Greetings Loyal Airmen, this past week was rough on all us lovers of pulp fiction as we lost one of the best pulp writers who ever put pen to paper.  Elmore “Dutch” Leonard passed away at the age of 87.

                               
                                                ELMORE LEONARD  Oct 11, 1925 – Aug 20, 2013

He was an American novelist and screenwriter.  His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard wen on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted to motion pictures; just as his westerns had.  From his short stories came such classic western movies as 3:10 TO YUMA and VALDEZ IS COMING.   Once he started writing crime fiction, he attracted a huge fan following, among them Hollywood writer/director Quentin Tarrentino who adapted his book JACKIE BROWN.

In the Air Chief's life long love of reading, there have only been a handful of writers who inspired us beyond simply writing good books.  Writers who were so good at their craft, them made it look easy and we wanted to emulate them; to learn from them in any way we could.  About a year ago the Air Chief wrote a short story called THE YELLOW DOG for an anthology called HOW THE WEST WEIRD Vol II – all the while we were writing it, we were keeping Leonard in mind, doing our best to try an copy his terse, economic style of prose.  It helped a lot making the story work so well.

                                          
                                                    Leonard and Timothy Olyphant

Over the years, several of Leonard's stories were the basis of television series; most of which failed and never lasted an entire season….until JUSTIFIED.  This Fox cable series is based on a Leonard's short story, FIRE IN THE HOLE, and the hero is a Kentucky Deputy U.S. Marshal played named Raylan Givens as played by actor Timothy Olyphant.  It is an extremely popular show and as of this writing, is in production for its fifth season on the network.  Happily Leonard lived to see and enjoy its success.

Again, its is always sad to lose our heroes and Elmore Leonard was one of ours for sure. But thank God we will always have his stories to read.  And if you Loyal Airmen reading these words have never had that pleasure, its truly time to rectify that mistake.  Go out and get one of his many books and get ready for a reading adventure of unbridled joy.  R.I.P. Mr. Leonard and thanks from this fan.

                            A PULP TEAM AS BROTHER BONES COLLIDES WITH LAZARUS GRAY

And lastly, we wrap up this week's Flight Log with some truly cool news.  A few weeks back, one of our good pals and colleagues, writer Barry Reese, came to us asking if he could use our character, Brother Bones, the Undead Avenger, in one of his short stories starring his own pulp hero, Lazarus Gray.  Being a huge fan of Barry's work, there was no way the Air Chief was going to nix this awesome idea.  Earlier this week Barry announced the team-up on his own blog much to excitement of both our fans.  As soon as he has finished with it and it becomes available in his new Lazarus Gary collection, we will happily let you know all about it right here.  We can't wait to read this crossover event.

And there you have it for another week, Loyal Airmen.  We've a couple of new Airship 27 Productions titles almost ready for the printers.  Hopefully we'll tell you all about them when you come back here next week. Till then, stay well and do good things.
Ron – Over & Out!