by Gene Moyers | Aug 27, 2020
Well, for the first time in a long while, I have some good news to report. I have a story published in a new anthology from Airship 27. The anthology is Dan Fowler volume 3. My story is titled Dead Man Shooting, a title I’m quite proud of.
Note: Titles are an interesting subject. Some are easy, some hard to come by, some are perfect and practically write themselves. Hmmmm . . . that might make a good topic to expand on some day. I’ll think about that.
Appearing in G-Men, later G-Men Detective which ran from 1935 to 1953; Dan Fowler was hard charging FBI agent. With 112 issues over an eighteen year span G-Men was one of the longest running hero pulps.
Dan Fowler battled gangsters in the 1930s, Nazi agents and saboteurs during WWII and Organized Crime in the post war years. A few years ago Airship 27 announced a third anthology of Dan’s adventures. Between writing assignments at that time. I threw my hat in the ring. I didn’t know much about Dan Fowler but I figured, what the heck, a pulp hero is a pulp hero. Well . . . sort of. I read some of his original adventures for background and came up with a plot. The writing wasn’t as easy as I had first thought though, and I actually struggled a bit writing Dan Fowler. I won’t go into specifics here. If you’re interested you should take a look at my author’s notes after my story in the book. At any rate I ended up writing what I consider a pretty good G-Man yarn with lots of car chases and shoot outs. A bit different than what I usually write but fun nonetheless. Although, I was mildly surprised at the body count and somewhat dark tone of the story. Still, that is exactly how a lot of the gangster pulps of that time were.
Anyway, I turned my story in an did what I always do; I waited. Waiting for other authors to commit and then write their stories then waiting for artwork is an ongoing process. Sometimes it goes faster than others times. Waiting for Dan Fowler turned into a marathon. I wrote Dead Man walking over four years ago. Yes, It has languished in publishing purgatory for a long time. I have discussed this phenomenon before. Sometimes the Publishing Gods smile on a project . . . sometimes they frown.
At any rate the wait has been worth it. Dan Fowler v. 3 is out and available direct from Airship 27 and Amazon.com. I will have copies available on E-bay as soon as my allotment of books arrive. My seller name is Libertygamer.
So, if you like G-men, gangsters, Tommy guns and chases give Dan Fowler a try. It is a fast paced, exciting read.
by Gene Moyers | Jul 21, 2020
Finally . . . something to write about.
Yes, yes . . . there’s lots going on out there; A world wide pandemic, personal lockdowns, people going postal over mask wearing (What’s that all about??), but in my opinion there’s far too much being written about the current crisis now. I’m getting tired of reading, watching and hearing about it all. So I have decided not to add my two bits worth to all the info floating around out there.’
I will limit myself to simply saying this; my wife and I are taking it all seriously. We wear our masks and socially distance ourselves when necessary. It’s a medical crisis and we do what we have to. Sooner or later the doctors and researchers will figure things out and we can get back to normal activities. That may be a while, but we have weathered serious crises in this country before and we can weather this one.
So, by now most of you have heard or actually seen the new Who’s Who in New Pulp reference book. For those of you who haven’t, it is a brand new reference published by Airship 27 with brief bios and information for over two hundred people involved in the New Pulp publishing industry. It includes writers, artists, editors, publishes and more.
I have not received my copy yet (Everything seems to take longer these days) but everything I hear about the book says it is going to be a terrific reference. I consider myself lucky to be included with so many other talented people listed in this book.
In the last few years of writing I have been fortunate to meet many of the players in New Pulp personally. Others I would like to meet or contact. This new reference will allow me to do just that. I believe most of us will have a copy on their bookshelves soon.
On the publishing front, some long awaited projects are finally starting to move. A couple of new books with my stories in them are nearing production, or so I’m told. And, a complete book of mine is hopefully going to see the light of day in the near future.
So maybe the drought is over. It has been a while since I’ve had anything new to brag about.
Hopefully, I will be back soon with good news.
by Gene Moyers | Jan 15, 2020
Well, it’s been a while but finally I have something interesting to report. First, a word about internet journals. I am a prodigious reader, have been since I was a little kid. Reading so much, I of course, have favorite authors. Many of these are well known and have their own websites that I check periodically to see what they’re up to.
Most of these author websites have updates, journals or some section dedicated to keeping readers abreast of new things the author may have going on. Now, I’ve noticed that most these update sections fall broadly into two categories; 1) They are only updated infrequently or very seldom, generally when there is something important to announce, or 2) They are updated regularly but often have nothing important at all to say. If this is the case, these sections are often filled with gossip, personal activities and other non-writing topics.
When I started this journal, I never thought about other author’s websites. I rather naively, thought I’d have interesting things to say or report every few weeks. Hmmmm . . . I guess you can blame my ego for that mistake. I have learned the hard way (often the only way I learn anything) that a lot of the writing business is just grinding away on the keyboard day after day. Not that it’s all drudgery. I enjoy writing and find it very fulfilling but it is a bit lonely and sometimes quite frustrating.
