New at Amazing Stories Magazine

We interrupt the Works in Progress series to let you know . . .

My latest contribution to Amazing Stories Magazine, "1933" is now available online for your perusal. Learn all about the Hero Pulp Explosion! You'll find it here, at the Amazing Stories Magazine site:

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P.J. Farmer, Grand Master Award winner in 2000, launched a popular string of novels and essays postulating that a meteorite that landed in Wold Newton, England, in 1795 radiated a band of nearby travelers, whose mutated genes formed the basis for the birth of all the heroes and villains who populated the pages, film, and radio waves of during the 19th and 20th centuries.
 
Whether you are a Wold Newton follower little matters. It is a matter of documented fact that during the year 1933, publishers detonated a population bomb that eventually lit the fuse that exploded the Wold Newton notion in Farmer’s imagination.

In 1933, Street & Smith published the first issue of Doc Savage Magazine, cover dated for March. Following Doc’s appearance on the newsstands, pulp magazines featuring The Phantom Detective, The Spider, The Avenger, Thunder Jim Wade, Jim Anthony, The Whisperer, and a host of others began to swarm the racks that once had been dominated by general fiction publications like Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book, and a few others
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Read more at the Magazine . . .

Just keep moving

There are days when "Just keep moving" is my mantra.

Those days when forward progress bogs down on a project, when nothing on the To-do List gets addresseed but 10 more things get added to it (before lunch), when the handy and make-your-job-and-life-easier technology fails to live up to its hype and my expectations.

But lately I've been busy with a lot of stuff -- household chores, projects at work, obligations for my kids, finish the taxes, car repairs, class prep for a course I'll be teaching soon, this-that-and-the-other-thing stuff. I haven't gotten much fiction writing accomplished except for some short passages, anywhere from 150 to 800 words. But I've been taking care of some other writing assignments and moving them off the To-do List, so keeping moving sometimes pays off and keeps one from sinking down in the dumps.

In fact, while I was waiting for an appointment the other day, I wrote about 500 words for the opening of a new western short story. I felt pretty good about that. (By the way, the photo accompanying this post is purportedly a perpetual motion machine: The Finsrud Wheel, a moving sculpture built by Norwegian artist Reidar Finsrud.)

Some recent activity:

"Mangling the works of Jules Verne" is my latest contribution at Amazing Stories Magazine. You can find it here.

"Iron Men and Silver Stars: Donald Hamilton's western anthology" is my most recent post at The Spur & Lock Mercantile, my blog for All Things Western.

"Budapest Then and Then: Jules Verne and Robert B. Parker" is a review of two books from two very different authors. This is my most recent post at The Pulp Rack blog.

That's not so bad for a week's amount of extracurricular productivity.

So, if you're feeling bogged down, don't fret. You're not alone. Just keep moving.

Inoculate Against the Lurids: Language Is A Virus

If that title looks confusing, I can only recommend that you visit the new Amazing Stories Magazine site and read my first contribution posted there. That is its title. Read on past that, and clarity should follow. (That's the intent, any way.)

You can find it here.

While you're there, be sure to check out the contributions from some of the many other fine writers. Lots of pop culture and genre-history brains gathered on the flight deck of a single star ship. It's a pleasure to be part of the ride.

Ignition! Amazing Stories launches

In a post a few weeks back, I described how the venerable science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, was returning to existence in our reality.

It's back.

Here's the official press release:

Amazing Stories, the world's first science fiction magazine, is now open to the public.

Social Magazine Website Offers Nearly Sixty Writers and Social Networking For Fans!

Experimenter Publishing Company
Hillsboro, NH
January 19, 2013

AMAZING STORIES are just one click away!TM

The Experimenter Publishing Company is pleased to announce the  reintroduction of the world's most recognizable science fiction magazine – AMAZING STORIES!

Following the completion of a successful Beta Test begun on January 2nd, 2013, Amazing Stories is now open to the public.  Fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror are invited to join and encouraged to participate in helping to bring back a cherished icon of the field.

For the past several weeks nearly sixty fans, authors, artists, editors and bloggers have been producing articles on your favorite subjects – the literature of SF/F/H, its presentations in media such as television, film, poetry, literature, games, comics and much more.

All contents of Amazing Stories are free to the general public. 

Membership is also free – and entitles members to participate in the discussion, share information and engage in many other familiar social networking activities.

Membership also represents a stake in helping Amazing Stories return to publication.  The more members the site acquires, the faster Amazing Stories can become a paying market for short fiction.

Every genre fan now has a chance to help support the creation of a new market for the stories, artwork and articles they all love so much.

To visit the site and obtain your free membership, go to AMAZING STORIES, and don't forget to invite your friends too!

