More Big News!

Back in March when I announced the new Domino Lady anthology, I hoped I would be back soon with more news. Well . . . soon has turned into six months. Still good news is good news, no matter when delivered.
So, just released by Airship 27 is my newest book “Zeppelins over Afrika.” This a what I call a novel in four parts. Meaning that it is four stories, closely linked together in time, that chronicle a war fought in Africa between British forces and Imperial German forces circa 1935. This is an alternate history adventure set in my Zeppelin World.
Not familiar with that particular world? Not surprising, while I created it long ago, not much has been actually published about it . . . so far. About eight years ago, I was asked by Tommy Hancock of Pro Se Press to write a story for an adventure anthology he wanted to publish. The premise was a flying adventure set in a world where fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft had never been invented or developed. I was intrigued and bought into the project. Since I was, and am, a big fan of anything lighter than air, I immediately decided my story would be about a dirigible. And of course, no one flew more successful dirigibles than the Germans. So, my story was planned as a German zeppelin flying an adventure in exotic setting. I chose a fictional war in Africa for that setting. This story was eventually published in Alternative Air Adventures; a fun little book that no one seems to have taken much notice of.
I had a lot of fun writing this story but when finished, I put it aside and moved on to other work. Fortunately, a couple of my friends who did read AAA liked my story enough to start nagging me about it. “What happened next with Max?” and “You ought to write more of his adventures” were some of the emails I got. Loyalty from my friends? Perhaps. But more likely they’re just alternate history fans. Alternate history has gotten to be a very big subgenre of ScFi/ Fantasy.
Finally, I gave in and wrote a sequel to my short story just to keep them quiet. This wasn’t enough, of course and more nagging ensued. Deciding that to write more of this saga I needed more background. So, I sat down and figured a whole back story to fit the stories I had written. By the time I had finished I realized I had created a whole alternate world. More details followed; including a timeline.
All this was a lot of fun. So, writing the third and fourth parts of the adventures of L-107 and young Max was easy. Well, not easy. There was the usual hard work of getting anything I write to make sense. But it didn’t seem like a lot of work at the time. I had a lot of fun writing these stories. After all, what’s not to like? Alternate history and Zeppelins? It was great fun for me. And, all those airship reference books I have been collecting for many years came in handy. So, Zeppelins over Afrika was born.
When it was finished and revised, I submitted it to Airship 27. Ron Fortier said some very kind things about the manuscript and accepted it. That was a few years ago. It took some serious searching to find the right artists and more time for them to work their magic. The wait was worth it though. When you see the cover of the book, I think you’ll agree.
Now comes the interesting part. In the intervening years since I finished writing Zeppelins over Afrika, I have done some interesting things with my “Zeppelin World” as I call it. I have written several stories and outlined even more stories covering a lot of interesting and varied aspects of my alternate world. After all, there are a lot more countries in the world than just Imperial Germany. Just imagine an alternate Graf Zeppelin or R-100. Not to mention no Hindenburg disaster.
Not only that, my alternate world also has no Nazis or Communists. Oh, there are plenty of rivalries, alliances and axes to grind. But this leads us to even more possible stories. What about Naval rivalries or diplomatic and espionage conflicts between nations in my World? The possibilities are endless.
The best part of all this is that I have several of these stories written and ready to go. It’s just a matter of where and how to publish them. Things are breaking on that front, but I cannot say too much at this time. Trust me though, it will not be years before my next Zeppelin World story will be available.
In the meantime, I hope lots of you take a chance and read Zeppelins over Afrika. It has plenty of rollicking aerial adventure in a different and, I believe, possible world.
So, here it is; my second published work this year and a whole book at that. Though it’s always possible that more work will be published shortly, I’m not holding my breath. Still, the Gods of Publishing do seem to be finally smiling on my endeavors.

See you next time.

Finally!

Thank God 2021 is over! I had high hopes for it on many fronts and was mostly disappointed on all of them. I’d like to think that 2022 will be better . . . but I thought that about last year too. I guess we’ll see.
One thing that is making 2022 better is publishing. I did a lot of writing last year but had next to nothing published. Why? I’m not sure. Publishers have their own problems and I hesitate to comment on them. Bottom Line: The Gods of publishing withheld their blessing last year.
This year will hopefully be different. It is starting out on a promising note. Hot off the presses, from Airship 27 is Domino Lady volume 4. This is the latest entry in their popular anthology Domino Lady series. I have the lead story in this volume entitled Diamonds are the Lady’s Best Friend. It can be found on Amazon or direct from Airship 27. I also am selling them on E-bay.
I have actually written quite a few stories about the sexy hero (yes several are awaiting publishing) and I think this story is one of my favorites.
There are several other of my projects that, I’m told, are nearing publication. We’ll see. It would be nice to see a couple of things published that have been hanging fire for a long time. At any rate, it looks like 2022 will be better than last year and that is about all we can ask for.
Hopefully, I’ll be back with more good news soon.

