Author: Tommy Hancock

YOUR YEAR IN PREVIEW CONTINUES WITH CHUCK MILLER FROM BLACK CENTIPEDE PRESS!

News
January 1, 2011

Ten years ago, the most ruthless, violent, sociopathic criminal the world has ever seen launched a four-day reign of terror which came close to wiping out human civilization.

She was nine years old.

For the past decade, she has been locked away, the sole inmate of the refurbished Alcatraz Island Federal Prison. She’s decided that’s long enough…

DOCTOR UNKNOWN JUNIOR in “THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS” from BCP in 2011.
By Chuck Miller

http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2010/11/perhaps-most-infamous-correctional.html“THE
RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS”
(Preview)

By Chuck Miller
Copyright 2010 Chuck Miller/Black Centipede Press

Free 9-page preview PDF download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?vg0c49fi0xq0ojg

ONE

“Today,” said Dr. Dana Unknown, “is Jessie Von Cosel’s eighteenth birthday.”

“I’m thrilled for her,” I replied absently. I was busy, as she could
certainly see.

“Jessie Von Cosel,” she repeated.

“Right. Thrilled. To death. I mean it.”

“Jessie VON COSEL,” she said yet again. This time, it was enough to
tear my attention away from my computer monitor.

“Dana!” I snapped. “Is there some point to… Oh. Jessie Von Cosel.”

“Yeah. What are you doing over there? Looking at porno again?”

“Of course not,” I said with a great deal of indignation, as I
swiveled the monitor screen around so she couldn’t see it.

“She’s eighteen?” I said, as though Dana’s vile slander had never been
uttered. “Well. Time flies. She’s been locked up for what? Ten years?”

“More like nine. The trial took a year. Anyhow, this is her birthday.
She is legally an adult. That being the case, they were transporting
her earlier today from Alcatraz to the federal courthouse in San
Francisco for a hearing.”

“It didn’t go well, did it?”

“How did you know that?”

“Dana, I used to be a superhero. I have had a lot of experience with
super-villains. When has a transfer of a super-villain from a prison
to a courthouse, or anywhere else, ever failed to turn into an escape
on the part of said villain?”

For the past few months, I’ve been working with Doctor Dana Marie
Laveau Unknown, also known as Doctor Unknown Junior. If you’ve heard
anything to the effect that I work FOR her, please disregard it. For
some reason, probably psychological in nature, she likes to spread
that story. Honestly, I think she feels threatened by a man who
asserts himself in the workplace. She sees a strong male as a threat
to her feminity.

Dana is the daughter of Raoul Deveraux Unknown, the original
superhero-sorcerer called Doctor Unknown. What happened to him is a
story in itself, and it’s not mine to tell. Ask Dana about it
sometime. She’ll talk your ear off, and you won’t understand one tenth
of what she tells you.

The bottom line is that Raoul retired, and Dana, who is a Level Twelve
Magus—whatever the hell that is—took over his duties and
responsibilities. Being a Level Twelve Magus must be a huge deal,
judging by the fact that Dana never passes up the opportunity to
remind me that she is one. But she never goes into any detail about
it, citing mysterious mystical oaths and other nebulous security
issues. My own feeling is that she must have had to do something
really nasty to get there, though she of course hotly denies this.

“Well, today it didn’t,” Dana was saying. “Jessie had a seizure on
the way to the courthouse. She was fine all morning. No history of any
kind of seizures since she’s been incarcerated, or even prior to
that.”

“Hmm,” I said, which summed up my entire take on the situation.

“She had this seizure, or whatever it was, at exactly 9:44 a.m.”

“Which is significant because why?”

She sailed right on past that and asked, “Do you know what I was doing
at exactly 9:44 this morning?”

“Yeah, you were out at that screwball Scudder Moran’s house helping
Vionna and Mary tie up some loose ends, whatever that meant.”

“The loose end I tied up was called the Moriarty Machine. A very nasty
piece of work it was, and it does nothing to improve my opinion of
scientists in general. Anyhow, I don’t need to go into a lot of detail
with you now, because Vionna is writing another one of her reports
about the case, which she intends to send to you to proofread, and I
don’t want to spoil the story for you.”

(NOTE: See “Vionna and the Vampires, BCP 2010:
http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2010/11/vionna-and-vampires-part-one-chapters-1.html
)

“Thanks.” I was actually looking forward to reading it. I was very
proud of my adopted little sister. She’d come a long way since our
reunion a while back.

We all had. Shortly after Vionna had reentered my life, so had the
ghost of Jack the Ripper, or so we thought at the time. It turned out
to be something else, but proved to be every bit as nasty and
potentially lethal as the real Ripper. That whole situation led me to
seek help from Dana, who received serious psychic injuries in the
conflict with the faux Ripper ghost.

It was plain that Dana would need help at that point. She had set for
herself the task of uncovering the origins of the ectoplasmic
imposter, which would have been a daunting task at the best of times,
which this was not. I graciously offered her my expert services,
agreeing to partner with her and bring to the table my vast experience
as a crime fighter and general specialist in weird, nasty, dangerous
crap of all kinds.

She and I have had two major adventures together since then. One of
them answered a couple of questions about the faux Ripper, but not the
most important ones. The other was a harrowing encounter with
something called the Scholomance. I can’t promise I’ll ever be able to
bring myself to write about that one. Suffice it to say that it ended
with Dana regaining most of her lost magical abilities.

Even though Dana is back to peak efficiency, she has left our
partnership intact. This is obviously because she has realized that
there is simply nobody better than me to have at one’s side in the
face of danger. She might try to give you some crap about her feeling
sorry for me because I don’t have anything constructive to do, and am
pretty much unemployable. As I say, I think she has psychological
issues.

“Well,” she was saying, “the Moriarty Machine was a scary dangerous
piece of merchandise. It did something that nobody would ever have a
legitimate need to do, and it had a self-contained power source of a
completely unknown nature. It seemed to me that the best way to
dispose of it was to drop it into an empty space in between a couple
of very remote fractal dimensions, so that’s what I did.”

