Ralph’s Rants conducted an in-depth interview with New Pulp Author Bobby Nash. Bobby discusses his writing history, what makes a story pulp, what books are coming up from him, how it feels to kill off a favorite character, and much more.
You can read the full interview here.
UPDATE: Peter’s site is back. Feel free to add well-wishes there.
Peter David, writer of over one thousand comics for everyone over the past four decades, has suffered a stroke. He writes on his site:
I have had a stroke. We were on vacation in Florida when I lost control of the right side of my body. I cannot see properly and I cannot move my right arm or leg. We are currently getting the extent of the damage sorted out and will report as further details become clarified.
His main website, PeterDavid.net, is getting hammered, but we’ll be updating as we have more information. He’s still planning on hitting all his deadlines, though.
Peter, of course, is well known for his comics work, holding the current record for most months consistently published. comic book resume includes an award-winning twelve-year run on The Incredible Hulk, and he has also worked on such varied and popular titles as X-Factor, Supergirl, Young Justice, Soulsearchers and Company, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Star Trek, Wolverine, The Phantom, Sachs & Violens, The Dark Tower, and many others. He has also written comic book related novels, such as The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast, and co-edited The Ultimate Hulk short story collection. Furthermore, his opinion column, “But I Digress…,” has been running in the industry trade newspaper The Comic Buyers’s Guide for nearly a decade, and in that time has been the paper’s consistently most popular feature and was also collected into a trade paperback edition.
His latest prose fiction, Pulling Up Stakes, is available from Crazy 8 Press. Part one is available as an e-book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble now, with part two arriving shortly. His latest comic, Richard Castle’s A Calm Before Storm, is a spinoff from the TV series Castle, starring Nathan Fillion.
It’s not easy being a superhero in the best of circumstances, so pity the poor man whose powers derive from a demon — and whose mother is dating one of the nation’s leading evangelical preachers. And when that young unfortunate’s name is Chesney Arnstruther, well…that’s someone whom you would not want to switch places with.
Chesney is the superhero of Costume Not Included
There are two kinds of trilogy-middles: the ones that lose the energy of the first volume and mark time until the finale, and the ones that are happy to have gotten the scene-setting out of the way and leap into creating ever more complications to keep things interesting. Costume, luckily, is of the second type: the first book took a little while to get going, but this one hits its wry tone right up front and charges forward at exactly the right pace.
Really, how could you put down a novel that begins like this:
“I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Chesney Arnstruther said into the phone.
“I’m not speaking to you,” said his mother. “I’m telling you something for your own good, is what I’m doing.”
I’ve spent the last several years haranguing anyone who wanders into Antick Musings about how essentially funny and entertaining a writer Matthew Hughes is — see my other reviews of Hughes books, all of which you should buy, read, and love, in approximately that order: The Other, Hespira, Template, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Majestrum — so I’ll leave that part as read: Hughes came into the SFF field writing Vance-inspired far-future books, but his influences were always deeper than Vance (not that being able to write as smoothly and sardonically as the great Jack Vance isn’t a monumental achievement to begin with), and he’s since shown that his essential qualities shine through in a variety of subgenres.
So, anyway: Chesney is a superhero, and he’s been doing well at it. Too well, actually: he’s wiped out pretty much all of the Golden Age-style street crime (guys in suits and fedoras robbing banks, muggings, and so forth) in his city, and his deal only extends so far. He can’t directly stop the sources of crime — which, in best superhero fashion, lies with a shadowy cabal that secretly runs that city — and his put-everything-into-the-right-boxes mind is not happy leaving a job undone. (His new girlfriend, Melda, is also pushing him in slightly different directions; she’s like to see him have a higher media profile and perhaps make some money from being the Actionary.)
Adding to the complications is that his mother’s new boyfriend — that noted thriller writer turned TV evangelist, Reverend Hardacre — has his own new, and very odd, theory about the secret cosmology of the world, and it’s becoming more and more clear that Hardacre is right. And the Devil is not entirely happy with the deal with Chesney — that lack of a soul coming his way vexes him, and the Devil’s whole raison d’etre is to trick and twist and sneak — and the Devil has deal with other folks who may help him cause trouble for Chesney.
So complications — very idiosyncratic, unique complications, of the kind only Hughes could create — proliferate, until Cheney finds himself chased closely by a smart police detective, meeting a Jesus Christ, (not the Jesus — not the current one, at least — but a prior, historical version) and having himself proclaimed as a new prophet by Hardacre. But Chesney still has Melda, and his demon Xaphan, on his side, plus his own inextinguishable drive for truth and justice. And there’s still one book to come in this trilogy.
Not to sound like a broken record, but Matt Hughes is a great, wonderfully entertaining writer — his dialogue pops, his people are quirky and real, and his situations could be written by no one else in the world. If you don’t like his work, there’s got to be something wrong with you.
