Greeting Loyal Airmen.  What with the baseball season officially over (we're into the October playoffs now) it was with a heavy heart that we watched our beloved Red Sox end at the bottom of the AL East. And when we look at the past three years, the roller coaster image pervades.  Under Bobby Valentine in 2012, the Sox sucked big-time. Then they came back last year to win it all; 2013 World Series Champs. You have to know that had everybody talking.

So what would one expect back in the Spring, coming into the 2014 season with pretty much the same team intact?  Not that we'd end up in last place…again.  Down…up…down…that roller coaster of life just keeps rolling along.  And its a great metaphor for life.  Really.  Sure, the journey for all of is from birth to death, no one can escape that.  But its never a simple, straight forward road from here to there.  Nope, it has its valleys and its peaks….all the time.  Life is that roller coaster adventure and when we learn to accept that, its that much more fun to enjoy the ride.  As for our beloved Red Sox, hey, there's always next year.

And keeping with the same metaphor, let's look at a really UP story for this past week.  Our good buddy and Airship 27 Productions' very own Art Director, Rob Davis finally reached that Promised Land known as Retirement this past week.   Yup, Rob kissed the day-job goodbye…forever.  And you know we couldn't be happier, having reached that goal ourselves almost thirteen years ago.  For Rob this means lots more time with his wife and family and a whole lot more time in his art studio doing what he does best, creating amazing projects through his art and design skills. Want proof?  Check out the following, please.

After almost two months without a new release, Airship 27 this past week put out our 19th title of the year, JUNGLE TALES – Vol II, featuring Ki-Gor Jungle Lord.  It features three new Ki-Gor adventures by retired teacher John Rose, with interior illustrations by Clayton Hinkle and a great cover by Andy Fish…all put together by Rob.  The book is now available at Amazon both in hard copy and on Kindle, as ever we hope you'll check it out.  Trust me, it was great to finally get a new title out…and with we broke our old production record of 18 books in one year done in 2012.  And with three full months left to go in 2014…..AND….Rob working in his studio most of the time from now on, it is going to be anybody's guess as to how many more really cool pulp books and comics we can get out before year's end.  Stay tuned, this is going to be fun.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we trust you are all enjoying this wonderful Fall season.  Baseball play-offs kick off next week and although our beloved Red Sox had a losing year, we are still anxious to see who does go on to win this year's classic World Series Championship.  As for the Sox, hey, as we say in baseball, “Wait till next year!”  Ha.

In trying to come up with this week's topic, the Air Chief got to thinking about the various facets of Airship 27 Productions.  When we and Rob Davis began this New Pulp Fiction venture nearly ten years ago now, both of us agreed artwork would be a crucial element in the process.  We wanted to be sure our books clearly followed the tradition of the classic pulps with both gorgeous cover art and beautiful interior illustrations.  Of course when we got the ball rolling ten years ago, we were one of a small handful of publishers.  All too soon that changed as more and New Pulp publishers entered the arena.

Both the Air Chief and Rob enjoy good, healthy competition from these other outfits as most of them are owned and operated by some of our dearest friends and colleagues.   In fact, we liked these men and women so much, we make it a point to not get upset when some of the more flamboyant souls dish out their marketing spiels as to being “…the leading company…”  “..the most innovative publisher..” etc. etc. etc. Its all hype intended to convince the readers they are the best at what they do.  We get it and again, for the most part, we simply laugh it off.  Rob and the Air Chief never started Airship 27 Productions to compete with anyone…but ourselves.  That means we are constantly challenging each other to find the best writers and artists out there and to assemble the best, quality products we can offer you, our loyal readers.  It is never about “beating” the other guy. 

But there is one particular element in our books that is superior to all others and that is the amazing professional excellence of the artwork we showcase with each and every title we release. In that department we don't take a back seat to anyone.  Period.  And honestly, our past 97 titles are proof enough to that claim.  Has every book we've put out been perfect?  Hell no.  There have been missteps along the way, but those only spur us to get better all the time.  Thus this week the Air Chief wanted to show off some of that fantastic artwork we're been bragging about.  What follows are three sneak peeks by three totally awesome artists.

                                         
                                                                  PHIL CHO
One of our most successful series of the past few years has been our SINBAD – The New Voyages. Thus far we've released two anthologies and one full length novel.  At present we are putting together another anthology and it features a brand new artist to Airship 27, one Phil Cho.  A mutual friend recommended us to Phil, he sent us some of his art samples and both Rob and the Airship were mightily impressed with his drawing skills.  Above is one of the 12 pieces that will be featured in this volume.  Phil is a true find and we're thrilled to have him on board.