“Very good,” I said. “I’ve always told people that if you need
something dropped into an empty space in between a couple of very
remote fractal dimensions, then Dana Unknown is your man.”

“Shut up, Jack. I’m trying to convey some information to you. I
dropped the thing into that empty space at EXACTLY 9:44 a.m.”

“Ah,” I said. Another thing I had learned as a superhero was that
there was no such thing as coincidence, particularly when it involved
a super-villain and a piece of lethal hardware, no matter how little
connection there appeared to be between the two.

“Yeah. There’s a connection. I can’t imagine right now what it is, or
whether or not it’s of any significance. But, as your pal the Black
Centipede says, there just ain’t that much coincidence out there.”

I had just barely been aware of the whole Little Precious crisis ten
years ago. That was two years after Johnny died and I left Zenith in
something of a state.

“Little Precious,” Dana said, “is a binary consciousness, half organic
and half cybernetic. The two components cannot be separated, so for
every practical purpose, it is a single mind that occupies two bodies
at the same time.

“One of the bodies is that of Jessie Van Cosel. That’s the one that’s
been locked up in Alcatraz for ten years. They never found the robot.”

“I know all that,” I said. “Everybody knows all that. It’s history.
Everybody remembers where they were and what they were doing when they
first heard about it. Except me, of course. That was two years after I
left Zenith. I’m not entirely sure where I was at the time, but
wherever it was, I was drunk.”

“You missed a real show,” she said. “This was after Captain Mercury
died and Tomorrow-Man and Commander Power vanished. Everybody who was
still active was in on it. Dad was there, and the Red Dagger… They
even issued a time-limited amnesty to the Black Centipede.”

“I was sort of aware of the whole thing,” I said, “because of the fact
that it was the ONLY thing on the news for four days. I remember
discussing it with some people in a bar. I’m pretty sure it was in the
United States. My drinking buddies thought it was the end of the
world, which sounded pretty good to me, as I recall. We were watching
the coverage. I remember seeing both of those skyscrapers in Zenith
explode. Then there was the footage from Mexico City, after the swarm
of exploding ladybugs blew through—super-miniaturized nuclear
warheads. Jesus! Even Professor Ubik would have stopped short of
that.”

In all, there had been 14 major incidents worldwide during the
four-day reign of terror of Little Precious. A time-displacement wave
in Beijing that left the city knee-deep in medieval plague victims.
The DNA Scrambler Bomb that wrought genetic havoc in Egypt. The city
of Rio De Janeiro teleported to the surface of the moon. The President
of the United States forced to commit an act of inspired perversion on
live television with a creature nature did not design with such antics
in mind.

There are conflicting accounts of the final confrontation between
Little Precious and a veritable army of superheroes and super-villains
(none of whom wanted the world whose wealth they coveted destroyed by
this creature), the military and more than 150 different law
enforcement agencies from around the world.

The battle raged for almost 24 hours, starting just outside Zenith and
ending in the center of the mysterious Area 51. Thousands were killed,
combatants and bystanders alike. When the dust settled, Jessie Von
Cosel was comatose and in chains.

The robot whose mind and body were the other half of the Little
Precious persona was nowhere to be found. No fewer than 40 combatants
claimed to have personally destroyed the thing. None of the claims
were ever confirmed, of course. In the decade since Jessie’s arrest,
the robot has been “spotted” at various unlikely locations around the
world more often than Elvis Presley.

The fact was, nobody knew. Those who wanted to be able to sleep at
night chose to believe it had been destroyed. Those who knew how the
world really worked kept their fingers crossed for years.

Jessie came out of her coma in time to star in the most celebrated
show trial in history. The Trial of the Millennium, it was called. The
hyperbole was not exaggerated. Jessie was tried as an adult, in spite
of her age, and the fact that her speech and behavior showed
unmistakable signs of a form of autism with occasional forays into
schizophrenia. But because of everything she had done, the world
demanded she be brought before the bar of justice, her tender years
and unstable condition notwithstanding.

Since she had been captured on US soil, and was an American citizen,
she was tried at the United Nations building in New York City before a
multi-national tribunal of judges assembled at the Court of
International Justice in the Hague.

The only concession made to mercy was when the prosecution announced
that they would not seek the death penalty. There were protests, of
course, but they weren’t very persistent. I think everybody would have
felt crapty about executing a nine-year-old girl, no matter what she
had done.

Following a trial that lasted just over a year, Jessie was sentenced
to a total of seven thousand years in prison on multiple counts of
murder, assault, theft, kidnapping, mayhem, terrorism and assorted
other crimes, ranging from simple felonies to treason, attempted
genocide, sedition and crimes against humanity.

The newly-refurbished prison on Alcatraz Island would be her home for
the rest of her life.

She was taken to Alcatraz to begin serving her sentence two weeks
after her ninth birthday.

She has not aged a day since. Physically, at least, she remains a
nine-year-old girl. Nobody knows why.

Another mystery.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

PART TWO OF THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS!

News
January 1, 2011

Not far uptown, on River Street between several closed shops, a bar named Maxie’s lit the street with its blinking neon lights in the window and a large garish neon sign up the front of the building.

Inside the clink of glasses and the sounds of a piano playing ragtime. The air in the bar was full of tobacco smoke and the smell of stale beer. The floor was covered with sawdust.

And Santa walked in.

“Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas,” as he walked over to the bar.

Tending the bar was ‘Big Mike’ O’Shea. Fairly tall with a red handlebar mustache covering most of his face below his large nose. He was wearing a red shirt and green pants with green suspenders. His arms were bigger than most men’s thighs and his chest looked like it was made of flat rocks.

“Well, hello there Santa,“ O’Shea says in an Irish brogue. “And what might I be doing for you now?”Well, hello there Santa,“ O’Shea says in an Irish brogue. “And what might I be doing for you now?”

“Well Michael McShamy, how about a glass of milk?”Well Michael McShamy, how about a glass of milk?”