Just in time for Halloween, New Pulp Author James Palmer has released a free tale of a suppressed Halloween and a futuristic fascist dictatorship at http://jamespalmerbooks.com/2012/10/31/free-story-the-halloween-room.
Happy Halloween!
The timing of The Raven’s home video release is a curious one as I am busily teaching my eighth graders about the short story, using Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” as the first example. This feature film was released in the spring and sank without making much of a ripple at the box office, unlike Poe, who startled readers with amazing regularity for over a decade before his tragic, mysterious death.
To introduce the students to Poe, we reviewed his life which had him all over the northeast, marrying a thirteen year old relative and fighting depression and alcohol while trying to be the best writer or journalist he could be. His works of prose and poetry made for excellent reading in the newspapers and magazines while he laid the groundwork for contemporary detective fiction and helped transition us from the more genteel gothic tale to one of pure horror.
Screenwriters Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare used the unrecorded circumstances of Poe’s final days and blended them with elements drawn from his works to tell this particular story that fails to be a solid detective yarn or be particularly scary. Director James McTeigue’s (V for Vendetta) best move was to cast John Cusak as Poe, giving us a sympathetic character, although he appears far too robust given what really happened in Baltimore back in 1849. Foreshadowing the serial killers that became a staple of newspapers and novels decades later, this story shows us Poe chasing such a killer.
None of it really happened and the R-rated film is too violent for my young charges to see, which may be just as well given its lack of real suspense or good writing. Even the pounding soundtrack is more distracting than unsettling, just another layer of noise on an all-too busy film.
Why is he in Baltimore? Not chasing a killing but there to woo and marry Emily Hamilton (Alive Eve), despite the disapproval of her father, Captain Charles (Brendan Gleeson). He’s also drunk and in need of work, hoping to land some assignment from editor, Maddox (Kevin McNally). During this time, someone is killing young women in a manner reminiscent of Poe’s work so Police detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) summons Poe for a consultation and suddenly the game is afoot.
If you enjoy Poe’s work, you will appreciate the nods which have been woven or shoved into the fabric of the story but on the whole it is tedious business, not at all helped from flat dialogue and characterizations to a less than effective atmosphere. And it also avoids being interesting by being very predictable so of course Emily falls into the killer’s hands and Poe will be the only one to save her. Had the screenwriters actually used Poe’s structure of building suspense and playing with the psychological underpinnings of gothic fiction, things might have turned out far differently. Instead, we’re left checking our watch and wondering how such rich material could feel so obvious.
The film’s transfer to Blu-ray is nicely handled and McTiegue’s dark, shadowy shots retain their black moodiness. Similarly, the audio work is just swell.
McTiegue and producers Marc D. Evans, Trevor Macy, and Aaron Ryder provide rich details on the film’s making in the audio commentary. The disc also comes with six Deleted and Extended Scenes (10:41); none of which are missed. The Raven Guts: Bringing Death to Live (13:32) is a just-right-length making of featurette while the teaching in me wanted more from The Madness, Misery, and Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe (9:50), as a pair of experts tell us what Poe’s life was really like, especially at the end. There are three additional pieces: Behind the Beauty and Horror (2:18), The Raven Presents John Cusack & James McTeigue (2:45), and Music for the Raven – The Team (5:10).
Star Trek: The Next Generation 365
By Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdman
Abrams Books, 744 pages, $29.95
Let me state upfront that Paula and Terry have been friends for a long time, but I adamantly maintain that they were the ideal people to write Star Trek 365 and the recently released Star Trek: The Next generation 365. Why? Because Paula has been intimately involved with the franchise since the 1980s and knows every nook and cranny within Paramount Pictures to find rare images or information. Terry is an experienced film publicist and has a keen understanding of what people like to know and has an engaging way of sharing that with enthusiasm.
Being the series’ 25th anniversary makes this a nice companion volume to the series; chock full of images, architectural and production drawings, special effects pictures, and some on set antics. Every episode from each of the seven seasons receives not only a brief synopsis but then stories about the show, told from a wide variety of angles. You get some of the best known tales such as the banana clip that became Geordi’s VISOR to lesser known stories in how episodes were conceived. Some of the best are the ones demonstrating how a kernel of a story lingered until the right opportunity, or the right writer, or both, arrived to solve the conundrum. A good example is how long it took to produce the acclaimed “Darmok”.
Given how many images Paula approved for use through the years, she knew which ones to avoid in the hopes of finding a fresh look at the series. One approach meant leaning more towards the black and white shots the still photographer took that have rarely been used, and that adds a nice quality to the book. Many of these are behind-the-scenes and between takes shots of the cast relaxing, prepping or goofing off.
