Well, there’s good writing news and bad writing news. The good news; I have a new story in print and another story will go to print very shortly. Newly available is a anthology published by Moonstone Books. It is I.V. Frost: Tales of Mystery and Scientific Detection.
Two years ago I was approached by Joe Gentille of Moonstone and asked to participate in this anthology. I new very little about the character of Frost except that he was a minor Pulp hero from the mid 1930s. I accepted and bought a book containing eight reprints of the original stories. I found out very quickly that Frost is an unusual and interesting character. I have heard him referred to as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Doc Savage. Probably not a bad description. Set in the ’30s, Frost is both a Professor and brilliant detective. He has the Holmes-like ability to “read” crime scenes and see things no one else sees. He also has some of Holmes’ idiosyncrasies such as high energy when working and bouts of lethargy between cases. He also is a scientific genius who uses all kinds of high tech items to combat crime. Couple this with his beautiful, intelligent and spunky assistant and you have some fun stories. Substitute an armored limousine for a Hansom cab and you get an idea what a Frost story is like.
I had a lot of fun writing The Suicide Murders and cranked it out in a couple of weeks. Joe liked it, helped make some useful improvements and accepted it happily. The book has been held up a while (due to copyright issues, I’m told) but is happily now available. Look for it at Moonstone Books website. I will have copies available here soon. It also has stories by Ron Fortier, Frank Schildener and a lot other talented writers. Also, though I haven’t seen it but I hear the cover art is really cool.
The second piece of good news is I have found a home for my Dream Master story. I wrote Dream Master three years ago for an another publisher. It started out as a traditional villain pulp for an anthology called Shudder Pulp but ended up launching an original character for me that has already appeared in Legends of New Pulp Fiction published by Airship 27. Shudder Pulp, unfortunately, never got off the ground and after a couple of years the publisher offered the story back to me. I took it and have been searching for the proper place to publish it. Well, enter Storyhack magazine. Storyhack is a brand magazine that will specialize in adventure stories. That’s all they are going to publish; adventure. Adventure stories set in any time and any place. This is an exciting project. I think we are sadly in need of independent magazines publishing short fiction. These kinds of magazines have been a traditional venue for new authors to get started in writing and I would like to see more of them. I have high hopes for Storyhack, not withstanding that Dream Master will appear in the first full issue to be published early this Fall.
So check out I.V. Frost and Storyhack magazine if you get a chance. There is also more good news concerning some of my other writing projects but that will have to wait for a later journal update.
Now for the bad writing news; I have written relatively rather few words in the last month. Normally the summer months of recent years have been fairly productive for me but not this year. June got off to a rough start with me being gone for two weeks on research/ vacation. I thought July would be better but I was way wrong. The problem: We are doing some major renovations here at home. I knew there would be some disruption but I sadly underestimated the chaos. I also seriously underestimated the time frame. What we all figured would be a three week project turned into a six week project. And as anyone who has undertaken such a project knows there are always road blocks and surprises that happen along the way (as a friend told me, ‘when you start opening up walls there’s no telling what surprises you’re going to find’). I was prepared for some of all this but the cumulative total of starts, stops, problems, emergencies (yes, running to Home Depot because the light/ fan unit I had purchased wouldn’t fit and the contractor was threatening to move on to another project that day) caught me unaware. It seemed that every time I sat down at the keyboard the phone would ring or the contractor du jour would have questions or start hammering away. Plus the electricity and water always were going on and off as people worked under the house or in the attic.
Anyway, I did not get a lot accomplished the last month. Not that it was totally unproductive; I did a lot of revisions on my Zeppelin Saga and it is nearly ready to go off to the publisher. And I am off to a solid but slow start on my next aerial adventure but I expected to be much more productive in July and August. No matter; The new bathroom is complete and looks great. More importantly the “Boss” is extremely happy with the whole project and the one person I have to keep happy is her. And with the renovation behind me I expect to get a lot more written in the coming weeks.
That’s all the news for now. Looking forward to fall and the start of Football season. Go Ducks! Go Titans and Seahawks!
Recent Comments