O’Shea’s face turned red when he got his Irish up, and it was turning red now, “how do call me that? Only my maw called me that and … ““how do call me that? Only my maw called me that and … “

“Your mother called you that when you’d just done something naughty, Michael. And she called you that quite frequently, didn’t she?”Your mother called you that when you’d just done something naughty, Michael. And she called you that quite frequently, didn’t she?”

“How do you know what she called me?,“ and ‘Big Mike’ reached across the bar to grab Santa’s collar, but found his hand stopped cold and locked in a grip of iron, while Santa stood there as if playing with a baby.

In a whisper, “I see you when you’re sleeping and I see you when you’re awake. I know when you’ve been bad or good. Now tell me, Michael, has Tony Minetti been here tonight?”How do you know what she called me?,“ and ‘Big Mike’ reached across the bar to grab Santa’s collar, but found his hand stopped cold and locked in a grip of iron, while Santa stood there as if playing with a baby.

O’Shea’s face now turned white. Looking around the bar to see if anyone had heard.

In a soft voice, “Minetti? I don’t know who you’re talking about.”“Minetti? I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Michael McShamy, you can’t lie to me. Now, why don’t you tell me what I want to know before I tell everyone in this bar some of the things you’ve been up to? Like talking to the police about the bank job last week and how everyone from that caper got caught. From the police perspective that was a nice thing. From the perspective of the people here, they might consider it naughty.”Michael McShamy, you can’t lie to me. Now, why don’t you tell me what I want to know before I tell everyone in this bar some of the things you’ve been up to? Like talking to the police about the bank job last week and how everyone from that caper got caught. From the police perspective that was a nice thing. From the perspective of the people here, they might consider it naughty.”

If it was possible, Big Mike’s face turned even whiter, “How do you know … OK OK.” Looking around again, Big Mike move closer to Santa, “he was here earlier today. He was meeting with Joey Kucinski and Al Browning. They was in the last booth over there. They left about 3 hours ago. That’s all I know.”“How do you know … OK OK.” Looking around again, Big Mike move closer to Santa, “he was here earlier today. He was meeting with Joey Kucinski and Al Browning. They was in the last booth over there. They left about 3 hours ago. That’s all I know.”

“OK Michael. Who was serving them? Was anyone else here when they were?”OK Michael. Who was serving them? Was anyone else here when they were?”

“Moira was serving them. She’s still here, serving a party in the back room. Alphie Jenkins was here then, and he’s still here somewhere.”Moira was serving them. She’s still here, serving a party in the back room. Alphie Jenkins was here then, and he’s still here somewhere.”

“Thank you Michael. Now that’s being nice. Here, have a candy cane. Merry Christmas!”Thank you Michael. Now that’s being nice. Here, have a candy cane. Merry Christmas!”

The man dressed in red takes a swallow of his milk, and holding the glass, walks toward the back room.

Entering the room he sees several men around a table drinking and eating. The only woman in the room was Moira O’Shawnesy, busty, pretty, in her mid-20s, with long red hair, holding a serving tray, placing large pitchers of beer on the table and taking the empty ones.

“Hey, what are you doin’? This is a private party pal!”

The Night Before Christmas

Mark S. Halegua

Part 2

“Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas to you all. Sorry to interrupt, I just want to speak to Moira for a moment.

Moira walks over, “how can I help you … Santa?”“how can I help you … Santa?”

Santa pulls her over to a corner and whispers to her, “well, Moira, I understand you were serving three men earlier today. One of them was Tony Minetti. Did you get close enough to hear what they were saying?”

“I I I don’t know what you mean,” she stuttered. Then she looks at the man with the white beard, and slyly says, “besides. If you’re really Santa Claus, shouldn’t you know what they said?”I I I don’t know what you mean,” she stuttered. Then she looks at the man with the white beard, and slyly says, “besides. If you’re really Santa Claus, shouldn’t you know what they said?”

“Well Moira, it’s Christmas Eve and I’ve been busy tonight. I haven’t had time to keep tabs on who’s been naughty and who’s been nice this evening. So, I need some help from others. I know you’ve been a good girl this year, and I think you’d like to help me keep tabs on Tony. I know how he hurt your brother, and how you’re taking care of him. It’s why you’re working here on Christmas Eve instead of being with him and your year old baby. Here’s something that can help.”

He places a couple of greenbacks in her hand.

“How did you know about that? No one knows…”

“Will you help me Moira?”

Whispering, “I can’t tell you much, but, yes, Minetti was here. They shut up every time I went over to their table. But, I did see Alphie Jenkins sitting close by and it looked like he was listening to what they were saying.”

“Thank you Moira.”

Turning around, “Ho ho ho. Again Merry Christmas to you,” and placing his glass of milk on Moira’s tray, walks out.”

One of the men at the table turns to Moira and asks, “Hey, Moira, what’d he want?”

Moira gave him a crooked grin, “He was complaining the milk was sour. What does he expect in a bar, straight from the cow?”

“Haw haw haw, complaining about the milk at Maxie’s, haw haw haw.”

Outside in the hall the man in red looks around for Alphie Jenkins.

Alphie Jenkins, short and thin was at a corner table by himself, nursing a beer, looking jittery and nervous. When he saw Santa looking at him his eyes opened round and large and he starts to look around the room in frenzied jerks as if hoping for someone to come and save him from … Santa Claus.… Santa Claus.

“Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas to you all. I leave now to finish my deliveries,” and walks out the front door.

Alphie calms down, but leaves the table and walks to the hall at the back of the bar. Looking around to see if anyone is watching him, he aims himself toward the back door and exits the bar into the back alley.

“Well, Merry Christmas to you Alphie. Or is it Alfred?”

Surprised, Alphie literally jumps in the air with a high-pitched “yeep.” Turning around he sees the Santa who had just left the bar by the front door.

“Well, uh, that is, uh, merry Christmas to you too, uh, Santa.”

“Alfred, that is, you don’t mind me calling you Alfred, do you? Or would you prefer Alfredo?”

“How do you know, I mean, that is, Alphie if you don’t mind.”