This reincarnation of Amazing Stories could not have happened without the generous support of Woodall Design LLC and the members of the Amazing Stories Blog Team:

Cenobyte, Karen G. Anderson, Mike Brotherton, Ricky L. Brown, Michael A. Burstein, Catherine Coker, Johne Cook, Paul Cook, Gary Dalkin, Jane Frank, Adria K. Fraser,  Jim Freund, Fran Friel, Adam Gaffen, Chris Garcia, Chris Gerwel, Tommy Hancock, Liz Henderson, Samantha Henry, M.D. Jackson, Monique Jacob, Geoffrey James, J. Jay Jones, Daniel M. Kimmel, Peggy Kolm, Justin Landon, Andrew Liptak, Bob Lock, Melissa Lowery, Barry Malzberg, C. E. Martin, Farrell J. McGovern, Steve Miller, Matt Mitrovich, Aidan Moher, Kevin Murray, Ken Neth, Astrid Nielsch, D. Nicklin-Dunbar, James Palmer, John Purcell, James Rogers, Felicity Savage, Diane Severson, Steve H. Silver, J. Simpson, Douglas Smith, Lesley Smith, Bill Spangler, Duane Spurlock, Michael J. Sullivan, G. W. Thomas, Erin Underwood, Stephan Van Velzen, Cynthia Ward, Michael Webb, Keith West, John M. Whalen, Karlo Yeager, Leah A. Zeldes

For more information about Amazing Stories, please contact the publisher at

Experimenter@AmazingStoriesMag.com

 

Unwrapping 2013

Happy New Year!

For New Year’s Eve, I wrapped up my writing and publishing activities for 2012.

Actually, I left one out: I have a criminous Christmas haiku in Gerald So’s anthology that was released in October 2012: The 5-2, CrimePoetry Weekly Volume 1. Gerald compiled this from the weekly poetic posts to his crime poetry site, The 5-2. I like being in an anthology that includes a writer named Catfish McDaris.

So, after that brief peek back at 2012, onward to 2013!

I mentioned in the previous InterroBang post that I considered 2012 a building year. 2013, also, is a building year. My plan is to continue producing work in a variety of genres, and to add entries to the series I’ve launched.

For instance, the next El Tigre Azul adventure, Two Monsters, picks up not long after the conclusion of Three Witches. And the second Shalimar Bang mystery tracks down what happened to Fred MacIsaac, who was mentioned in “The Dream Stalker.”

I hope to publish at least one story about a new character, Bomber Jacquet. I have three stories about him in progress currently. His path will eventually cross that of Shalimar Bang.

My big project this year is to complete the science fiction novel I’m working on with artist Mike Fyles, Space Detective.

And I have a story to wrap up for an Airship 27 anthology this year. This is a neat project, and it's fun to work on.

I’ll be contributing to the Amazing Stories site, I’ve promised some work to Ed Hulse for his Blood’n’Thunder magazine, and I need to catch up on posts to my blogs.

Somewhere in there I’ll be doing my day job that pays the bills, performing some duties for my church, helping with Boy and Cub Scout activities, and I may squeeze in a household chore or two.

It’ll be interesting to see how 2013 wraps up 52 weeks from now!

Wrapping up 2012

Happy new year’s eve!

I hope you’ve had a good year.

I’ve had an interesting one, writing-wise. My 30 thousand word Ki-Gor story, “The Devil’s Nest,” appeared in print in Jungle Tales Volume1, with stories by Peter Miller and Aaron Smith. This was published by Airship27 just in time for PulpFest 2012. I’d written my first Ki-Gor story for Airship 27 several years ago. For one reason and another, that story--“The Moon of the Demon Men”--was eventually published by WildCat books in Ki-Gor: JungleLord in 2007. So, five years later, I finally have my first story in print with Airship 27. And the anthology performed well sales-wise, remaining in the Top 10 of the New Pulp Best Sellers list for several weeks, as compiled and reported each Monday by Barry Reese.

Speaking of PulpFest, I had a wonderful time. I renewed some acquaintances and met a lot more folks for the first time this year. I sat on a panel of adventure writers working in the New Pulp realm, and enjoyed the discussion and the audience's questions thoroughly. The pulp community is a warm and friendly place, and I encourage any pulp fan who hasn’t yet attended a pulp magazine convention to do so. The convention organizers--for PulpFest, Windy City, AdventureCon, DocCon and others--work hard to make sure the attendees have a great time, and the programming is always a lot of fun and informative.

The focus of this year’s PulpFest was particularly delightful: the centennial for two of Edgar Rice Burroughs' most famous creations, John Carter of Barsoom and Tarzan, and the 80th anniversary for the first appearance of Robert E. Howard’s Conan.