                                        
                                                          NIK POLIWKO
Two years ago we published an anthology featuring a 1930s private eye called Rick Ruby, created by writers Bobby Nash and Sean Taylor.  Now we are putting together the second anthology in this series and were thrilled to have been able to recruit professional graphic artist Nik Poliwko to do the interior illos.  Nik is an artist we've long admired and when he agreed to join us on this project we were delighted.  Above is one of three pieces that will go with a tale called, “The Long Kill,” by none other that Ye Old Air Chief.  Trust me, we couldn't be more excited.

                                       
                                                    ZACHARY BRUNNER
Whereas we've been teasing with images from our interior illustrators, we thought you'd like to see the preliminary sketches for a new cover coming very, very soon from Airship 27 Productions.  Writer Chuck Miller has written a gripping pulp thriller called, “BAY PHANTOM – Confederacy of Devils,” which has a Shadow like hero operating in the Deep South during the 1930s. It is one of the finest pulp adventures we've ever had the pleasure of reading.  So to do it justice, we recruited the phenomenal Zachary Brunner to supply both the interior illustrations and the fully painted cover.  Above is Zachary's preliminary sketch for that cover and as you can see it is PURE PULP DYNAMIC.  This is Zachary's fourth book for Airship 27 and believe us, working with him is a joy for both Rob and the Air Chief.

And these are only three of the two dozen superb artists who work with us on a regular basis, both established pros and talented newcomers.  We are always on the look-out for new artists as we feel you, our Loyal Airmen, deserve nothing but the best and that's always our goal.  So far it seems to have worked extremely well.  Thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome to this week's Flight Log.  This time around the Air Chief thought we'd talk to you about two our favorite pulp heroes; one a classic from the 1930s & 40s and the other one of own invention and how they are both going to be showing up soon in new books and comics.

                             
I.V. Frost was created by writer Donal Wandrai and appeared in 18 stories, all of which were published in CLUE Magazine.  Frost was a combination Sherlock Holmes and Mike Hammer, a brilliant scientist, investigator not afraid to get his hands dirty or throw a punch.  He was assisted by the equally brilliant Ms. Jean Moray.  Having discovered Frost stories in a collection many, many…many years ago, we always entertained the hope that some day we'd be able to write new adventures of this great couple.  Lo and behold, along comes our old pal Joe Gentile of Moonstone Books asking if we'd like to write brand new I.V. Frost comics and prose adventures.  We jumped at the change and within a year had written one prose adventure and three comic strip tales.  Joe assigned artist Jake Minor (see above) to illustrate them.

Alas sometimes even the best plans don't materialize and as the years rolled on, it was obvious Moonstone just wasn't going to be able to do all of these Frost stories as they had hoped.  By this time Jake had drawn only one of the strips and illustrated the single prose story.  Joe assured us these two stories would eventually see print and we still believe that will happen.  But that still left us with two comic strips collecting dust in our files.  Which was when we got the idea to bring aboard our dear friend and Mr.Jigsaw artist Gary Kato to help us bring these two scripts to visual life.  Gary gladly signed on and we sent him the scripts. At the same time, pal Rob Davis, not only agreed to publish them in a one shot I.V. Frost comic, but went along with our idea of doing it FULL COLOR.  Till now there had never been a full color Redbud Studio title.  To that end we recruited super colorist Casey Beamis who did a fantastic job. When we told Jake Minor what we were doing to two unused scripts, he graciously volunteered to draw the cover for us.  The book was released just in time for Pulp Fest and that's the gorgeous cover above.

        
So thus far we were really happy with how all of this was turning out.  Then, out of the blue, Joe contacted us again.  This time he wanted to know if we'd be willing to help him finish a two part comic series he was producing that would feature a group of classic pulp heroes all banding together to save New York City.  For various reasons the writer who had penned the first half of the story was no longer available to make the changes needed in that script and so the Air Chief jumped in.  Imagine our surprise when we realized one of the pulp heroes involved was none other than our favorite I.V. Frost.  Hot dog!  We did our re-write of the first script and then went ahead and wrote the entire second part.  Believe us, Frost and Jean Moray continue to play a huge part in the saga which also includes, the Black Bat, the Phantom Detective, Jim Anthony Super Detective, Ki-Gor Jungle Lord and a brand new character of our own invention, Nighthawk the Flying Spy.  The art for this two part comic series is by the amazing Silvestre Szilagyi and that's one of his panels abvoe, showing Frost, Jean and a guest, in their lab dissecting a giant rat.  Oh, yeah.  This is wall to wall pulp action.  It will be a while before the books see print, but rest assured we'll let you know when they are due out.

