Writer Wednesday: Alma Alexander

Today, Writer Wednesday welcomes fantasy author Alma Alexander!

Alma Alexander's life so far has prepared her very well for her chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with  two obligatory writer's cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. You can find out more about Alma and her books on her website (www.AlmaAlexander.org), at her Amazon author page (https://amzn.to/2N6xE9u), on Bluesky (@almaalexander.bsky.social), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/alma.alexander/) or at her Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/AlmaAlexander)

Hi Alma, thanks for joining me for this Writer Wednesday! Let’s start with the big news: you have a new novel coming out in November! What’s it about?

I have written a number of historical fantasies which form a loose alternate history parallel to our own. This book turns a new page, as it were – we are still in that alternate history world but this time I am going back to my own cultural roots and we are in 13th/14th century Balkans. The Neimanni Chronicles follows an arc – “The Shadow Before the Dawn” (out November 24, 2026) tells the story of a Prince whose life… was not easy. It lays the groundwork. The next book…

While this is the start of a new trilogy, it does tie into your previous historical fantasy work, correct?

…continues on from that (“The Sun In High Heaven”, projected for late 2027 or early 2028), and is the story of the son of that Prince, of Shadow, a king who became known under the sobriquet “the Great” and created a golden age, an empire, out of his inherited kingdom. But the curse that was placed on his father’s line, having skipped his son, lands squarely of the aftermath. The son of the king known as The Great also had a name – he became known to history as “The Weak”, and he lost everything that his father had built in only a handful of years. It was a bad time to do it, too, because another empire was rising in the east, on a collision course… and then came the reckoning. “Against the Fall of Night” is the third book, and it is the story of that reckoning (probably 2029).

And yes, these stories tie into the historical and geographical arc built by the previous works. The empire of Visant, as featured in the novel “Empress”, plays a big part in these new novels… but it is centuries since the events of “Empress”, and Visant is old, and starting to crumble.

I have a complicated geopolitical and cultural story on my hands, and my work is cut out for me to make these books extraordinary.

You’ve told me that you’ve mined your own cultural history for this book, which makes it intensely personal. Can you tell us about that thought process, how you choose which aspects of medieval Balkan history to use, embellish, and so on?

I seem to keep on answering your questions by preempting them.  But here’s a bit more on the process.

You see, I started a novel along these lines more than six years ago, and I had some 20,000 words of it written… and then Life descended in a mudslide and I’ve been digging myself out from under that ever since. After six years of losses and of grieving in which I did very little writing at all I returned to those 20K words earlier this year and looked at them. And realized that what I thought was the “prequel” to the book which I really wanted to write, which was the “Against the Fall of Night” story, was actually the first part of a much larger story, and would really need to be two books. And so, there we were. A trilogy. I really did not intend this. But that’s what arose, and that is what I am going with.

There is so much raw material here that I am simplifying things and rearranging them quite a bit so that I can whack my way through the historical jungles in a way that is going to make sense to someone who is NOT as steeped in the material as I am. But there are aspects of this which I am not tweaking over much because they are intensely powerful in and of themselves and all I have to do is provide them with a proper outlet.

These are very important books to me. I don’t think I have ever written any book that was this close to my heart. I am going to do a lot of hard work to make sure that I convey what they mean to me, how important this story is for me to tell, and I hope that I am going to be able to carry the readers with me.

You grew up in Africa, and I would love to hear about how the varied cultures and traditions of the countries there influenced the way you both respond to stories and write them, and how those influences interact (or not) with the European tradition you’re mining for the new book.

Well, Africa has very little to do with this particular new novel because I am going back to a much earlier iteration of myself than the one that accreted the African overlay. But having been thrown into such a very different cultural and geographical milieu when I was so young and so impressionable has left its mark, of course. There are things about Africa that I will carry with me to my grave. And what it has taught me, and it’s something that does affect my storytelling in general, is how to be open to listening to the things that are important to people very different from  myself, respecting those things, treating them with the reverence that is clearly due to them. A part of me will always be The Other, because I grew up as The Other in so many places and I understand that from the inside. And I understand the beauty of voices that are Other to me. Africa taught me that.

I know you’ve described your writing process as “chaotic.” But I’m going to ask you to describe it anyway, since that’s part of what Writer Wednesdays is all about. Does it change at all when you’re working on short fiction versus novels?

Mostly my writing is a question of sitting down, shutting up, and taking dictation. I’ve told people before that my Muse is not some ethereal maiden clad in diaphanous veils and being all coy about things – no, my Muse is a Sergeant Major screaming at me to drop down and give him twenty literary pushups RIGHT NOW. I get what I call my “attack stories” which sometimes turn up out of the clear blue and are often strong enough to derail works in actual progress until I detour in their direction and write them; one such recent thing wrapped itself into the shape of “The Wind’s Four Quarters” which was a grouped-together collection of four stories which I eventually ended up releasing as a slim volume in the fall of 2025 (look it up!) – that one just came up and smote me upside the head and would not let go until it was done – and it was persnickety because one of the stories that I had in mind was quite simply the Wrong Story and I had to come to terms with that and find a new one for that slot because it was clear that it wasn’t working as intended and required closer attention. But this arrived while I was at work on “Shadow Before the Dawn”, and I had to share the writing liminal spaces with both things until I could put the Wind stories to bed.

My current chaos is creating a decent timeline for the second book in the Neimanni Chronicles because I KEEP ON FINDING THINGS TO ADD TO THE ONE I HAVE and what it means is that I keep on having to re-do it because it gets too complicated and bescribbled to be useful so I have to start again. I am on my third timeline as we speak. I’ll get it right. The trouble is I can’t really move forward with the book UNTIL I get it right, so I just have to keep at this until I have properly channeled the river of time into a course that I want to follow…

Short fiction… is less of a native form for me than longer-form stuff, but I’ve sold a handful of short stories in the last couple of years (two published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, one in Abyss&Apex, at least one in a forthcoming anthology…) so it isn’t a foreign country, entirely. But my shorter fiction tends to marinate in my head in its first six drafts so when I write it down it is in its final form and ready to go somewhere to seek a home. I actually have another waiting in the wings for a market I am interested in to open to subs again, so we’ll see. But for now, it’s the novels that are holding my attention.

Where can people interested in the new book find you online for announcements about the release?

My website at www.AlmaALexander.org has info – if you go to my blog on that site right now you can actually find an announcement of the new book a few posts back and you can also find a way in which you can preorder the book, or even subscribe to the entire series. Go take a look and see if that is something you’d be interested in. And there is always my Patreon (where patrons can even expect early glimpses of new covers or excerpts of the WIP…) Other than that, I will make announcements on my socials (FaceBook, BlueSky), so keep an eye on those.

And my usual closing question: what is your favorite book (and why, if you feel like sharing)?

…I have THOUSANDS of books in my library. My favorites include those written by Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula le Guin, Alix Harrow, Ada Palmer, Matt Ruff, Joanne Harris, Sharon Kay Penman, Marie Brennan, and oh SO MANY OTHERS. Yes, I re-read books. I will go back to an old love and it will be a sweet reunion every time. And my favorite book – in that moment – is the one I am holding.

Writer Wednesday: Jeffrey J. Mariotte

Today, Writer Wednesday welcomes Jeffrey J. Mariotte. Jeff is a writer whose work I’ve long admired. We’ve become social media acquaintances and we have quite a few mutual friends, but I’ve never had the chance to meet him in person. I’m very happy to have the chance to chat with him.

During his decades-long career in the world of books and publishing, Jeffrey J. Mariotte has written more than sixty novels, nearly 200 comic books and graphic novels, dozens of short stories, magazine articles, and much more. He has received multiple awards for his writing, including four Scribe Awards for Best Original Novel, presented by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. He’s also won the Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic-Con for his career contributions to science fiction and fantasy, the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for editing and publishing,  is a co-winner of the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and he has been a finalist for the Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers, the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, and the International Horror Guild Award, among others. He has owned and managed independent bookstores and has worked in publishing as the vice president of marketing for WildStorm Productions/Image Comics, a senior editor for DC Comics, and the editor-in-chief for IDW Publications.

Jeffrey works in multiple genres, including thrillers, mysteries, horror, westerns, and science fiction and fantasy, for adult and young adult audiences. He’s been entrusted with world-famous intellectual properties including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Narcos, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Tarzan, and many more.

He lives in the Arizona desert with his family, pets, and a massive collection of books.

Hi Jeff. Thanks for joining me for today’s Writer Wednesday!

It’s my pleasure, Anthony!

You’ve written two novels for Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc as part of the “Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe” (Tarzan and the Forest of Stone and Beyond Thirty: A World Reborn). What was your first encounter with Burroughs as a reader, and how has he influenced your writing?

I don’t have a specific memory of my first Burroughs book. I was introduced to Tarzan early, thanks to the Johnny Weissmuller movies playing frequently on daytime TV in the late 1950s/early 60s. At some point I discovered that there were books (it’s possible that I discovered him in comics first). In the mid-to-late 60s there was a boom in fantasy/adventure/sf paperbacks, and I was constantly reading ERB, Robert E Howard, and their literary kin. That continued through the 1970s, and in 1980 I became a bookseller at Books Inc. in San Jose, CA, a general bookstore that had the best sf/fantasy/horror section of any bookstore in the southern Bay Area. That was when I became acquainted with the fandom community, started meeting authors regularly, and started writing semi-seriously myself.

I can’t say that Burroughs has specifically influenced my writing per se, but he influenced the direction of my life, along with the many other writers that I read obsessively in those days. And, obviously, my life influences my writing all the time.

Who were your other early writing influences?

I’ve read so widely, and in so many different genres, that it’s hard to pin down specific influences. I don’t really recognize anybody else’s work in mine, and I’m not sure that mine reads like that of anyone else—unless, as in the case of a Burroughs book, I’m trying not to imitate his work, but to suggest it.

The Burroughs characters are not the only licensed properties you’ve worked on. What is your process like when approaching licensed work?

First, I want to be very familiar with the underlying property. I’ve read a lot of Burroughs over the decades, but before digging into a work of my own, I re-read some (specifically ones related to the project, like Tarzan books before writing Tarzan, and obviously Beyond Thirty for the new one). In the case of Burroughs, I also read what others have written about the works, because they can usually point out specific aspects of it that I might not pick up on my re-read. One of my bibles for that is Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by my old friend Dick Lupoff.

If it’s a work based on a TV series, I’ll watch as much of the series as possible and read things about the series. I want to know what the fans respond to, how they think about the characters, etc.

Does your writing process differ at all when working on your own original characters? Do you approach writing novels differently than short stories?

When writing original stuff, I still do research for locations, professions, anything the characters would have to know or do, etc., but I don’t have to read particular authors or watch particular TV series—the research is more focused based on who my characters are and what their setting is. Those things, I have to know for licensed work as well, but for my own characters I don’t have to know all the details of their previous adventures, because I’ll be inventing any of that.