“Very well, Alphie. Well, Alphie, I’ve been busy today, as I’m sure you might expect, and well, I’m actually running a little late on my deliveries. And there’s one particular person I have to visit to leave a lump of coal for. Do you think you could help me find that person, Alphie? It might help take you off the naughty list this year. And maybe next.”

“I’m on the naughty list? Wh wh why would I be there?”

“There is that little thing about the money you, um, borrowed from your church cashbox two months ago. And there are those wallets you removed from several people yesterday and there’s that matter of …”

“OK OK Santa. I, that is, I uh. Who do you, uh, who do you need to find?”

“Tony Minetti. He’s been a very bad boy this year.”

“T T T Tony Mi Mi Minetti! Well, see, uh, Santa, I can’t say I know where he is, that is, I mean, I, uh, don’t know, uh, who that is and uh-“

“Now now Alphie. We both know Tony was in the bar this afternoon and you were here too, and you were listening to his conversation with Joey and Al. So, I’m sure you can tell me what you heard. Of course, I’m also sure there’s one person in the bar right now who’d like to know where his wallet is, don’t you?”

Alphie’s face turned whiter than the snow on the ground, his mouth dropped open enough to swallow a reindeer.

He gulped and said, “I, uh, well, now that you remind me, I think I did see Tony and Joey and Al here. They were talking about, well, uh, doing some work, uh, tonight. Said it was a big job, and, uh, it was gonna happen at about 11.”

“And did you happen to hear where that might be, Alphie?”

“Well, that is, uh, I think they said some rich guy. I think the name was Robeson.”

“Would that be Ken Robeson, the writer.”

“I think so. He might have said the guy was hosting a party with some other swells. I, uh, think he mentioned some guy named Grant and maybe Tuttle. Tony was gettin’ suspicious o’ me maybe listening and I had to move to another table.”

“Thank you Alphie. You’ve been very helpful. No coal in your stocking this year.”

“You think I could get a present maybe this year Santa.?”

The man in red turned and gave a stern look, “don’t push it Alphie.”

“Uh, no, of course not. Thank you Santa.”

A HOLIDAY TALE TO CLOSE OUT THE HOLIDAY SEASON IN FOUR PARTS-FROM MARK HALEGUA

News
January 1, 2011

The Night Before Christmas

by Mark S. Halegua

Part 1

　Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house –

One creature was stirring. It was a louse.

An apartment in an apartment building. A railroad flat, and it was the front room. This apartment building was unusual as all the apartments had fireplaces. The fireplace in this one was dark and the flu wouldn’t completely close, so the room was colder than the others. The doors to the hall and the next room were closed to keep the cold in it.

A couch on the left wall, the fabric threadbare, between two round topped side tables, scratched and dull, each with an old lamp. Across the room from the couch the front wall with two large windows looking out onto the street, street lamps barely keeping away the dark, and the sidewalks covered with a thin layer of snow, a brisk wind blowing wisps of snow around.

Looking around the room, faded wall paper. A tree in one corner on the side of the room away from the fireplace, festooned with tinsel, strings of popcorn, and colored buttons. At the top an angel, old and cracked. Under the tree a few boxes, wrapped with newspaper and tied with string.

On the fireplace mantel five stockings, different colors with a narrow strip of white faux fur at their top. Each stocking holding a solitary candy cane and a small wrapped chocolate. To the side of the fireplace a table stood with a glass half full of milk and a plate with two cookies.

A man quietly moved towards the mantel, removing the candy from the stockings and placing them in a sack in his hand. Dressed in a watch cap, brown leather jacket, dark pants and work boots, he silently moved towards the tree and starts to pick up one box and place it in the sack …

“Ho ho ho,” he hears. “I think I see a naughty boy here. Taking the presents and the candy from this poor family I see.”
The man in the watch cap turns towards the voice, standing by the chimney, light from the street lamps dimly coming in the windows and showing a man with a white beard and mustache, dressed in a red suit and fur lined tassled cap, black boots and wide black belt.

“Who are youse old man? What are youse doing here?”

“What am I doing here? The better question would be what are you doing here? But, I already know that, just as I’ve had you on my naughty list for many years, Caine Marko.”

“How do you know who I am? And, who do you think you’re fooling dressed like that? You tryin’ to make me think youse is Santa Claus?”

“I know everyone who is naughty and nice. Now put those presents and candy back and leave here. Now.”

“And, if I don’t? What you gonna do, sic Rudolph on me?”

A sigh escapes the lips of the man in red, “I was truly hoping for once you could do a nice thing. No Caine, I won’t call Rudolph in on you. But, do you remember what naughty boys get in their stockings for Christmas?”

“Uh, I uh think … oh, yeah, Santa puts coal in my stocking. Ha, is that what youse is gonna give me, a lump of coal? Huh, ‘Santa’.”

“In a manner of speaking Caine, yes,” And the man in red whips his hand forward and Caine Marko is struck on the forehead by a hard lump of coal.

Groaning, Marko falls to the floor. The man in red takes the sack and replaces the presents under the tree and the candy in the stockings.

He walks over to the small table and takes one cookie and eats it, then taking a swallow of the milk. He walks over to the dazed Marko, swings him over his shoulder, opens a window, and climbs down the fire escape to the street below. Marko is placed on the ground and when he wakes up he realizes he can’t move his arms. Looking down he sees he is inside a giant red Christmas stocking.

“Hey, youse can’t keep me tied up like this. Let me out!”

“Ho ho ho. I think this is the perfect place for you. Now, why don’t you tell me who you’re working for? Is it for Tony Minetti? He’s another on my naughty list.”

“I ain’t working for anybody. I work for myself. I ain’t tellin’ youse nuttin.”

“So, you aren’t working for Minetti, but you’re too stupid to be doing this on your own. You aren’t bright enough to think about this yourself. And, you don’t work alone. Who’s helping you on this Caine? Are Joey Kuzincski and Al Browning in on this with you?”

Struggling inside the giant stocking, Kaine answered, “I don’t know what youse is talkin’ about. Let me outta this ting!”

“I believe you do know, Caine. So, what say you tell Santa?”

“I don’t know nuttin. Youse are crazy.”

