Greeting Loyal Airmen, well Christmas is behind us and we pray all of you had a wonderful time with friends and family as this Holy time should be spent.  We had some concern as our mother, Gabrielle Fortier, 89 years young, took a bad fall at the Senior Facility where she lives back in New Hampshire and the day before Christmas underwent surgery to put steel pins in her writs and a titanium pin in her fractured hip. Thank God she came through surgery well but now comes the hard part, the physical therapy to regain her mobility. It is going to be a painful but necessary process and we humbly ask your prayers on her behalf.  It seems 2013 was indeed a year of ups and downs, losses and victories.  Realizing this would be our last Flight Log of this memorable year, we decided to take a short look back at some of our own highlights and share them with you.

Airship 27 Productions kicked off its most productive year ever with the release of our fourth SHERLOCK HOLMES – Consulting Detective book.  Always a huge fan favorite, this series would book-end 2013 as our last title released only a few short weeks ago was the fifth volume in this series. In between those two titles, were 15 other pulp anthologies and novels and one 1 children's book (our first ever) for a grand total of 18 Airship 27 titles in one year.  Not bad for a two man operation.  We want to publicly thank our partner and art director, Rob Davis, whose tireless efforts and creative design work make all this possible.  It was a hell of a ride; both physical and creative.

Early in the year, Rob and the Air Chief were invited to Norman, Oklahoma, to be guest of the Oklahoma Fiction Writers Conference, an organization consisting of almost 800 writers.  It was a first time experience for us and there we gave two 90 minute presentations on HOW TO WRITE A GRAPHIC NOVEL.  We used our own DAUGHTER OF DRACULA book as the main feature of our power-point presentation with yours truly discussing the basics of script writing and Rob explaining how a professional graphic artist adapts such a script.  To help get these points across, we also sold copies of both the graphic novel and my script for it (seen above).  It was such an amazing, fun trip for both of us. Sadly, the very area of Oklahoma we were in was hit by those awful tornadoes only two weeks later.

Spring had finally arrived and being diehard Red Sox fans, Valerie and the Air Chief were thrilled to see baseball start up again with a new team.  After the Sox dismal last place showing in 2012, we weren't getting our hopes up too much.  This would clearly be a rebuilding year as all baseball fans believed.  So we started watching the games and keeping our fingers crossed.  Then came the Patriot's Day Boston Marathon bombing which kill and crippled so many innocent, good people as perpetrated by two insane brothers. both avowed Muslim terrorists.  Thanks to the fine efforts of Boston law enforcement, they were captured within days of the incident. It was another reminder that evil does exist in the world and there are fanatics that hate our democracy and freedoms, enough to want to destroy them any way they can. What these zealots don't take into account is the internal and spiritual fortitude of the American people and soon the people of Boston were loudly proclaiming a new motto that would echo all over the country throughout the summer – BOSTON STRONG!

Shortly after all this we were winging our way back to New England to attend the high school graduation of our granddaughter Chelsea.  We were all so proud of her.  This fall she began her college career in Wheelock, a Boston College and is loving it.  Upon getting back to Colorado from this whirlwind visit back east, the Air Chief somehow threw out his lower back and for several weeks was dealing with a very familiar pain. Still we kept up with our own stretching and daily walking routine and got things back to normal finally. In fact just in time before Rob and the Air Chief were to fly to Chicago for the Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention.

We were particularly excited about the fact that for the first time ever we would have a premium to offer all our Loyal Airmen who come out and support us at these conventions; the all cloth Airship 27 patch. We would gave one away freely to anyone who bought two of our books, or they could simply buy a patch for the low fee of $3.  We are happy to report the patches were a huge hit, both at Windy City and later at Pulp Fest.

One of the big highlights of the Windy City convention is the presentations of the Pulp Factory Awards given out Friday night to recognize in the best in New Pulp fiction and artwork from the previous year's publications.  Having won the PF Award for Best Pulp Short Story the previous year, we were stunned to do it again this year for our tale THE GHOUL, which appeared in the Pro Se Productions book MONSTER ACES as created and edited by Jim Beard.  Above is the happy Air Chief with his second PF Award along side the Managing Editor of Pro Se, our good friend Tommy Hancock.  It truly was a remarkable time and show.  So many of our colleagues and fans were in attendances and lots of great memories were made.

