Greeting Loyal Airmen and welcome to this week’s truly exciting Flight Log.  We’ve got some grand news to pass along to you, so let’s get cracking.

We’re sure most of you are by now familiar with audio podcast; they are pretty much the internet version of radio shows.  People record on their PCs in audio files then post them on sites for others to download and listen to.  For the past four years Ye Old Air Chief has been a co-host on the popular ZONE 4 weekly podcast created by Brant Fowler and supported by the popular comic book website, Comic Related.  Just at the end of last year we recorded our 300th episode.  After that laudable achievement, Brant approached us about the idea of our creating a brand new Zone 4 sponsored podcast devoted to the topic of New Pulp Fiction.  We immediately contacted our Art Director (and partner in crime) Rob Davis and asked how he would like to co-host such a podcast with us.  Starting in Feb, ZONE 4 presents AIRSHIP 27 will launch as a one hour, once a month podcast that will air the second week of every month.  Rob and the Air Chief hope to make this a fun, informal program were we talk not only about our projects coming from Airship 27 Productions, but about all the news in the New Pulp Community, including conventions and other projects from our colleagues.  One of the things we’d love to do on this show is answer any and all questions you might have regarding our projects at Airship 27 Productions; which ones you liked and would like to see more of, or which ones you did not think worked….or which kind of different books do you think we should be doing.  Any and all questions would be most welcomed. You can send them directly to me here or to both Rob and Air Chief via our Facebook pages.  Of course keep reading the Flight Logs as we’ll let you know when the first show airs and where to find it.

Speaking of the old Airship 27, we are thrilled to be announcing our two very first projects of this new year.  We’ve just released our first novel of the year and its a rootin’tootin western called GUN GLORY by ace writer R.A. Jones.  Note, this is a straight up western in the grand tradition of Loui L’Amour and Max Brand and a truly great read.  The cover painting was provided by Graham Hill and has nine interior illustrations by artist Neil T. Foster, with Rob Davis handling book design.  The book is now available at Amazon in hard copy and will soon be available for Kindle in just a few more days. We hope you check it out.

Which brings us to our second offering of the month, a Kindle only title, SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERIOUS by I.A. Watson.   As most of you Loyal Airmen know, our best selling series at Airship 27 Productions is our SHERLOCK HOLMES – CONSULTING DETECTIVE books of which we’ve published six thus far with volume number now in the works.  In the course of that time this series has produced four Pulp Factory Awards, one for Best Pulp Cover (Mark Maddox), one for Best Interior Illustrations (Rob Davis) and two for Best Pulp Short Story (Andrew Salmon & I.A. Watson.) In fact, Watson has had seven stories published in these first six volumes.  Enough so that we thought it would be a very good idea to collect all of them in one digital big book and thus we put together SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERIES by I.A. Watson….and to sweeten the pot a bit, we also had Watson provide us with an eight, and brand new, story that has never been published before.  This massive collection is now on sale at Amazon…and again, only available in digital Kindle format.  We have given some thought to later producing a deluxe hardcover edition and would appreciate your thoughts on such a book.  Yes or no?  Remember, we’re all about giving you Loyal Airmen the kind of books you want, so let us know.

And there you have it for this week, my friends.  As ever, thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you all back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we've had a busy week at Hangar 27 getting all kinds of projects ready to launch. Many of which you will all be hearing about right here.  And for that reason this week's Flight Log is going to be a wee bit on the thin size, but we trust you'll enjoy what we've posted.

Last year the students of Colorado State University here in our home town of Fort Collins, CO. hosted the first ever FoCo Comics & Gaming Festival of which the Air Chief was a promoter and guest. The one day event turned out to be a huge success…enough so that the folks at CSU are doing it again this year, to be held on the campus itself on Sunday March 8th.  Once again, the Air Chief and many other amazing comic writers and artists will be featured there as guests.  In fact the good people of FoCo finally came up with an official logo for the con based on the college's own iconic character, BIG BUCK.  And here he is finally in full superhero regalia.  We'll tell you lots more about this show as it nears.