                                              
Okay, so we've told you how much fun we've been having writing a little known classic pulp hero. Well, we also love creating brand new pulp heroes of our own, ala Brother Bones the Undead Avenger.  But the first real new pulp hero we ever created in prose was the beautiful Kate Furyaka, better known as Ms Fury.  Ages ago, we were invited to contribute a short story to an anthology to feature female action heroes.  The editor didn't care what the genres were, be they mystery, horror, western or whatever, as long as the hero was female.  Almost instantly we dreamed up Kate.  Her father was Japanese and her mother Scandinavia, which resulted in a tall, statuesque brunette with almond eyes.  Ms.Fury would be a female Doc Savage traveling the world having all kinds of adventures.  In this, her premier story, we also invented her companion and sidekick, former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, Donat Cartier…who also just happened to be a werewolf.

That one and only story was called FURY IN VERMONT and was published without any accompanying illustrations what-so-ever, much to our dismay.  Of course we'd always hoped to do more of her adventures but as often happens in life, other things got in the way.  Things like retiring from the day-job and then starting up Airship 27 Productions etc.etc.etc.  And poor Ms Fury just languished, all but forgotten.  Then, just about two years ago, fellow new pulp publisher, Tommy Hancock began publishing a regular anthology series called Pro Se Presents to which we submitted a few Brother Bones stories. When Tommy was happy to get those, we brought up FURY IN VERMONT and asked if he'd like to reprint it.  He was only too happy to do so…and this time found a really gifted artist to do up one illustration to go along with the story.  (See above.)  And so a new audience was introduced to Kate Furyaka after almost ten years.  Once again we wondered if we'd ever be able to do any new stories with her and Donat.  But it just wasn't to be. 

About three months ago, another pulp friend, Rich Harvey, informed us that he was going to get back into publishing his own mag, PULP ADVENTURES, which he had ended with issue #14 a long while back.  Rich was looking for material and put out the word.  Now as much as any such call for stories is tempting to a pulp writer like the Air Chief, there really are just so many hours in the day and our commitments for the rest of 2014 pretty much made it impossible for us to take on anything else.  So we let Rich's invite go floating by us truly hoping others would sign on instead.  A few more weeks go by and then we get a personal message from Rich saying he still needs material but this time tells us he is willing to reprint something we've already done and had published before.

Really?  And just like that Ms.Fury was calling us again to put her back on the stage.  We pulled out the manuscript to FURY IN VERMONT and cleaned it up yet again and sent it off to Rich explaining fully its print history.  Much to our delight, Rich really liked the story and agreed to use it.  Next thing we learn is that PULP ADVENTURES # 15 is also contain stories by E.Hoffman Price, Robert Leslie Bellem and our recently departed colleague C.J. Henderson all under a gorgeous cover by the legendary pulp painter, Norm Saunders.  Yup, that's it above.  Honestly, we are still pinching ourselves to see if this is all real.  PULP ADVENTURES # 15 will debut at Rich's own annual con, PULP ADVENTURE CON being held Nov. 1st this year…and then it will be available on his Bold Venture website.

But that's not the end of our story, Loyal Airmen.  You see what we didn't know when offering Rich this tale was that he was going to recruit artist Ed Countts to do some truly awesome interior illustrations for the stories, including ours.  Above is the beginning rough sketch of Kate by the talented Mr. Counts, the second artist to depict here. We weren't about to reveal the completed piece yet. That wouldn't be fair to those folks who pick up a copy at the show.  But the sketch alone has us really, really happy.

And that's how Ms.Fury's one and only adventure will, by Nov, have been published three times. As ever, its our hope that this third printing will as yet find her more readers.  Maybe enough to start banging on the Air Chief's door to bite the bullet and write more of her daring adventures.  Let's keep those fingers crossed.

And there you have it Loyal Airmen, I.V. Frost and Kate Furyaka, two pulp heroes the Air Chief absolutely enjoys and hopes to keep writing for many, many years to come. Thanks as ever for stopping by.  We'll see you back here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, as coincidence would have it, as we pen these words for you to read tomorrow morning it is Sept.11th.  Thirteen years since America was attacked by fanatical Islamic terrorists who despise our country and its freedoms. It was the beginning a war for the hearts and minds of all mankind that is still being waved today and our enemies grow ever stronger.  We must never weaken our resolve do defend our great democracy and way of life and defeat all who would dare destroy it.

We said coincidentally because this week saw the release of CAPTAIN AMERICA – WINTER SOLDIER on DVD.  Easily our favorite movie of the year and a whopping huge success as the sequel to CAPTAIN AMERICA – THE FIRST AVENGER.  As most of you know, Cap was created during the days of World War II when America was at war with similar barbarians as we face to day.  Artists Jack Kirby and Joe Simon wanted to inspire us with a hero who would reflect our core values, our love of justice and freedom for all men and women.  And so they gave us a hero draped in red, white and blue; Steve Rogers.

