Greetings Loyal Airmen and as you can see by the cover image above, we are thrilled to announce our first pulp title of 2016!  “Motor City Manhunt,” by R.A. Jones and Michael Vance is a taut suspense crime thriller that takes place in Detroit in 1935.  All the art for the book, both cover and interior illustrations was provided by Jesus Rodriguez of Mexico and is outstanding.  As ever, our Art Director Rob Davis provided the book’s over all design. It is always a great feeling to get the first book of a new book out. Note the book is available at Amazon in both hard copy and on Kindle and eventually will be available as an audio book via Radio Archives.  We hope you’ll check it out.

One of the things the Air Chief is most grateful for is that our town has a Second Run theater. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it simply means when a new movie is released, it is sold to First Run movie houses and will stay at them for as along at the theater manager feels it is making money. When that period expires, the movie company will then put out to Second Run houses for a cheaper fee…which these theaters pass along to their customers.  Ergo, if you see as many movies and Valerie and the Air Chief, it can tend to get expensive and sometimes, for various reasons you’ll wait until a feature comes to the Second Run theater.

Thus was the case with “In the Heart of the Sea.” Since seeing its trailer months ago, we’d very much wanted to see this spectacular man-against-nature epic filmed by Ron Howard, one of the best directors in Hollywood today.  Based on the book by Nathanial Philbrick, the movie tells the true story of the Essex, a whaling ship out of Nantucket, Ma. that was attacked and sunk by a whale in the Pacific Ocean. When the tale got out to the public, even though the Maritime Commission did its best to suppress it, one of the many intrigued by it was writer Herman Melville. Melville traveled to Nantucket and interviewed one of the survivors of the Essex and from his notes wrote his classic adventure novel, “Moby Dick.”  The film here opens with the writer meeting the old sailor whom he is going to interview, brilliant played by Brendan Gleeson.  He is a man haunted by what happened aboard that ill-fated ship and voyage and as he begins to relate his tale, we are thrown back in time to the actual events.  This is a powerful story and one beautifully filmed, though we suspect its lackluster performance profit-wise is most likely due to the brutally honest depiction of whaling in all its gory savagery. Watching those harpoons rip into those magnificent beasts is not for the weak of heart whereas the attack of the white whale is itself frightening to the core.  “In the Heart of the Sea,” is story of its time and the courage of those men who cast their lots to the merciless seas.  If you missed it at the theaters, do yourselves a favor and catch it when it comes to cable. It is very much worth your time.

Next up we are happy to report that our character, Brother Bones – The Undead Avenger is getting some nice publicity in different venues these days.  A few years ago we wrote a story “The Butcher Blues” in which Brother Bones teamed up with a new hero, the Pulptress, the creation of our good pal Tommy Hancock of Pro Se Productions. Well, that anthology has just become an audio book and is available via Amazon or by going directly to Audible.com – So if you ever wanted to “hear” the grim avenger’s stories, here’s your chance.  Note previous three Airship 27 Brother Bones will also be soon available in this fun format.  While in just another few weeks the good people at Scaldcrow Games will be releasing their Brother Bones role playing game module to be called, “Ron Fortier’s Cape Noire.”  And we can’t be more excited.  Above is the latest sketch of our highly popular character by Scaldcrow Game’s own head honcho, T. Glenn Bane and we love.

And lastly we’ve join the staff of “The Digest Enthusiast” as a contributing writer. Issue # 3 (see cover above) has just come out and is available in hard copy and on Kindle from Amazon.  They’ve printed several of our recent book reviews in the issue and a short sci-fi story of ours called, “The Rail City Rolls.”  We think you’ll enjoy it.  Phew, as you can see we do tend to keep busy this time of year.  As ever thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you all back here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!