Speaking of superheroes, ABC premiered the first episodes of its new hero-related series, AGENT CARTER this past Tuesday to rousing success.  Based upon the further post World War II exploits of Captain America's girlfriend, Agent Peggy Carter during the early years after the war.  In fact it is set in 1946, the year the Air Chief and millions of other baby-boomers were born.  Reprising her role as the sassy, highly capable Agent Cart is British actress Hayley Atwell, who is said to have been thrilled to be able to resurrect her character from that film and now continue to bring us her further adventures.  The two hour premier was rollicking fun and we can't wait for more.

A few years ago Airship 27 Productions brought you the adventures of THE SHADOW LEGION in their first novel adventure, NEW ROADS TO HELL by author Thomas Deja.  Well, Thomas spent last year penning the sequel, SHADOW LEGION – CASE FILES, and now Canadian artist Vincent Marchesano has begun drawing the interior illustrations for the new book.  Above is his depiction of the blind hero known as Ferryman, who can see through the yes of ghosts, which always plague him.  This is great pulp fun and we can't wait to get it wrapped up and brought to you.

And there you go for another week, Loyal Airmen.  As ever thanks so much for stopping by.  Hopefully in a few more weeks we hope to have some really amazing and fun news concerning Airship 27 Productions we hope you are going to rave about.  Stay tuned till then.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well here we are, our first Flight Log of a brand new year, 2015. It is one we are very, very happy to see roll in.  2014 certainly had its ups and downs, with family loses and illnesses, but God as ever blessed us throughout and made this year end time special for the Air Chief and all his loved ones.

Our mother, Gabrielle Fortier, is one of five girls, maiden name Richer.  Now residing in a senior home for the past seven years, it has been a long while, years in fact, since she's seen several of her sisters.  Feeling wonderfully well this holiday season, our younger brother, Paul, offered to drive her to go visit two of her sisters just after Christmas.  They went the visit Cecile, the oldest of the sisters and while there, called Rose, the youngest, and she happily came to join them.  Above are the three of the five Richer girls, from left to right, Aunt Cecile, now 92, Mom at 90, and Rose, whose age we really don't know, save she was the baby in the group.  Missing were Hortense, born after Mom and Jeanette, the fourth in line.
Paul took this picture and shared it with the rest of the family.  Talk about a joyous time.  Mom was one of ten children, five girls …and five boys.  Of her brothers, only Henry remains, keeping the well known statistic true that women do tend to live longer.  Here's praying we have the Richer sisters for a long time yet to come, God willing.

Two years ago, while attending the Rocky Mountain Con in Denver, we met artist Kevin A Johnson.  From that meeting came a new friendship and Kevin signed on to illustrate our graphic novel, THE BLACK LION, which had been collecting dust for over a decade in our script files.  Once Kevin was on board, we recruited inker Mark Stegbauer on to the team. 

                                                    
Then we were so lucky to get Warren Montgomery to join us as the letterer and colorist.  Over the past year, all three of these talented men have been working on the project between their many other obligations and commitments, but we're happy to say it is finally starting to come together…and beautifully so.  Above you will find pages 1 and 2, our little peek to all you Loyal Airmen.  It will still be many, many months before this project is finished, but hey, we think when you have this kind of quality, it's okay to wait.

On the pulp side of things, we had shut down operations at Airship 27 Productions for the holiday, affording both the Air Chief and Art Director a little welcome R & R.  But hey, the new year is here now and we've once again started up our pulp production line.  Barring an unexpected calamity, our first new title for 2015 is going to be a great, old fashion western called GUN GLORY, written by R.A. Jones with a cover by Graham Hill and interior illos by Neil T. Foster.  Above a peek of the back cover.  Stay tuned, Loyal Airmen, this should be out and on sale in another few weeks.

