Category: News

The Spider ™ Argosy Communications. Artwork © Pablo Marcos.

New Pulp Author Martin Powell shared an excerpt from the upcoming Moonstone release of The Spider in “The City That Couldn’t Sleep.”

Enjoy.

Gunfire erupted, bullets splintering plaster and wooden panels. The Spider was a dark-cloaked blur, springing forward with panther-like prowess. He fired twice, dropping as many hooded thugs, splashing their blood and brains ruby-red across the linoleum. Two more shots punched through another masked skull, and severed a spine into gory splinters.

Only one crook remained. Trembling, he tossed away his weapon, knelt upon the sticky blood-slick floor, and surrendered.

The Master of Men laughed again.

“Smart boy,” he snarled, gliding closer to his prisoner. “You’ve been cleaning up, all over town. Clever jobs.
Well organized. Not like everyone else. Maybe you’re immune to the Sleepless Sickness. Perhaps you’re the cause of it. We’re going to have a long talk…and I promise you’re going to tell me exactly where—”

The thug’s eyes spilled tears, gasping behind his mask. The Spider tore away the cowl, revealing killer’s contorted face already blackening with poison he’d consumed from a hollow molar.

There was nothing the Spider could do, except watch him die. He wanted to curse his own failure.

Instead, he laughed. And laughed some more.

***

The Spider in “The City That Couldn’t Sleep” is written by Martin Powell with interior illustrations by the legendary Pablo Marcos. Coming soon from Moonstone Books. http://www.moonstonebooks.com/

There’s a great interview with Joss Whedon, director of the upcoming The Avengers movie, out May 4^th, in Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times.

Anyone who reads these columns with any regularity already knows that I am a Buffy geek. But you don’t know that I originally ignored it.  Yep, that’s right.  I didn’t find the Buffster until the second half of the second season, about the time Angel went back to being Angelus. I found her thanks to my participation in a message board called The Coffee Nebula, which started as a Voyager fan fest, but spread out into other science fiction — I can’t call it sci-fi — and fantasy shows, especially after Voyager ended. (The Neb, as we “Nebsters” fondly call it, is still active, so you might want to check it out.)  Everyone was raving about Buffy The Vampire Slayer, so I finally gave in checked it out.  And was hooked.

I searched out and found the episodes I had missed.  They weren’t quite as strong as the current episodes, but thinking about it now — and after reading the interview — I’ve figured something out.

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Writing can be fun. Most of the time. Even writing for profit. Or writing for fun like I do here.

And some days, it’s not. You sit down with the best intentions and nothing happens or nothing good. Like this time. I’m in a bad mood, my cats are nagging me, I feel tired and everything I write seems like crap and probably is. However, the column is due and I’d better not go back to Casablanca again. I told Mike I wouldn’t.

So I’m doing what I usually do. Sit down and type stuff and see if there’s anything useful in it.

I’m betting that, on some level, you know what I’m talking about. Doesn’t matter if it’s about writing. You’re trying to get something done and, for whatever reason, it’s just not working. It could be work, it could be a relationship, it could be just trying to fix something around the house – whatever, the fates are not aligned and it just doesn’t work and it’s frustrating as hell, isn’t it? We all know that feeling.

That’s what makes storytelling work, I think. We may not all have the exact same experiences but we know the feelings that come out of those experiences. Do I have to kill someone in order to know how a murderer might feel? Of course not. What I have to find in myself is how the murderer might feel in this given situation. Have you ever killed a fly? How did you feel about it? Most of us would feel nothing or might feel a bit of triumph or glee. It’s a pest that annoys you or it might be a threat that will bring some illness or lay eggs in your hamburger. (One of the reasons My Mary hates flies; that happened.) Different folks, different motivations.

Maybe that’s how the murderer feels about taking a human life. On the other hand, have you ever said or done something that you instantly regretted and knew you couldn’t take back? Hurt someone, perhaps ended a relationship beyond all possibility of revival? Maybe your murderer feels something like that.

As I write, I have to figure out what the character might feel and then find in myself some situation, some memory, some feeling that is similar and extrapolate from that. If I do that correctly, the reader will also – hopefully – find some feeling in themselves with which they can respond to the scene or the story and it will have greater impact.