When I’m writing a short story, I’m more likely to just dive in and do any necessary research as it comes up, rather than before I start work. Beyond that, my process is pretty much the same for both formats.

It feels like you have worked in almost every genre. What is your favorite, or most “comfortable” genre to write in? And is there any genre you haven’t worked in yet that you’d like to?

I guess I’m most “comfortable” with thrillers or novels of suspense. Even when I’m writing in other genres, I tend to include elements found in thrillers. Tarzan and the Forest of Stone, for example, was a Tarzan adventure but also a crime novella with a prolonged chase scene. Many of my horror novels are really supernatural thrillers, as well. I like writing plots that keep the reader turning pages to see what’ll happen next.

I think I’ve written in every genre that I’m truly interested in. I’ve written sword-and-sorcery, science fiction, horror, adventure, mystery, thriller, western…maybe others I’m not thinking of right now. I’m not particularly interested in writing romance or romantasy (although I wouldn’t entirely rule out cozy romantic mystery). I think mainly I want to stick with the genres I know, but to do new things within them.

Beyond Thirty: A World Reborn comes out later this year from ERB, Inc.. What else do you have coming out in the near future?

Nothing in the immediate future. I had two book releases in August—Billy the Kid: Cheat the Hangman, an “untold tale” of Billy the Kid in the last weeks of his life, and Flesh of All Sorrows, a fairly epic thriller that’s earning some of the best reviews of my career. The Burroughs book will be the last of this oddly busy season—three books in three different genres from three different publishers. I do have a horror novel finished that’s out with an agent. I’ve been working without one for years, but this particular agent is someone I know and would like to work with, but I’m still waiting to hear if she wants to rep it. I’m pretty sure everything else that I’ve placed is already published.

Where can you be found online?

My website is jeffmariotte.com, and I try to keep it up-to-date. There’s a blog there where I write about what’s happening in my professional life. I also have a Substack (https://substack.com/@jeffreyjmariotte), which is a substitute for the autobiography that people have been bugging me for years to write. It’s occasionally about my writing projects but more often about other aspects of my life and my long career in the world of books and publishing. Facebook is the social media site I use most, but all of my socials (and more) are on my Linktree.

And my standard final question: what is your favorite book?

This is the world’s hardest question, because there are so many books that I love. Our library comprises thousands and thousands of volumes, on thirty-some bookcases spread throughout just about every room of the house (with more books boxed in the garage because there’s no room for them). My sentimental favorite is probably Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, a historical novel set largely in California’s Bay Area, where I lived for ten years and still love. Stegner’s work resonated with me when I was getting to know the American West, and he was a brilliant writer, a faithful activist, and a wonderful man with whom I was privileged to spend most of a day once.

On different days, though, I could just as easily pick books by William Goldman or Joan Vinge or Ross Macdonald or James Lee Burke or…well, it’s a long list. Books have been the most constant feature of my life, and I’ll never stop reading them.

Interview: Callie Schuttera

Today is a special “weekend edition” of “Writer Wednesday” with actress and writer Callie Schuttera.

Callie Schuttera is an American-born actress and producer who grew up in Cincinnati Ohio. Callie is known for her iconic role in Zach Cregger's 'Weapons' and her appearances on shows like 'The Rookie' and 'On Call'. Callie earned international acclaim on the festival circuit for her performance in 'Blue', which took home a slew of awards including multiple wins for Best Picture and Best Actress. Callie can also be seen in the family comedy 'The Last Conception' and voices Vivian Lobdow, on the popular Darkest Night podcast. Callie earned a B.F.A. in Acting from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). After moving to Los Angeles, she co-created Poison Pictures Film House with her wife, Gabriela Ledesma. Poison Pictures is a leading indie producer of feature films, music videos, and documentaries.

Hi, Callie! Thanks for taking some time to chat with me.

Thanks for reaching out :)

Your new film The Exit State premieres at Screamfest in Los Angeles this month (Tuesday, October 13th, for those in the LA area who may want to catch it). Tell us a bit about the film.

The film is political thriller/horror about a group of American citizens who attempt to illegally flee the United States to Mexico, to escape an authoritarian regime. They arrive at shelter they believe is safe in politically neutral territory but their ‘safe house’ becomes a dystopian nightmare.

Will it be showing at other film festivals or be coming to streaming or on DVD?

Screamfest will be our major film screening before moving to streaming a couple of weeks later!

When did you first know you wanted to pursue acting? How did you get started in the industry?

I knew from a really young age, maybe six or seven. I got as much training as my parents would allow me to. Classes, camps, and then a BFA in Acting from a conservatory program.

When I moved to LA I was lucky to land an agent right away, and I learned a LOT from those first few years of auditioning.

Your most recent screen appearance was as “Alex’s Mom” in Weapons. What was working on that film like?

That was a very cool experience. I was a huge fan of Zach’s previous film Barbarian so I was thrilled to audition for the project even before I knew the details.

Being on set was surreal - not only was everyone so talented (cast + crew), the scale of the project was massive. So the feeling that something iconic was being made was palpable.

You’re the co-writer of both The Exit State (with Josh George and director Gabriela Ledesma) and Blue (also with Ledesma, who directed both films). I would love to hear about the writing process for those films.

Writing is a passion that kind of bloomed for me in late twenties. I had always enjoyed it but the older I get, the more obsessed I am with writing scripts.

My writing process with Gabby is usually quite harmonious. We always say she can ‘see’ the film and I can ‘hear’ it. She’s very in tune with the camera’s trajectory and I’m more drawn to dialogue.

Adding Josh into the mix was a ton of fun. He brought a great perspective to our process and was crucial in world-building and creating the plot’s landscape.

Also regarding the creative process: as an actress, how do you usually work on crafting your performance? And does that process differ when it comes to scripts you wrote versus characters in movies or shows you didn’t have a hand in writing?

Each role feels like a new puzzle, so the process is never exactly the same. That said, I do always keep a little character notebook that contains some of a character’s backstory, their key thought patterns, and their astrology (whether you believe in astrology’s validity or not, it’s a great way to explore a character).

The main difference in playing a role you’ve helped craft is that there’s a lot of subliminal character work being done as you write and rewrite. When you go to prep the acting, you realize that a lot of the character’s nuance is already engrained in you.

Who are some of your strongest influences, both as a writer and as an actor?

As a writer, I’m heavily influenced by Adam McKay, and Jesse Armstrong - they’re both writers who unabashedly comment on real world politics, and some of society’s most dire current circumstances. Their lenses always includes humor without sacrificing the severity of their subject matter.

As an actor, I’m a massive Hannah Einbinder fan right now. I love how much joy translates from her work. I think she’s fearless yet lighthearted and an incredible human being.  Her work in Hacks and Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun is another fantastic writer!) were some of my favorite performances of the past couple years.

You and Gabriela co-founded Poison Pictures, which produced both Blue and The Exit State. Your website states your mission to “collaborate with the best up-and-coming filmmakers in LA and around the world to create high-quality products from start to finish.” What’s coming from Poison Pictures in the near future, in addition to The Exit State?

We are feeling very at home in the horror/thriller genre so we’re putting a lot of our energy behind two other narrative scripts in the same wheelhouse. What I love about both of them is that, like The Exit State, they boldly venture into contentious subject matter, not just to agitate, but for the sake of progress.

In addition we are working on a very special documentary about an organization called The School of Sexuality Project. They teach science-based, fun, shame-free sex-ed to K-college kids and hold community events for adults. We’re very proud to be a part of their cause and helping to take their mission world-wide.

And my usual final question: What is your favorite book, and why (if you feel like sharing)?

The Social Animal by David Brooks. I love all of his work but this one is very special. It blends economics and psychology while drifting in and out (seamlessly) of narrative storytelling to illustrate its points. It left me understanding my own human nature, perhaps more than anything I’ve ever read.

Check out Poison Pictures website for more about the company, and of course the ScreamFest page for the full roster of movies and talks.  Callie can also be found on Instagram and IMDB.

Writer Wednesday: Russell W. Dickson

Today I welcome my childhood friend and neighbor Russell W. Dickson to chat about his books and writing process. Russell and I grew up in the same section of Mahopac, NY and our mothers were good friends. We haven’t seen each other in person in way too long, so it was fun to “catch up” as it were.

Russell W. Dickson is a horror novelist and longtime journalist based in Upstate New York. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English/Writing with a minor in Journalism and has written for NewsBlaze Daily News for more than 26 years. His books include The Man Next Door, Children Shouldn’t Play with the Dead, and The Leather Man’s Curse. Drawing inspiration from the communities, folklore, and dark corners of his home region, he creates interconnected stories where familiar places conceal unsettling secrets. He connects with a combined social media following of approximately 110,000 fans across Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

Hi Russell. Thanks for joining me on this Writer Wednesday!

Thanks so much for having me! I’m really happy to be here. It’s especially fun doing this interview with someone who grew up in the same hometown—and even the same part of town—as I did. I’m looking forward to talking about my books, my writing, and maybe revisiting a few ghosts from our old neighborhood along the way.

Your recent books and upcoming novella are all in the horror genre. Is it safe to assume you’re a lifelong horror fan?

Absolutely. I’ve been a horror fan for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by movies like The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, and Halloween. There was something about being scared—while knowing you were safe—that hooked me early on.

As I got older, that fascination grew beyond movies. I became interested in ghost stories, local legends, haunted places, and the darker side of folklore and history. I think that naturally found its way into my writing. Horror has always been the genre that lets my imagination run the wildest, so looking back, it probably makes perfect sense that I ended up writing horror stories of my own.

We grew up in the same small lower Hudson Valley town, and in fact the same part of town. I’ve noticed a few nods to Lake Secor in your work. How did growing up where we did influence your writing?

Growing up there had a huge effect on my writing, probably more than I realized at the time. Camp Henry on Lake Secor in Mahopac and the woods behind my childhood home are featured prominently in Children Shouldn’t Play with the Dead. Those were places I knew intimately as a kid, so when I began creating that story's world, they naturally became part of it.

Even the group of kids in the book was inspired in part by the kids I grew up with in our neighborhood—the friendships, personalities, adventures, and trouble we managed to find.

If you read more of my books, you’ll find other connections to our hometown scattered throughout them. I like leaving those little nuggets behind—places, memories, and details that might not mean anything unusual to most readers, but that old friends like you might recognize immediately. In a way, pieces of where we grew up keep finding their way into the fictional worlds I create.

Who were your major influences (literary or otherwise)?

As a child, I was an avid reader. I loved mystery and adventure books, especially The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Those books gave me an early appreciation for mystery, suspense, and the idea that something unexpected might always be waiting around the corner.

