Greetings Loyal Airmen. This week's Flight Log comes to you early, as the Air Chief has a full plate this week.  Yesterday afternoon, Valerie flew home after a month in Colorado visiting our son Alan and his family.  We are so happy to have her back home, and getting our lives back to some semblance of routine.  But watch that get all twisted around starting tomorrow night no less.  We are heading down to Manchester to attend the Star Wars concert at the Verizon Center.  If you are unfamiliar with this program, it is an amazing show that features a one hundred member symphonic orchestra playing cuts from John Williams scores from the six Star Wars movies, while on the world's biggest High Definition screen, scenes from the movies are projected.

As an avowed, dedicated fan of film music, we were thrilled when we first learned of this engagement and scrambled to get tickets.  Happily a family relative came through for us and provided us with box seats for the show.  Realizing this would be happening within days of Val's return home, we went the extra step and booked a hotel room at the Radisson across the street from the stadium.  Thus the Air Chief and his lady are going to make a really nice, get away night of it all.  And thus why we will not be here to do up the Flight Log as usual.  Thus you Loyal Airmen get to see it early this week.

                          
A long while back, we had the good fun of reading and reviewing Max Allan Collins' thriller THE LAST QUARRY from one of our favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime.  Quarry is the stoic hitman, Collins created years ago and has appeared in a half dozen of his books.  Upon reading this terrific paperback, we learned that it was in fact the expansion of several other pieces starting with a short story called A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL.  This little tale was later used as the basis of a film script co-written by Collins Peter Biegen which was directed by Jeffrey Goodman as THE LAST LULLABY.

When we learned about this film, we went searching the web to see if it might be available somewhere. Sadly we came up empty-handed.  Being a fan of Collins' work, we were really anxious to see this movie.  Lo and behold, several weeks ago a package arrived in the mail from said writer.  Initially we thought it was his latest book and we were wrong.  It was a DVD copy of THE LAST LULLABY.  Talk about a wonderful surprise.  Several days later we threw in the machine and sat down to watch it.  Note, for whatever reasons, Collins opts to change the name of his protagonist in the film, where in he becomes Jack Price, rather than Quarry.  Veteran actor Tom Sizemore plays the laconic, world weary hitman who comes out of retirement to take on one more job.  He is excellent in the role, playing it with a quiet, understated drive that is nothing less than riveting.  He is aided considerably by a stellar cast headed by the lovely and talented Sasha Alexander.  This is a gem of a noir story and director Goodman deftly brings it along in a such a relaxed pace, we marveled at how perfect the entire viewing experience was.  Oh, don't get us wrong, there's plenty of violence here, but it serves the story but it is the characters that pull us along from scene to another.  THE LAST LULLABY has won numerous awards at various film festivals, which comes as no surprise.  And we are happy to say, it is available for sale on-line by simply go to (www.the lastlullaby.com).   Loyal Airmen, if you like tough, gritty, no-nonsense crime tales, please go and pick this up.  You can thank us later.

Moving back into the world of pulps, all you Loyal Airmen are aware that for the past two years we have been writing brand new novels featuring Captain Hazzard and his brave gang of five.  A few weeks ago we received an invitation by pulp fan Ric Croxton to appear on his popular podcast show, the Bookcave.  Ric, along with his co-host, Dr.Art Sippo, have come up with a pulp-book-of-the-month club wherein once a month they announce which pulp book they are going to read, hope their listeners will do the same and then fire off questions to them about that particular title.  All leading to a show where the author is a guest and answers the gathered questions.  And that is what is going to be happening next week.  Ric and Art have chosen as their first pulp book to read, our second Captain Hazzard novel, CITADEL OF FEAR.

Above is the cover to that book as it was published several years ago by Wild Cat Books.  WCB no longer has the rights to the book and I believe places like Amazon and Barnes & Nobles no longer have copies in their inventories.  WCB may still have a few, as we did see them selling such at this year's Pulp Fest in Columbus, Ohio.  Thing is, Loyal Airmen, early next year, Airship 27 Productions will be reprinting this very book, so stay tuned.  In the meanwhile, any of you who do have this first printing and would like to participate with next week's podcast, can send your questions about it (or any other Hazzard book in this series) to Ric at the following e-mail address (ric.croxton@gmail.com) – And please do so before next Tuesday, 17th Nov.  That is the evening we will be doing the actual show. Ric informs us, after he's edited it, it will be posted on his Bookcave site for the following Friday, 19th Nov.  So if any of you Loyal Airmen have ever wanted to ask the Air Chief about Captain Hazzard, here's your chance.

And there you go, Loyal Airmen.  Another week's Flight Log wrapped up.  Take care, stay healthy and we'll see you all back here next week at our regular Friday morning time.
Ron – Over & Out!