New Pulp Author Tim Byrd’s Doc Wilde returns to battle The Frogs of Doom. Byrd is joined by illustrator Gary Chaloner. Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is published by Outlaw Moon Books.

PRESS RELEASE:

Wilde Adventure Is Back!
(And On Sale!!! Until July 1, get the Kindle or EPUB edition for $2 Off!)

“Really. Totally. Awesome.” —Book Nut

“Doc Wilde swings in on a jungle vine to raise the flag high for adventure. Infused with pace, fun, and all the two-fisted action a reader could ask for…” —Zack Stentz, screenwriter, Thor, X-Men: First Class

“Written in fast-paced, intelligent prose laced with humor and literary allusions ranging from Dante to Dr. Seuss, the story has all of the fun of old-fashioned pulp adventures.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A true delight…Tim Byrd has taken Doc Savage, added in a pinch of Robert E. Howard, a liberal dose of H.P. Lovecraft, and mixed it all together in a well done, enchanting pastiche of the pulps that will appeal to the adult audience as well as young adult readers.” —The Baryon Review

To the world at large, Doc Wilde and his family are an amazing team of golden-skinned adventurers, born to daring escapades and globetrotting excitement. Join them as they crisscross the earth on a constant quest for new knowledge, incredible 21st-century thrills, and good old-fashioned adventure!

Now, with adventurous Grandpa Wilde missing, the Wildes confront the deepest mysteries of Dark Matter, penetrate the tangled depths of uncharted jungles, and come face to face with the likely end of the world in the clammy clutches of an ancient amphibian threat…THE FROGS OF DOOM!

“Written in fast-paced, intelligent prose laced with humor and literary allusions ranging from Dante to Dr. Seuss, the story has all of the fun of old-fashioned pulp adventures.” –Kirkus Reviews

The Astonishing Adventures of Doc Wilde are written by Tim Byrd, lavishly illustrated by Gary Chaloner, and published by Outlaw Moon Books.

Now in deluxe new editions, these novels recapture the magic of pulp cliffhangers for readers of all ages. Lost worlds, ancient ruins, cool gadgets, and evil villains and daring heroes, all brought into the 21st-century with contemporary themes, modern science fantasy, the wonders of family, and a deep appreciation of literature and of the thinking life itself.

 In the tradition of classic adventure stories, and modern tales like The Incredibles and Raiders of the Lost Ark, they’re great for kids and grown-ups alike.

To celebrate the return of Doc Wilde, Outlaw Moon Books is offering the ebook edition of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom at a special low price of $4.99 (regular $6.99) until July 1, 2013. To get the book, visit the links below at Amazon (Kindle format) or Barnes & Noble (for EPUB format):
DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM AT AMAZON

Coming Soon!

DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM AT BARNES AND NOBLE
ALSO AVAILABLE IN TRADE PAPERBACK!

VISIT DOC WILDE ADVENTURE HEADQUARTERS AT WWW.DOCWILDE.COM

DOC WILDE AND THE MAD SKULL by Tim Byrd, art by Gary Chaloner is currently in production for release later this year.

Amazon is having a sale. Many New Pulp books have been discounted.

If you’ve been waiting for a sale to try something New Pulp, now’s your chance.

New Pulp Publisher Airship 27 has released their latest New Pulp anthology with Quatermain: The New Adventures.

PRESS RELEASE:

Airship 27 Productions is extremely thrilled to announce the release of our newest pulp collection starring a classic adventure hero loved by millions.

British adventure writer, H. Rider Haggard’s most popular fictional character was Alan Quatermain, the irascible African big game hunter. As the hero of the classic KING SOLOMON’S MINES, Quatermain immediately fired the imagination of readers across the world and created an instant demand for more of his adventures.

Now Airship 27 Productions answers that on-going demand by presenting two brand new Alan Quatermain novellas each filled with plenty of suspense, action and exotic African locales. When a French river boat pilot discovers elephant ivory suffused with gold, it sends the expert guide on a quest find a fable elephant’s graveyard to learn answer to the “GOLDEN IVORY” by Alan J. Porter.