As I got older, I discovered writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, who showed me just how powerful horror could be when it was grounded in believable people and places. I was also fascinated by Washington Irving and Hudson Valley folklore. Stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle mattered to me because they blended fiction, history, folklore, and recognizable places. That strongly influenced my decision to incorporate local legends, history, and real locations into my own books.

My education broadened those influences considerably. I earned a B.A. in English/Writing with a minor in Journalism, where I learned the discipline and mechanics of writing professionally. In college, I was inspired by a wide range of writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. I was drawn to Poe's darkness and atmosphere, Dickens's memorable characters, and the harsh realities and psychological depth found in the great Russian writers.

I was also fascinated by vivid firsthand wartime accounts and historical writing, because they demonstrated how powerful specific, honest details can be. Journalism reinforced that lesson: observe, research the facts, and make the reader feel as though they are actually there.

All of those influences eventually came together in my own work. Horror may be the genre I write most often, but underneath it you'll usually find history, folklore, real places, human nature, and little pieces of the world I grew up in.

What is your writing process like? Are you a “plotter,” a “pantser,” somewhere in between? And does that process change based on the length of the work (novels, novellas, short stories)?

I would definitely say I lean more toward being a “pantser,” although there is some plotting involved. Most of my stories begin with an idea, an image, a place, a piece of history, or sometimes just a frightening “what if?” I usually know where I want the story to go in general, but I don’t necessarily know every turn it will take to get there.

I like giving my characters room to develop and letting the story surprise me. Some of my favorite ideas have come while I was actually writing rather than during the planning stage. There are times when a character or situation takes the story somewhere I hadn’t originally intended, and I think that spontaneity gives my work some of its energy.

The longer the work becomes, though, the more organized I have to be. With a novel, especially when I’m weaving together history, local legends, multiple characters, and connections to my other books, I’ll keep notes and map out important events so everything eventually comes together. With novellas, I tend to work from a looser framework. Short stories are probably where I’m the closest to being a pure pantser. I can start with one disturbing idea and follow it to wherever it takes me.

So I suppose I’m somewhere in between, but I always want to leave the door open for the story to surprise me. For me, discovering what happens is part of the fun of writing.

You’re also a journalist. How does your process differ between fiction and non-fiction, if at all?

For me, fiction and journalism actually have a lot in common. Whether I’m writing a novel, a short story, or a news article, it has to be something I have a genuine interest in. I write from both my heart and my mind. If I’m not interested in the subject myself, I can’t expect the reader to be interested either.

Research is also crucial to everything I write. I believe you have to become as much of an expert on your subject as possible. Readers are smart, and if you don’t understand what you’re writing about, it will eventually show, and you’ll lose credibility.

The biggest difference is what I do with that research. As a journalist, the facts are the story. My responsibility is to be accurate, fair, and truthful. In fiction, research becomes the foundation that lets my imagination take over. When I write about a historical event, a local legend, or a real place, I want the details to feel authentic even when I introduce something supernatural.

Journalism taught me discipline, accuracy, research, and how to tell a story clearly. Fiction gives me the freedom to take those same skills and ask, “What if?” I think the two sides of my writing have influenced each other tremendously.

What projects do you have coming up that people should be on the lookout for?

This is a really exciting time for me. Publishers, literary agents, film producers, and actors have expressed interest in my work, so several possibilities are developing behind the scenes.

My first three books—The Man Next Door, Children Shouldn’t Play with the Dead, and The Leather Man’s Curse—along with my upcoming The Witch’s Road, really only scratch the surface of the fictional world I’ve been creating around Gloversville and the surrounding region. The stories are connected through local history, folklore, characters, and supernatural threads, and I currently have three more books planned that will expand that universe considerably.

I’m also writing shorter pieces from the Leather Man world. Readers can find me on Substack at RussellWDickson, where subscribers get multiple creepy short stories and other material that allows me to explore corners of that universe that might not fit into the novels.

Outside of fiction, I continue my journalism work for NewsBlaze.com, and I stay very active on social media, particularly Instagram, where I’ve built a large following and can interact directly with readers.

A lot is happening right now, and I feel like I’m only getting started. If readers enjoy the world they’ve encountered in the books so far, there is a great deal more coming.

Where can interested readers find you or your work online?

Readers can find me all over the place online. The easiest way is to search for Journalist Russell W. Dickson on Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X. I’m very active on social media, where I share updates about my books, upcoming releases, appearances, horror stories, and other projects.

You can also find my journalism at NewsBlaze.com. Readers looking for more horror can find me on Substack as RussellWDickson, where I publish creepy short fiction, including stories that expand my Leather Man universe.

My books are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, and other major online booksellers and distribution channels worldwide, as well as through select independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.

And if your local bookstore doesn’t carry my books, tell them they should! Independent bookstores are incredibly important to authors. Booksellers interested in carrying my work can reach out to me directly through Instagram for ordering and distribution information.

Most of all, I enjoy hearing from readers. Whether you find me through my books, journalism, Substack, or social media, feel free to reach out and say hello.

And my standard final question: what is your favorite book?

That’s a tough question for someone who has been an avid reader his entire life, but if I had to choose one, I’d probably say Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I know it’s technically a short story rather than a novel, but it influenced me so deeply that I have to pick it.

Growing up in the Hudson Valley made Irving’s story feel different to me. These weren’t just imaginary places somewhere far away—they were part of the history and folklore of the region I called home. I loved the atmosphere, the mystery surrounding the Headless Horseman, and especially the way Irving blurred the line between history, legend, and the supernatural.

Looking at my own books today, I can see that influence very clearly. I’m constantly digging into local history and legends and then asking myself what might be lurking beneath the stories we think we already know.

Of course, ask me again tomorrow, and I might say Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Dostoevsky, or Dickens. That’s the problem with asking a writer to name only one favorite!

Writer Wednesday: Don Simpson

Starting up my series of interviews with creative folks again, and branding it “Writer Wednesday,” although it won’t always be writers who are featured.

Today, I welcome my friend Don Simpson to the blog. After seeing Don’s work in comics dating back to the 80s, I got to know him in person through PulpFest, the annual pulp magazine and vintage paperback show held in Cranberry, PA each August (the 2027 show will be August 5-8). Over the past few years we’ve had plenty of great conversations about comics, creativity, and King Kong and so it felt right to re-inaugurate this series with a chat with Don.

Don is probably most well known as the creator of Megaton Man, Border Worlds, and Bizarre Heroes. He also drew an adaptation of the original King Kong, and provided illustrations for Al Franken’s book Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them. His recent releases include The Complete Megaton Man Universe Volume 1: The 1980s, Megaton Man; Microbus, The Lost Art of Don Simpson and X-Amount of Comics 1963: (When Else?!") Annual. Don can be found on Facebook, Instagram, his blog, Substack, and Bluesky.

Q: Hi Don! Thanks for taking some time to “chat” with me.

A: My pleasure, Anthony.

Q: I’m sure you’ve answered this question a million times, but for any of my readers who may not be familiar: how did Megaton Man come to be?

I was preparing to be a “serious” superhero penciler from the time I first started reading comics in the spring of 1972, at the age of ten. I read mostly Marvels at the time, and gravitated to undergrounds and Heavy Metal and European bandes dessinées by the time I was in the late teens and early twenties. Of course, I also always read the daily comic strips in The Detroit News and Peanuts and Funky Winkerbean, and of course Mad magazine and later National Lampoon and so on, so I was always a fan of humor as well. I would always draw funny comic strips for my school newspaper from time to time, and was featured on the choir bulletin board in high school. So I always had a sense of humor, I like to think.

So, like I say, I was submitting stories to Heavy Metal and getting rejection slips from (art director) John Workman, which were still encouraging, and rejections from Jim Shooter at Marvel and Dean Mullaney at Eclipse Comics. I wasn’t giving up on science fiction or superheroes, dramatic comics, as it were, but I also roomed with Mike Kazaleh, an aspiring humor cartoonists and animator—he later had success working for everyone from Ralph Bakshi on a Mighty Mouse revival to Matt Groening on the early Simpsons when it was on the Tracey Ullman show to John Kricfalusi on Ren and Stimpy. He would draw Ren and Stimpy for quite a long run at Marvel. Anyway, we were a couple of undiscovered geniuses getting nowhere in Detroit, and we shared an apartment where our drawing boards were in the kitchen.

One day we got to arguing about the relative difficulty of doing drama versus humor in cartooning, which is an absurd discussion to have—many of the greats were facile with both—Crumb, Kurtzman, Wally Wood, and so on. So we made this kind of friendly bet to try the opposite genre. Mike tried serious superheroes and gave up within a matter of hours; I tried doing funny stuff and it was just awful, but I kept at it. Finally, I drew the over-muscled beach bum with bikini-clad chicks draped all over his massive arms. I showed it to Mike and it was the first thing that got a laugh from him. I thought maybe I had something.

I kept at it and gave him a costume with a big “M” on his torso. I tossed around names with my other roommate, Brian Gabel, and one of us tossed out “Megaton Man,” and it just clicked. The whole concept sprang from that and it has really been a process of elaborating on it ever since.

Q: I’m always interested in the creative process. How do you approach page layout, lettering, etc. for a given project?

A: In the old days, I would start with a scribble in a sketchbook, a thumbnail rough, or maybe I would draw directly on 11" x 17" Bristol board. Today, I’m much more likely to type out a full script on a word processor. But I still can go back and forth. If it is a cover or a one-pager, and I can draw it all out in one sitting, I may just go with the inspiration. If it is a longer story, I’m going to type out plot notes, then start to hear dialogue, then add scenic (visual) descriptions. My full scripts can be quite elaborate—who is in the foreground, who is in the background, who is entering from the left side of the panel, and so on. I include psychological notes about the characters’ states of mind, if necessary.

I’m much more comfortable writing out my thoughts fully because I’ve learned if I have to set a project aside for any length of time, I can read back what I’ve written and recall my state of mind and what it is I want to draw. If I just make a scribble and then set it aside, if I don’t get to it right away, I have no idea how to decipher it later. And an unfinished drawing runs the risk of going stale. I used to draw every day so I ran into that less often. But as I’ve gotten older and life is more complicated, I find writing it out is better in case life intervenes and I can’t finish it all in a few days or weeks.

Sometimes the full-script approach leads to wordy dialogue, but it’s easier to cut dialogue at the drawing board—the fact that I still hand-letter is a big inducement to trim! And if a scene goes stale or no longer serves a purpose, I find it easier to cut writing than to cut finished art. It can be painful to have to cut finished comics pages that no longer serve any purpose in the story.

Q: What are your preferred tools for each step of your process (pencils, inks, letters, colors)? And have those preferences changed over the course of your career?

A: I’m still blue pencil—light blue Col-Erase, although they’ve discontinued them, the bastards—and graphite pencil, Hunt #102 crowquill and sable brush, Rapidographs for lettering, although pigment markers are more convenient nowadays. I scan my art into the computer and color in Photoshop. We used to use Cel-Vinyl colors on greylines—state-of-the art in the 1980s, but that is very primitive now.