When Joe Johnston brought him to life two years ago in that first great movie, he brilliantly retold his origin story and his battle against the Nazis.  Now, with this excellent sequel, we pick up the tale as Steve Rogers is truly a man-out-of-time having to adjust to our new sensibilities and a paranoid world where things are not so much black and white any more, but muddied grays.  Who are our allies for real? And who is the enemy fighting from the shadows.

In WINTER SOLDIER, the Russo brothers stay true to exactly who Captain America, showing us that his old fashion values have never gone out of of style, but merely been forgotten.  But when it comes time to fight, Cap is once again willing to sacrifice all for this great country of ours.  Chris Evans is remarkable as  Steve Rogers and Cap, aptly supported by Anthony Mackie as his new ally, the Falcon and Sebastian Shaw as his old friend turned adversary.  We get lots more of the Black Widow – Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L.Jackson is great as ever as Nick Fury, head of SHIELD.  What makes the film work is its deft blend of both drama and action, each coming in equally does throughout and creating a fantastic thriller for our times.  Proving that such a character can be a hero in both the past and the present.

If you haven't seen it yet, do so.  We think you'll agree with us it is a cinematic winner from start to finish.

And although there is no “real” Captain America in these troubled times post-9/11, his spirit does live in all the brave men and women who continue to serve in our armed forces.  They deserve all our respect and thanks…and prayers.

GOD BLESS THEM AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome to this week's Flight Log.  The Air Chief has been very busy lately writing both comics and pulp stories.  Last week we wrapped up our latest piece of prose fiction, a Ravenwood Stepson of Mystery adventured called “Jazzy,” which will appear in our new series. OCCULT DETECTIVES.   No sooner did we set that aside then we were invited to contribute a new Black Bat tale to a BB anthology in the works over at Moonstone Pulps.  We've done many stories for Joe Gentile, Moonstone's managing editor, including our Avenger story, “Vengeance Is Mine,” which won us our first Pulp Factory Award.  So it is always a pleasure to work for Moonstone. 

Whereas back at Airship 27 Productions we've got lots of new books in works including a brand new, full length western novel by popular writer, R.A. Jones.  Jones' last book for us was the Indian fantasy adventure, “Deathwalker.”   Now he's turning his talents to doing a straight out, old fashion western to be called, “Gun Glory,” and its hero is a young veteran of the Civil War named Jason Mankiller.  In the book he is known as the Man Who Cries Blood….all because while on a ruckus drinking binge with his fellow soldiers, Mankiller had a tattoo put on his cheek that looks like drops of blood coming from his eyes.

Upon reading/editing the manuscript, we went and recruited the super talented Neil T. Foster to be our interior illustrator for this particular title.  In conferring with Neil, we suggested he model the character of Jason Mankiller after the actor, and one of our favorites, Clint Walker.  We grew up watching CHEYENNE every week.   Neil went to work and a few days later send us these model sheets to approve.  We were totally bowled over and gave him the green light to proceed.  At present he is hard at work on the actual nine illustrations that will appear in the published book.  Stay tuned, we'll, as ever, keep you posted.

And for all you Mr. Jigsaw fans out there, we are finally putting together issue # 13 of his magazine, MR. JIGSAW Man of a Thousand Parts.   Above is a sneak-peek at the cover by artist Gary Kato. Which also highlights the fact that guest-starring in this issue is Liberty Belle, a character created by the legendary Steve Ditko long-long ago for Charlton Comics.  She only appeared in one story and then was never seen again…until now.  Note, this 16 paged will also be featured in publisher Mort Todd's new CHARLTON ACTION book…and in full color there.  Again, Loyal Airmen, we will keep you posted.

Meanwhile the Air Chief is currently wrapping up a new comic project for Moonstone Comics called, “Guns of the Black Bat,” combining our loves for both comics and pulps.  This one has tons of classic pulp heroes all coming together for a world-spanning adventure.  We think you are going to love it.

And that wraps us up for another week, Loyal Airmen.  As ever, thanks for dropping up. See you back here in a week.
Ron – Over & Out!!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, and here we are with another Flight Log filled with all kinds of odds and ends. Ever since coming home from this year's Pulp Fest, we've been trying to play catch up and keep you all posted on what we have going on in both the pulp and comic fields.  But first we want to discuss a couple of TV series we've truly been enjoying lately.