Book Sales

For a while now, I have been selling books containing my work through E-bay at discounts from retail prices. This has worked well for a while, now. I started out selling on E-bay long before I was published and have made a lot of profitable sales over many years. Unfortunately, that may not continue for much longer.
E-bay has made many changes over the years. Some of those changes have been positive (creation of Paypal) but others have been negative. Always these changes have been in the direction of making it harder to sell independently. I have stayed with them because the positives always outweighed the negatives when it came to sales but that is no longer the case.
A while back E-bay made the short sighted decision to sell Paypal; no doubt for a lot of money. Their break with Paypal has not worked out as well as they thought and in what I think is a childish decision they are breaking totally with their former payment system.
As a seller, I am now not allowed to accept Paypal payments; period. E-bay now insists on direct payments to them that they will distribute as they see fit.
So gone are the instant payments to my Paypal account allowing me to ship nearly as instantly. To say I believe this decision to be short sighted is a gross understatement. I won’t bore anyone with the new hoops I am being forced to jump through to maintain my status as a seller but I will say that I am not sure how much longer I will be selling on E-bay.
If it comes to pass that I am forced off their platform, I will sincerely miss it. I have sold a lot of books there. And , before that a lot of games and models when I was in the hobby business.
The good news is I can still sell books published by Airship 27, Pro Se Press or Moonstone Books that contain anything written by me through this site. If anyone wants any book containing my works, just contact me through this website. I will start checking it more often as of today. Once you contact me, we can work through Paypal or I will accept a mailed check.
I am now looking into direct publishing through Kindle on Amazon.com for certain future works. While I love New Pulp and will continue writing for Airship 27 and other publishers, there area lot of other stories and entire books that I intend to write that might work a whole lot better on Kindle. More on that as it develops.
On the writing front I have just finished a new pulp story and will be submitting it soon; Another classic character from the 30’s and 40’s with a name everyone will recognize. New stuff I will be working on this spring will be alternate history stuff for my Zeppelin World and maybe some historic fiction/ horror.
So, if you are looking for any of my works, contact me through this website and we’ll get you the books you need.
Until next time; Happy reading!

Gentlemen Prefer Domino Lady

A new year surprise just landed on my doorstep. A project that has been long in the planning and execution has finally hit the presses and is now available.
A long time ago I was asked to write a story for a Domino Lady team up book. This was a project for Moonstone Books. It was delayed literally for years for various reasons but finally got back on track last fall. The book is now available and is entitled; Gentlemen Prefer Domino Lady. My story, “Blind Date,” teams Domino Lady with the classic pulp hero Ravenwood.
For those not familiar with Ravenwood, he was a little known hero published in only five stories that appeared in the back pages of Secret Agent X magazine. Ravenwood was an investigator of supernatural mysteries. Most interesting, he actually had minor supernatural powers, unusual in a time where most stories only had phony or simulated supernatural/ horror aspects.
My story is a light adventure that combines DL’s crusade against corruption and Ravenwood’s interest in the supernatural. Most fans love team ups. I’m not that crazy about them. If the heroes fight; no one can win. Plus the story has to give equal play to each hero. Hence each hero gets only half as much attention. So, I had my doubts about the whole concept.
While I haven’t changed my mind about team ups in general, I do think it worked out for my story. DL and Ravenwood work well together with their skills complimenting each other and just hint of romance between the attractive heroes. I am quite happy with the story and hope readers enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The other stories, written by a talented group of authors, are also well worth reading.
The book is available at the Moonstone Books website but unfortunately, not at Amazon.com. I will have some for sale on E-bay as soon as my copies arrive.
Hopefully this is a harbinger of good things to come in this new year. More news as it happens.

2020 and 2021

I have refrained from commenting on the various improbable and downright crazy happenings of the last year.
Why? One; I believe there are far too many people out there venting their spleens about the current situation, now. One more opinion won’t add much to the conversation.
Two; Things have gotten far too political. Personally, I think Covid-19 is simply a biological plague and nothing more. We’ve had these kind of things before (Anyone remember, Ebola or SARS?), this one is just a lot more dangerous. In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t had something like this sweep the world before this. How people can politicize a pandemic just amazes me!
Three; This site was always intended to be about my writing, nothing else. I’ve tried to keep both my personal life as well as politics out of the conversation. I will continue this policy as much as I can.
This is not to say that I have not been affected by everything going on around me. My wife and I have isolated ourselves. We stay home, wear our masks and try to maintain our sanity while the world seems to go Hell around us. I have missed writing conventions and business trips. My wife has missed all her bowling tournaments. We have not taken any trips or vacations since February. We were in Hawaii when this madness broke out and had to fight our way home. Upon arrival we were greeted by a locked down state, near panic at grocery stores and cleaned out gun stores.
As for me personally; I have had some trouble finding motivation to write. Not sure why, maybe fallout from the isolation. concern with the mass wildfires burning everywhere in western Oregon this Fall (the sky was so dark with smoke you could look directly at the sun and see only a dull red disk) or maybe the growing election madness that seemed to get worse every day.
This is not to say that I wrote nothing. Some stories got written. And others are moving along. Also some long range writing projects are finally moving from theory to reality. But, I must admit I could have been a lot more productive in 2020.
All this leads me to 2021. I, like a lot of others have great hopes that the new year will be a whole lot better than the last one. After all, it can’t get a lot worse . . . can it? Seriously, a vaccine is being distributed. The election is finally over. It is . . . isn’t it??? God, I hope so.
And hopefully America will gradually open up as the virus gets under control. It would be nice to travel, visit old friends and take some vacations again.
So, I am not sad to see 2020 in the rear view mirror. Things have to get better. At any rate this is as political as it will get here. I intend to stick to writing news in the future.
2021 is starting off strong. I am just sending off a new story for a pulp anthology and have other projects starting to move. Hopefully there will be good news to report soon.

A Happy and prosperous New Year to All!