Q: As a lifelong King Kong fan, I am particularly interested in how you came to work on the comic book adaptation and what that process was like.

A: I grew up with the movie on TV, of course. It was thrilling. It’s still thrilling today. The artistry really hasn’t been surpassed. The acting was atrocious, but the artistic vision, what is conveyed through stop-motion animation and set design and so on still holds tremendous power.

Fantagraphics approached me. I had done In Pictopia (from a script by Alan Moore) and Gary Groth was always fond of Border Worlds. I also know Tom Powers, a young guy from Detroit who became an assistant editor with Fantagraphics. Gary had been after the Kong license for quite some time—I’m sure you know the ownership of the Kong trademark and copyright—the film versus the screenplay and novelization—has long been a tangled mess.

They lined up six superstar covers by Dave Stevens, Al Williamson, Mark Schultz, William Stout, and Ken Steacy, and they needed someone cheap to do the adaptation and artwork. I was one-stop shopping, I suppose, and we agreed upon a page rate that wasn’t exactly Marvel or DC, but it compared favorably to Kitchen Sink Press, with whom I had just severed ties. So I got a used paperback copy of the Delos W. Lovelace novel—we didn’t have rights to use the RKO imagery, and I cartooned away.

It’s not a job I would have asked for or tried out for. I never thought I was doing the definitive interpretation of King Kong—just a workmanlike effort. I certainly put a lot into it. We were able to restore the giant spider scene and add a few other touches—I have a kid reading a Doc Savage novel in 1931, which is slightly anachronistic, but there you go. At the time it came out, my version didn’t get much love, but I think it has aged rather well. It has a fairly avid following now, especially at a venue like Pulpfest. I’ve sold several comics and a few pieces of original art there.

(Illustrator) Joe DeVito has had the Kong rights tied up for a long time and has refused to collect mine. I think Kong collectors would like to see the six issues collected into a mass-market graphic novel. I numbered all the pages from 1 to 130 for that purpose. Someday, Joe will be out of the picture and not be in a position to hold up the show anymore. I look forward to that.

Q: You’ve got two successful Kickstarters under your belt. Any advice for people looking to do a Kickstarter project? Things to do, and things to avoid?

A: Don’t cheat yourself on foreign postage. Not only are there customs—thank Emperor Tariff—but also filling out the forms is time-consuming. The big thing is not to overpromise and to fulfill promptly. Have your project already in the can and ready to send to the printer before you launch your campaign, and give yourself an extra three months. Also, don’t post pictures of the boxes being delivered, because then your backers will want to know why you haven’t mailed it out already, three days later. You’re not Amazon, so give yourself ample time.

Q: Your most recent successful Kickstarter was for the Megaton Man: Microbus collection, which brought together all of the weekly Megaton Man serials from 1996 to 2001, plus some other material. And before that, you funded The Lost Art of Don Simpson. What’s your next Kickstarter project, and when does it launch?

A: I’ve been working on Megaton Man: Megatropolis, my “9/11” graphic novel, for twenty-five years. I’m finishing the coloring. I’m preparing to launch very shortly, I hope. Watch the skies!

Q: And my standard final question: What is your favorite book?

A: I prefer a lot of nonfiction. I’m not a voracious reader. I think I’ve read maybe twenty Doc Savages, back when I was a teenager. I’ve read one or two since, and they are tough sledding. But I’ve read the opening chapters to Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, by Philip José Farmer, any number of times. For a while there, every spring I’d read the opening chapters, where he summarized the supersagas and talk about Henry Miller and E.E. “Doc” Eddison, and William S. Burroughs, and talk about telling a “rattling good story” and driving the literati up a wall. I found it thrilling and inspirational. More recently, I discovered the Barsoom trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I think I prefer to Tarzan. There’s just something magical about A Princess of Mars—I bought the Library of America edition at Pulpfest this past summer. It’s just uncanny. It’s just words on paper, but I feel transported. I know people who are voracious readers and more widely read than I’ll ever be, but I’d rather read a few good examples of writing more than once. I’ve read Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins twice, and it holds up. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn does not hold up, but the excerpts Farmer mentions in Apocalyptic Life are still thrilling.

A Catcher in the Rye is terribly dated now, and Wicked has to the most over-rated book in the past century.

INTERVIEW: BETH CATO

Today, I’m chatting with author Beth Cato. Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in Red Wing, Minnesota. She usually has one or two cats in close orbit. A 2015 Nebula finalist, she is the author of the cozy mystery CHEDDAR LUCK NEXT TIME as well as fantasy like A THOUSAND RECIPES FOR REVENGE. Her short stories can be found in publications ranging from Beneath Ceaseless Skies to Uncanny Magazine. In 2019 and 2022, she won the Rhysling Award for short speculative poetry. Her website BethCato.com includes not only a vast bibliography, but a treasure trove of recipes for delectable goodies. Find her on BlueSky as @BethCato and Instagram as @catocatsandcheese.

Photo Credit: Corey Ralston Photography (2013)

ANTHONY: Hi Beth! Thanks for taking some time to chat. Your latest release, which was an Amazon First Reads pick for September, is A House Between Sea and Sky. Tell us a bit about the plot.

BETH: It’s a cozy standalone set in 1926 Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. A grieving writer and a secretive silent film star are adopted by a sentient cottage with a dark past.

What inspired you to write A House Between Sea and Sky?

After I wrapped up my Chefs of the Five Gods series, I asked my then-editor what she’d like to see next. She said she wanted historical fantasy set in the real world. From there, I started mulling. I’m a native Californian, so exploring that setting feels right.

House is historical fantasy, much like your Blood of Earth trilogy. How much research did you have to do into the time period this book takes place in, and how did you go about that? (I loved all the details you incorporated about the Silent Film industry of the time, even the unsavory aspects of it.)

I spent a solid three months on research before I could even finish a synopsis, and then I kept researching through the writing and revision process. For me, worldbuilding really needs to come before fleshed-our characters or plot. Our world shapes everything. I was truly blessed to find a wealth of scanned Carmel 1920s newspapers on Archive.org, plus a tourism book that was published in 1925. There is a very special famous person cameo appearance in the book, and that person’s involvement determined the exact days of the plot. As for the silent film elements... I actually have a trunked novel I wrote a few years ago that I think is one of the best things I’ve ever written, but my agent wasn’t able to sell it. My main character in that book was a scenarist in 1923 Hollywood. I had kept the most interesting research books and had tons of information on my computer, so I was able to repurpose that material, which felt wonderful!

I would love to see that trunked novel be published some day! Without spoiling anything, I think it’s safe to say that Russian folklore plays a large role in the book. Was this folklore that you grew up with?

In my teens, I collected a number of century-old Andrew Lang Color Fairy Tale books and other mythology tomes that were discarded from my local library. (There’s a reason those Lang books get a mention in A House Between Sea and Sky!) I still have them all, too. That’s really the first place I encountered a broader variety of stories that were identified with their places of origin, and I was then able to connect creatures and elements to the AD&D books I was also reading at the time.

While I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated in the text, I got the very strong feeling that Fayette is asexual/aromantic (although those terms probably didn’t exist in the 1920s), and thus her relationship with Rex is one of mutual respect and quickly-developing friendship, but nothing more. I think we still don’t see enough of this in historical fantasy (the lack of a romance between leads). I’m not sure I have a question here, other than “is my understanding of the character correct?” But would you like to talk a bit about how you approach representation in your books (which always have diverse casts)?

You’re 100% right. I wrote Fayette to be ace. I love a good main character romance, but I don’t think that should be a requirement even if it appeals to the big trend. People CAN just be friends. I want my books to be realistic, and for me, that means diversity is natural. That includes a spectrum of queer rep as well as different skin tones and ethnic backgrounds. By the way, the racism shown in this book was directly inspired by reading Jack London’s book The Valley of the Moon, which is partly set in Carmel, and is also horrendously racist with very particular ideas on who is a “real American.” So I guess my approach to representation is sometimes inspired by active defiance against a book that is over 100 years old!

I would love to know what your writing process is like, and if it varies when you delve into different genres (you know how much I loved your foray into cozy mystery/thriller territory, Cheddar Luck Next Time) or different story lengths (novels vs. novellas vs. short stories for instance).

I’m a hardcore outliner and researcher. Even for a flash fic, which is normally about a thousand words, it’s not uncommon for me to have a few sentences of outline to guide me! Poetry is the only thing I write spontaneously. So many of my recent fantasy books have been historical, and the research has been immersive. A Feast for Starving Stone had a 25,000-word outline, but that was also long because my characters were talking a lot in my head, and that dialogue was sketched in. Cheddar Luck Next Time was nowhere near as intense, but I still had to research details on running a cheese board business. The details on the many cheeses included were largely drawn from my own personal cheese log, which is over 200,000 words and is nearing 2,000 cheeses. Bird’s taste note on cheese are pulled from my own experiences.

Speaking of Cheddar Luck Next Time (which I reviewed HERE … is there any word on whether we’ll get to see more adventures of Bird and company?

I hate to be a tease, but I hope to be able to talk more about that soon!

I’ll take whatever teases I can get! What do you have in the pipeline/coming out next?

I do have one contract signed that I can’t talk about yet, and I’m in a very early research stage for something else. I’ve been very busy recently!

And my traditional final question … what is your all-time favorite book?

There is one recent stand-out for me, and that is The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. It’s really a suspenseful love letter to the power of children’s fantasy novels and how they can save lives. I recently read it again because I proposed it to a local book club, and the other members loved it so much that they all immediately picked up her second book, The Lost Story, which is also excellent. It’s a queer take on Narnia-style portal fantasies. Really, you can’t go wrong with Meg Shaffer’s books! Her third one will be out next year, and I can’t wait.

I am adding Meg Shaffer to my To Be Read list as soon as I finish posting this interview. Thanks again Beth!

Interview: BRIAN K. MORRIS

Today, as part of on-going but soon-to-end series of interviews with various creative types attending PulpFest 2025, I chat with author Brian K. Morris.

Brian K. Morris is a freelance writer, independent publisher, occasional actor on stage and film, as well as a former mortician’s assistant. Originally from Illinois, Brian now lives in Central Indiana with his wife, no children, no pets, and too many comic books.

Adept in multiple genres of fiction and nonfiction, Brian’s work has been published by Stormgate Press, Flinch Books, Pro Se Press, BEN Books, Blue Planet Press, TwoMorrows Publishing, and Atomic Stories, among others.

Brian won the 2022 Pulp Factory Award for Best Short Story for “Snow Ambition” (BEN Books) and his novel, The Terrors, earned Jeffrey Hayes/Plasmafire Graphics the 2024 Pulp Factory Award. Brian also received a playwriting award in 1997 for not murdering his director.

