Greetings airmen, have I got a story for you this week.  As most of you know I have been living a dream these past few years by getting involved with pulps as both a writer and now and editor.  One of the recurring themes of the pupsmiths of old was how they were commissioned to write X number of words at any given time to help various editors fill their dozens of magazine titles.  And often with very little notice before hand.  And that's what happened to me over last weekend.

But first a little bit of background.  Moonstone publishing is currently getting into the pulp anthology field in a very big way, much to delight of all we fans.  First they did their award nominated KOLCHAK – The Night Stalker Chronicles.  Then they set about doing an anthology on the famous pulp hero, THE SPIDER.  Those of you who stop by here on a regular basis, know I am a part of that book, having been invited aboard by editor Joe Gentile and what a thrill it was.   Well, shortly after all that, a colleague, Martin Powell, informed me that Moonstone had decided to do as yet a third prose anthology.  This time to feature the classic comic strip hero, Lee Falk's THE PHANTOM.  I thought that was a great idea.  Moonstone already does a fantastic job publishing the comic adventures of the Ghost Who Walks, so who better to do a prose collection.  I wished Martin luck, as he had been invited to participate.

As the summer months went by Martin continued to keep me abreast of his many projects including the Phantom story he was writing.  Finally it was done and he let me read it before he turned it in.   It was a great yarn and I figured this was going to as yet another big winner for Moonstone.  Little dreaming what would happen a month later, long after this book was suppose to be finished.   Early last Saturday morning I received an e-mail from Joe Gentile asking if I would like to write a Phantom story for their anthology?  Boy, did that catch me by surprise.  That book should have been done long-long ago.  I immediately realized they had obviously hit some serious bumps in the road, as Joe further went to say, were I interested, he would need my 5,000 story ASAP.  Ha.

I took a few hours to mull all that over.   It was something out of the blue.  Something I had not been prepared for and if I said yes to doing it, I would have to pull out the stops.  Drop everything I was doing, sit down, come up with a decent idea and then get it written and written fast.   But could I do it?  And would it be any good if I did.  See, you always thought it was easy being a writer.  Ha, no bloody way.  Sometimes it's really, really hard or even scary.  Still, not one to pass by a golden opportunity to write one of the greatest fictional characters of all time, I finally sat down and wrote Joe.  I told him I would do it and I would have the story to him by today, meaning in five days.

In the next three days I went at it and all the time began to understand just how it must have been for all those pulp writers back in the heyday of the pulps.  Working under the gun, trying to make a deadline, getting that word count where it had to be, and no more.  Well, airmen, three days after Joe's letter, I sent him THE FASTEST ANIMAL, a Phantom adventure in 5,000 words and it will be appearing in that anthology book due at the first of 2007!!!   Joe was clearly surprised and thrilled at how quickly I turned around his assignment, and me, I felt good.  Really, really good.  As if all the ghosts of all those wonderful pulpsmiths of old were looking over my shoulder and smiling.  Welcome to the club, they were saying, now your a pulp writer.

Oh,and a special thanks to Tom Floyd for letting me borrow his wonderful Phantom illo to brighten up this week's log entry.

Have a great week, Ron, over and out.