“Hmmm. I know, it’s Christmas Eve and you haven’t had your candy cane. Here you are.”

The white bearded man in the red suit sticks a candy cane in Marko Caine’s mouth.

“I don’t want no cand … mfff.”I don’t want no cand … mfff.”

“You’ll like this one. It has a … special flavor.”

Caine tries to spit the candy out, but a red glove covers his mouth. After a couple of minutes, the crook’s head is lolling around.

“Now, Caine, where’d you get the idea to steal these family’s presents on Christmas Eve?”

“In … bar. Hoid some guys at the booth behind me … hoid them talk ’bout a caper tonight, takin’ presents from some … rich family … and maybe more. Hoid one of … ’em call anudder … Tony. Dats all. Figgered I could do same … around here.”

“Ah, I see. And what bar were you in, Marko?”

“M, M, Maxie’s. On … River.”

“I know of the place. Full of nothing but naughty boys and girls. They’re all on my naughty list. What say you go to sleep Caine.”

“What ya … mean sleep …,” and the last thing he saw was a giant candy cane swung at his head.”

“Huh, Caine was caned.”

A window sash opened from one of the apartments and a man looks out on the street, awakened by some noises he heard. He looks around and spots a huge red Christmas stocking, hung with care from one of the streetlights, stuffed with what looked like a man.

“What the …”What the …”

From down the street he hears, “on Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen, dash away dash away all we have naughty boys to talk to before the night is last call.”

To Be Continued

ALL PULP RINGS IN 2011 WITH THE YEAR IN PREVIEW!!!

News
January 1, 2011

FROM TOM JOHNSON-
EXCITING PULP TALES by Tom Johnson: Being proofed now, and coming soon from Altus Press. This sequel to 2010’s PULP DETECTIVES contains ten exciting pulp tales with the feel of the original writers of the 1930s and ‘40s. Many of the original characters return for the first time. The Angel returns in “A Devil of A Case”; The Green Ghost returns in “The Case of The Blind Soldier”; The Cobra returns in “Curse of The Viper”; The Crimson Mask returns in “The Mask of Anubis”; Gentle Jones in “Nazis Over Washington”; The Purple Scar in “The Skull Killer”; Funny Face in “The Star of Africa”; and Alias Mr. Death in “Coffins of Death”. Next is a new jungle girl adventure, featuring the Jungle Queen in “Jungle Terror”, and Ki-Gor returns in a 30,000 word story, titled “Lost Valley of Ja Far”, which was previously written as a 15,000 word story for another publication. This volume comes in just under 400 pages. If you want your pulps original, these stories will fill the bill.

FROM WILLIAM PATRICK MAYNARD-

THE DESTINY OF FU MANCHU is pencilled in for December 2011 publication by Black Coat Press.

Michael Knox is the brash and arrogant assistant of renowned archaeologist Dr. Spiridon Simos. A chance encounter with a beautiful Egyptian woman at Dr. Simos’ wedding in Corfu leads the young man on a whirlwind journey to Cairo where he barely survives the terrifying reincarnation of the ancient Pharaoh Khunum-Khufu.

A chain of events quickly unfold that embroils Knox with obsessive British agent, Sir Denis Nayland Smith and his pursuit of the master criminal, Dr. Fu Manchu. Slowly, the young man begins to piece together the threat posed to the world as Fu Manchu and his seductive, but sadistic daughter Koreani tear the dread secret society, the Si-Fan apart.

Before Michael Knox can act on the intelligence in his possession, he must first survive death in a myriad of strange guises from a savage gorilla trained to crush a man’s spine to the unrelenting pursuit of Margarita, the disarming dwarf assassin who brings terror to the Orient Express to one thousand poisonous butterflies unleashed at the Munich Conference as Europe teeters on the brink of a Second World War.

As madness sweeps the globe, one hedonistic young man must examine his own life as he realizes the world’s future hangs in the balance. The action moves swiftly from Greece to Egypt to Africa to Europe in a breathtaking battle of ideologies as Sax Rohmer‘s infamous creation seeks to realize THE DESTINY OF FU MANCHU.

FROM BARRY REESE-

The Damned Thing, my occult noir novel set in 1939 Atlanta, comes out from WCB, as does The Rook V6.

I’ll be at Pulp Ark

I’m gonna be a part of The Ninth Circle project.

I’m writing a Crimson Mask story for Airship 27.

Working on Turn the Page with Tommy Hancock.

Lazarus Gray V 1 from Pro Se.

MORE YEAR IN PREVIEW COMING LATER TODAY FROM ALL PULP!

ALL PULP 2011-THE YEAR IN PREVIEW!!!

News
December 31, 2010

As the old year draws to a close, ALL PULP wants to know what you as publishers, writers, and artists have coming up for Pulp in 2011!!!! Send us a snippet, a release, heck, a manifesto telling us about what you’ve got coming up for the next year! Send us images, works in progess, whatever and we’ll post it on the first day of the New Year along with a special recently written holiday Pulp story from Mark Halegua!! Send all your 2011 stuff to allpulp@yahoo.com

INTERVIEW WITH ‘WEEK IN HELL’ AUTHOR J. WALT LAYNE!

News
December 31, 2010

J WALT LAYNE-Author

AP: Thanks for being with us! Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you became a writer?

JWL: First thank you for the review and the interview. It is difficult for the novice to learn marketing and you guys are great to work with.

Y’know everyone says they started writing as a kid, and I know that’s true for me. I started telling and then writing stories as soon as I could hold a pencil. I learned to read and to write very early, and was reading a lot of classic literature late in elementary school. I used to drive my English teacher crazy with this very literary stuff when all she wanted was a theme about my weekend adventures. I wrote my first screenplay in Sixth grade, it was an episode of The A Team, it was terrible… Through High School I wrote a lot of Sci-Fi and combat stuff, war fiction and the super soldier stuff was big in the late 1980s. I didn’t write much when I was in the Army, but I did put on a lot of mileage.