You can find all things BKM at www.RisingTide.pub where you can sign up for his monthly Insider Information email and from there, join his Patreon account where you can read his twice-weekly blog, Every Blog Deserves a Name.

Hi Brian! Thanks for taking some time to chat.

Goodness! Thank YOU!

Be warned… I tend to talk at sixty miles per hour with gusts of 75. You ask me for the time, I’ll give you the history of clockmaking. Brace yourself…

Since this interview is intended for my series focusing on the creative folks attending PulpFest, let’s start there: what is your first memory of the Pulps or the characters that debuted in them?

I had no idea the pulps existed before I saw the early Doc Savage reprints in a local bookstore, which was also a tobacconist. I recall they had about four or five of them in a row on their shelves. I knew nothing about Doc and the Amazing Five, but I saw the cover of Curse of the Werewolf and I just about fell to my knees, begging my mother to let me buy it.

I started in on the book that night. The next day, I persuaded—if kicking and screaming and begging counts as persuasion—my mother to take me back to that store so I could buy all the others on the shelves.

Then I read the first volume of Jim Steranko’s History of Comics where I learned more about the pulps. Comics and pulps have become a passion that’s enriched most of my life.

And what influence did these characters/books have on you as a reader?

BKM: I loved these episodic adventures because they were like the comic books I loved, but I had to mentally supply the images. These carried me up to the early adventure series of the Seventies and Eighties: Mack Bolan, Remo Williams, The Penetrator, The Chameleon, The Death Merchant, Edge, etc. In a way, I saw these new series as successors to the old pulps. And I still love those books to this day, just as I do the pulps.

I have a reasonable background in reading many pieces of classic literature, mostly because my parents made that a condition to continue reading the material I genuinely loved.

I’m always interested in hearing about people’s creative process. What is yours like? And does it differ between short stories and novels, or when you’re working on your own characters versus somebody else’s?

My process is ever-evolving. Mine begins with the germ of an idea which becomes an “elevator pitch” of two sentences, along with a sentence of a potential plot. If I can boil a story down to that, I’m halfway home with coming up with a decent story.

Then I apply the Lester Dent Master Plot to the process to flesh out an outline. After that, I dive into researching what I need for the story, or I just make it all up out of my head and hope I don’t need to use any real history or science.

Then I take my outline, look at it before I start writing, and then ignore it as I type to allow sudden inspiration to take hold. Every now and then, If I get bored with my outline, I’ll toss a spanner into the works to make the protagonist’s life more hellish. It keeps things fresh for the reader, I hope, and definitely for me.

My process is pretty consistent across multiple word limits except I might add steps to my outline for a large novel or delete an incident or two for a shorter story, depending on the word count I’m allowed. And make no mistake, you give me a word count, I will push it until it whimpers.

As for working on characters for other publishers, I love when I’m asked. I love being told that my work sounds like the creator’s voice. I’ve had a great deal of fun doing the CNI: Classified stories for Robert J. Mendenhall. For those stories, I purposely selected the so-called “minor” characters because I didn’t have to worry about other writers’ ideas conflicting with my own. Plus, don’t those characters deserve some time in the spotlight?

I’m keenly aware that I have to use what Stan Lee called “the illusion of change.” I must leave the characters I’ve been given, pretty much in the shape they were given to me by the end of my story, no better nor no worse. I can’t make Captain Hawklin a cyborg, or force Conrad von Honig to undergo an amputation, or allow Abraham Snow to become the King of the Venusians. In fact, I tend to add secondary characters to whoever loans me their brainchildren, so my benefactors can have new toys to play with. Then they can abuse my brainchildren to their hearts’ content.

Last year at PulpFest, you debuted Quest for the Delphi Oculus: The Chronicles of Conrad von Honig, published by Flinch! Books and featuring a character created by Flinch publishers Jim Beard and John C. Breuning who had previously appeared in a short story anthology (Quest for the Space Gods: The Chronicles of Conrad von Honig). What was that process like in particular? And will you be penning more of Conrad’s adventures?

I want to go on record that this book was quite an adventure for Jim, John, and myself. They’d never worked on a full-length novel with a writer that wasn’t either of them. I couldn’t have asked for two more helpful, encouraging, and challenging editors than those two. I’m so very proud of the book and would love to see some comments on Amazon for it.

I want to say it took about three years to get that book into print because we were all kinda feeling our way in the dark thought the process. They’d never handled a full-length novel from an outside writer—i.e., not Jim or John. Also, I’ll take responsibility for any delays because at the time, I’d overcommitted myself to other publishers at several points in our timeline. But thanks to their patience and skill, the book was written and I’m very proud of what the three of us put together. And what about that Mark Maddox cover, huh?

But I loved, and still love, Conrad von Honig. Jim ‘n’ John were fantastic to work with and yeah, I might have another CvH book in me. So if you want to see it, call Jim and John at… let me get their home phone numbers for you, okay?

I might already have them. (Kidding, John and Jim! Kidding!)

You also last year released The Terrors, an update of a classic Golden Age comics character (The Black Terror). What inspired you to write the book and what changes did you make to the character (who is in the public domain)?

I am so proud of The Terrors. It started by letting my mind roam, which can prove hazardous to those around me. I’d just finished a book that mentioned the U.S. Government approached the various comic publishers to portray members of the Axis powers as less human, even sub-human, in order to destroy any empathy a comic reader might have for them. And given that a LOT of comics were sold in P.X.s at the time, this dehumanized our foes and made them easier for the soldiers to kill.

Not long after that, I sought an idea to write about for what proved to be my first novel for my Rising Tide Publications imprint in too many years. For whatever reason, I asked myself what if the heroes with the word “Black” as part of their name—Black Hood, Black Bat, Black Condor, etc.—were actually African American? How would that have influenced their acceptance by the public they first appeared in? How would that affect their relationship with the authorities? I started taking notes.

I loved the original Black Terror and thought he’d make a good subject for a novel. Then the idea of a clandestine government organization, based on my earlier reading, popped into my head. I applied the idea of a World War 2-based minority hero in my fictional Raceway City, and the rest just fell into place. The book practically wrote itself, and I’ve gotten some great reviews as a result.

And this hero’s “The Terror” because referring to his “blackness” would be as redundant as calling another hero “The White Green Lantern” or “The Orange Thing.”

Bob Benton and Tim Rowland—previously “Roland” in the original comics—were unaltered in personality, but I gave each of them a backstory and Tim got a mom. Jean Starr’s paramour was killed in his second appearance in the comics, but he was too good a villain to not use in these stories.

I also used a version of the Fox Comics public domain version of the Blue Beetle that I renamed The Cobalt Scarab. I also snuck in an appearance from the pulps’ Black Bat. All of this is wrapped up in the notion that the comic adventures DID happen, just not as they were portrayed in government-encouraged propaganda, namely the comic books that you and I know.

I kinda upped the Terror Twins’ power levels and gave the Scarab a means of flight that amused me, based on the old E.B. Stoner illustrations. Then everything fell together, I’m happy to say.

I believe you’ve been working on the sequel. What can you tell us about that?

OOOH! I’m quite excited about the sequel, tentatively titled From Dust ‘Til Dawn. I up the threat level and pretty much destroy any limits this series might have.

In a nutshell, an ancient sarcophagus holds wrappings that will soon prove to be a deadly threat not only to the Terror Twins, but to the world. Let’s just say today, Raceway City… tomorrow, everywhere.

And there will also be two spin-offs from this book that I’m having fun writing. All of them will have GORGEOUS covers by Jeffrey Hayes of Plasmafire Graphics. Jeffrey’s become one of my most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the series, I’m tickled to report.

I am a fan of fiction related to Christmas, especially genre stories connected to the holiday. Tell us about your short novel Santastein: Or, the Post-Holiday Prometheus.

BKM: Santastein, The Post-Holiday Prometheus, is my biggest selling book and probably was the most fun to write. My wife just shakes her head at what I think is amusing, but it’s sold on eight continents, and file-shared out of Russia and China. It does my ego good to know I’m worth stealing from.

Santastein was originally a ten-minute holiday play that I couldn’t convince any of my theatre peeps to produce. They loved it but found it a bit irreverent for the holiday. Can you imagine that? Irreverent? From ME???

This book came early in my full-time writing career. I wanted to put out something fairly quickly after a serious downturn in my daily employment, so I expanded on the script from the original play and it’s become my all-time best seller. This means a lot to me because Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the first “grown-up” book I ever read and it might just be my favorite of all time.

And yes, I have plots for two more sequels.

You’ve also written a lot of essays for books and magazines about pop culture history, especially comic books. In fact, we just shared a table of contents, in Jack of All Comics! A Fan Conversation about the King of Comics. What is your process like for researching and writing these non-fiction pieces in general, and the piece on Jack Kirby’s run on DC’s Our Fighting Forces in the 1970s in particular?

BKM: I have so much fun working on this kind of book. It gives me legitimacy, at least in my own mind, when I tell my wife my “work” will involve reading my favorite comic books and watching classic television shows. It’s tough work, but someone’s gotta do it.

First of all, I keep my ears open for anthologies that explore subjects I’m reasonably familiar with, and passionate about. After I make my pitch for an article, and it’s accepted, I dive into the subject, whether it’s Batman ’66 or a specific run of a comic book. While doing the research, I find the “hook” that will make the article interesting to me, at least. It might be a creator’s approach to the material, or it might be a breakdown of what made me interested in the work initially, and to share WHY all this made me happy and why it was important to the medium in which it was presented.

The REAL reason why I enjoy doing articles on old TV shows, comic books, and other media of my misspent youth: I get to watch/listen/read material that makes me happy, then share that joy with the editor of the book.

And before you ask, YES, I do write with the reader in mind. But first and foremost, I write for the EDITOR. I figure it’s his/her job to know what their readers want, so I need the editor’s guidance to please their “customers.” I make the editor happy, the editor pleases the readers. It’s a kind of literary “trickle-down” theory.

What do you have coming up that readers should keep an eye out for?

Well, I’ve finally got a plot for the sequel to Vulcana: Rebirth of the Champion, so that’s in the queue. The following year, I hope to get the final Vulcana novel out, but you have to ask me about the title in person. It’s a bit irreverent…

I’m also working on the aforementioned The Terrors 2: From Dust ‘Til Dawn, as well as the REAL stories behind the Twin Terrors’ and Cobalt Scarab’s original four-color adventures.

I’ve been sitting on an anthology featuring my character Doc Saga, who appeared in Pulp Reality #2 from Stormgate Press. My anthology contributors have exercised superhuman patience with me, so I plan to get that out soon.

I’m also planning out a new version of an anthology that I recently got the rights to, but that’ll have to stay under my fez for now.

Thanks again, Brian! By the time this posts on my website, we’ll both be knee-deep in all things PulpFest!