BBC America just finished airing THE MUSKETEERS, and wonderful retelling of Alexander Dumas' classic adventure novel, THE THREE MUSKETEERS.  Always one of the Air Chief's favorite classics, we enjoyed lots of film adaptations over the years and were happily delighted at just how well this series was done.  The stories to find their inspirations in Dumas' original but having the luxury of many hours, the writers have added lots more depth and characterization.  It also doesn't hurt that the cast is great.  Artos (Tom Burke) d'Artagnan (Luke Pasqualino) Portos (Howard Charles) and Aramis (Santiago Cabrera) are all spot on with their roles.  And kudos to BBC America for casting a mulatto in the role of Portos, paying tribute to Dumas who was himself of mixed ancestry.  And of course we be remiss if we didn't mention Peter Capaldi (the new Dr. Who) as the villainous Cardinal Richelieu.  The first season just wrapped last week and if you haven't seen it, cheer up as it has just been released on DVD (see cover above) and a most reasonable price. The Air Chief loves the series that much that we picked this up today and plan on watching it all over again.  Of course it is fun to hear what are classic French characters speaking British English, but that is easily forgotten as each tale unfolds.

Speaking of French history, the Air Chief has been enjoying the show WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, produced by Ancestry.com wherein famous celebrities try to search their own family trees in order to uncover their lineage.  The series has been on for several years and is truly fascination.  As for the Air Chief, both my parents were of French Canadian heritage.  My grandfather, John Baptiste Fortier move to Southern New Hampshire when he was 13 years old, from Quebec.  His father was Pierre Fortier. We've often wondered what prompted them to make such a radical exodus from their homeland.  My mother's maiden name was Richer, her father was Donat Richer and his family settled in the nearby town of Sanford, Maine.  Growing up, we spoke both French and English, though we are sad to say we've forgotten most of our French over the years.  Mom once told us that her father was embarrassed as a child growing up in Quebec because his mother did not speak French.  We then learned that her maiden was Hamlin and her people had migrated to Canada from England.  We've never really sat down to explore our ancestry but several years ago our oldest son, Scott, found a Fortier Association headquartered in Canada and there a family coat-of-arms.  According the records of this organization, the first Fortier to travel from France to Canada was one Antoine Fortier, a master shipbuilder, ergo the sailing ship at the bottom of the crest.  He was supposedly from Normandy, represented by the twin lions and settled in an area of Canada known for fertile soil good for planting fruit.  Finally the parapets represent the name's translation, Fortier meaning someone who works in a Fort…someone strong.  One of these days, the Air Chief is going to have to explore this in a whole lot more detail.  Right now, we love to have this coat-of-arms sculpture in wood. Would look very cool hanging up in our office, don't you think?

As we stated at the start of this Flight Log, we've been keeping busy and are happy to finally announce the availability of our two latest comic projects from Redbud Studio.  PARADISE FALLS is the first issue of a sci-fi thriller. It's a crime story told in a futuristic city and was written by yours truly with art by John D. Williams and lettering by Warren Montgomery.  Warren also did a great job in coloring the cover; the book is in black and white and we had a lot of fun putting it together.  The second release is our very first full color comic book from Redbud Studio and it is based on a little pulp hero from the 1930s, I.V. Frost a character created by pulp writer Donald Wandrei who penned 18 Frost short stories for CLUE magazine.  Frost was a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Mike Hammer, a scientific detective not afraid to get his hands dirty.  He was accompanied by the smart and sexy Jean Moray.  This one shot comic features two complete stories by me again, art and lettering by Gary Kato, the cover art was by Jake Minor and all coloring to include the marvelous interior pages was by Casey Beamis.  Both books were edited by Rob Davis and can be purchased on-line from (www.IndyPlanet.com)  We truly hope you'll give them a look see.

                             
                                  RAVENWOOD – Stepson of Mystery

And finally to close things up this week we thought we'd let you know what the Air Chief has been working on his coming back to Hangar 27.  Later this year Airship 27 Productions will be releasing a new anthology called THE OCCULT DETECTIVES and it will feature four stories all starring occult detectives.  On board are writers Joel Jenkins, Joshua Reynolds, Jim Beard and the Air Chief.  Yup, we are putting the finishing touches on a brand new Ravenwood – Stepson of Mystery.  After publishing two anthologies starring this very cool pulp hero, we just couldn't turn down the chance to write him and his supporting characters just one time.  The story is called JAZZY and that's all we'll say for now.  But it is a really special project for us on a personal level which will become quite clear when the book is released.  Stay tuned, we'll certainly keep you all posted.

And there you go, another week done and into the Labor Day Weekend.  The end of Summer is only weeks away.  Enjoy the holiday weekend, have fun, be careful on the roads and see you back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, and welcome to this week's Flight Log.  This week we are thrilled to announce the release of the first new Mr. Jigsaw comic strip in well over thirty years ago.

The CHARLTON ARROW # 2 published by Mort Todd of Maine is a book devoted to that great little comic company from Derby Conn. where so many of us got our start.  The origin of Mr.Jigsaw by the Air Chief and artist Gary Kato was our second sale to Charlton and appeared as the cover story to SCARY TALES # 38, in full color.  Since then, all his subsequent appearances have been in black and white.  Ergo our excitement of seeing him in color again.