By maybe 1999 or 2000 I was looking at taking it to the next level but I wasn’t quite sure what that was… I was writing a lot of very over the top stuff, but you don’t really know how to write anything beyond a few thousand words until you do it. My first real book project was an editing and rewriting gig with an old friend who was into mythos fiction. After that I was cranking out a lot of flash fictions and short stories over at www.zoetrope.com. It was one of those flash fiction contests that prompted my first novel.

AP: Who were some of the early influences on your writing style?

JWL: Good question, because I believe in a lot of ways you are what you read. I wasn’t allowed to play sports as a kid, so I spent a lot of time in my books and in my head. I read everybody from Judy Blume to Emile Zola. I loved comics, particularly horror and detective stuff. I read my way through Burroughs, Tarzan was my favorite. Robert Heinlein was and is a favorite, matter of fact I’m reading Glory Road right now. I discovered pulp in a box of comics and detective magazines bought for a dollar at a garage sale in the mid 1980s. It was racy stuff compared to David Copperfield. I still remember reading Paul Cain’s One, Two, Three for the first time. Wow.

When you’re a kid though, there’s a certain pressure to have an eye on what’s popular at the time, even if you’re not particularly concerned, and so I got into the fictional accounts and history of the Vietnam War. I read Platoon, Hamburger Hill, and Deadly Green, but the one that hit me hardest and still resonates is Body Count, by William Turner Huggett. He was writing a contemporary, gritty, war novel, but it was graphic in both its language, and depiction. He was a year out of Vietnam when he wrote it, the war hadn’t sat on his shelf long enough to mellow and age. In the service I read a ton of biographies about military people, all the bigger than life generals anyhow.

In the last 10 years or so it has been a mixed bag, Spider Robinson, pulp anthologies, Becky Benston, Bobby Nash, and the dystopian stuff like Fahrenheit 451.

AP: Your first book, Frank Testimony, was released in 2006. Can you tell us a bit about what it’s about and how readers can get ahold of it?

JWL: Frank Testimony is a legal thriller set in 1950s Mississippi. I didn’t even know that book was inside me until it sort of exploded. It was about this time (December 29, 2005) when I was gearing up for the weekly flash over at Zoetrope. As it turned out there was no regular contest because of the holiday weekend. Another regular poster who hosted a site called The Redrum Tavern, posted a prompt, ‘Death’. The very second I started writing I knew something was up because it was just pouring out on the page. 40 days and 144,000 words later I had something that I had a sense was very special, to me at least. It wasn’t until I started getting reader feedback that I realized that I’d turned a corner as a writer.

Frank Testimony is the story of jealousy gone bad. Frank Burchill is implicated in the murders of his would be sweetheart Mae Whitaker and her father. If it was up to Sheriff Cobb, the prosecutor and other good ol’ boys Frank would have a one way ticket to the gas chamber. But Judge Hull smells a rat, a big one named Bobby Lee Russell who is almost genealogically predisposed to criminal mischief, Klan violence, and just being generally hateful and nasty.

It is a big story, big characters, with a pretty good recipe for pulled pork and gatorbacks. Available at www.createspace.com/3352654

AP: A Week in Hell is your newest release and is the first in the Champion City series. What led to the development of this novel and how will future books carry the story forward?

JWL: Spade, Marlowe, and Hammer are all detectives in big cities, Gothams, Metropolises, everyone knows those places are dens of scum. Thurman Dicke is a big Slavic/German cop in a dying Midwestern blue collar city. Champion City is a big bowl of the low parts of Americana. It has a Tammany-esque political machine, restrictive ethnicity in neighborhoods, both Irish and Italian organized crime, dying industry, and dirty business. There are varying degrees of justice and as the top cop says: There’s a right way, a wrong way and the CCPD way.

The series will chronicle Thurman’s rise to glory, his fall from grace, and his redemption. Thurman won’t always be a beat cop, he won’t always work for CCPD, and there will be points when his white hat turns a very dark gray. He’s a bigger than life guy, and thus his highs are higher and his lows will be catastrophic. He isn’t a one man army, but he does what he has to do to get things done. I hesitate to say that each book builds on the last building up steam for the big finish, but the last book is already written, not set in stone… But I pretty well have it.

AP: The language and situations in A Week in Hell are pretty mature — was there ever a point when you were writing the story where you felt you were pushing the envelope too far?

JWL: It is a bit more than edgy. I count the book as a victory, but in the future my narrative can be accomplished with much more ferocity with less explicit display. I don’t think it oversteps its bounds much more than any of the so called Neo-Pulp, but I’m trying to do something more traditional that loosing a hedonistic gorilla on an idyllic hamlet. The masters of the style got it there without the use of such devices and I should endeavor to do so.

AP: What do you think about the modern pulp revival? What role do you think the hardboiled genre has to play in its resurgence?

JWL: I think it’s about time. There was so much great stuff written that laid the ground work for people who are writing now. I think the best stuff is yet to come, and there’s some guy or gal out there writing right now, something that will get passed on by a big house that will turn the pulp community on its ear, just like pulp did to so called polite society 70 years ago.

I think that when a lot of people think of pulp they think of the hardboiled genre. They don’t consider that it was ever about Heroes, Villains, or Characters other than those considered on the fringe. I guess I fall in that camp also because I equate the hardboiled style to a language and landscape painted in shades of noir with the good guys and the bad guys being varying shades of gray, and evil being true black.

I think that hardboiled stories are going to be an introduction to pulp for a lot of people. A resurgence or renaissance of traditional pulp is a great thing, and opened the genre for a brand new generation of readers and writers, ushering in a new era. I think that there are also some negatives, depraved things that masquerade as pulp that aren’t are where warning labels and censorship will come into play.

AP: What’s next for you?

JWL: Rewriting and editing the second book in the Champion City Series. Then I have a WWII story that I am very interested in, that came to me first as an April Fools shaggy dog in a small town newspaper. I’m a history nerd, and the story of Operation Pastorius is an excellent foil for plausible deniability, gets good mileage for the war effort, and makes great conspiracy… Fiction with firm foundations in real history make for very gripping stories…

There’s also an opportunity to write another pulp horror story. A hardboiled mythos thing. Not sure of a lot of detail about that at this point its still written ona napkin with a coffee ring…

AP: If readers want to find out more about you and your work, where can they do so?