Aw, thank YOU for letting me overshare my love of all things New Pulp.

Readers, as you read this, it is probably Day Two of PulpFest 2025. It’s still not too late to register for and attend the remaining two days of THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the PulpFest website for registration and hotel information!

Interview: Mike Chomko of PULPFEST

Today, I chat with Mike Chomko, one of the founders and organizers of Pulpfest. Mike Chomko, the winner of the 2010 Munsey Award,  has been a regular at pulp cons since the early nineties. In September of 2008, he joined Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, and Ed Hulse to launch PulpFest. Mike serves as the marketing and programming director of the convention and is also the publisher of The Pulpster. A former member of the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society, Mike was the publisher of Purple Prose, a highly respected pulp fanzine that ran for seventeen issues in the late 1990s and early 21st century. Around the same time, he founded Mike Chomko Books, an independent purveyor of genre fiction and related materials. His specialty is pulp-related material. In “real life,” Mike is a retired registered nurse who worked in the operating room for nearly 20 years. Married for over forty years, he is the father of two adult children and a grandfather. To reach Mike by email, write to mike@pulpfest.com.

Mike Chomko (right) with authors Bob Deis and Wyatt Doyle

Hi Mike! Thanks for taking some time out of what I’m sure is a busy schedule prepping for PulpFest 2025 to chat.

Of course, Anthony/Antny/Anton/Ant/Dinty/Thanny/T/Sandy/Andrew/The Other Guy /Stormy/;  . . . I’m not exactly sure what to call you. Perhaps I’ll just call you, Lamont.

I mean, I don’t mind being mistaken for one of The Shadow’s many identities … (For those who don’t know, my email signature is a list of every nickname I’ve ever had. I guess I need to add Lamont now!)

For readers who may be unfamiliar with PulpFest, can you tell me a little about the convention’s focus and history?

The focus of PulpFest is pulp magazines — fiction periodicals named after the cheap pulp paper on which they were printed. The first pulp was published in 1896 by Frank A. Munsey. It was called The Argosy.

The first PulpFest took place in 2009 in Columbus, Ohio. The convention was founded by Jack Cullers, Barry Traylor, Ed Hulse, and me. Chris Kalb, a very talented artist and illustrator, helped us by setting up our website. He also put together several flyers and ads for the convention. So Chris was a big help getting PulpFest off the ground, but he didn’t want to be one of the so-called organizers or founders. But he helped big-time.

Before the first PulpFest, there was a long-running pulp convention known as Pulpcon. The first of these took place in 1972, and the convention pretty much continued on a nearly annual basis through 2008. Jack, Barry, and I were all members of the “crew” that organized Pulpcon during its final years. But many people felt that major changes were required for the convention to survive, and PulpFest was the result.

So between PulpFest and Pulpcon, we’ve been around for more than fifty years, celebrating “mystery, adventure, science fiction, and more” pretty much each and every summer.

Every year, PulpFest has a theme. What is the theme for PulpFest 2025, and what programming can attendees expect to enjoy related to that theme?

My wife likes to kid me about the anniversaries we celebrate at each and every PulpFest. Of course, if I forgot about our wedding anniversary, she’d be ticked off at me.

Regardless, we have this spreadsheet listing the start of important magazines such as Black Mask, Doc Savage, Weird Tales, or what have you. And then there’s another that lists the birthdays of major writers, artists, editors, publishers, and so on.

Well, I already knew that 2025 was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Rice Burroughs. But when I was looking at our spreadsheets last summer, I also noticed that Edgar Wallace, who was called “The King of the Thrillers” in Great Britain, and Rafael Sabatini, the celebrated author of historical fiction, were also born in the same year.

I pointed this out to Bill Lampkin, the convention’s advertising director, and we came up with the line, “Celebrating the Masters of Blood and Thunder.” We thought the phrase pretty much summed up the writing of all three writers.

So this year’s programming will have presentations on Wallace, Sabatini, and Burroughs, along with films related to at least two of the authors: King Kong and The Sea Hawk.

Although both Wallace and Sabatini had a good deal of fiction in America’s pulps, ERB was one of the “big guns” of the industry, creating Tarzan of the Apes, John Carter of Mars, and other series for the rough-paper magazines. So we’ll have presentations on Tarzan illustrators, Tarzan merchandising, and ERB’s “disciple,” Ray Bradbury. All of these will be part of our mini-convention, ERBFest 2025. Your membership in PulpFest also makes you a member of ERBFest.

2026 is also the anniversary of the “villain pulps.” These were character pulps that had bad guys as their so-called “star.” There was Doctor Death, The Mysterious Wu Fang, and in Weird Tales, a series of Doctor Satan adventures. These all began in 1935. Doctor Yen Sin, The Octopus, and The Scorpion came later.

In addition to ERBFest, we’ll also be hosting Farmercon XX, a convention that we’ve been hosting almost every year since 2011. And then there’s Doc Con 2026, a convention that we’re reviving thanks to a group of Doc Savage fans who have been attending PulpFest for a number of years. This year, PulpFest and Doc Con will be celebrating the Golden Anniversary of the George Pal film, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. It came out fifty years ago, back in 1975.

I would love to hear about your own personal connection to the pulps: your first encounter with them, favorite titles or characters, etc.

Well, my birthday is around the middle of August. So every year, I’d get presents from our relatives right before the start of school. And not having a whole lot of money, my parents naturally used the bulk of my birthday money for school clothes.

Back in the mid-sixties, there used to be a big department store in Allentown, PA (where I now live) where we’d go for school clothes and other necessities. This store had a book department, and I liked to read. So my parents let me have five bucks of my birthday money and let me wander off to the book department. And that’s where I found my first three Doc Savage paperbacks — The Land of Terror (because I loved dinosaurs), The Quest of Qui (because I thought Vikings were great), and The Brand of the Werewolf (because I liked to watch monster movies, despite the nightmares they caused).

That’s how I found out about the pulps. My first pulp was a Shadow magazine with no back cover, the one featuring the story “Chicago Crime.”

Somewhere along the line, I heard about Tom and Ginger Johnson’s Echoes, John Gunnison’s The Pulp Collector, Doug Ellis’s PulpVault, and the late Howard Hopkins’ Golden Perils. I probably started getting them from Bob Weinberg and later subscribed.

I used to write letters of comment to most of these fanzines. Then some short book reviews. I began to index them. I probably learned about Pulpcon by reading someone’s report in one of the fanzines I read religiously.

My first Pulpcon was the one in Wayne, New Jersey . . . the so-called “Pulpcon from Hell.” As Wayne was about 90 minutes from where I lived, I could commute nightly to it. Of course, I pretty much only spent my time in the dealers’ room (so I missed out on the programming). But I was hooked.

I began writing my own Pulpcon reports. I volunteered to help Jack and Barry with the Pulpcon auctions. The three of us became fast friends. It was John DeWalt — one of this year’s nominees for our Munsey Award — who nudged me to join the Pulp Era Amateur Press Society, AKA PEAPS. There, I started Purple Prose, my own fanzine, modeled after the things I admired in Echoes and the rest. Eventually, I expanded Purple Prose and made it available by subscription.

Although I had to give up publishing my own fanzine when I returned to college to become a registered nurse (I’m a retired operating room nurse), I recently rejoined PEAPS when they asked me to contribute to their 150th issue. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.

I’m pretty much a generalist when it comes to the pulps. I’ve enjoyed the character pulps, science fiction, adventure, detective pulps, and so on and so on. Although both of my kids (both now in their late 30s) are readers, neither wanted my pulps. So I’ve sold off most of what I ever owned. About all I have left are a few readers copies and a bunch of aviation and detective pulps because I happen to really like the writer, Franklin H. Martin.

What do you think we can or should do to maintain interest in (or foster interest and awareness of) this pretty quintessentially American publishing format, and the great characters and concepts that originated in it?

Well, I honestly think that PulpFest does an awful lot to foster interest and awareness of pulps. When we moved to Mars, PA in 2017, our first guest was the artist Gloria Stoll-Karn. She had previously been a guest at Pulpcon, but we had her back because she lived right in Pittsburgh, just south of the convention.

A few years after that, the Pittsburgh public television station contacted me about a documentary on local women artists. One of them was Gloria. They wanted me to appear in the film, but I guess because of budget limitations, they didn’t have me come out to Pittsburgh . . . although Allentown is in the same state, the two cities are nearly 300 miles apart). So I recommended a local professor to them, and she was interviewed about Gloria. I think not long thereafter, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts put on an exhibit of Gloria’s work, including some of her pulp covers.

I honestly believe that PulpFest having Gloria as its guest made people aware of her, and hence the interest. After all, we do have a pretty darn active website.

What can the average pulp fan do to keep the pulps alive?

Attend at least one pulp convention a year, be it Windy City, Pulp Adventurecon, PulpFest, ECOF, or what have you. I know it's hard to travel, and it's certainly not cheap. But the pulp cons have done a lot to promote interest in pulps and pulp collecting. The only way we can keep doing this is to have people attend. Yes, it's easy to buy pulps online by bidding in an Adventure House or Heritage Auction, but pulp cons have been plugging away for decades, trying to keep the interest there and to grow it as much as possible. And we can only keep doing it with your help.

This year’s PulpFest is also host to three other conventions: FarmerCon (dedicated to the work of Science Fiction Grandmaster Philip Jose Farmer), DocCon (focused on classic Pulp character Doc Savage) and ERBFest (devoted to the “Master of Adventure,” Edgar Rice Burroughs). How did PulpFest come to play host to these other conventions?

Back when I was publishing Purple Prose, I started selling books part-time to help pay for my printing bills. Fanzine publishing is a money loser, a time-honored tradition. Anyway, people would ask me if I could get this book or that.

I can’t recall who it was, but someone inquired about a fanzine called Farmerphile. I wrote to its publisher, Mike Croteau, and worked out a deal to sell his periodical. I think I made a buck a copy.

Anyway, Mike was involved with Farmercon. After Phil Farmer and his wife, Bette, passed away, there didn’t seem much impetus to continue the pilgrimage to Peoria, Illinois where the early Farmercons were held (often in the Farmer’s backyard). Mike asked me if they could have the 2011 Farmercon at that year’s PulpFest. After clearing the idea with my partners, the first combined PulpFest and Farmercon took place.

Phil’s fans had such a blast, they asked if they could return. After all, where else could they find a room full of pulp and book dealers to enjoy? Plus all of the programming (including their own) and socializing. And PulpFest gets to do a lot of the heavy lifting like working with the hotel, maintaining an active website, and so on.

Some years later, the country was hit with COVID. That was the year we had to cancel PulpFest. Come 2021, things continued to be a little dicey, and some conventions continued to be shut down. Things didn’t look good for the return of a Burroughs’ convention.

