Tagged: novel

Vampires Set Free in October! Get A Free eBook!

tumblr_static_mw-by-mw-2013-tumblr-150x138-6299495Lez Vamps is an anthology of vampire stories inspired by one single painting by award winning comic artist Mark Wheatley. The book features additional illustrations by Mark, inspired by the stories. It is a vastly entertaining exploration of blood sucking and lust! A perfect Halloween Gift for the, ah, oldest kids you know!

Last year, Mark Wheatley was looking for ways to promote his Facebook fan page, his website and his experiments with online self-publishing. Putting out a free eBook might help drive some traffic.

Now, Mark liked the idea of a free eBook. But he was too busy creating art to write a free book himself. So he opened up the process to his fans. He posted one of his paintings to his Facebook page and anyone inspired could write and submit a short story based on their interpretation of the art. The best submissions, would be bundled together and put it out as a free eBook. It’s a novel way of involving his fans with his art and his Facebook page!

Well, Mark doesn’t do things half-way. So, he got a crew of professional writers and editors to read through and judge the submissions. And he didn’t just slap the book together, but got the project edited by Gary Henry. Mark also designed the interior pages and added even more art inspired by the stories to the final mix. The book is a collaboration of many people, fans and professionals, all brought together and inspired by Mark Wheatley and his vivid vision of vampires!

The result is a short, free eBook of sexy, scary, funny, strange and eclectic vampire stories.

Lez Vamps will be free for the entire month of October. Lez Vamps is available in three standard eBook formats – ePub, Mobi and PDF. The PDF version is an elaborately illustrated book! When we say free, this isn’t “With a Qualifying Purchase: Free” or “Sign Up for this Mailing List: Free,” but the actual “Just Grab it and Run, with No-Strings-Attached” kind of Free!

Download your Free eBook by clicking right here.

And if you are on Facebook, you can keep up with all of Mark Wheatley’s books, projects and art by liking the Mark Wheatley Facebook page here.

 

Presenting: Tweeks!

tweeks-twins-post-119x225-8995983Beginning tomorrow afternoon and every Thursday thereafter, ComicMix will run a video podcast featuring twin 11 year-olds Maddy and Anya Ernst. The San Diego sisters will discuss their most favorite (and sometimes their least favorite) aspects of pop culture.

The girls come by their expertise naturally. Anya was named Anyanka in utero by her mother, Jen, after the character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Madeline, Maddy for short, was named after the French children’s book character. They love The Hunger Games (and their Katniss Barbie doll), Doctor Who, and My Little Pony. Less nerdy, they also adore musical theater, drag queens and Disneyland.

“Maddy and Anya represent the very next generation of fandom, and they do it with wit, style and tremendous enthusiasm,” ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold babbled. I couldn’t be more excited about having them join our ComicMix team.”

The Tweeks will debut with their review and analysis of the new Doctor on Doctor Who, as well as a discussion about the upcoming 50th anniversary episode. Future video webcasts will discuss Phineas and Ferb, My Little Pony and the latest Lenore graphic novel. The webcasts will be co-produced and abetted by ComicMix editor Adriane Nash.

“Maddy and Anya are twins, they’re tweens and they’re geeks,” Nash noted. “That’s how they came up with the name “Tweeks!”

‘A Week In Hell’- First In New Pulp Crime Digest Series- By J. Walt Layne Debuts From Pro Se Productions

Pro Se Productions continues its tradition of providing the best in New Pulp and Genre Fiction with its latest release- A WEEK IN HELL, the First volume in the Champion City digest novel series by author J. Walt Layne!

 

“Crime stories,” Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor-in-Chief of Pro Se, comments, “have always been an essential part of Pulp Fiction.  It’s a genre not restricted by time periods or certain story conventions.  Crime is Crime and Crime is everywhere.  What J. Walt Layne does in  A WEEK IN HELL is tell a tale of crime and murder in a very tried and true style, reminiscent of paperbacks of the 1950s.  It’s two fisted, it comes at you guns blazing, and doesn’t ask for permission or forgiveness.”
 
Welcome to Champion City. A megatropolis it isn’t. But you couldn’t arrive at that conclusion by looking at the police blotter.  Most everyone in the city would tell you that a day in Champion is like… A WEEK IN HELL.
 
