Greetings Loyal Airmen, we pray all of you had a fantastic Christmas filled with love, friendship and some really cool Santa Surprises.  Last week the Air Chief showed you all the truly cool Black Beauty die-cast model given to us by pal James Gaubatz.  Well, the day before Christmas as yet another surprise Santa package arrived in the mail.

It contained a beautiful letter bound journal made up like the old notebooks explorers would use on their travels around the globe. Truly a gorgeous item and the sender was our good friend, and super talented graphic artist, Michael Dorman. Michael and the Air Chief did a two part Black Bat – Domino Lady adventure for Moonstone Comics recently and with all fingers crossed, you’ll all be able to see those pages before the end of 2017. Meanwhile, upon seeing the journal, Valerie suggested we use it to keep notes from our conventions travels in the coming year and that was a splendid idea. Thus our first entry above. And Michael, thank you so very, very much.

Another wonderful surprise popped up on Facebook when our good friend, and huge Brother Bones fan, sculpture Kenneth Stock of Denver, did up a mock Bones cover featuring the bronze statue he had done and given us as a gift earlier in the year. We did he did a truly super bang up job with it.

With Christmas over, things slowly began to get back to some semblance of the routine and we decided to head to the local cinema to catch a movie.  What with all the hoople on the new Star Wars Rogue One, we opted to find something else to view wherein the theater wouldn’t be packed like a tin of sardines.  We chose Will Smith’s latest drama, Collateral Beauty and it was a truly wise move. This beautiful told story of life, love and death is clearly one of the best films of the year and the Air Chief cannot recommend highly enough. Smith is powerful as a grieving father trying to overcome the death of his six year old daughter. His marriage has fallen apart and he’s about to lose his advertising business and so his three best friends, played brilliantly by Ken Norton, Kate Winslet and Michael Pena, hatch an incredible scheme to rescue him. The cast also includes Helen Miren and Kiera Knightly among others and the story is simply heartfelt. Easily one of the finest movies about life with its many joys and tragedies. Everyone should see this movie and reflect on its simple but true message.

As we wrap up this eventful year, we look at it as having been a truly good year what with our choice for President, Donal Trump, winning the election, the Chicago Cubs the baseball World Series and our amazing 70th birthday surprise party at the Rocky Mountain Con.  As we said, for the most part a great year. Of course it held its share of sadness as well. Lots has been made of all the celebrities who passed, but honestly those deaths really aren’t personal to us. What hurts is to lose family and real friends such as writer Mark Justice, who died back in Feb of this year.  We miss him terribly and it was an honor for us to republish in his last novel, The Dead Sheriff.

Speaking of publishing, we’re happy to report that Airship 27 Publications put out twenty-four titles in 2016. The record is twenty-six, but honestly, the Air Chief and his pal Rob Davis are thrilled with this output and we hope you Loyal Airmen are as well.  Now it’s time to look to the year ahead and what 2017 will have in store for us.  It looks like our first book of the new year with be R.A. Jones’ western COMANCHE BLOOD, which is a sequel to his earlier GUN GLORY which released back in 2015.  This book features the interior art of Chris Kohler, and super talented New Pulp creator and this marks his first ever work for Airship 27 Productions.  We’ve posted a peek at one of his pieces above.  After the western, our next pulp title should be the second in Nancy Hansen’s pirate queen saga.  Now that’s a book you don’t want to me.

And in that mix of activity, the Air Chief has a very special and personal project he hopes to see in print for the very first time.  We’ll tell you all about it within the first few weeks of 2017.  And there you have it, so long one year and welcome the next…with prayers and hopes.  We wish you all a glorious New Year.

Ron – Over & Out!