I emailed Henry G Franke III of The Burroughs Bibliophiles and proposed ERBFest to him. He cleared it with his board and our Burroughs mini-con was born.

Doc Con came about when Jen DiGiacomo and Bill Lampkin approached me in 2024 and proposed reviving the convention devoted to The Man of Bronze at this year’s PulpFest.

Started in 1998, Doc Con ran for about 20 years, with its last one — until now — taking place in 2017. Now thanks to the efforts of Jen, Bill, Ron Hill, Scott Cranford, and several more fans, we’ll have the 21st Doc Con as part of this year’s PulpFest.

And word has it that another group wants to talk to me about adding a fourth “mini-con” to the mix. Thank goodness I can use my fingers to count or I’d lose track of all of our associates.

Regardless of what happens, it’s great to have Doc Con, ERBFest, and Farmercon be part of PulpFest. It’s nice to have so many fans with different interests under the pulp con tent.

What are the odds that in the next year or two, we’ll see PulpFest grow to include, say, ShadowFest or AvengerCon?

Well, I think I kind of answered that in the last question. Let’s see what I learn at this year’s convention.

Finally, is it too early to share the dates, location, and/or theme for PulpFest 2026?

I can’t remember when we started, but Bill Lampkin and I have been running an ad in recent issues of The Pulpster — our conventions’ main program book — advertising the dates, location, and theme of the next year’s PulpFest and its associated conventions.

So we started looking at our spreadsheets about two months ago and 2026 happens to be the centennial of the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. So that will be the main theme for 2026: “An Amazing Century!”

But it’s also the centennial of Bernarr Macfadden’s Ghost Stories. Unfortunately, one of the leading experts on the magazine lives in England, while the other lives in California. So we’re looking for someone to speak about the magazine/pulp of “true” ghost stories.

There are other anniversaries, including important birthdays for Rogers Terrill, Earle K. Bergey, Ryerson Johnson, Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, and others. And for magazines like Ka-Zar, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Sheena, and The Witch’s Tales. And let’s not forget about The Skipper and The Whisperer.

And 2026 also marks the 80th anniversary of “O’Brien and Obrenov,” Philip José Farmer’s first professional sale. And the centennial of Burroughs artist Bob Abbett. And who knows what ideas Doc Con will have for me.

Next year’s convention will be July 30 - August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pittsburgh - Cranberry in Mars, PA. It’s a good location for us (as long as our experiment this year, using the foyer outside our dealers’ room for more dealers’ tables works out for us) and our attendees really like it here.

I for one really like the location. It’s only a 6-hour drive for me from northwest NJ, and I travel enough by plane for work that being able to drive to/from Pulpfest makes it easier to attend. One last question: what can you tell me about this year’s Auction at Pulpfest?

In addition to our great programming, all put together by volunteers, we have a very nice auction this year. Currently, we have more than 200 lots, mostly consigned by PulpFest 2025 members. We also have a few small estates that also placed items with us for the auction.

We have a nice run of the large-sized Argosy from 1941 – 42; over 50 issues of New Worlds Science Fiction, long the leading British science fiction magazine; the first two issues of The Pulpster from its years as the Pulpcon program book; a complete set of Bantam’s Doc Savage paperbacks; several Arkham House first editions; a nice selection of Shadow pulps; the first appearance of Peter Pan; the ultra-rare LA Bantam Book #13, Children’s Favorite Stories; a run of Who’s Who in Baseball from the 1930s; artwork by Michael Wm. Kaluta; and much more. Also consigned are nearly 30 issues of Weird Tales from the 1920s and some pretty science fiction digests from the 1950s.

If you can't make it to PulpFest 2025, we do accept online bids. Visit our website and click the auction button to learn how to participate. Online bidding has been extended through Tuesday, August 5th, 2025.

Because off how close this post is going live to the start date of Pulpfest, parties interested in bidding remotely by phone can also email Mike (at mike@pulpfest.com) for contact information.

That’s a lot to bid for! I can’t wait to check it all out. Thanks again, Mike!

You’re very welcome, Lamont. Thanks very much for having me.

Readers, it is not too late to register for and attend Pulpfest 2025 (THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast) and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the Pulpfest website for registration and hotel information!

Interview: Glen Held

Today I chat with author Glen Held. Born on a Monday, Glen Held grew up in Brooklyn, then was unceremoniously whisked off to Long Island where he still resides with his wife Kathy and the fabulous Eddie the dog! His writing credits include the just published 1930's adventure Legends in the Earth, the pulp team-up novel, The Devil You Know, the young adult sci-fi tale Way Out World (all three available on Amazon), The Killer -  a short story anthology (available from Gromagon Press) and the mystery/romance novel Burning Secrets (available nowhere.) In addition, he has a number of science fiction and fantasy short stories published in various magazines/anthologies. Glen is retired from a thirty year plus Civil Service career and enjoys travelling as well as watching the Mets - having converted his adult children into fans, thus teaching them the agonies of NY National League baseball.

Hi Glen. Thanks for taking some time to chat with me.

A pleasure!

Indeed — always a pleasure talking to a fellow long-suffering Mets fan!

I’m running this series of interviews as a lead-up to PulpFest, so my first question is: what draws you to the pulp genre?

What drew me to the pulps, what I guess drew most of us, was Doc Savage. It really was a strange circumstance that introduced me to The Man of Bronze. I was in fifth grade and this one kid, who was a bit nutso, raced over to me at lunch, stopping inches from my face. He said he had this book I must read (I learned afterwards, his parents forced him to read a book as punishment for something he did, and he wanted me to give him a summary of it.) It was The Devil’s Playground, one of the Bantam Doc reprints. The cover interested me in it immediately…as did the fact I didn’t want to have to fight him.  So I put aside the Foundation novel I was reading, and started the Doc. Even though it’s not a Dent, I was drawn in immediately. From then on, I devoured every Doc I could find. As my neighborhood had a number of antique stores, I went to them hoping to find original Doc pulps. The few I found were way expensive, however I did find other pulps that I could afford and that lead me to other reprints and heroes and…here we are!

Your latest release is Flights of the Peregrine Book One: Legends of the Earth. Tell us a little about the book and how you came to re-launch the character.

This book had a strange journey from the start. A few years back, I saw an ad on the old Pro Se site saying they were looking for authors to write a novel based on Barry Reese’s character The Peregrine. At that time, I had one book published, a romance/mystery printed in 1991, and a few short stories. Fascinated by the art for the character, I came up with a proposal and was thrilled when I was given the okay to write the book! Four months later it was done, and I submitted the finished manuscript. I heard nothing for over a year. I kept contacting the company and was told various things. I had just about given up, when I was contacted by Dale Russell who would be the book’s editor. Together we polished up the story and got it ready for publication. More months passed and I saw various things on the internet which led me to believe Pro Se was in trouble. Eventually I was contacted by them and told, yes, they were going out of business and releasing stories back to their respective authors. However, as The Peregrine belonged to its creator Barry Reese, I would have to work something out with him to use it or change all the names and descriptions. Luckily, Barry was thinking about starting his own publishing company and we worked out a deal bringing Legends out as the first of his Flights of The Peregrine series.

The book itself is a two-part story. The first section deals with establishing the characters and has our good guys fight a truly evil menace that they had inadvertently released. But when the bad guys are defeated, it turns out  there’s a bigger bad behind them. Part two deals with The Peregrine, his fiancé, and a surprise from part one, venturing into the hollow Earth with the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. I tried to give the story as many twists and turns as I could, throwing in some easter eggs and cameos, and gave an ending which, I hope, was thought provoking. Once I get some reviews, I’ll know for sure.

 Will you be writing further installments? Or is this a multi-author franchise?

There will be at least two more novels in the series, but I won’t be writing them. One of the stories will be written by my friend, J.P. Linde, author of Fool’s Gold. I can’t wait to read his take on the characters Barry allowed me to play with. I suppose one should never say never though as The Peregrine is a great character and I’d be happy to return to chronicle more of his adventures.

Tell us a bit about your other recent novel, The Devil You Know, which came out in 2024. This also has some strong connections to both classic pulps and the “New Pulp” movement, right?

Boy that one was a doozy to write! At the time I started thinking about concocting a story for Airship 27, I figured I’d have a better chance of getting published if the tale had as many public domain characters as possible. Doing my research, I came upon an image that blew me away. It was the cover of the August 1935 Weird Tales with a picture of a red clad, horn masked man with the words “Meet the Sinister and Mysterious DOCTOR SATAN, the World’s Weirdest Criminal” I mean, come on! What could better than to have a character like that as my antagonist?

I immersed myself in all eight Satan stories, feeling a fondness for not only him, but his enemy, Ascott Keane. Although Keane, a minor practitioner of the mystic arts, would be my main hero, he would need help going up not only against Satan, but another villain of my imagination who would be working for the nazis.

Since there would be a decent amount of magic in the tale, I figured Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery, would be likely to give a hand. So, I read a bunch of his stories. Considering the worldwide scope I had planned, there would have to be a governmental liaison to eventually coordinate the efforts. More research brought Major Steele, a minor pulp character, as that liaison. And, what the hell, why not add a bigger hero into the fray? I looked for someone who wouldn’t overshadow Ascott. When I discovered that the girlfriend of Secret Agent X, the man of a thousand faces, shared the same last name of Keane’s girlfriend, I knew it was fate. (And I also had an easy way of bringing X into the picture when the cousin’s got together.)

After that, I sprinkled in some real-life characters of the time (such as Amelia Earnhardt’s navigator Fred Noonan and the criminal Meyer Lansky) as well as historical places such as the German bund camp in Yaphank on Long Island and, eventually, I had a story. It’s gotten some good reviews (always room for more!) so I think I may have done a good job.

I’d be interested to hear a bit about your writing process. Are you a plotter, a “pantser,” somewhere in-between? Do you have a set writing schedule?

Definitely not a plotter; not even close. Nope. No, sir! I have a vague idea of the story’s beginning and nothing more than that. My chapters are usually a few pages long and end on cliffhangers to get me (and hopefully the reader) excited about what’s to come. After chapter one, I have to spend some time thinking about where to go from there. Usually a new chapter idea comes to me overnight or on a walk with Eddie the dog. It’s really a terribly time-consuming way to write since I have to go back and change the previous parts to agree with any new plot twist. However, writing this way keeps me engaged with the story and I don’t get bored. Frustrated? Yes. Bored? No.

I know you’ve published short stories in anthologies like Atomic Stories, Dead Science, and Spectacular! Spectacular! Does your process for writing short stories differ at all from writing novels?