 
It all starts with a girl and a bag of cash. Candi was the kind of gal who could give a guy indigestion. She was poison, with looks to kill, a reluctant moll looking for a way out. Thurman was a young flatfoot, not necessarily the knight in shining armor. He went to shake out a brawl and nearly fed her his gun, was it any wonder he got a date? They spend an evening on the run, but where does it lead? Just when it looks like its over, BOOM! Is it a dead girl, a bag of somebody else’s dough, or both?
 
“Writing A WEEK IN HELL,” says Layne, “was a chance for me as a writer to try and give something back to the pulp novels and magazines of yesteryear that I enjoyed reading as a kid when no one was looking. Something about the honest, yet ornery sound of the language. The not so innocent victims, the uncompromising men. The story bigger than the hero can handle, yet coming out on top against all odds. Forty Miles of bad road for the big payoff or the big sleep.”
 
Written in the style of slang ridden, bullet riddled classic crime Pulp and mystery fiction, Layne’s A WEEK IN HELL drops the reader square into all the corruption and corrosion of human spirit that is Champion City.  Dames, gats, gumshoes, and brass cupcakes die, shoot, run and glitter from every page.  Edited by David White and David Brzeski, this book features a beautiful cover by Terry Pavlet with design, logo, and print formatting by Sean Ali and Ebook formatting by Russ Anderson.  A WEEK IN HELL by J. Walt Layne courtesy of Pro Se Productions.
 
A WEEK IN HELL is available in print for $9.00 from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/n6meb2q and via Pro Se’s createspace store at  https://www.createspace.com/4407054.  This crime thriller is also available as an Ebook for $2.99 for the Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/lsgbvo5   and on the nook from Barnes And Noble at http://tinyurl.com/n5lgkjx and in most digital formats at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/348511.
 
For interviews or review copies or further information on the book or the author, contact Morgan Minor, Director of Corporate Operations at MorganMinorProSe@yahoo.com.   To learn more about Pro Se Productions, go to www.prose-press.com.
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New Pulp Author is the Talk of the Town…

Bobby on the Talk of The Town couch

New Pulp Author Bobby Nash was interviewed on Talk of The Town, a local interview show filmed in his community. Over the course of the twelve and a half minute interview, the show’s host, Karen Allen talked with Bobby about writing, pulp, Evil Ways, Lance Star: Sky Ranger, The Ruby Files, and his latest release, Fight Card: Barefoot Bones.

The video has now been posted to the internet. You can watch it above or here. Bobby is the second interview, following author Creston Mapes, starting around the 12 minute mark.

Host Karen Allen with Bobby Nash’s novel, Evil Ways

REVIEW: The Great Gatsby

Gatsby BlurayWhen I read The Great Gatsby in AP English back in 1975, I knew it was considered a literary classic but didn’t fall in love with it, despite East Egg’s source material, Great Neck, was nearby. It was a world of the wealthy and decadent that didn’t make sense to me. More recently, though, I reread it for the first time in preparation for my teaching career. With some experience, age, and wisdom, I came to see F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose in a new light. I certainly got to appreciate that this was a fresh take class, wealth, and The American Dream.

So, when I heard director Baz Luhrmann was going to bring his visual sensibilities to bringing the novel to the silver screen, I thought this could be a wonderful treat, matching the imaginativeness of his Romeo & Juliet and verve from Moulin Rouge. The casting — from Tobey Maguire’s Nick to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby – sounded spot on, mixing big names with less familiar ones. That it would be shot in 3-D sounded daring but if anyone could turn a novel into a spectacle, it was Luhrmann.

The resulting film, released last May and out this week on home video, proved interesting but ultimately disappointing. It could be, I and others, expected too much from the director or he just didn’t see the world of Jay Gatsby the way we did. It received mixed reviews and tepid box office for what should have been a box office smash.

Part of the problem could be that he amped things up too much. In what could have been an interesting indictment of the 1920’s one percenters, he chose instead to make things so lavish, so big, so indulgent that it staggered the imagination. Compare the party scenes he shot with the ones glimpsed in the trailer for the 1926 silent adaptation, just a few years after the book’s initial publication. Luhrmann made everything so out of scale, perhaps because of the intended 3-D wow factor, that it felt less like a story and more like a fairy tale (or cautionary tale).

thegreatgatsby8Nick Caraway (Maguire) is the audience’s representative as he slowly gets sucked into the world of the ultra-rich, ultra-secretive Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio). More stories exist about him than actual facts but over the course of the story, we learn that he went from rags to riches through nefarious means and intends to reclaim Daisy (Carey Mulligan) who is clearly in a loveless marriage with the rough and tumble Tom (Joel Edgerton). There are parties, fights, flirtations, fast cars, loose women, and gallons of champagne until things suddenly come to a stop with a finality that signaled the end of the Roaring Twenties.

