already knew Steve and were already working with him on some other projects, so we approached him and he was happy to step in.

Bob Greenberger: Basically we had to forgo one Jew with a beard for a Swede with a beard. We think it’s an upgrade.

CMix: Why three writers rather than one of you?

Savile: Personally, I love the collective aspect of it. Writing is by necessity a lonely business but there is something very gratifying about the act of collaboration, the idea that what comes out of all three of us together is greater than what might emerge from my mind alone, or Bob’s or Aaron’s, plus it is an absolute delight to learn from these guys. They’re not only great people, they’re great friends, and how often in this life do we get to work with real friends? Not often enough would be my answer.

Rosenberg: Two reasons, really. First, the world is just so much richer for the three of us. I can come up with a world on my own—I’ve done it enough times—but that means it’s all from my perspective, my style, my tone. With three of us, one of us will come up with something and one of the others will say “Hm, that’s cool, but what if we do this to it?” and it’s something the first person never thought of but it makes everything that much better. We really build off each other’s creativity, crafting a setting that’s more complicated, more engaging, more exciting than any of us would have had alone.

The other reason is the scope of the project. Putting up a new piece of content every single day—if any one of us were to do this, he’d run himself ragged. With three of us, we can split that up. Each of us writes one storyline. Each of us handles one type of additional content. It becomes more manageable. And you get materials from three different viewpoints.

Greenberger:  I love collaboration and brainstorming so have a blank slate and starting to fill it in is very exciting. This is a huge concept worthy of deeper exploration, which three can do better than one. Who knows, maybe it will grow from there and more will be invited to come explore with us?

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