Then, no sooner do we fly home from the con, then the Air Chief and Valerie packed up once again and this time headed down to Denver to be guests at the second annual Denver Comic Comic. The year prior, the con's debut had brought in nearly 26,000 fans.  Most of us thought we'd see them expand to the 30,000 mark. Ha, we were so far off the mark it was ridiculous.  In the end the final tally was closer to 48,000 fans who turned out during those four days. It was crazy and we had so much fun. There were so many cosplayers like the group pictured above. And once again the Air Chief made lots of great new fans. We can only imagine what next year's show will be like.  Ha.

Then a short week later, barely having recovered from the DCC, the Air Chief and pro-artist, Felipe Echevarria were driving up to nearby Cheyenne Wyoming to put on a two day workshop in Comics and Graphic Novel storytelling.  See what we mean about a Traveling Year?  Above is the flier for that event and we had ten students take the workshop.  This was the first time the Air Chief had ever done anything like this at a college venue and we very much hope to do a lot more of these in the future.

Summer seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye.  Suddenly we were into the last week of July and it was once again time to for Rob and the Air Chief to wing our way to Columbus, Ohio, and Pulp Fest.  As we mentioned before, we had the new patch premiums on hand and Rob had just managed to put together the multi-disc audio set for our book – CAPTAIN HAZZARD – PYTHON MEN OF THE LOST CITY as read by Joe Stofko and produced by Dynamic Ram Studios. It is on four six disc and last six hours long. You can also purchase it on line as a download from the popular site www.Adidble.com – Rob had assembled five sets and we sold four of them at the show.  The audio book is doing extremely well and as we write these words, Joe is now recording the second of our Captain Hazzard adventures, CITADEL OF FEAR.

Another truly fun gathering of friends and fans.  While at Pulp Fest we released the 11th issue of our comic series, MR. JIGSAW – Man of a Thousand Parts.

Unfortunately the Air Chief didn't realize until he'd flown back home that the book had two pages printed out of order.  Never mind the story itself was a time travel and those mixed up pages made the story incomprehensible.  We had to go back to the printers, scrap the original files and redo the entire book.  Happily with weeks the clean edition was out and available to our legion of Jiggy fans.  And we are happy to report that issue # 12 should be out early in 2014.

With summer quickly fading into our rear-view mirror, one of our major family events occurred when our grandson Alex went and passed his driver's test and obtained his driver's license.  We couldn't be more proud of him.  Now he's working every chance to earn enough to eventually buy his own car. We so admire his determination.

Of course Fall brought with it the end of the regular baseball season and lo and behold, the Red Sox had won their division!!  Going from last to first place in just one season.  And all of us knew the BOSTON STRONG theme was what was inspiring this team of talented ball players to achieve the impossible.  October arrived and our battling Sox beat the Tamp Bay Rays to seal the Division Championship. Then they took on the powerful Detroit Tigers and again managed to find a way to come out on top as American League Champs.  Finally it was time to face the National League Champs, the St.Louis Cardinals in the 2013 World Series.  The Red Sox and Cardinals slugged it out, each team laying it all out on the field but in the end, on a glorious night in Fenway Park, the bearded Red Sox beat the Cardinals in a Game 6 and won the series.  The Red Sox were the World Champs and Boston was stronger than ever.  If this wasn't a real life metaphor of good and right triumphing over evil, the Air Chief doesn't know what is.  We had to wipe away a few stray tears watching these guys hold up that trophy.  AMAZING!!!

On Nov 5th, the Air Chief turned 67 years old.  A week later, Dark Horse comics released a magnificent reprinted edition of  TERMINATOR – BURNING EARTH, a min-series we'd done over twenty five years ago at the start of our career with artist Alex Ross.  Here we are at a local comic shop along with our pal and protege, Todd Jones who holds up his copy.  It was icing on the cake for us that had been this wild and crazy year.  Oh, there were tons of other things we'll never forget about 2013, there were some great books, movies and TV series that entertained us greatly.  After all, life is to be live and we like to think we've finally gotten that down pat.

This was but a small glimpse and we hope your own experiences were filled with mostly happy ones too. And we thank you for stopping by every week, supporting us and wish you and yours a truly FANTASTIC & HAPPY NEW YEAR.  Be safe and we'll see you back here in seven.

Ron – Over & Out!