It’s why so many men have the same reaction to the end of Field of Dreams that I get. It tears me up every time I watch it. (And, yes, I understand many women have the same reactions.) It’s about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons/daughters and what was, what might have been, what maybe could be.

Can you have stories without that? Sure. You can use a formula, you can connect the dots, and have something perfectly serviceable and even entertaining. You can make money doing that. The stories that stay with us, however, are the ones where we connect on some emotional level. I, as a writer, turn to the reader and ask, “Have you ever experienced something like this? Have you ever felt something like this?”

It’s the moments were that happens that a connection is made. It’s like flipping a light switch – the electricity flows, the connection is completed, and the lights come on. We share something together. We need that sharing – that empathy –to live with one another. We do that and we create something special – whether it’s a story or a civilization. One of my rules is that “Nothing that is human is alien to me” and when we deny that we deny our common humanity.

Huh. Look at that. Guess I found something to write about after all.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

Here’s the sort of wackiness you needed this weekend!

A dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers, the seven members of the Umbrella Academy spent their childhoods fighting evil and honing their extraordinary gifts under the tutelage of their guardian and mentor, Dr. Reginald Hargreeves. In this story from the past, the UA team fights a mysterious murderer and learns a powerful lesson…

Conceived and written by Gerard Way (of My Chemical Romance), [[[The Umbrella Academy]]] features art by Gabriel Bá (Casanova) and Dave Stewart (Hellboy) and was originally published by Dark Horse Comics. It won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Finite Series/Limited Series, and if you haven’t read it yet, watch this to find out why…

The SyFy mainstay series EUREKA is coming to a close with a hand full of episodes that begin on the network on Monday at 9pm (ET). We begin our look at the show by talking to star Colin Ferguson and EUREKA creator Jamie Paglia on how they are prepared to say goodbye. Plus more with SyFy’s FACT OR FAKED Investigators, including the things they saw that made them believers and Frank Miller finally gets a GO for SIN CITY 2.

The Point Radio is on the air right now – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or mobile device– and please check us out on Facebook right here & toss us a “like” or follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

One week till the End of the World!

Hold on, amigo. Before you donate the contents of your bank account to Bart Simpson’s favorite charity, tell your boss where he can stick that twelve-dollar raise he gave you, and go sky-diving off Mount Rushmore–get a grip on yourself!

It’s not really the end of the world. Not the end of the real world, I mean. It’s only the end of the world in Aztlan: The Last Sun, the first in my brand-new series of 21st-century Aztec murder mysteries– available now as an e-book from Amazon.

Imagine if Cortes never conquered Monteczuma. Imagine if the Aztecs expanded their empire from Tierra Del Fuego to Baffin Bay. Imagine if 2012 rolled around and that empire was plagued by a series of grisly murders that recalled the human sacrifices of ancient days?

No need to keep on imagining. It’s all in Aztlan: The Last Sun.

Growing up in the 1960s, I first heard “Shazam” from the lips of Gomer Pyle, USMC and only later learned it had something to do with a defunct character, Captain Marvel. When I then saw ads in the comics for a Saturday morning series called Shazzan, I was confused, thinking it was somehow connected. Nope, the CBS series created by the great Alex Toth and produced by Hanna-Barbera and had the following narration:

“Inside a cave off the coast of Maine, Chuck (Jerry Dexter) and Nancy (Janet Waldo) find a mysterious chest containing the halves of a strange ring. When joined, the ring forms the word “Shazzan!” and with this magical command, they are transported back to the fabled land of the Arabian Nights. Here they meet their Genie, Shazzan (Barney Phillips). Shazzan presents them with Kaboobie (Don Messick), a magical flying camel. Shazzan will serve them whenever they call, but he cannot return them home until they deliver the ring to its rightful owner. And thus begins their incredible journey.”

Adding an extra “ho” to the Jolly Green Giant’s “ho ho ho”, the 60-foot tall Shazzan was a jovial genie, calling the kids “little masters” and never tired at saving them with regularity. The series ran from September 9, 1967 and ended on Saturday, September 6, 1969 and featured two escapades per thirty minutes and achieved just enough popularity to be repeated as part of countless series in the 1970s and 1980s before finding a home on cable. The complete 36 episode series has been collected for the first time thanks to the tireless folk at Warner Archive.

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