Of course, the novel’s entire story had to be condensed and even the final cut got further trimmed as Luhrmann honed in tighter and tighter on the relationship between Nick and Jay. There are 27 minutes of deleted scenes with the director explaining how delightful they were but needed to go to remain on topic.

The movie looks right with an amazing eye for detail from dresses to jewelry to wallpaper. As usual, the soundtrack is a living thing, a mixture of period era jazz and modern rap, pulsing to a beat that defined a generation. The performances are solid but not revelatory although credit goes to Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki for breathing some life into their supporting roles as, respectively, Myrtle and Jordan.

Gatsby DaisyThe movie is available in a variety of formats but the combo pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and Ultraviolet is the one most likely to be purchased and the one reviewed. The bonus features are of course on the high definition disc. The transfer is stunning in its color and clarity, living up to the expectations where Luhrmann rarely disappoints. Similarly, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track properly conveys the aural feel of the era and the music subtly plays away, creating a nice sense of place.

There are a series of short bonus features, mostly Luhrmann talking with plenty of clips from the film and source material. There’s an overview, The Greatness of Gatsby (9:14), then some behind-the-scenes footage called Within and Without with Tobey Maguire (8:41). A highlight is a look at The Swinging Sounds of Gatsby (12:17) as the director, composer Craig Armstrong, Jay-Z, Florence Welch (of Florence & the Machine), Lana Del Rey, Bryan Ferry and The XX discuss how the soundtrack came together. A fine companion piece is The Jazz Age” (15:43), lifting liberally from Ric Burns’ New York documentary.

Razzle Dazzle: The Fashion of the ‘20s (16:22) has Luhrmann’s wife, and the film’s Costume Designer Catherine Martin reveal how they worked closely with Brooks Brothers, Tiffany & Co. and Prada to revive the look, largely thanks to archival designs and pieces in the various archives.

The author gets his due in Fitzgerald’s Visual Poetry (6:55) which also touches on the 3-D process. Then we have four more short behind-the-scenes looks under the umbrella title Gatsby Revealed.

THIS WEEK ON PRO SE PRESENTS: THE PODCAST- SPEND ‘A WEEK IN HELL’ WITH J. WALT LAYNE!

THIS WEEK ON PRO SE PRESENTS: THE PODCAST- SPEND ‘A WEEK IN HELL’ WITH J. WALT LAYNE!

This week, PRO SE PRESENTS: THE PODCAST introduces Pro Se Fans to Author J. Walt Layne and his debut Pro Se novel,  A WEEK IN HELL, the first novel in the Champion City Series.  Listen and learn about Layne’s background, influences, the true life inspiration for Champion City, and his love for pulp crime and the slangy jargon and tough bitten characters that go with it.  Tommy Hancock acts as tour guide as PRO SE PRESENTS: THE PODCAST vacations in Champion City with J. Walt Layne for  A WEEK IN HELL!

(Apologies for Technical issues)

http://prosepodcast.libsyn.com/pro-se-presents-the-podcast-j-walt-layne-spends-a-week-in-hell

Pro Se Productions- www.prose-press.com

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Prohibition Writer Terrence McCauley Wins Award

All Pulp congratulates author Terrence McCauley for winning a Stalker Award for the Most Criminally Underrated Author. The award was presented by the blog, Pop Culture Nerd, and more than 1,900 crime-fiction fans voted for their favorite books and authors in the 3rd annual Stalker Award. More information on the award can be found here.

McCauley won the award for his Airship 27 novel, Prohibition, as well as for his other work.

“Sometimes an award is most aptly named as this case. Terrence McCauley is one of the finest new crime novelist on the scene today and it is high time readers discovered this guy.”
Ron Fortier Managing Editor Airship 27 Productions

Peter Rozovsky of the blog Detectives Beyond Borders, recently wrote that “McCauley harks back to [authors] Dashiell Hammett and Paul Cain (and to writers and movie makers who harked back to Hammett and Cain). While his book’s themes of loyalty, doubt, and betrayal are confined to no one era, the cover of the novel…quite accurately reflects the early- and mid-twentieth-century gats ‘n’ gloves mythos to which McCauley makes a modern-day contribution.”

