Greetings Loyal Airmen, we’ve got tons of things to share with you this week and all are about our amazing experiences at this year’s Windy City Pulp & Paper Con in Chicago that went on over the weekend. We’d told last week we’d have a full report for you and so sit back and enjoy.  Above is Ye Old Air Chief and Art Director Rob Davis having set up our tables and ready for the show to get rolling.

Friday night the 7th Annual Pulp Factory Awards were handed out and Airship 27 Productions took four of the five categories. This year the awards were moderated by Pulp Factory members Gordon Dymowski and Van Allen Plexico and they were responsible for designing the beautiful acrylic awards you see above.  Winning Best Pulp Novel went to our friend Paul Bishop for his gripping police mystery, “The Lie Catchers.” Having reviewed it last year, the Air Chief recommends you all go out an buy a copy. It is that good. The book was published by our friends at Pro Se Productions.

Best Short Story went to our pal Derrick Ferguson for his tale, “Voodah of Thunder Mountain,” illustrated by Barry McClain (see illo above) and appeared in “The Legends of New Pulp Fiction,” which went on to take the award for Best Anthology Collection.  Having won the Pulp Ark two weeks ago, this books becomes the only new pulp title to win both awards.  That’s saying quite a bit.

Whereas our own Rob Davis won the award for Best Interior Illustrations for his art in our “Sherlock Holmes – Consulting Detective Vol 7,” it was his second Pulp Factory Award win.  Above is the Air Chief holding the award for Best Anthology and Rob proudly displaying his.

The Best Pulp Cover went to Czech artist Marco Turini for Airship 27 Production’s “Bass Reeves – Frontier Marshal,” which was our last title of 2015.  The Air Chief doesn’t even know if Marco has been notified of his win yet but will get on that immediately after writing this Flight Log.  We always knew that cover was a winner.

The true fun of these shows is meeting fellow creators and it was a pleasure to finally hook up with young Jaime Ramos, one of the two Assistant Editors who helped up put together “Legends of New Pulp Fiction.” The other was Todd Jones.  Well, Jaime finally came to the con and we had a blast sharing a fun panel with him on Sunday morning about how that amazing came together.  Along with Jaime and the Air Chief, we were joined by Doug Klauba who painted and of course Rob Davis, the book’s designer and Tommy Hancock, the man for whom the book was a benefit moderated.  What a great panel. All of us giving our audience a lot of behind the scenes stories of how that giant tome all came together.  Fellow writer, Andy Fix, was wise to bring a tape recorder and the entire hour long panel will be posted to his own podcast in a week or two.  We will be sure to post the link right here so all you Loyal Airmen can listen to it should you desire.

One of the traditions we adhere to at every Windy City show is the Sunday morning Pulp Factory breakfast at a local eatery.  Above left to right, in a group selfie, are Gene Moyers, the Air Chief, Rob Davis (peeking in) and Van Plexico.

Five minutes after snapping the first photo, artist Doug Klauba arrived and Van immediately got him into this picture.  Those breakfast get togethers are so much fun.

Sitting here writing this all out, the Air Chief is doing a mental check list of all our great friends we hooked up with over the weekend and my apologies if we forget anyone here.  Martin Gram, Doug Klauba, Van Plexico, Joe Gentile, William Patrick Maynard, Tommy Hancock, David White, John Bodnar, B.C. Bell, Gene Moyers, Jim Beard, Jaime Ramos, Michael Black, Bob Mendenhall, Andy and Claire Fix, Jeff and Lisa Fournier, Doug Ellis, Mike Chomko, Ed Hulse, Will Murray, Matt Moring, Lance Stahlberg, Gordon Dymowski.  If we forgot anyone, and we’re sure we must of, our apologies.  What a great group of friends and fellow creators. Every time the Air Chief goes to this show, he leaves all charged up to start new projects. We tend to inspire each other all the time. And believe us, several new pulp projects were hatched over the weekend that you will all be seeing by the end of the year. Trust us, it is good stuff.

Of course one of the best results of attending a show like this one is the positive creative energy that gets fired up and then folks go home with all kinds of ideas for new pulp projects.  Here at Airship 27 Productions we’re pleased to announce the start of a second anthology volume featuring the most bizarre pulp hero of them all, the Purple Scar. The book will contain four new Scar stories by Gen Moyers, Paul Findley, Erik Franklin and David Noe with the amazing artist Marco Santiago providing the interior illustrations. Those are his sketches of the character above. Hopefully we can get this together and out by Fall or early Winter. We’ll keep you posted.

And there you go, Loyal Airmen.  Thanks for stopping by as ever.

Ron – Over & Out!