After PulpFest, I published two more eBooks. The first was Three Witches: An Adventure of El Tigre Azul. This gave me the opportunity to play in a world of humor and horror featuring a luchador enmascarado, a masked Mexican wrestler of the type seen in the films of El Santo and The Blue Demon. Filmed in the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ’70s, these movies pitted their masked heroes against witches, vampires, mummies--you name it--all between defending their titles in wrestling matches. I had a lot of fun writing this story, and the readers I’ve heard from have said they were entertained by it. It has sold more copies this year than any of my other releases, and it was published just in November.

The second eBook is a short story, The Dream Stalker. This mystery features a consulting investigator, Shalimar Bang, who operates in a slightly different reality than our own -- much as Spider-Man, Superman, and other heroes operate in a slightly different universe than the one in which we live. Shalimar's headquarters is on Alcatraz Island, and she takes on cases the regular authorities aren't quite able to tackle.vThis story first appeared in one of Tom Johnson’s neo-pulps in the 1990s. I’ve updated and expanded the story, and it’s intended to kick off a series of adventures about Shalimar.

I’d had two stories available exclusively at Amazon through its Kindle Select program, “Pretty Polly” and “A Quiet Night in the Dark inLaPlata, Missouri, 1942.” Although they had sold at least one or two copies each month of the year, I’d not seen any particular benefit to having these two stories remain limited to Kindle sales only. So I opened up a Smashwords account, and in December released them both there. I experimented with releasing “The Dream Stalker” separately through Kobo and Barnes & Noble, but Smashwords appeared to distribute the stories as quickly to those sites as Kobo and the Nook released the versions I published through those two sites. So I may just stick with Smashwords in the future for all non-Kindle releases. (By the way, the links to my books above go to Amazon for Kindle editions. You can find my work for all other eReaders at Smashwords by clicking here.)

I will say that compared to Amazon’s Kindle publishing site, B&N’s Nook publishing site, and Smashwords multi-platform site, Kobo’s site is about the easiest and user-friendliest when it comes to uploading and publishing an eBook.

I expanded my marketing position by adding a page to InterroBang that lists all my books and links to them at various sites; building an author page at Amazon and at Smashwords and at GoodReads.

Finally, I wrapped up the year by joining the gang of writers who will be contributing to Amazing Stories, the 21st Century incarnation of the first magazine that was dedicated solely to science fiction. I’m looking forward quite a bit to participating in this adventure.

This has been a year of building. I have a variety of stuff out there. While I had published a straightforward pulp-hero story (Ki-Gor) in a traditional print format, I also experimented with eBook publishing and played with pulp magazine history a bit (in “A Quiet Night,” wherein actual fictioneer Lester Dent met his house name doppelganger, Kenneth Robeson), launched an adventure heroine (Shalimar Bang), and delivered an action hero of a type no one else had yet developed in a prose narrative (El Tigre Azul in Three Witches).

Overall, I’m pleased with how 2012 turned out. What will 2013 bring? Stay tuned.

Amazing Stories to return

Amazing Stories, the world's first science fiction magazine, opens for Beta Testing of Phase 1 on Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

Fifty+ Writers Sign On to provide genre-related content!

And I'm pleased to say I’ll be one of them.

AMAZING STORIES are just one click away!

On Wednesday, January 2, 2013, I will be joined by more than 50 other writers from around the blogosphere to help launch the Beta Test of Phase 1 of the return of Amazing Stories.

Amazing Stories was the world's first science fiction magazine.  Published by Hugo Gernsback, the Father of Science Fiction, the magazine created the genre's first home and was instrumental in helping to establish science fiction fandom – the fandom from which all other fandoms have evolved.

The magazine itself ceased publication in 2005; in 2008 the new publisher, Steve Davidson, discovered that the trademarks had lapsed and applied for them.  The marks were finally granted in 2011.

For me, this is all one of those Six Degrees of Separation experiences. Once upon a time I worked for a technical publishing start up, The Cobb Group, which was eventually purchased by William Ziff, Jr., heir to the Ziff-Davis publishing empire. Ziff-Davis had been the owner of Amazing Stories from 1938 to 1965.

Fellows I’d once worked with at The Cobb Group later started an internet-based publishing business, Emazing.com, where I worked as Content Director. And now, here I am, a blogger about pulps soon to be blogging for that first science fiction pulp magazine in its new incarnation: Amazing Stories. It might not be an exact circle, but I see the path as a sort of wobbly ellipse. Seen from the ecliptic.

Back to Amazing Stories:

Phase 1 introduces the social networking aspects of the site and the Blog Team: more than 50 authors, artists, collectors, editors, pod casters, designers and bloggers who will address 14 different subjects on a regular basis – SF, Fantasy & Horror literature, anime, gaming, film, television, the visual arts, audio works, the pulps, comics, fandom, science and publishing.

Those wishing to participate in the Beta Test should request an invite by emailing the publisher, Steve Davidson.

Steve’s launching the new Amazing Stories from the appropriately named Experimenter Publishing Company in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.

 

Visit the site! You'll find it here: http://www.amazingstoriesmag.com/