Of course the line-up of new pulp titles we have coming out this year is nothing short of fantastic, what with more Sherlock Holmes anthologies and several full-length novels starring the Great Detective.  And then we've got our usual anthologies featuring our classic pulp heroes ala the Black Bat, Secret Agent X and the Domino Lady.  In between these series outings, you can expect to see some truly amazing books like our first ever Houdini anthology.  Above is a preliminary mock-up of the cover by the super talented Carl Yonder.  Like all Airship 27 anthologies, this one will feature four new adventures starting the famous magician'escape artist.  We're predicting this to be a big winner for us.

And those are just a very few of some of the things coming your way from both Airship 27 Productions and Redbud Studio.  Personally, the Air Chief has two brand new pulp comicbook series coming from Moonstone plus several novels and short stories for them.  As you can see, busy as ever.  We hope you'll stay with us.  2015 looks has the potential to be our best year ever.

Finally, all of us here wish all our Loyal Airmen a truly HAPPY NEW YEAR.  God bless you and your loved ones.

Ron (Over & Out!)

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well the Air Chief is behind the old eight ball today.   After celebrating a fantastic Christmas yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised to see it start snowing here in Fort Collins just as the sun set.  It continued all night till we awoke this morning to a true Christmas wonderland outside our windows.  A leisurely breakfast, then outdoors to shovel off the car and driveway and off to a local UPS shop to mail off our grandson Logan's birthday present.  His birthday is the 31st of Dec.  Somewhere along all this running around, we suddenly realized we hadn't done our Flight Log.  So again apologies and here we go.

                          
Usually every Christmas we go out and find a new “special” Christmas tree ornament to add to our collection on the Christmas tree.  Well this year several new additions joined the ranks.  Knowing of our love of the Rocketeer, Valerie had this little gem all wrapped up and waiting for us.  It now joins the Air Chief prized collection that includes Captain America, Spider Man, the Flash and the Lone Ranger.  Of course it was Valerie who ended up with the biggest ornament surprise of all.

                                 
You see, one of her favorite holiday movies is “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,” with Chevy Chase going crazy trying to give his family the best old fashion Christmas ever.  What makes Valerie laugh every time she sees it is the scene wherein a squirrel has gotten into their house and is hiding in the Christmas tree.  Clark goes to investigate only to have the animal jump out of the tree at him.  Well, our son Alan, knowing of her affection for this movie, got her the above ornament…and get this, it comes with sound, as Clark's aunt says there's a noise in the tree.  Then we hear the squirrel's chirp followed by Clark's scream.  It is hilarious.

Now one of the nicest the Air Chief received this year happened Christmas night.  While on Facebook, we saw lots of our friends posting pictures of all the great things Santa had brought them this year.  Our last title of the year for Airship 27 Productions was  OCCULT DETECTIVES Vol One. – See Above.  So imagine the Air Chief's wonderful surprise when FB pal, Sam Gafford posted a picture of all the cool video games, toys, comics and assorted books he received…and there amongst all this wonderful loot was a copy of our book!!! 

Can you spot the copy of our OCCULT DETECTIVES among Sam's Christmas goodies?  Honestly, this was one of the best Christmas surprises the Air Chief has ever had.  We tell you Loyal Airmen all the time what your support means to us and we speak from the heart.  THANK YOU. We hope your Christmas was as much fun as ours and we dearly wish you all a truly fantastic HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen.  As hard as it is to believe, this is our last Flight Log before Christmas.  Yup. once again time seems to have flown past us so fast.

All of us at Hangar 27 HQ want to wish each of you a truly joyous and Merry Christmas.  It is our wish that Santa has lots of great surprises in store for each of you and that they are all awaiting you come Christmas morning under your individual, beautiful decorated Christmas trees.  Our own went up a few days after Thanksgiving thanks to Valerie and our lovely granddaughter, Cora.  Lots of the Air Chief's personal ornaments are hung from Spider-Man to Superman, the Lone Ranger and Captain America.  And we are told we've another one waiting to be unwrapped come Christmas morning.