McCauley lives in Amenia, NY, near the Bronx. He graduated from Fordham University in 1996. McCauley is the Manager of Government and Community Relations for MTA Metro-North Railroad.

The publisher of Prohibition, Airship 27 Productions, is among the leading publishers of the New Pulp Movement, keeping alive the classic pulp literature of the 30s and 40s while producing newer pulp themed titles by today’s brightest writers and artists. The publisher now offers sixty novels and anthologies, and all titles are available digitally via Amazon’s Kindle as well as at several other outlets. Some are available as e-books. To learn more about Airship 27 and the books they publish, go to airship27.blogspot.com or http://airship27.com.

Pulp Crime and Noir! ‘A Week in Hell’ Available for Reviewers from Pro Se Productions!

ADVANCE DIGITAL REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE OF 
‘A WEEK IN HELL’  BY J. WALT LAYNE!
 
Continuing its tradition of action packed two fisted books featuring the best in New Pulp and Genre Fiction, Pro Se Productions announces the first in a Crime/Noir Series from Author J. Walt Layne!  A WEEK IN HELL will hit the hard bitten streets on August 15th and Pro Se wants established reviewers interested in an advance digital copy to get there first!
 
 
Welcome to Champion City. A megatropolis it isn’t. But you couldn’t arrive at that conclusion by looking at the police blotter.  Most everyone in the city would tell you that a day in Champion is like… A WEEK IN HELL!
 
 
Pro Se Productions continues its tradition of providing the best in New Pulp and Genre Fiction with its latest release- A WEEK IN HELL, the First volume in the Champion City digest novel series by author J. Walt Layne!
 
It all starts with a girl and a bag of cash. Candi was the kind of gal who could give a guy indigestion. She was poison, with looks to kill, a reluctant moll looking for a way out. Thurman was a young flatfoot, not necessarily the knight in shining armor. He went to shake out a brawl and nearly fed her his gun, was it any wonder he got a date? They spend an evening on the run, but where does it lead? Just when it looks like its over, BOOM! Is it a dead girl, a bag of somebody else’s dough, or both?
 
“Writing A Week In Hell,” says Layne, “was a chance for me as a writer to try and give something back to the pulp novels and magazines of yesteryear that I enjoyed reading as a kid when no one was looking. Something about the honest, yet ornery sound of the language. The not so innocent victims, the uncompromising men. The story bigger than the hero can handle, yet coming out on top against all odds. Forty Miles of bad road for the big payoff or the big sleep.”
 
Written in the style of slang ridden, bullet riddled classic crime Pulp and mystery fiction, Layne’s A WEEK IN HELL drops the reader square into all the corruption and corrosion of human spirit that is Champion City.  Dames, gats, gumshoes, and brass cupcakes die, shoot, run and glitter from every page.  Edited by David White and David Brzeski, this book features a beautiful cover by Terry Pavlet with design, logo, and print formatting by Sean Ali and Ebook formatting by Russ Anderson.  A WEEK IN HELL by J. Walt Layne courtesy of Pro Se Productions!
 
If you are an established reviewer of books either through a site or other venue or you have established yourself as a reviewer with a site of your own, contact Morgan Minor, Director of Corporate Operations at MorganMinorProSe@yahoo.com to request a digital copy for review.   Also anyone interested in interviews with the author or other information concerning the book or Pro Se Productions may contact Morgan at the above address as well as going to the Pro Se website- www.prose-press.com

Interview With “Behold “The Night Wind'” Author Christopher Yates!

Another classic character returns to new life in ‘BEHOLD ‘THE NIGHT WIND”, a full length novel by Christopher Yates!  Recently Christopher sat down with All Pulp to discuss himself, the novel, and his interest in tales Heroic and Pulpy!
 
ALL PULP: First, tell our readers a bit about yourself? Personally and Professionally?
 
CHRISTOPHER YATES: I’m a husband, dad, and nephew.  I’m most proud of my “husband” and “dad” titles, but the “nephew” label is a good gig. When the U.S. government gets sued in a court (employment or immigration related matters usually) I argue to a federal judge and jury on behalf of my Uncle, Sam.
 
AP: Behold ‘The Night Wind’ is your first full length novel featuring this character. Give us a brief overview of what the book is about.
 