And here's we are holding the book open to that special new Jiggy story.  We truly hope all our Mr. Jigsaw fans will pick up at copy.  It is available at (www.IndyPlanet.com) and thanks again to editor/publisher Mort Todd, who by the way, also was the colorist.  He did such an amazing job, both the Air Chief and Gary were thrilled.  Oh, and as a tease, we are right now doing a new Mr. Jigsaw story for Todd's newest title CHARLTON ACTION coming out soon.  Of course all these tales will be featured still in our regular Mr. Jigsaw black and white series as well.

Sticking with our comics, almost ten years ago artist Rob Davis and the Air Chief created the adult horror graphic novel, DAUGHTER OF DRACULA and have kept it print ever since.  It continues to sell for us as its audience grows by word of mouth. Recently we sold lots of copies at Pulp Fest in Columbus.  Enough so that we thought it was time to do up a brand new edition and make available for the very first time from Amazon.  And that's what we did.  Above are the covers for the new Amazon edition, note we also lowered the old price on the book.  Again, please, this is an ADULT graphic novel, not for little ones. It tells the highly charged love story between Marya, the Daughter of Dracula and Manfred von Richthofen, the famous German Ace known as the Red Baron during World War One.  If you've never read it, we hope you'll try this brand new edition.  As ever, thanks for your continued support.

And finally we end this week's Flight Log with some truly exciting news concerning the PULP FACTORY AWARDS.  These awards are handed by the Yahoo Group Pulp Factory, made up of new pulp fans, writers, artists and editors and presented each year at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show.  For the past five years the PFAs only covered three categories; Best Pulp Novel, Best Pulp Short Story, Best Pulp Cover & Best Interior Illustrations.  This year the group has okayed a fourth award (see one of the past statues above) in BEST PULP COLLECTION.  This will cover both anthologies, as written by multiple writers and single author collections.  If a traditional anthology wins, the award will go to the editor, if it is a single author collection, then of course the award goes to that writer.  We ere extremely excited about this as the PFAs have become a huge part of the New Pulp Community in helping to make the work of New Pulp writers and artists better recognized throughout the world.

And there you have it for this week, Loyal Airmen, as we move closer to Labor Day and the end of summer.   Schools are open once again here in Colorado and seeing children of all ages rushing about every morning has been a pleasant reminder that Fall is on the way.  Our good luck to all of you with kids in school, or even if its you that is still a student.  We hope the coming semester is both enjoyable and positive.

Ron – Over & Out!
                       

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we are back home to Hangar 27 after a hugely successful trip to Columbus, Ohio last weekend and the fun we had at Pulp Fest 2014.  We saw so many old friends, colleagues etc. and happily made lots of new ones.  The Air Chief realizes many of you have never been to a pulp con and so for this Flight Log we thought a few of the pictures we took and allow you all to get some small idea of how much these shows truly are.  Above is the back wall to the main hustlers room where thousands upon thousands of old and new pulps were on sale.  The last two table in the row above…is none other than  those of Airship 27 Productions and you can just make out Art Director Rob Davis seated there.

And here's an up front shot of Rob and ye old Air Chief himself.  We had lots of banners and displays but of course the real gems were our amazing pulp titles on the tables before.  As ever our loyal fans were thrilled by our new titles and we sold lots and lots of books.

Here's another of the hustler's floor as taken from the balcony on the second floor.  So many great vendors with so much cool stuff.  You just couldn't see it all in just a few days.  The Air Chief picked up a few new pulps he has been wanting for some time now and lucked out in finding an old G-8 & His Battle Aces comic book from 1960.

As we mentioned above many of our writing colleagues stopped by including our pals, the Three Pulp Musketeers (left to right) Rick Lai, Frank Schildiner and Jim Beard – with the Green Hornet plastic ring.

Writer Bob Craig stopped by to visit, a truly wild and wacky guy.  Rob's first pulp story was published this year in our GREEN LAMA – MYSTIC WARRIOR which Bob proudly displays here.  One of his next projects for us will be a brand new GEORGE CHANCE – THE GREEN GHOST tale.  He must really love that color.  Ha.

And here we have writers and vendors, Ralph Angelo and David White.  David is an old pro at these shows whereas this was Ralph's first time as a writer.  And justifiably so as he won this year's New Pulp Award for Best New Writer.  Both were laughing merrily every time we passed their table.

One of the real joys of attending this show every year is that our old buddy, comics writer Tony Isabella always makes it a point to stop by and visit with us.  You'll excuse the blurry photo, the Air Chief isn't the best cameraman.  But we trust you can see his Church of Godzilla on his way cool Tee-shirt.   We're excited that Tony will one day be writing books for Airship 27.  More on that as it develops.