Which leads us back to why I haven’t written in this journal for months; the truth is not much has happened for a long time. Oh, I’ve been writing away. I wrote a couple of short stories for my alternate Zeppelin world, and I’ve knocked out quite a few words on my long neglected swashbuckling colonial hero. I’ve even come up with some fun new outlines for future stories, both new pulp and horror. Unfortunately, there is no place for any of them in the immediate future. I’m not willing to talk too much about future projects; most writers aren’t. You let out a neat new idea and no telling who might grab it and run with it before you get a chance to write the story yourself. Also more than a few publishers prefer that you not announce new books before they do.
Adding to this lack of news is the fact that I only had two stories published in 2019, both very early in the year. I was hopeful that other projects might move forward but everything seems to be stuck in quicksand. I’ve discussed this before; the publishing industry moves at it’s own speed.
All this has changed in the last couple of weeks. I have been notified that two projects I have been waiting on are finally making progress. One book had been held back awaiting artwork, while the other anthology lacked a final story. Now both are moving forward. Quickly forward? Who knows? But at least something is finally happening.
More interestingly, there is positive news about a story I wrote nearly four years ago. I had almost given up on this story thinking the publisher had gone out of business but I heard from him last week. He was out of the business for a long while but he is back and intent on getting this long delayed book out. He event sent me back an edited copy of my manuscript for changes. This is a good sign, the changes needed are minor and having a professional editor at work on the stories means that we may actually see this long delayed anthology published sometime this year.
So, 2020 is opening on a hopeful note. Two anthologies with my stories in them are moving forward and a full book I have written is very likely to be published this year. Yessss! (Fist pump)
I knew 2019 would be slow in the publishing end of things, so I’m not too disappointed. I did get a lot words written just not anything major I can announce. But I have as strong feeling that 2020 will be different.
Hopefully, I will have more positive news in the future.
by Gene Moyers | Jun 20, 2019
I haven’t written here in a while. Why? Well, there actually has been little to report. Yes, I have completed and submitted a bunch of stories and a full length book. Unfortunately, none of them are likely to be published any time soon. Possibly for the rest of the year. The villain? The usual suspects; awaiting art work, awaiting a final story or awaiting an editor’s pleasure.
Since this site was intended to be about my writing, not just my published work, it occurred to me that I should be talking more about all of my work, not just soon to be published stuff. Looking at it from that point of view, lots of things are happening.
This spring I completed two long short stories set in my alternate history Zeppelin world. One is a Zeppelin adventure set in WWI. Classic stuff; again set in East Africa during a slightly altered, well known, historical incident. The other story concerns an advanced transportation idea that nearly came off in 1930s England. Too bad it didn’t. This technology had the ability to change high speed transportation in Europe. Not strictly an airship story but it fits in well to a background of Zeppelins and the British/ German rivalry I have going in my alternate world.
I have a full book of the alternate history airship stories awaiting publication and hope soon to have enough stories for another book.
Also this spring, I completed the origin story for my female avenger character published in Mystery Men & Women volume 5, published by Airship 27. I am busy writing a bunch of her adventures with the hope of having a complete book’s worth soon. I’m actually conflicted about this origin story, though. I may hold it back a while. I may take another page from Walter Gibson’s Shadow playbook and hold the origin indefinitely to keep up the mystery about my character. It was a lot of fun though, writing about my young girl’s first encounter with bad guys and how green she was at the avenging stuff.
So, you see, there is a lot going on . . . just nothing being published right now or in the immediate future. Up next for me is more alternate history and I may just take swing at some adventure stories set in the middle ages. After all it was my major in college and I do love knights, swords, and damsels in distress. It’s been along time since I wrote GURPS: Crusades for Steve Jackson Games but I still remember how much fun it was writing about that period. I loved Medieval adventures then and still do. I should dust off my copy and get some thoughts down on paper. Let’s see: What could I do with an out of work, wandering knight back from the Crusades and looking for trouble? Think of the possibilities!
So that’s what I have been up to. I will try to write here more often. There’s always something to report, after all.
by Gene Moyers | Mar 19, 2019
As I said earlier, 2019 is off to a good start. As of today Domino Lady volume 3, published by Airship 27, is now available on Amazon. In this volume I have two very short (about 8,000 words) stories with the masked Lady once again fighting corruption in her beloved Golden State.
This is my second title published this year. I wish this pace of publication could continue but, alas I think it might be until quite later in the year before another of my works will be published. But you never know; Development of this new DL book went very fast once the fourth story finally rolled in. As I’ve noted before the Gods of Publishing move in mysterious ways.
Speaking of fourth stories; the final Domino Lady story in this new volume is written by Samantha Lienhard. She is new to Airship 27 and New Pulp but has written a fine story that fits right in with the Domino Lady other adventures.
I have been waiting since the beginning of this series for some female writers to give us their versions of one of the few female masked avengers of the Pulp era and was surprised we haven’t seen any sooner. The wait was worth it though. I liked Samantha’s take on the character and thought she captured the style of the original DL adventures quite well. There were some subtle female touches to her character that I will keep in mind for future DL adventures.
Welcome aboard, Samantha. I hope to see you in future volumes of Domino Lady.
Other than that, I am still hacking away at various stories set in my Zeppelin world and re-visiting my long lost Colonial hero William. Next big stop for me will be Windy City Pulp Con in Chicago in less than a month.
Although there will not be the draw of one of favorite author as Guest of Honor this year. There will still be lots of writing friends I look forward to re-connecting with. Look for a report in a month.
See you then.
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