That depends on what sort of short I’m writing. If it’s someone else’s character – like the ones I’ve written for Code Name Intrepid, the Reese Unlimited Universe, Atomic Stories and the Radio Rita anthology – I have to immerse myself in the character’s established histories. I don’t want to go against anything that’s already established or have the characters behave differently than readers of the series are used to. Completely new stories require a different kind of research as I try to make my stories believable in their unbelievability. Like for my story ‘At His Hands’, which featured John Wilkes Booth and Dr. Samuel Mudd (‘Hands’ appeared in Freedom Fiction Journal) I read everything I could about the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination and visited both Mudd’s house in Maryland and Ford’s Theater. (Actually, I would have gone to those places anyway as history fascinates me.)

Finally, do you have anything in the works that readers should keep an eye out for?

Thankfully, I do! Currently, I’m writing a Lazarus Gray story for a Barry Reese anthology as well as a tale bringing a version of The Shadow into the Doc Talos universe. I’m just starting to write a sequel to my book The Devil You Know, available on Amazon (plug, plug)  with what I hope is a really cool idea that I just got on a walk with Eddie. In it, Doctor Satan…well, that would be telling.

At the moment, I have a young adult book making the rounds at a number of agents and another I’ve written about 10,000 words of that I’d like to finish. I also have a story in Robert J. Mendenhall’s Code Name Intrepid anthology coming out mid-August as well as a Radio Rita short to be published later this year by Airship 27.

I’d like to write a mainstream novel, but I’m still hunting for that one great idea. I think Eddie and I are going to have to start taking much longer walks!

Thanks again Glen! See you at Pulpfest!

Readers, it is not too late to register for and attend Pulpfest 2025 (THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast) and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the Pulpfest website for registration and hotel information!

Interview: Douglas Klauba

Today I chat with artist Douglas Klauba. An award-winning illustrator, Douglas Klauba was born and raised in Chicago, and is a graduate of the American Academy of Art. His paintings have been included in the art annuals of Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, the Society of Illustrators, and Imagine FX magazine. His artwork has graced the covers and interiors of books from Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. (Tarzan Trilogy, Untamed Pellucidar, Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, The Girl from Hollywood Centennial Edition, and Tarzan and the Forest of Stone), Flinch! Books (the Midnight Guardian series), and Craig McDonald’s Zana O’Savin Doc Savage pastiches.

Hi Doug! Thanks for taking some time to chat.

Thanks for thinking of me, Anthony!

First, I’d like to ask about your early influences. What are your earliest memories of really connecting with a piece of art?

Looking over my earliest childhood drawings that my family saved, you would see drawings of Batman and Robin, Superman, The Beatles, and lots of monsters. One of my earliest recollections of the visual world around me was movies and the magazine and comic racks at the corner grocery store. There I saw Famous Monsters of Filmland for the first time and my obsession with monsters began. Soon after, a newsstand/cards and gift shop opened next to the grocery store and that became my place to explore paperbacks, monster magazines, and comic books. I began collecting the Warren magazines, because the artwork looked the best to this 8-year-old developing artist. With the Frazetta and Sanjulian covers, and inside I found the Reed Crandall, Pepe Gonzales, and Richard Corben stories. And soon I would become obsessed with an artist named Wrightson. The artists that have influenced me the most is a long list. Some of them are: Frazetta, Basil Gogos, Steranko, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Franklin Booth, Joseph Clement Coll, Dean Cornwell, N. C. Wyeth, Roy Krenkel, J. Allen St. John, Hubert Rogers, Reynold Brown, Drew Struzan, Thomas Blackshear, and Alphonse Mucha.

What were your earliest creative outlets?

I was fortunate to be raised in a creative household. My father was a painter in the trades who grew up on EC and Classics Illustrated comics. His original career choice was to follow his older brother and become a Chicago illustrator. Instead, my father decided on marriage and starting a family. So he went into the trades. Our home was still decorated by oil paintings that my father painted. My uncle George was an illustrator at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, and I would see his artwork every week in the newspaper. We would visit my aunt and uncle often and I got to hang out in his home studio. We would visit his gallery openings, and I always thought it was pretty cool that my siblings and I were the youngest in attendance. I would soak up each experience. George Klauba is an internationally recognized painter and is best known for his Moby Dick series. There was always some form of inspiration throughout my early years - and beyond. Drawing was pretty contagious, and I did it daily, for hours. I didn’t lack imagination and when I didn’t have anything to draw, I would copy the Famous Monsters covers by Basil Gogos. My mother would often ask me to stop drawing and go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. But, throwing rocks at passing trains, or getting into fist fights grew old fast. One memorable Halloween, I entered a contest to paint a Halloween scene on a store front window. I painted Lon Chaney’s vampire from London After Midnight. I didn’t win the contest, but all of a sudden, I had made myself known as the neighborhood artist - and more importantly I met this kid, John, who lived two blocks away on another street. Like me, John had the Aurora monster models, collected the Warren monster magazines, he was into old monster movies and John had a Super 8 movie camera and his own projector! It was pretty fortunate to meet someone else that shared my interest in movies, comics, and monsters. Over the years we made our amateur movies, we tried our hand at stop motion animation, I worked with make-up to transform ourselves into monsters. We soon found other like-minded creative kids and spent hours creating fanzines, reading monster magazines, comics and going to the movies.

I’m always interested in hearing about the creative process. What medium and materials do you work with most frequently (your “favorites,” I guess)?

I love to draw in pencil. I am happiest when I am sitting at my drawing table and working on drawings. The last few years, I have been drawing with black acrylic paint. It was a natural transformation of working on a pencil drawing or using a black color pencil and I have continued to explore and enjoy working this way. It’s similar to any illustrator or comic book artist working with brush and ink - only I am using acrylic paint. I have been using acrylic paints for my color work since my advertising years of working in a Chicago illustration studio. Originally, I was hired because I was able to work in a variety of mediums from pen and ink, markers, watercolor paint, etc. But eventually the air brush was forced upon me at the studio, and I soon acclimated myself to this new tool and form of applying paint. I began exploring all that I could do with it and developed a working technique that has evolved into how I work today with acrylic paint. My process when working on a color piece has its measured steps. I start with putting gesso on a Crescent illustration board, followed by transferring my drawing onto the gessoed surface. I sometimes tighten up the drawing with color pencils before painting with the brush. At some point, I soon break out the air brush and apply color. I then finish up with my lighter values, using opaque acrylic paint. That’s basically the painting process from start to finish. The only thing not mentioned is finding good music to accompany the session (or listening to an old time radio drama) to help capture the mood of the narrative, the back and forth wrestling the artist will go through with the painting, maybe some frustrations, but eventually emerging through the challenges.

Has this changed over the arc of your career?

When I entered the art program at The American Academy of Art in Chicago, I was mainly a pen and ink artist that emulated Bernie Wrightson’s style. I had some experience with watercolors, but I didn’t have any confidence with working in color. I was intent on developing my craftsmanship with black and white ink and becoming a comic book artist. However, the few years at the Academy was more than I could have asked for. The academia of figure drawing, oil painting, watercolor instruction, and commercial illustration classes formed me into a much more rounded artist. My pen and ink illustrations became more developed, but I soon realized my passion for painting. In particular, I was drawn more towards pursuing a commercial art path, than a comic book career. Those were exciting times, as a developing art student. I worked at a few Chicago illustration studios that serviced advertising agencies for the next few years. I worked in every medium: pencils, pen and ink, marker renderings, watercolor / gouache paints, pastels, oil paints, air brush, and acrylics. It soon lost its lustre and the many hours of work, switching mediums, being told which technique to do a project - soon burned me out. I fell into an awful depression because I had lost my path. I no longer knew what kind of artist I was or wanted to be. I thought that if this was what the rest of my life was going to look like, I didn’t want it. But, instead of quitting, I left my studio position. And, within days (literally) I packed up my things and moved to California. I enrolled at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco for a semester, and studied with my favorite illustrators: Thomas Blackshear, Kazuhiko Sano, and Drew Struzan. The program, the fellow students, and the art community opened my eyes to becoming a better artist. The work that I developed, the friendships I made, put me back on a better footing of the artist I wanted to be and goals to pursue. I eventually ran out of money and returned back to my hometown of Chicago and intended to save up funds to permanently move back to San Francisco. But I became a busy illustrator, and life took its course. I eventually returned to working in pen and ink and developed a painting style of working in acrylics. The technique has changed a little over the years, but the process is more focused.

Does your process change at all depending on the type of project you’re working on?

Deadlines can dictate a path for a project. Under tight deadlines, I might not develop tight sketches or studies - and go straight to board. Spend less time constructing the drawing, and do more work with the painting process. It has its advantages, and the work is more immediate, and have a certain impact. The most important part of working on an illustration is the thumbnail sketch. Very small sketches, maybe 1 x 2, or 2 x 3 inches a piece. And I’ll sometimes do endless concepts. Usually, every assignment gets the 12 to 36 thumbnail session. I’ll immediately rough out every idea that comes to mind. The thumbnails are very simple, just shapes and scribbles - until something catches my eye.

I know you primarily as the artist of so many amazing book covers. Can you walk us through the process of developing a book cover? How much input does the author or publisher have throughout the project?

Once I finish the thumbnail session, I’ll pick the best of the lot and narrow them down to the best four or five to present to the client. I like having a discussion. I like getting input and much information or thoughts during this stage. This has worked well for me, so I don’t second guess myself or over analyze during the next stage of drawing studies and the finished pencil drawing. Once this drawing is approved, I have all of the confidence of creating the finished painting. I’ll spend up to 10 hours developing the drawing onto the board. Depending on the design and composition, applying paint can be 12 to 16 hours over 2 days, and then approximately 12 more hours of finishing. Depending how much time the painting wants to wrestle with me. Then I scan it and send the file for its approval.

What projects do you have coming up that fans should be on the lookout for?

I am developing an original pulp, sci-fi book of illustrations. I have been talking about it for years and I am slowly going through it. I would love to work on it full time, but commissions and projects come in at their own timing. I started a personal project earlier this year of painting black and white portraits of the classic movie monsters, as I reconnect with my younger monster kid roots. I also would like to strengthen my pulp influence. So, I’ll be exploring ideas with color paintings and black and white illustrations. Even while teaching part-time, I am always open for more assignments. I enjoy working with new creatives, and I like working in a team setting to develop new ideas and concepts. It’s that work that opens my eyes and fuels growth. In the meantime, I’m working on ideas and sketches for The Land That Time Forgot from ERB Books, as well as an alternative movie poster for the film, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut. You can also expect more covers for Craig McDonald’s Zana O’Savin books, as well as John Bruening’s The Midnight Guardian. And I look forward to any upcoming project from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Thanks, Doug! Looking forward to talking to you more in person at Pulpfest in a few weeks!

Readers, it is not too late to register for and attend Pulpfest 2025 (THE pulp magazine-focused convention in the Northeast) and the other three conventions it hosts: FarmerCon (dedicated to the works of Philip Jose Farmer), ERBFest (dedicated to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs) and DocCon (dedicated to all things Doc Savage related). Check out the Pulpfest website for registration and hotel information!