Next a naïve American lad follows Quatermain deep into the jungle to find eight missing white women only to uncover an ancient evil capable of possessing the bodies of its victim’s in Aaron Smith’s chilling “TEMPLE OF LOST SOULS.”

“We couldn’t ask for more fast paced, exciting yarns these two these,” beams Airship 27 Productions’ Managing Editor, Ron Fortier. “The affection our writers hold for this character was obvious throughout their stories and we fully expect Quatermain fans to agree. This is really old fashion pulp fun.”

Here two are complete tales that will thrill veteran fans and introduce a whole new generation to one of the most famous adventure heroes of all time; H. Rider Haggard’s Alan Quatermain.

Illustrations by Clayton Hinkle.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – Pulps for a New Generation!

Now available from Amazon as a hard copy and on Kindle.

My very good friend, William J. Norris, is an excellent actor, a wonderful director, an inspiring playwright (I wrote my first play because I really admired a play that he wrote and that led, in turn, to my writing career), and one helluva teacher. I should know. I’ve stolen cribbed borrowed applied so many ideas and concepts from his teaching into my own attempts.

I met him one night for drinks after he taught an acting class and he told me that a student came up to him after a session and asked Bill if he thought the student could act. Bill said, “No.” William J. says that every time a student asks him that question, he gives the same answer. That seemed a little brutal to me in this nurturing, everyone-wins-an-award-for-showing-up era we live in. Bill said he was being kind; the life of an actor – of any artist, actually – is hard enough and if someone can be talked out of it, they should be.

He was, and is, right.

In my own theater days one of sidelines I pursued, on occasion, was that of a freelance actor coach, focused on helping someone with their auditions. It was surprising how many actors (and I include myself overall in this) let their sense of self-worth hinge on whether or not they got a call-back or were cast in the part. The whole artistic process is too narrow a reed on which to hang so weighty an existential question – do I have worth?

I encounter a variation of this at the lectures on writing.

I do. At the onset, I ask who is interested in writing. Some hands go up. I ask the hands, “Are you a writer?” You’d be surprised at how many people equivocate. “Well, I’m trying to be. . .I don’t know. . .Maybe. . .” All those answers are wrong.

If someone says that yes, they are a writer, I then ask, “Are you a good one?” Again, I often get equivocation – they want to be a good writer, they hope someday to be a good writer, and on and on. I slap the buzzer. Errnk! Again, wrong answer.

There’s a right answer but it’s also a trick answer: “Yes, I’m a writer. I’m a good writer. Not as good as I want/going to be yet.” That’s the right answer.

Here’s the trick part: you have to mean it. You have to believe it. If you don’t, why should anyone else? You have to have conviction.

I’ve sometimes compared writing – or any creative, artistic endeavor – to a circus. Sometimes you are on the high-wire, working without a net. You put one foot in front of the other and you don’t look down.

Sometimes it’s like being on the trapeze, and then the spotlight goes out. You let go of one trapeze and reach out into the darkness, believing that there is another trapeze bar and that there is another set of hands that will grab yours. You have to believe.

Sometimes it’s like being the clown car; you putter into the central ring and then all of these strange, absurd, maybe wonderful beings come out of you. If they don’t then you’re just a stupid little car in the spotlight. You have to trust in your inner clowns.

You don’t ask whether or not you can write. If you have to ask, then you can’t and won’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best thing anyone has ever written or even if it’s the best you have ever written. You put the words down and you decide later if you like them. You have to believe in your talent. You’ll figure out later if the writing is good, bad, or indifferent. For now, you’re writing and that’s what a writer does. A writer writes.

In the belief – not the hope, not the wish – in the belief that they can.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

Forgive me folks. Today’s column is going to be a sappy, crappy, and sweeter than caramel drenched hot fudge balls dipped in rock candy. Consider this my spoiler alert: there’s absolutely no snark in today’s column. There’s only the happy tale of how a pair of acquaintances became so much more to me and to my Unshaven brethren.

The only thing truly standing in my way of bringing the noise and the funk to my half of every Samurnaut book were real life models. I make no bones about my abilities: I draw from life. A blank paper to me is less an invitation to showcase a spindly Spider-Man or healthy Hulk. I was trained to draw what I see, and sadly my mind is far too left brained to maintain an image well enough to reproduce from grey-matter to hand. But I digress.