To find fresh nuggets of information about the 178 episodes, the pair interviewed dozens of people who worked on the show over the eight years it took from conception to finale. As a result, they got not only interesting new anecdotes but found additional graphics for use, especially from production designer Richard James and visual effects producer Dan Curry. Effects associate Eric Alba is also credited for coming up with a variety of candid photos for use. All of this enriches the book and ensures that it’s not a retread of previously seen images or twice-told tales.
The comes with a foreword by Ronald D. Moore, who got his big break with an unsolicited script and has gone on to a creative career among the stars. The 365 series of pop culture books are nice, compact treasure troves that are well worth a look.
New Pulp Author Sean Taylor’s Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action Blog is planning a new award for bloggers called The BaGo Awards. Sean is currently looking for nominations so let him know your favorite blogs here.
Press Release:
We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of the blog (first post was 11/27/11), and I wanted to do something special for it, but not for me — for all the other bloggers out there plugging away every day.
So here’s what I have in mind — The BaGo Awards (or the soon to be known simply as the BaGo). Send me your suggestions and I’ll present the best of the best blogs out there for and by writers. Here are a few of the categories I propose. What categories would you add? (not blogs yet… I’ll announce the call for those as soon as we get the categories hammered out.)
Best In Show Awards
For INDIVIDUAL writers who are primarily genre-specific who maintain a blog about their work in that genre and the genre itself.
Genres include:
Horror
Pulp
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
Mystery
Thriller
Comics and Graphic Novels
Best in Craft Award
For the best instructional/inspirational resource blog to make writers better at their craft.
Most Beautiful Soul Award
For the best, personal blog from a writer who uses his or her platform to “bare the soul” as the cliche goes.
Best Group Blog Award
For those blogs maintained by a group of writers, whether focused on genres, news, interviews, reviews or a combination them.
Best in Reviews Award
For the best blog that focuses primarily on book reviews, can be be a writer blog or reader blog in this category.
Welcome to the Club Award for the best blog from a new writer first published within the past year
Any other suggestions?
Take care,
Sean Taylor
Official Taylorverse Website
Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action Blog
New Pulp Author Sean Taylor’s Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action blog hosts a regular writers rountable. This week’s topic is Killing or Kissing the Muse — Writers on Finding Inspiration. Joining Sean this week is a writing who’s who on a subject we’re all passionate about. Read all about it here.
The muse.
As our ongoing metaphor for inspiration, she’s been the subject of many songs and stories, best portrayed I think in Neil Gaiman’s amazing comic Sandman. But I digress. Calliope (the muse of epic poetry) and her sisters have been made a virtue by some, a vice by others, and by others merely ignored as an urban legend for creators.
To find out how today’s hard-working writers feel about the muse and finding inspiration, particularly in today’s busy lifestyles where one is most likely a “writer and” — not merely having the luxury of just being a writer — we asked.
And some of New Pulp’s finest answered. Read what they had to say at http://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2012/09/killing-or-kissing-muse-writers-on.html
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| Visit http://stamfordmuseum.org/upcoming-exhibit.html for details. |
The Stamford Museum & Nature Center in Stamford, Connecticut has announced that it is hosting an exhibit called Flash Gordon and the Heroes of the Universe from September 22 – November 4, 2012.
About Flash Gordon and the Heroes of the Universe:
Flash Gordon and the Heroes of the Universe showcases artwork by two of the finest Flash Gordon illustrators, Alex Raymond and Al Williamson, as well as numerous other science fiction cartoonists. The artwork and memorabilia on display, representing space adventure creations from Buck Rogers to Star Wars, provides evidence of the significant impact that these heroes of the universe have had on American culture. Flash Gordon, which first appeared in 1934, was created by Alex Raymond (New Rochelle, 1909 – Stamford, 1956) and has impacted countless science fiction creators including George Lucas, director of “Star Wars.” Lucas claims, “Had it not been for Alex Raymond and Flash Gordon, there might not have been a Star Wars.”
One of the most influential artists in the history of his genre, Raymond is credited with having created “the visual standard by which all such comic strips would henceforth be measured.” The exhibition will also include original artwork by Al Williamson, who continued Raymond’s creation and put his own imprint on the way the character was drawn and presented. Writer and cartoonist Brian Walker, who served as curator for Fifty Years of Bailey Bailey at the Museum in 2001, is serving as the guest curator for this exhibition. He has been the curator of more than seventy exhibitions and is the author of numerous books on cartoon history.
Flash Gordon and the Heroes of the Universe is made possible, in part, by support from King Features Syndicate, A Unit of Hearst Corporation, as well as the annual support of Premier Partners: Aquarion Water Company, First County Bank and Purdue Pharma. The Stamford Museum & Nature Center would like to thank Cori Williamson, Peter Maresca, Jim Keefe, Bill Janocha, Steve Kammer, Bob Fujitani, Brian Walker and the Strong Museum for lending artwork and artifacts to this exhibition.