Our son, Alan, asked me what we wanted for Christmas this year and my answer was an easy one to come up with.  We wanted our Mom to have a great Christmas.  This time last year she was in the hospital having broken her hip at the age of 89.  It was the beginning of a truly horrible six months where she underwent not one, but two surgeries and lots of very difficult and painful therapy.  But to her credit, Mom proved once again that she is an incredibly strong soul and she battle back to regain her health. On Nov. 1st she turned 90 and has started doing Yoga.  This past week she attended a Christmas party and got to sit with Santa (see photo above).  She is doing great and that is nothing but answered prayer.  So thank you Jesus for the blessing of this amazing woman and for putting that beautiful smile back on her face.

Finally, we always love to give you Loyal Airmen little peeks at artwork that will be featured in coming pulp projects and we thought that would be our Christmas gift to all of you.  If all goes as planned, the first new Airship 27 Productions pulp title of 2015 is going to be a terrific old fashioned western novel called GUN GLORY by writer R.A. Jones.  Believe me, its a humdinger, if you like these kind of traditional cowboy tales ala Max Brand and Louis L'Amour.  Providing the nine interior illustrations for the book is artist Neil T. Foster and above is one of these gorgeous pieces of art.  Wait till you see the rest of them and the painted cover by Graham Hill.  It's going to kick off the New Year in great fashion.

And there you have this week's Flight Log, Loyal Airmen.  Again, may the blessings of Almighty God rain down on all of you reading these words.  May the spirit of the season, of peace, hope and love be the invisible treasures that fills all your hearts in the coming days.  Thanks ever so much for stopping by and for being a part of our Airship 27 family.  God bless.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, well the month of December is certainly racing along and before we know it, Santa will soon be packing up his sled and directing his magical reindeer all over the world to gladden the hearts of boys and girls…of all ages.  To say the Air Chief isn't getting excited too, would be a tall whopper for sure.  We so love this time of year.  Of course, we had let you know that we would be shutting down the pulp arm of the Ariship 27 Productions – Redbud Studio operations.  After releasing a record breaking 27 titles from the old Airship 27 this past year, we thought it was time we grounded her for a mechanical overhaul.  In the meanwhile the Air Chief and Rob Davis have been devoting lots more time to their many comic projects still rolling along under our production lights.  We thought this week we'd give you a little peek at three of the Air Chief is working on.

                                        
Some three years ago, Rob and the Air Chief thought it would be great to do a one-shot comic starring that classic pulp spy, SECRET AGENT X.   Within a few weeks we did up a script and then scoured the internet for an artist.  At that time, Rob was merely going to act as director.  We eventually found a talented young man and initially he was enthusiastic about the project and started turning in a few pages. But as often happens in comics, ultimately the guy just couldn't stick with the project and after almost a year of keeping us waiting, bit the bullet and bowed out of the project.  Again, these things happen all the time and we were disappointed but not overly so.  We put the project aside with the thought that some day we'd get back to it.  So lo and behold, way back at the start of 2014, Rob came to the Air Chief saying he'd given it some thought, and depending on how his scheduled looked by the end of the year, he wanted to take a stab at drawing the SECRET AGENT X comic.  We are thrilled to report, several weeks ago, true to his word, Rob dusted off the script and went to work on bringing it to visual life.  We couldn't be more excited.  The comic is just over 30 pages long and Rob recently turned in page # 11, so as you can see this IS going to happen at long last.  Above is a peek at page one which kicks off this super paced pulp thriller.  Sit tight, pulp fans, it is coming.