Here's writer, pulp fan David Walker with the Air Chief, call us the boys in blue. And look closely, David is wearing a custom made Captain Midnight short as he had written a Captain Midnight story for one of our past LANCE STAR – SKY RANGER anthologies.  David is now working on a full length Captain Midnight novel for us.

One of the real highlights of PULP FEST every year are the author readings and here we have Frank Schildiner doing a reading from one of his many published workds.

And here we have the Air Chief with pal Ray Riethmeier.  Ray is one of quality proof-readers for our books and is wearing his amazing Captain Ron tee-shirt.  We get a big chuckle every time we see him wearing it.  The shirt was designed for my appearances on the Zone 4 podcast.

Finally, my personal favorite moment at PULP FEST every year happens when we have the honor and fun of moderating the New Pulp Panel which takes place on Saturday afternoon and is always made up of today's finest new pulp writers.  This year, joining me in a super discussion of “The Fun of Writing Pulp Fiction” were (left to right) Dr. Art Sippo, Ralph Angelo, Wayne Reinagel, Frank Schildiner & Jim Beard.  They were all fantastic and our audience truly appreciated their sharing their writing insights.

And there you have it, Loyal Airmen, a small encapsulation of our great three days at this year's Pulp Fest.  We hope you liked seeing the pictures and that they make you envious.  Maybe next year you can save up those pennies and come join us.  We'd love to have you join in the fun.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen.  As we promised you last week, this week's entry would be a few days early as by the time most of you read this, the Air Chief and his partner, Rob Davis will be in Columbus, Ohio attending this year's Pulp Fest…and having a blast.  But before we head out, we managed to produced and release our 18th title of the year.  It's a weird western written by Fred Adams Jr. with cover and interior illustrations by Zachary Brunner, two of the most creative people we've ever had the pleasure of working with. To that end we'd like to show you just how the cover for this book came about, step by step.

Whereas the story combines elements of horror with the western genre, we certainly wanted both aspects to be visible on our cover.  There is a scene in the book where we learn the main villain has been possessed by a demonic entity that hides in his body and in one particularly gruesome scene, appears as tentacles coming out of his stomach.  Okay, so we had the idea of showing this with our bad guy standing in the middle of a typical, classic, dusty western town.   The Air Chief then scoured the internet for the appropriate elements that would make up this composition.  Needing a tough looking cowboy with his gun drawn, we found just the right image on an old paperback cover.  See above.

Next we had to find just the right background scene and began looking at western towns until we found one that was right for our idea.  We liked the brown and yellow hues and imagined what it would be like with our evil gunfighter standing dead center in front of this setting.

Then it was time to find just the right, oozing, twisting, awful looking tentacles and our search turned up the above image.  Of course we knew it would eventually be colored…but we liked how each strand twisted around like the living thing it is suppose to represent.  So we then send all these three pictures to our super talented Art Director, Rob Davis and gave him the task of combining them to create our desired cover image.

Of course we knew Rob would come through for us like he always does.  When seeing the above photo-shop picture, we thrilled as we now knew we were on the right track.  The only thing that would need to be adjusted in this composite would be to shrink the tentacles….these here were too large and covered too much of the cowboy.  So it was time to send this off to cover painter Zachary Brunner…and explain what we required.  Please keep in mind, we were not asking Zach to “copy” this, but rather do a painting inspired by it.

A few days later Zach sent in the above sketch to see if he was on the right track.  Both Rob and the Air Chief were thrilled.  We discussed the color palette we wanted Zach to use, to be sure we got those yellows and browns for the down and the sky needed to be a very bright, clear blue.  We also suggested giving the tentacles a sickly green hue and adding red to the cowboy's eyes…to make him truly horrific. Then we sat back and waited for Zach to do his magic.

And here is Zachary Brunner's amazing rendition ….completed.  Honestly, he surpassed all our expectations with this piece.  It is totally what we had envisioned…and more.  Zach is one of the most talented and generous artist we have ever had the pleasure of working with and we hope to continue doing so for a long, long time.

Then Rob did his design magic, adding the title, whose colors work to balance the entire piece, the font is also perfect …along with the author's name and our Airship 27 logo…and voila, we have the 18th Airship 27 Productions title of the year.  Having posted the cover all over the internet this morning to announce its release, we've already started getting many wonderful comments of praise for the cover.  And so decided to give all you Loyal Airmen a behind-the-scene look at how these amazing covers come together.
SIX-GUN TERRORS by Fred Adams, Jr is now on sale at Amazon in hard copy and within a few days will be available on Kindle.  We hope you'll check it out.