About the Stamford Museum & Nature Center:
Stamford Museum & Nature Center is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of art, the natural and agricultural sciences, and history. The Museum is a vital cultural and educational resource for the community, and a focal point for family activity and interaction, seeking to inspire creativity, foster self-discovery, and nurture an appreciation for lifelong learning through exhibitions, educational programs, and special events that enhance the visitor’s experience of our unique site.
Learn more about the Stamford Museum & Nature Center at http://stamfordmuseum.org.
If you stop by the exhibit, tell them All Pulp sent ya!
(August 15, 2012—Waco, TX) – iVerse Media, creators of some of the world’s most popular and widely used technologies for reading and distributing digital comics, announced today that the company’s Comics Plus platform has been selected as the exclusive digital distribution platform for Contraband Comics, a new independent, creator-owned comics publishing initiative.
“We’re extremely happy and excited that Contraband Comics has decided to launch with us exclusively,” said Michael Murphey, iVerse CEO. “Their creative team is outstanding and, from the work we’ve seen so far, we know that our readers are really going to enjoy their lineup.”
“iVerse’s dedication to creator-owned projects is what we were looking for in a distribution partner,” said writer/artist and Contraband founder, Jon Goff. “Their ability to deliver content on a level that meets the high standards everyone at Contraband strives for made this a very easy choice for us. We plan to utilize the Comics Plus app’s many features to their fullest, as Contraband continues to roll out titles that push the envelope of storytelling and innovation.”
The first wave of Contraband titles that will be available exclusively on Comics Plus include:
“A big goal for us at iVerse is to help talented creators like Jon get their creations out to millions and millions of people,” said Steve May, iVerse Director of Business Development. “There are many amazing creator-owned books out there just needing the right distribution partner to take them to the next level. With talent like Jon, Marat, Travis and Jim on board, I have no doubt that Contraband Comics will quickly reach that level and grow beyond it.”
About iVerse Media. LLC
iVerse Media (http://www.iversemedia.com) is a digital content distributor focused on the world of comics and popular culture. Founded in 2008, the company was one of the first to launch digital comics on Apple’s iOS platform. As of April 2012, over 12 million products in the iOS App Store have been downloaded that are powered by iVerse, making the “iVerse Engine” one of the most popular and widely used platforms for reading digital comics in the world. The company is principally located in Waco, TX. For more information, visit www.comicsplusapp.com.
About Contraband Comics
Launched in 2012, Contraband Comics is a creator-owned, independent comic book publisher with a focus on providing quality titles across multiple genres. Founded by writer/artist, Jon Goff, and featuring a talented line-up of comic book creators, including Travis Sengaus, Marat Mychaels, Jim Hanna, Fco Plascencia, Comicraft and more, Contraband’s only goal is to entertain. Contrabrand Comics are available exclusively on iVerse Media’s ComicsPlus digital platform. Learn more about Contraband Comics on their Website: http://www.contracomics.com
About Jon Goff
Jon Goff has developed content for comic books, action figures and video games while working with many of the top companies across the entertainment industry, including The McFarlane Companies, 343 Industries, Microsoft Game Studios, Marvel Comics, MEGA Brands, Gentle Giant Studios, WETA Workshop, ABC Studios, Tor Books, DK Publishing, Prima Games and more. Jon’s credits include Tor Books’ Halo-themed anthology, Halo Evolutions, the monthly Spawn comic book title and The Adventures of SPAWN online comic. Follow Jon on Twitter: @Jonathan_Goff
About Marat Mychaels
Marat Mychaels (Grifter, Deadpool Corps) is a veteran of the comic book industry, having provided artwork for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics and more. Marat’s current focus is the launch of his creator-owned title, Blindside, as part of Contraband Comics, along with steady work on DC Comics New 52 titles, including Hawk and Dove and Grifter. Follow Marat on Twitter: @MaratMychaels
About Travis Sengaus
Travis Sengaus is an illustrator and animator from Calgary, Alberta, who has provided artwork for various comic, video game and animation projects. His credits include The Adventures of SPAWN online comic book and production work for Table Taffy Studios. Follow Travis on Twitter: @TravisSengaus
About Jim Hanna
Jim Hanna is an artist/writer based in Mesa, Arizona. He has provided art for Arcana Studio, Upper Deck, Red 5 Comics, Cryptozoic Entertainment and Marvel/The Hero Initiative. Jim’s newest project is the creator-owned title, Jack Rabbit, part of Contraband Comics’ initial wave of titles. Follow Jim on Twitter: @jimhanna
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