CY: Behold ‘The Night Wind’ is a heroic adventure tale set in United States history.  In the fall of 1920 membership in the KKK is at an all-time high, with some particularly nasty sects (as if the rest of them are fluffy kittens) headquartered in Indiana and Eastern Ohio.  Al Capone is a low-ranking foot soldier in the mafia, en route from the east coast to Chicago and just presented with his raison d’être – exploitation and control of the black market in alcohol.  Of course, in 1920 alcohol is only available through the black market, because the Anti-Saloon League, and their publishing arm, the American Issue Publishing Co. (headquartered in central Ohio), successfully spear-head the passage of the Constitutional Amendment that imposes prohibition.  Both the Governor and sitting Senator from Ohio are their parties’ nominees for President of the United States.  Senator Warren Harding is conducting his campaign from the front porch of his home in central Ohio.  National celebrities, and crowds in the thousands pour into Harding’s hometown in the last few months leading up to the November 1920 election.  Speak-easies in central Ohio are being burnt to the ground, and Mr. Capone is diverted from his trip to Chicago to restore the flow of alcohol.  The KKK sees fit to substitute the flow of alcohol with the flow of mafia blood by hunting and killing any and all purveyors of hooch.  The United States Secret Service finds this developing conflict to be somewhat problematic in their efforts to ensure the personal safety of both Presidential nominees and the voting public.  Enter Bingham Harvard alias, The Night Wind, his wife, a former police detective, and their valet.  Just after assigning a private detective and friend the mission of discovering the identities of Bing’s natural parents, the Harvard’s are enlisted to discover and stop the arsons, infiltrate the KKK, and beat the stuffing out of any and all Mafioso so as to accelerate Capone’s retreat from the forming battle lines (and away from the Presidential campaign).
 
AP: The Night Wind is a character from the early 1900s. Can you share a bit of his history, what he’s all about, etc.?
 
CY: The Night Wind first appeared in the novel Alias, the Night Wind, from the May 10, 1913 issue of The Cavalier.  We’re introduced to Bingham Harvard, foster son of a wealthy New York City bank president, who is framed by a NYC police officer of stealing substantial sums from his foster father’s bank.  Befriended by another (a female) police officer, shadowed by her personal valet, Mr. Harvard proceeds to pound the tobacco juice out of anyone attempting to apprehend him until the frame-up is exposed and his reputation restored.  He earns the alias, the Night Wind, from the NYC police for his strength, speed, and elusiveness.  In all of the successive titles, The Return of “The Night Wind, The Night Wind’s Promise, and Lady of the Night Wind, the Harvards (Bing + the befriending officer whom he quickly weds…and her valet) fend off extortionists and con-men who threaten them and their family.  The series is akin to Charles Bronson’s Deathwish movies…without the violence or steady pacing.  A fantastic wrinkle in this now commonplace plot device is that the leading man, Bingham, is exceedingly, physically strong.  In Alias he snaps and dislocates limbs of up to five armed police officers…at once.  The cover of the first installment of the Alias serial sports artwork by Martin Justice portraying Bingham throwing a police officer over his head.  In The Night Wind’s Promise, the title refers to Bingham’s commitment to his wife not to tear apart bad guys with his bare hands.  In Lady of the Night Wind, Bingham’s wife is so fearful of the villain’s fate at Bing’s hands that she won’t even tell her husband that she’s the target of physical threats and extortion.
 
AP: As a writer, what appeals to you about continuing the tales of an established character over creating your own character?
 
CY: One thing I had to admit to myself and the publisher, Wildside Press, was that Behold ‘The Night Wind’ would not gain traction by the fact that the Night Wind was an established character.  To be sure, the Night Wind got lead story and occasional cover art in dozens of pulp magazines churned out by the biggest fiction magazine publisher of the day, Munsey’s.  Four novels spawned from those magazine series, and even Hollywood scored a hit movie adapting the first title, Alias, the Night Wind.  But all of that happened over 90 years ago.  There isn’t a living soul on the planet that read a Night Wind story upon its original release, or viewed the movie in a theatre.  At the time I dusted off the Night Wind, not one of the titles had seen reprint.  Consequently, I agreed to locate and re-edit, and my publisher agreed to bankroll the re-release of the original four novels to perhaps re-establish Bing in the public consciousness. 
 