And there you go, Loyal Airmen.  We're off to PULP FEST.  See you next week.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we are sure most of you who visit this Flight Log know what diehard Red Sox fans we are here at Airship 27 HQ.  But one of the things we've learned over the years is just how hard it is to win a World Series Championship at the end of a grueling season, unlike any other in sports.  In 2012 the Red Sox suffered one of their most humiliating seasons ever under the awful leadership of Billy Valentine. Things were shaken up at the end of that year, a new general manager in Ben Cherington was broad on board and he immediately hired John Farrell as the new Manager.  New pieces were added to the team and along came 2013, which all sportscasters predicted with we a so-so rebuilding season.  Yeah, right.  The team expected to simply break even won it all in one of the most amazing seasons in all of Red Sox history.  So 2013 ends and as ever, management loses some of their key players.  But not so much that it should adversely affect the chemistry of the team, right?  Wrong.  Whatever that unknown element is that bands a group of 25 men together to win a World Series, when you take out even one or two of these players you change the recipe and that, like this year, can prove to be disastrous.  Lo and behold, today the Red Sox, holding firm to the last place in their division, began trading off the best of their roster, especially in the pitching pen in the hopes of gaining what has been critically missing this year; consistent good pitching and hard hitting bats.  Within the last week they've let go of Jake Peavy (to the Padres), Felix Doubront (to the Cubs), Jon Lester (to Oakland A's), John Lackey (to the Cardinals), all starters at the beginning of the year and Andrew Miller (to the Orioles), a left handed reliever at the same time also swapping out utility player Jonny Gomes (to Oaklland) and short-stop Stephen Drew (to the Yankees).  For all this, they in turn got one of the best sluggers in all of baseball today, Yeonis Cespedes and at least 8 of the top young pitching prospects in the minor leagues.

What a difference a year does make.  Reading expert analysis throughout the day, it is clear baseball watchers think these moves were all smart and will help the Sox put together a powerful new team come April 2015.  But it sure will be a new team filled with lots of new faces.  That's the way the baseball roller-coaster goes, up one year and down the next.  Here's hoping 2015 the ride goes up again.

To moving on to other fun topic, one of our favorite sci-fi TV shows on the air these days is BBC America's amazing ORPHAN BLACK.   Last weekend at the huge San Diego Comic Con, it was revealed that IDW Comics is soon going to be publishing an Orphan Black comic book series and they revealed the cover art for the first series.  Imagine our surprise when we saw that it has been beautifully painted by our very good friend, artist Nick Runge.  Nick is one of the finest talents in commercial art today and he recently packed his bags and moved from San Diego to Los Angeles.  Look at that cover above closely and tell the Air Chief this fellow shouldn't be doing movie posters.  We wish Nick all the luck in the world and for sure, we're going to be picking up this comic when it comes out.

On the movie scene, we've been huge fans of French writer-director Luc Besson for many years and this past week went to see his latest, a sci-fi thriller called LUCY starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.  It takes its central plot from old notion that we human only used 10% of our brain's capacity. This theory had been suddenly debunked in recent years but hey, this isn't a biography, it's sci-fi and if you can believe a kid bitten by radioactive spider can then climbs walls, then sit back and enjoy a really well made suspense story about an innocent girl who has evolution forced upon her by a gang of criminals who cut her open and put a new experimental drug in her stomach.  When the bag accidentally ruptures, the chemicals begin to affect Lucy's brain, making it work evolve and thus giving her strange and alarming abilities.  Normally Besson's movies are all about the action, but that is not the case here and the appeal of this movie is watching how Lucy slowly begins to change and the apprehension at what she is becoming is the crux of the tale.  Kudos for Johnsson for making us believe this metamorphosis and as ever, Morgan Freeman, given very little to do here except explain the science metaphysics, does so brilliantly.  We think if he read the telephone book, he'd win an Oscar.  Anyway, if you'd like to see a very good, short and entertaining flick, we give LUCY two major thumbs up.

Next up our newest pulp adventure from Airship 27 Productions is now on-sale at Amazon.com
CHALLENGER STORM # 2 CURSE OF POSEIDON by Don Gates with art by the great Michael Kaluta is an action packed sequel to the first Challenger Storm book we released a little over a year ago.  Gates packs old fashion pulp thrills on every page.  And we are thrilled to have it out now. We will have copies at this year's Pulp Fest.  Speaking of whick….

Finally we'd like to remind all you Loyal Airmen one last time that Pulp Fest coming fast. In fact this time next week, the Air Chief and his partner, Rob Davis, will be in Columbus, Ohio manning our two Airship 27 tables stacked high with all our latest pulp novels and anthologies.  The show looks to be bigger and better this year and we truly hope to see many of you there again this year.  Okay, back to packing.

Ron – Over & Out!