JWL:I’m easy to find, Author J Walt Layne on facebook. I’m being pushed to relaunch my blog at www.championcityontheweb.blogspot.com but I don’t know that I have enough going on to devote an entire blog to it.

TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Super Hero Fiction!!! Joe Sergi’s SKY GIRL!

News
December 31, 2010

TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Pulp Reviews by Tommy Hancock

SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY
by Joe Sergi
Available in Ebook and Trade Paperback from iEnovel.com
Retail Price: $4.99 in ebook format; $11.99 for print version
ISBN:1451530137
EAN-13: 9781451530131
LCCN: 2010903747

Many writers, myself included, have pondered, thought on, and even struggled with the concept of having a comic book idea and trying to translate it into prose or the reverse. It seems to be a thorn in many of our paws that either forces us to give up or we fight our way through and the end product isn’t what we expected. It would be great to find a prose work that captures the colors, imagery, and description of a comic book, striking that perfect balance.

Thanks to Joe Sergi, I think I found it.

SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY, the first of a planned trilogy, focuses on DeDe Christopher, a young fifteen year old aspiring gymnast who lives with her widowed mother, goes to high school, has a best friend, Jason, who is the ultimate geek and proud of it. While preparing for National competition, which is being hosted at her high school, DeDe discovers she has super powers. It turns out these super powers are the exact powers of Sky Boy, a popular supposedly fictional character. As the story unfolds, DeDe and Jason deal with her issues of not wanting to do anything but be a teenager along with supervillains, intelligent apes, robotic menaces, and a strange conglomerate of aliens!

Now, that description is a thumbnail and covers it pretty well. What it didn’t cover is CHAPTER 0. Being a comic inspired novel, it has to start with 0 of course. Chapter 0 introduces us to Professor Z, Donna Dominion, and other supervillains all teamed up to stop Sky Boy. Yes, Sky Boy. The opening chapter assumes that the characters thought fictional by DeDe and her entire world are real and that chapter sets a tone for the whole book. This is, in prose, a silver age like experience like no other. Homages, pastiches, and nods aplenty to all sorts of comic, pulp, and other popular culture concepts abound. If you’re a fanboy/girl and want to get your geek on, just finding the easter eggs that you’ll recognize in this book will keep you busy!

What is most endearing, though, about Sergi’s work is, even though some have super powers, some wear capes, and monkeys and aliens abound, these characters are very real. DeDe is not a superficial image of a girl, she is real flesh and blood with insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, and frustrations. This goes for all the characters, even those who go through ‘changes’ as the book continues. They are not mere two dimensional contrivances to tell a super hero story. They are real people affected by all the good comic book weirdness going on around them.

The language does get a bit laborious at points, sounding a bit too comic booky, even though that is what this is, a comic book world in prose. That is a minor drawback to what in all ways is a fantastic, fun, exciting read and although aimed at younger readers, SKY GIRL AND THE SUPERHEROIC LEGACY can really be enjoyed by all ages and all level of geek.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE TIPS OF THE HAT-This is a book worth reading again to yourself and then to your family and then again to yourself. Gift this to your kids, to your library, and even to your favorite reviewer if you want!

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND NIGHTHAWK EDITION 12/30/10

News
December 30, 2010

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND

NIGHTHAWK EDITION

12/30/10

THE RETURN OF RAVENWOOD!

Airship 27 Productions & Cornerstone Book Publishers bring back another classic pulp hero from the 1930s in an all new collection of fast paced, macabre adventures of the supernatural. Meet Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery!bring back another classic pulp hero from the 1930s in an all new collection of fast paced, macabre adventures of the supernatural. Meet Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery!

He is an orphan raised by a Tibetan mystic known only as the Nameless One. As an Occult Detective he has no equal and is called upon by the authorities when they are challenged by supernatural mysteries. One of the more obscure pulp characters, Ravenwood – The Stepson of Mystery appeared as a back-up feature in the pages of Secret Agent X magazine. There were only five Ravenwood stories ever written, all by his creator, the prolific pulp veteran, Frederick C. Davis.

Now he returns in this brand new series of weird adventures, beginning with this volume in which he combats Sun Koh, a lost prince of Atlantis, battles with monstrous Yetis in Manhattan and deals with murderous ghosts and zombie assassins. Four of today’s finest pulp storytellers Frank Schildiner, B.C. Bell, Bill Gladman and Bobby Nash offer up a quartet of fast paced, bizarre thrillers that rekindle the excitement and wonder that were the pulps.

With a stunning cover by Bryan Fowler and dramatic interior illustrations by Charles Fetherolf, Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery was designed by Rob Davis and edited by Ron Fortier. Once again Airship 27 Productions presents pulp fans with another one-of-kind quality pulp reading experience like no other on the market today.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – Pulp fiction for a new generation!

ISBN: 1-934935-82-4

ISBN 13: 978-1-934935-82-8

Produced by Airship 27

Published by Cornerstone Book Publishers

Release date: 31 Dec. 2010

Retail Price: $24.95

Discounted at our on-line shop. (http://www.gopulp.info/)

FROM Russ Anderson, PULPWORK PRESS

OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD 2

I am now taking pitches for stories to be published in How the West Was Weird, Vol. 2 in 2011.

What am I looking for?

I’m looking for stories that qualify as “weird westerns” – basically a western mixed with some other genre. This usually means a western with a horror or sci-fi twist, but feel free to play with the concept. I’ll consider anything that’s both a western and weird. The less obvious, the better. If you need some more coaching on what a weird western is, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_western.

Stories should be between 1K and 8K words. I’ll consider stories up to 10K, but it really better be something special if you’re going that long. Shoot for 8K.