                                    
Then way back at the start of Nov. we mentioned having attended the super fun Rocky Mountain Con promoted by our pal, Tim Moret, and how we'd met several really talented artists.  One, in fact, had agreed to take on the third Simon Pryce Private Eye written by yours truly and Bill Gladman.  Another project that had been sitting in our files collecting dust for a long-long time.  That artist was Barry McClain and in the past few weeks we've showed some sample of his character pin-up pieces from the story.  Well, we teamed Barry with super incker Paul Frey and together they have begun knocking out some truly stunning black and white pages.  Above is a peek at page one of this 23 page project.  Eventually our amigo Rob Davis will be handling the lettering.  We sure do keep Rob busy, don't we. Anywhere this is another typical Simon Pryce murder mystery and we hope you'll think the wait was well worth it when we get it out.

And lastly, but certainly not the least, we'd like you to meet Fenneck, a wandering adventure, paladin.  Fennec is a Western African Fox and this particular colorful character was created by another artist we had the fun of meeting at Rocky Mountain Con, Mr. Jason Meents.  The Air Chief was immediately taken by his loveable, cartoony style and we discussed various things from comics to possible children's books. This past week, Jason posted the above image on Facebook and asked if anyone would be at all interested in helping him the develop the creature into a possible hero for an on-going, full color comics for kids.
You can imagine how quick the Air Chief jumped on this offer.  At present Jason and the Air Chief are kicking around various ideas and approaches, nothing has been formulated yet, but this creative world building is always a blast and with fingers crossed, when done, we'll have come up with something turly special that you fans will want to pick up.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

So there you have Loyal Airmen, three of many projects, both comics and prose, keeping the Air Chief busy these days.  As ever, thanks for stopping by.  Be nice to each other while out there on the streets doing that last minute gift buying…and in the melee, try to give some thought to the real reason of this season.  It should warm your hearts.  Till next week, take care,

Ron – Over & Out.

Greetings Loyal Airmen, last week we celebrated the release of our 100 Airship 27 Productions title.  Well, this week we are announcing the the release of 101 and our record breaking 26th title of the year.

OCCULT DETECTIVES Vol One features four stories featuring a quartet of popular fictional characters.  Three new heroes created by writers today and the fourth stars a classic hero from the 1930s.  Josh Reynolds provides a new Charles St. Cyprian – The Royal Occultist entry.  Joel Jenkins offers up his Native American shaman warrior, Lone Crow and Jim Beard relates a new ghostly cape starring his Sgt. Janus – Spirit Breaker.  Which left the book with one open slot and Ye Old Air Chief jumped on it in a flash.  As we've always been a big fan of the little known classic pulp character Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery, this was our chance to have fun with him.  And boy did we ever, making this particular Ravenwood adventure the sequel to our popular graphic novel, DAUGHTER OF DRACULA. That's right, you read that correctly.  For those of you who have ever wondered what happened to Marya Dracula after the events depicted in that adult comic tale, now you can find out in the story we titled “JAZZY.”
OCCULT DETECTIVES Vol One is now available from Amazon in hard copy and should be out in Kindle within a few days.  All the interior illustrations are by Art Director Rob Davis as is the cover, which was colored by Jesus Rodriguez.  We hope you'll check this out.  And honestly, it makes a Christmas gift for the readers in your family.

With OCCULT DETECTIVES, Airship 27 Productions is once again going holiday hiatus, as the Air Chief and his partner, Rob Davis, take some much needed R & R to devote ourselves to the holiday season.  But don't worry, Loyal Airmen, we've got some truly awesome titles in the queue that will be coming your way in 2015.  And with putting out 26 books this year, it will be interesting to see if we can match that count next year….or possibly surpass it?  Time will tell.

On the comic book front, the fourth collection of THE ADVENTURES OF MR. JIGSAW is finally out and available from Amazon.com – This volume collects regular issues 10-11-12 and features a bonus section of pin-ups by Tim Ellis, Rob Davis, Darren Goodhart, Will Meugniot and Gonzalo Martinez. Each a true gem.  So you Jiggy fans out there, we hope you'll check it out.  Another great gift idea for the comic readers in your life.