What I really enjoyed about picking up the reigns from Mr. Dey’s series was that he had created – knowingly, or unknowingly, I’m not sure – an exceedingly diverse, fantastic and quirky cast, and either failed to, or wasn’t given the opportunity – again I’m not sure which, if either – to add even one more dimension, or exploit their diversity, elements of fantasy, or quirkiness.  For example, Bingham had five times the strength of a normal man, but all he did was knock about a few cops and instill a fear amongst his own loved ones that he might one day erupt in a streak of destruction and violence.  That “eruption” never happened.  The reader was told that Bingham was a foster child – a condition rendering him more mysterious and suspect than it might have today.  But we’re never told anything about his true parentage, or heritage, let alone the source of his unusual physical prowess.  In an era when women don’t yet have the right to vote, let alone find even fictional portrayal as an empowered, strong willed hero, Mrs. Harvard is given top billing in her own series/novel – Lady of the Night Wind, also earning a beautiful portrait/cover art by Charles David Williams in the Oct. 5, 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly.  She’s a wealthy heiress who shuns her heritage and shelter in the Blue Hills of Kentucky to take on a false name and become an armed police detective in 1900’s New York City.  Mrs. Bingham Harvard also has an inexplicable penchant for mechanical devices of injury and capture.  She’s chaperoned by her family’s valet, of African origin, who, without explanation, abandons his own family and comfort to tag along with his otherwise full grown, independent charge.
 
Given these templates – a guy with untested super-strength and no back-story, a woman who prefers bullets to bonbons, and an older black man with an overactive paternal instinct – I’ve got a lot of room to exercise my own creativity.  Who knows, if Mr. Dey hadn’t given the world the cast of the Night Wind, I might have made them up myself.
 
AP: The Night Wind is at best an obscure hero from the past. What challenges does that present to you as an author and why does he specifically appeal to you?
 
CY: I guess I blew enough hot air in my last answer to cover most of this one.  The challenge I gave myself in picking-up a 90 year-old story line was to add the few missing elements of the archetypal “hero,” or even “superhero,” that Mr. Dey and his era hadn’t quite birthed.  Bingham was the wealthy man about town with the desire, money, and unusual physical strength to right wrongs.  What he lacked was the altruism to right wrongs for folks in need other than himself and his own loved ones.  What he needed was a means of discovering those people in need and perhaps some willing, capable aids.  I saw the Night Wind saga as a means of evolving a one-dimensional albeit unusual cast of characters from playing private parlor tricks to becoming crime fighting adventurers.
 
AP: With this being aimed at a modern readership, why do you think Behold ‘The Night Wind’ will appeal to today’s readers?
 
CY: Although I struggled mightily to maintain many elements of the original series, among other modifications, I ramped-up the pacing 100x.  For today’s readers I’ve added to this fifth, stand alone, Night Wind novel compelling subplots, one or two more dimensions to the characterization, more characters, more and bigger guns, and a body count that approaches – but does not exceed – the best of The Spider series.
 
Having edited the re-released original four Night Wind titles, I had the means to keep a religious adherence to grammar and spelling.  That said, the vernacular saddled on Julius, the African American valet, had to go.  It was almost as if some 19th century, white Columbia Law School graduate, turned fiction author, took a pot shot at poor black Kentucky dialect.  I stomached his dialogue through the four re-releases because A) It’s how Mr. Dey wrote it, and B) I chose not to whitewash obvious racial stereotypes of that era.  I wasn’t going to confuse “re-release” with “re-write,” or fail to let new readers know which was which.  However, Behold ‘The Night Wind’ is not a re-release.  For continuity sake, I couldn’t just re-introduce a character whose few monologues were linguistically inaccurate with dramatically new and improved diction.  Because Julius’ words read as if they were a really poor imitation of a stereotype, almost as if the speaker was making it up has he went along, that’s exactly how I chose to explain the change. 
 
Also, I hope I succeeded in sustaining the original period atmosphere.  I put in hours of historical research just to ensure, for example, that the referenced weaponry was contemporary and properly identified. 
 