Your deadline for the completed story is March 31, 2011. However, some time before that I’m going to need a pitch. This is just a couple of sentences or paragraphs that gives me an idea of what your story is going to be about. This is so I don’t get three stories that have essentially the same plot (zombie cowboys vs. vampire indians, for example), and you don’t spend a couple months writing a story that I then have to pass on. There is no deadline to get me your pitch, but the earlier I get it, the more likely someone isn’t already doing that sort of story.

I have no problem with you using series characters that you’ve used in other stories or books, but there are a couple of rules with that. I want a story that hasn’t been published elsewhere yet, with a gentleman’s agreement that it won’t be republished until at least a year after our book’s publication. Also, the story has to be fully understandable outside the context of your character’s other stories. Even if I’ve never read the book you introduced Robo-Sheriff Z9 in, I shouldn’t have any problem following the story you write about him for HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD.

What’s in it for you?

Unfortunately, I’m not offering any upfront pay. If the book breaks even, any profit it makes will be split evenly between the contributors on a quarterly basis, minus 10% for the publisher, Pulpwork Press. Please keep in mind that the last sentence contains a very big IF. How the West Was Weird, Vol. 1 has been out for 9 months now, and even though it continues to sell steadily every month, it hasn’t made its money back yet.

This isn’t to discourage you – I truly believe in the long-term lifespan of these books – but I don’t want anybody planning to go buy a car with the proceeds.

So with that pie in the sky stuff out of the way, what do you realistically get?

A nifty little book with your name on it, mostly. Unlike the last volume, I will also be providing a contributor copy for everybody this time around.

What else?

As with the last volume, Jim Rugg has signed on to create another cover for us. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, and I’ll share it with the contributors as soon as I’ve got it.

For those of you who weren’t around for this last time, you can check out the first volume of HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Was-Weird-Tales/dp/1449580572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287249761&sr=8-1. You can also read Josh Reynolds’ contribution, Camazotz, for free at the Pulpwork Press site at http://www.pulpworkpress.com/pulpworkpresspresents.htm.

If you’re interested, or you’ve got questions not covered in this email, drop me a line at RussLee74@gmail.com and I’ll try to answer them.

ALL NEW BOOK CAVE-WRAPPING UP THE YEAR WITH RIC AND ART!

News
December 30, 2010

END OF THE YEAR WRAP UP ON THE BOOK CAVE

ALL PULP’S OFFICIAL PODCAST!!!!

12/30/10 ON THE BOOK CAVE!! The Book Cave Episode 107:The End of the Year
Check out ALL PULP’S official podcast, THE BOOK CAVE here-
http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/

Ric and Art review and wrap up 2010 with their thoughts, reviews, and comments on a year of THE BOOK CAVE!

Next week..and next year-The Book Cave goes to Mars!!

TIPPIN HANCOCK’S HAT-Tommy Reviews HARDLUCK HANNIGAN: THE SPEAR OF GOLIATH!

News
December 30, 2010

TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Pulp Reviews by Tommy Hancock
HARDLUCK HANNIGAN: THE SPEAR OF GOLIATH
Written by Bill Craig
Cover by Laura Givens
Published by Craig Enterprises
304 Pages

When I read pulp, I’m not simply reading as a reviewer. First and foremost, I’m a lifetime fan of the field and thoroughly enjoy pulp. Especially when that pulp centers around a well defined, multilayered, two fisted protagonist that I can get behind and want to stand alongside of.

Hardluck Hannigan is that type of hero.

SPEAR OF GOLIATH is the sixth adventure of Hardluck Hannigan written by Bill Craig. It is also the only novel I have read of the series, so bear that in mind. In this tale, Hannigan, just off of his most recent adventure and having turned away from two women in his life, finds himself in Africa and, after saving Musio, a Chinese woman who also owns a bar, Hannigan and a team of new and old allies end up racing to find the fabled Spear of Goliath, brought to Africa after the giant’s death. I say racing because there are several people pursuing Hannigan and/or the Spear, including Nazis, citizens of a lost city, and monster men from mineral mines! Yup, I said it.

This book is rich and vibrant with character. Hannigan is definitely cast in the pulp adventure mode as is most of the friends and enemies Craig sprinkles around him. He’s also complex, not simply relying on his fists or wild ideas to get through the day. He has worries, concerns, even self doubt and these play so well into his motivations, into what makes him a hero, that they aren’t weaknesses, but strengths of a different sort. Craig pours heart and soul into the lead as well as the cast around him.

Craig also paints the surroundings well. Whether or not its on the beach, in the bar, in a jeep, or in the opulent lost city, the reader feels as if they are there. Craig’s use of phrases and description make it very easy to imagine the ruins of the city being stalked by a lion or tribes of natives attacking Hannigan from one side with Nazis on the other. Craig’s handle on both his characters and his settings is top notch. The fantastic cover by Laura Givens only adds to the level of beauty that Craig generates in his descriptions.

SPEAR OF GOLIATH starts off extremetly well. The introduction to Hannigan’s new situation, the way that characters are brought in and explained well, but not overdone, and the pacing of the action is all very tight and dead on. Unfortunately, that tightness, the control of plot and action and flow seems to almost disappear later in the book. I noticed this quite significantly when the plot concerning citizens of the lost city came into play. One instance concerned the origins of Goliath’s birth. Not wanting to spoil anything, Craig identified Goliath’s parentage and unless the timeline we understand from Biblical studies has been altered by Craig, his proposed heritage for Goliath doesn’t click. Also, it seems that Craig is trying to juggle too many dangling plotlines toward the end of the book and although issues are resolved, said resolutions are not as satisfying as they could have been if possibly less attention was paid to throwing in several mini plots and more was given to keeping the primary ones introduced early on flowing and tight. I was particularly intrigued by the build up of the Nazis and the mercenary for hire working for them, but was somewhat disappointed in how that particular line was tied up.

Even with that, HARDLUCK HANNIGAN: THE SPEAR OF GOLIATH is a fun read and totally engaged me with its descriptions and its exciting, colorful characters. I will definitely read the other books in the series simply to be able to ride along with Hannigan and crew a few more times.

THREE OUT OF FIVE TIPS OF HANCOCK’S HAT-An enjoyable read, one definitely worth adding to your collection.