And finally, as many of you know, this past year, Colorado State University here in Fort Collins, hosted its first ever comic and gaming festival.  It was such a great hit, that the university is going to do it again next year in a much bigger campus venue.  The second FoCo Comics & Gaming Festival will be held on Sunday March 8th at CSU.   You can imagine the Air Chief's surprise when their mascot Ram, drop by unexpectedly this past week to make sure we were going to be in attendance.  We were only too glad to confirm we will certainly be a guest at this over-the-top fun event.  If you live in Colorado or Wyoming, mark that date on your calendar.  We'd love to see you there.

And that's it for this Flight Log, Loyal Airmen, we hope all of you are staying safe and warm from these cold winter blasts covering parts of the country and won't let that dampen your holiday spirit. Remember, tis the season to be jolly.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving with friends and family.  Ours was grand and the Air Chief is convinced he's added five pounds to his weight with just that one mean. Ha.  There's been a lot of great things happening at Hangar 27 Headquarters this week, so let's get to it.

Earlier in the week we released our 25th title of the year, YOUNG NEMO AND THE BLACK KNIGHTS by writer Michael Vance.  It chronicles the adventures of Jules Verne's immortal character Captain Nemo as a young adventurer and is a fast paced action tale from start to finish.  It features interior illustrations from artist Chuck Bordell with a cover penciled by Rob Davis and colored by Shane Evans. As ever, it is available from Amazon.com – both in hard copy and on Kindle. We hope you'll get it a look see.

Now this book has the honor of being our 100th title published by Airship 27 Productions!!  Nearly ten years ago, the Air Chief and his artist pal, Rob Davis, had this idea of paying homage to the classic pulps by publishing brand new pulp novels and anthologies featuring those old pulp heroes but as written by today's best writers and artists.  And here we are, ten years later and with 100 titles in our catalog.  Not bad for two pals and a dream.  Of course two sets of people deserve all the credit for our success. The first is all our amazing writers and artists who actually created these fantastic books.  To each we owe such a debt of gratitude.  The second group we have to thank is you, our Loyal Airmen, who have supported us both with your well wishes and your hard earned dollars.  Without you, the old Airship 27 could have never soared to the heights it has reached.  And believe us, the best is yet to come as we've already got a dozen great titles in production that you'll be seeing in 2015.  Again, thank you so much.

Of course the fun doesn't stop there.  Two years ago we introduced the first ever Airship 27 Log Patches and they went over with all of you like hot cakes.  Fans loved getting these at our con tables. So this year we decided it was time for a brand new premium to that end we've whipped up the official Airship 27 Coffee Mug which we will be selling at all our con appearances next year to include the Windy City Pulp & Paper show in Chicago and of course Pulp Fest in Columbus.  So if think you'd like to have one of these colorful cups to drink your favorite hot or cold beverages in, let us know and we'll put one aside for you.

And finally, as many of you know, earlier in the year we were approached by T. Glenn Bane of Scaldcrow Games Inc.  Glenn and his team do up gaming modules for popular role-playing games.  Somehow Glenn had tripped over our pulp character, Brother Bones – The Undead Avenger and thought he and his outfit could do up a great module based on Bones and his world of Cape Noire.  Rob and the Air Chief loved the idea, contracts were signed and off we went.  Glenn and his team are doing up a detailed map of Cape Noire, a character index that will list ALL the characters that have ever appeared in any Brother Bones story, be it pulps or comics and lots more goodies.  To include a brand new 5 pg Brother Bones comic strip that we wrote for this module and Glenn will be drawing.  Above is the on-line promo poster he has made up to start getting our fans ready.  This is going to be a Kickstarter progam and Glenn will be looking for cash sponsorship when the time comes to produce the module.  Rest assured we'll keep you all posted right here.

And that Loyal Airmen, is this week's post-Thanksgiving Flight Log.  Thanks as ever for stopping by. Take care, have a great week and we'll see you all back here in seven days.

Ron – Over & Out!