Moving slowly in the fast lane

There are a number of things I wanted to wrap up before August flew into September. But looking over the past 30 days, I think I've been on the road more days than I've been home.

Still, quite a bit happened: I attended PulpFest, the family and I had a short vacation, I traveled for work, and just during the past week, I've accomplished a number of things.

The boys and I took in the Samurai exhibit at the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. This was really an excellent exhibit on arms and armor and Samuari culture. All that info will be very helpful for a story I'm working on.

I also wrapped up a 3000+ word essay for The Big Book of Bronze # 5. Jay Ryan compiles this Doc Savage-focused fanzine annually, publishing it to coincide with the Arizona Doc Con.

Plus, I submited a contribution to the 100th mailing of PEAPS, the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society. For 25 years PEAPS mailings have gone out quarterly, with contributions covering scholarly reviews of pulp magazine authors or works, or bibliographic topics, reviews of recently read pulp-related books, reports on pulp conventions, and on and on. A sample of a PEAPS contribution from 2003, Warren Harris' Back Numbers Can Be Easily Procured, can be viewed at efanzines.com by clicking here. My contributions, when I was an official PEAPS member, were titled T'rilling Action, conflating Doc Savage's idiosyncratic response to a mystery (trilling); the word Thrilling from the titles of a series of magazines known as "the Thrilling group" (Thrilling Adventures, Thrilling Baseball, Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Football, Thrilling Love [!], Thrilling Ranch Stories, etc.) published by Standard Magazines; and the word Action, which was used in the title of many pulp magazines, including Action Stories, Action Adventure Stories, Action Detective Magazine, Action Novels, Action-Packed Western, and so on.

I'd intending completing the draft of Three Witches, a short novel, by Friday. Didn't happen; but this week I did complete the two big battles that form the climax of the story. I need to write out the denouement, which may result in another thousand words or so, and then I'll set to revising and tweaking. I plan to release Three Witches as an eBook, and I've already prepared the typography for the cover. Once I start revising, I'll also get the cover art into shape, lining up each step to get Three Witches closer to publication.

When Three Witches moves into the revision stage, I'll jump back to finishing the novel I'm doing with artist Mike Fyles, Space Detective. (Mike's art at the top of this post is a sample of what he's been doing on this project. I think his stuff is just dynamite. And really, what's not to love about a Studebaker?) This, really, is long overdue. But taking a break from it has recharged my batteries to complete that novel-length story.

Last but not least, I've been kicking around emails with Jim Beard, author the The World's First Captain Action Novel, Riddle of the Glowing Men. We've been building a world and characters for a series of stories that should prove to be a lot of fun. Jim anticipates we'll have this ready by late 2013. It's good to know there's always more fun and excitement ahead--it makes the work go much more easily!