When it came time to shoot The Samurnauts, I opted to reach out to those whose faces I wasn’t so acclimated to. That, and I honestly didn’t want my immediate family and friends traipsing around as superheroes. My call-to-action was met (largely) by members of a local(ish) comedy troupe I had opened for on a handful of occasions. Oh yeah. I should totally mention: for a hot minute I considered pursuing stand-up comedy. Don’t look it up on YouTube. Seriously. Don’t type “Marc Fishman Stand-Up.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you. OK? OK. Where was I?

Oh yes. Six members of “Big Dog Eat Child” were kind enough to lend their faces to The Samurnauts. With said Big Dogs I was granted a set of models built for emotion and staging. Putting a nerf gun into their capable hands and shouting “be heroic” showed their natural talent to contort and twist into brand new people. Amongst them, Erik Anderson and his wife Cherise (not of the troupe, but equally interested in helping out when our initial model had to cancel) stood out as being very much into becoming superheroes. After a fun afternoon of digital photography, Nerf wars, and prancing about… I made a last-minute offer to my new models. “If you are ever curious as to how this will turn out, feel free to look me up on Skype.”

It could not have been maybe a week or two later that my computer buzzed at me. Erik and Cherise, in the heart of the weekend (when most everyone is enjoying not having to make comic books), wanted to check in. And there they stayed glued to their screen watching me build a comic book from roughs to inks to colors to lettering. Over the course of the weeks that it took, they stayed up on Skype night after night watching the construction. Suddenly I was no longer making a comic alone in my basement… I was drawing for an audience. An audience willing to literally stay up with me until they couldn’t stay awake. As they would later tell me… I was better than HBO.

When the first issue of Samurnauts came hot off the press, Erik and Cherise were at the convention with bells on. Not happy enough to simply see a final copy of their issue, they were determined instead to see Unshaven Comics succeed. They grabbed a handful of business cards and took to the show floor to spread the word. A husband-wife guerrilla marketing team… doing the job we figured would not be gifted to us for many many years of convention-trenching. Oh how wrong we were.

Over the years (which I can’t even believe is how long we’ve been doing this…), Erik and Cherise have become less friends of Unshaven Comics, more family. Every convention, literally every convention we have attended since The Samurnauts was a thing, they have been in tow. We launched a Kickstarter to turn Erik into a cosplayer. And when it succeeded, soon our Blue Samurnaut was showing up in every costume-round up album across the mid-west. And this past weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, both Erik and Cherise stood behind tables pitching our wares at Heroes Con in lieu of our own Kyle Gnepper (who was deservedly enjoying a vacation gifted to him by his non-comic-book-making day job). They did it without being asked. They did it because they love our book. They did it because they want to see us succeed.

There’s that gem of a lyric… “I get by with a little help from my friends…” And never before would I have found it to be so profound. Unshaven Comics is substantially lucky to have a plethora of amazing friends out there in the industry. We’d be remiss not to thank Mike Gold, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and the whole lot of ComicMix‘ers for the continuing success we’ve achieved in the five years we’ve seriously pursued our dream. Erik and Cherise engrained themselves into our studio and company without asking for anything more than the promise of continued hero-dom. A price we still feel guilty for today.

I know those of us who make comic books have many reasons to be cranky, snarky, angry, or bitter. But here I sit in awe of two people who Skype’d in with me once because they loved the idea of being heroes to the world… and ended up instead being mine.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

It’s a TV series about a woman who dies and is brought back into a totally new life, so how ironic that DROP DEAD DIVA was cancelled after four seasons, then revived for a fifth on Lifetime. We talk to the shell shocked cast and creator about where they are going from here. Plus GHOST RIDER back in court, Roger Corman decides to share and SONS OF ANARCHY gets a comic,

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New Pulp Authors Kane Gilmour and Doc Vaughn visit the Book Cave to introduce the listeners to their fantastic novel and web comic, Warbirds of Mars.

Listen to The Book Cave Episode 234: Warbirds of Mars now at http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/the-book-cave-episode-234-warbirds-of-mars