Pulpwork Press Releases E-Books

I'm pleased to announce that Pulpwork Press has released their entire book catalog through Fictionwise. This means that five books by yours truly are now available at Fictionwise in a variety of electronic formats such as Adobe Acrobat, eReader (PDB), Palm Doc (PDB), Rocket/REB1100 (RB) ], Microsoft Reader (LIT), PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB), hiebook (KML), Sony Reader (LRF), iSilo (PDB), Mobipocket,Kindle Compatible (MOBI), OEBFF Format (IMP).



Not only is the entire Dire Planet series, thus far, available--but Pulpwork Press has obtained the electronic rights to my Fantasy novel, Escape from Devil's Head, which is available currently through PA Press and listed on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.



In addition to Devil Take the Hindmost, horror fiends might want to check out the e-books by Joshua Reynolds.



Movie fans will want to check out the two different Movie Review Notebooks by Derrick Ferguson--all available in ebook format at a very reasonable price.

Howard vs. DeCamp

When the eternal debate about the merits of L Sprague DeCamp's tinkering with Robert E. Howard's Conan tales began, for the umpteenth time, a day or two ago on the Howard listserver, someone asserted that Howard's work was more timeless than DeCamp's.

For some reason this brought to mind an anachronism I recalled from DeCamp and Carter's Thing in the Crypt where Conan's "leaden legs moved like pistons". It's a basic rule of writing that a writer should avoid comparisons to things that don't exist in the time frame you are writing about. So for example, Tolkien wouldn't say that the dragon, Smaug, "screamed like a jet engine". At any rate, the comparison of legs to pistons brought to mind the engine of an auto and jarred me out of my suspension of disbelief.

Now perhaps pistons were much more commonplace in Conan's day than I realized and I'm nitpicking--but lest people think I'm being overly critical of DeCamp (and being an author, I do full well realize that no author is perfect) I will mention that I quite enjoyed his Flame Knife adaptation.

The Obscure Works of Joel Jenkins, Part 4 or the Revenge of Sly Gantlet

In my posting entitled The Obscure Works of Joel Jenkins, Part 3 I mention that the only place (or at least the only legal place) you can find a print copy of one of the Gantlet Brothers adventures is in the pages of Adventure Mystery Tales.

After doing some pondering I realized that this is not an entirely true statement. Sly Gantlet appears in a fun little tale called Dead Beat in La Esca which I co-wrote with author Derrick Ferguson. In this story Derrick Ferguson's character, Dillon, world-wide adventure and the flamboyant Sly Gantlet, rock musician and erstwhile gun for hire, have a not-so-chance meeting at a night club in New York City.

If you take a look at the Vaults of Caladrex header you will see Sly Gantlet holding the Desert Eagle .44 handgun with the laser sight.

Sly and Dillon don't get along too well, and sparks begin to fly--and when they finally realize that not all is as it seems it may be too late to extricate themselves from the trouble they've found.

I had a blast writing this tale with Derrick and am quite pleased with the results. If you'd like to check it out for yourself you find Dead Beat in La Esca in the pages of Thrilling Adventures which a search shows me has disappeared from the Amazon.com website.

However, Thrilling Adventures still appears to be available at the 86th Floor Press website along with a number of their other titles.

In some other posting, for the fun of it, I'll show you a couple alternate covers for Thrilling Adventures which didn't get used.

Also, in future posts I'll relate some various encounters that the Gantlet brothers had with some people that were also quite famous in the music scene of the eighties--as culled from various newspaper clippings and from their own personal anecdotes.

It seems that Thrilling Adventures will not be the last publication to print a Gantlet Brothers adventure. I actually have an advance cover for the eventually-to-be-released Nuclear Suitcase novel to be published by Pulpwork Press, which I will also share with you at a later date.

The Pirates of Xonira Pt. 4

Dillon and the Pirates of Xonira is back with chapter four--in which he begins to unravel the secret of the beautiful Toi Lahayne's interest in him and the secrets to the Braithwaite Group which is secretly employing her.

Posted exclusively on the Pulpwork Press website: check out Derrick Ferguson's latest tour de force and while you are there don't forget to check out some of the other titles available from PulpWork Press.

The Obscure Works of Joel Jenkins, Part 3

Back around the year 2000 Hidalgo Publishing released a nifty little book/magazine called Adventure Mystery Tales. It's pages contain some fine tales by other authors and also includes the Gantlet Brother adventure, The Ikarian Connection--a story about, guns, guitars and girls; specifically a van full of missing Ms. Fitness Pageant contestants which go missing.

As it happens, rock musician Matthias Gantlet is slated to be a guest judge at the Pageant and when word of the missing girls gets around he swings into action. Thus far, this is the only Gantlet Brothers story to see hard copy print, though a number of other tales have been serialized via Electronic Tales.

There are still a couple of copies of Adventure Mystery Tales available on Amazon.com for $10.95 each.

Lost World Cover Art

I've just received some advance cover art for the first issue of DarkWorlds, in which appears a science fiction story I penned, The Investment. The Investment comes from the annals of the employees of Barclay Salvaging and follows the intrepid crew of The Scavenger as they explore the jungle-covered depths of Arcturon 6 hunting for an ancient hyper-drive engine.


In the tradition of some of the 1930's pulp magazine covers, the cover art for Dark Worlds #1 is a bit racy--though not particularly shocking by today's standards. And despite the occasionally lurid artwork, one of things I quite admire about the pulp-fiction of the 1930's is the limited use of profanity and that despite the frenetic pacing the authors use a restraint that is rarely seen in today's authors. Over all, I think it makes for a better piece of fiction that is accessible to more readers.



To your left is an illustration from The Investment, which depicts some of the denizens of Arcturon 6.

Dark Worlds #1 will be available in both print and electronic formats. I'll let you know where you can pick up a copy when they become available.