Today’s readers will not abide slow narrative pacing.  Thank you gaming industry, rapid-cut filming and special effects.  Most, if not all of the four original Night Wind installments moved at the pace of a salted slug.  We all have fond memories of Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or Wells’, The Invisible Man.  Both represent very early commercially successful efforts at science fiction mystery.  However, today’s reader is profoundly irked to discover after reading a couple hundred pages that the climax, or hook, is merely that the guy has a split personality, or is invisible.  Behold ‘The Night Wind’ doesn’t hold its punches like Jekyll and Hyde or The Invisible Man.  You learn very early that Bing can pulp a man’s body just by pushing him to solid ground.  The Night Wind’s super strength isn’t the hook.  There is a lot going on in Behold ‘The Night Wind’ that the modern reader will abide:
 
1)      Solving the mystery of Bing’s parentage,
2)      Finding out if the heroes can avoid an all-out blood bath between the mafia and the KKK that would engulf and scandalize the 1920 Presidential election,
3)      Discovering the master mind of the saloon arsons,
4)      Answering the question of how many booby traps can be crammed into one house and which ones will cut a person in half like a mousetrap made with razor wire,
5)      Determining what happens to a living human body when you paste it with hot coal tar and cover it with goose down, and last but not least:
6)      Asking what’s with the valet’s grammar?
 
AP: What other projects are you currently working on?
 
CY: Although I outlined a sixth Night Wind novel just after completing the first draft of the fifth installment, I’m not yet feeling the same level of motivation to actually flesh-out that outline.  If I learned anything from this experience, it’s that “I’m going to write a novel” is way, way too easy to say.  I’m not prepared to say it again, just yet.
 
I am piecing together a reference book that I hope to market one day.  From the moment I caught the superhero prose bug, I’ve created and maintained an index of my own collection.  At 1,348 titles and counting, it includes superhero fiction from the pulp era (e.g. The ShadowDoc SavageThe SpiderGreen Lama, etc.), novelizations of other superhero media (e.g.  comic books, movie screenplays, t.v. screenplays, etc.), and of course, original superhero fiction (e.g. Wild Cards novel series, etc.).  An individual entry includes the usual data – title, author, publisher and date of release – but heaps on loads of extras.  For example, I document the provenance of the content of all my books through all other media.  A given novelization of a Green Hornet television episode might have been born a radio script, adapted to a comic book story, turned into a television script, and then novelized.  The novel may be a prequel to a story line that continues as a short story in a published Green Hornet anthology.  If I had to assign a “working title,” I’d dub this work in progress The Encyclopedia of Superhero Prose Fiction.
 
AP: Thanks for your time, Chris!
 
Behold ‘The Night Wind’ is available from Borgo Press at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Behold-Night-Wind-Christopher-Yates/dp/1479400270/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376864950&sr=8-1&keywords=behold+the+night+wind 

A Girl and Her Cat– Honey West Returns!

Cover Art: Douglas Klauba

Win Scott Eckert has shared the final cover to the upcoming Honey West/T.H.E. Cat novel: A Girl and Her Cat by artist Douglas Klauba. A Girl and Her Cat is the first new Honey West novel in over 40 years.

Available for order soon via Diamond and direct from Moonstone!

Following on the heels of the first ever Honey West & T.H.E Cat crossover comic, Moonstone’s “Death in the Desert,” comes the Honey West & T.H.E Cat novel, A Girl and Her Cat…

When an exotic green-eyed Asian doctor hires Honey to recover a stolen sample of a new Rubella vaccine from a rival scientist, the blonde bombshell private eye—suspicious but bored—takes the case. But after she’s attacked not once, but twice, on her way from Long Beach to San Francisco to track down her quarry, she knows there’s more—much more—to her femme fatale client than meets the eye.

Along the way, Honey’s one-time paramour Johnny Doom—ex-bounty hunter and current Company agent—reenters the picture, and the gorgeous doctor’s insidious—and deadly—grandfather deals himself in. But when Honey questions whether Johnny’s playing her game, or just playing her for a patsy, she joins forces—as only Honey can—with the one man in Frisco who can help her recover the stolen vaccine-cum-bioweapon and prevent worldwide genocide by germ-warfare—former cat burglar-turned-bodyguard Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat: T.H.E Cat!

Join writers Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh, and cover artist Douglas Klauba, for A Girl and Her Cat, a groovy, racy 1960s romp coming soon from Moonstone!

Win Scott Eckert (The Green Hornet, The Avenger, Pat Wildman, The Domino Lady, Zorro, The Phantom, Sherlock Holmes, Wold Newton Origins, etc.)
Matthew Baugh (Zorro, The Avenger, The Green Hornet, Sherlock Holmes, Six-Guns Straight from Hell, The Phantom, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc.)
Douglas Klauba (The Phantom, Zorro, The Green Hornet, The Spider, Kolchak, The Black Terror, The Green Lama, Philip Marlowe, Doc Savage, etc.)
Moonstone: Classic & new heroes in thrilling tales of adventure, mystery, & horror!