Greetings Loyal Airmen, we are back safe and sound from last weekend's amazing Windy City Pulp & Paper Con.  The show as was a huge blast and the Air Chief and his art director, Rob Davis truly had a great time getting together with so many of you Loyal Airmen and lots of our fellow pulp colleagues.

And here's the Air Chief and Rob once again manning our two tables filled with all kinds of pulp and comic goodies.  Sadly, by some snafu, Rob forgot to pack our glorious Airship 27 banner which we always have standing tall behind our tables.  It was missed, but didn't stop us or our Loyal Airmen who stopped by from having a great time.  A real tip of the Pulp Fedora goes out to the show's two promoters, Doug Ellis and John Gunnison.  Again they outdid themselves.

Of course the entire reason for this show are the pulps and they were on display for all to see, as this fan is discovering in front of this WALL OF PULPS.  From the old, to the reprints to the New Pulp, if it was Pulp Related, it was at Windy City.  Oh, yeah.  Pulp collectors were in heaven.

For the second year in the row the con featured NEW PULP SUNDAY.  A block of five hours set aside on the last day of the show for five panels dealing with New Pulp Fiction.  Participating were 18 writers, editors, artists and publishers, all part of the New Pulp Movement.  The Air Chief had the fun of moderating the first of these and on our panel we had, from left to right, Tommy Hancock, David White, Rick Lai and Chris Bell. If you ever plan on attending the Windy City show in the future, to make it point to stick around for New Pulp Sunday, you'll be glad you did.
             
                               
             

And for the fifth year in the row the Air Chief had the honor of announcing the winners of the Pulp Factory Awards given to the best in New Pulp Fiction and Art published the previous.  Helping us with this delightful chore were Rob Davis and Tommy Hancock. This years four Quill & Gears trophies went to….

BEST PULP NOVEL –  Will Murray fro DOC SAVAGE – SKULL ISLAND from Altus Press.
BEST PULP SHORT STORY – Andrew Salmon for THE LIMEHOUSE WEREWOLF from Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Vol 4 from Airship 27 Productions.
BEST PULP COVER – Rob Moran for BROTHERS BONES – SIX DAYS OF THE DRAGON from Airship 27 Productions.
BEST INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS – Sean Ali for PRO SE PRESENTS # 19 – Pro Se Productions.

Our congratulations on these winners and all those nominated in this year's award program.

And finally, aside from the fun of the panels, the awards, the auctions etc.etc.etc. the biggest reason the Air Chief attends this show is to meet our Loyal Airmen, none more loyal and supportive than Mr. John Bodnar seen above with the Air Chief.  John is a wonderful human being and despite some truly serious health issues that have plagued him for years, he still manages to smile and carry on.  We are so grateful for his continued support and happy to call him a true friend.  God bless, John and thanks always.

And there you go, all you other Loyal Airmen.  That's it for our Windy City Con report.  One day maybe we'll post a picture of you with the Air Chief.  Until then, take care and thanks for stopping by.

Ron – Over & Out!

Well Loyal Airmen, its that time again when the Air Chief packs up Airship 27 for his flight to Chicago and the annual Windy City Pulp & Paper Con.  Believe me, as ever we are truly excited for this show once again.  We, and our Airship 27 Productions partner, Rob Davis have tons of new pulp novels and anthologies to display at our tables for all those loyal pulp fans attending.  We'll also have four of our terrific writers stopping by out tables to sign copies of their books.  Chris Bell, David C.Smith and Gene Moyers will be on hand Saturday and Jim Beard will stop by on Sunday morning.  Looks to be a great weekend, hope to see many of you there.  That's why this Flight Log is a day early.

Speaking of fun shows, the Air Chief has a blast last Saturday at the FoCo Comics & Gaming Festival, Fort Collins first ever comic show.  So many fans came out to show, it was a packed house and we had a blast.  The Air Chief also got to unveil his new con banner for the very first time.  Here framing it with us, is Colorado school teacher, Diane Odbert, a good friend, avid comic reader and truly wonderful teacher.  The Air Chief did a presentation at her school a few weeks back and when we mentioned the comic show, Diane promised to come over and we were so glad she did.  So congrads to the college students of CSU here in town for putting on one hell of a great comic event.

Last year, one our colleagues, writer/editor Van Allen Plexico announced he was going to put together an anthology featuring the characters from James Fenimore Cooper's classic LAST OF THE MOHICANS; an American adventure classic.  It has always been one of the Air Chief's favorites.  So we immediately signed on and wrote a story called RED BLIZZARD.  Earlier this week, Van released the finished book via his imprint White Rocket Books.  Alongside my tale are three others by Jim Beard, Frank Schildiner and I.A. Watson, all truly superb writers.  The cover was done by my dear friend, Denver based Laura Givens who truly outdid herself.  The book is now on sale at Amazon.com in both hard copy and on their Kindle for E-Readers.  Writing this particular story was, for the Air Chief, a dream come true.  We hope you'll check it out.  We are told Van is going to have copies at Windy City, where he too will be in attendance.

And there you have this early Flight Log, Loyal Airmen.  Thanks as ever for stopping by.  Next week we hope to report on the Pulp Con and the fun we had while there. Take care,
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we are going to have some artistic fun with you this week.  A few days ago we released our latest Airship 27 Productions title and we thought it would be fun to take you back on how this amazing cover was put together and the two remarkable artists responsible for it.

Our story begins sometime last year when the Air Chief was approached by writers Derrick Ferguson and Joshua Reynolds.  Both of have done lots of great work for Airship 27 Productions in the past so you know, when they offer up an idea, the Air Chief is all ears.  This time around they had this idea of writing a full length pulp novel in which a young Dillon, the black hero created by Derrick (one of the most popular new pulp heroes out there today) would seek out a 70 yrs old Jim Anthony; Super Detective to be his teacher in all things dealing with adventure.  They were going to call the book THE VRIL AGENDA and after we read the loose plot outline, we sign on immediately.  The Air Chief right at the offset this would turn out to be a very special projects.

To that end, we thought it would be wise to announce the book's arrival way-way ahead of time.  Something we rarely ever do.  But the Air Chief wanted to get pulp fans excited about what was coming their way and so we enlisted the aid of our pal, and Airship 27 Art Director Rob Davis to do up a special preview poster announcing the book.  Whereas in the previous Jim Anthony books we've published here at Airship 27, we've always imagine him looking like the late body-builder-turned-actor, Steve Reeves. As for Dillon, he always had us imagining football-star-turned actor Jim Brown. So we suggested to Rob that he do up an image to showcase these two heroes in that fashion.  Above is the resulting, super wonderful poster Rob did up.  Of course he, on his own initiative added zeppelin, the skull and Nazis swastika, all recognizable pulpish icons.  Soon as Rob was done, we plastered this all over the internet and on every pulp website we could think of.  It served its purposes, as it instantly stirred lots of excitement amongst pulp fans everywhere.  Meanwhile Derrick and Joshua set about writing the book and within six months of this poster being released, they had delivered the manuscript.

As soon as the Air Chief finished reading/editing the manuscript, we handed it back to Rob as he was going to be doing the nine interior illustrations that would grace the final book.  While Rob started part of the process, it was time for us to find just the right cover artist.  We had long been fans of artist Adam Shaw who, in the past few years, had some remarkable covers for other New Pulp companies. Covers that truly impressed us and we had always harbored a wish that someday we would be able to recruit to do a cover for Airship 27.  Having so enjoyed the experience of reading THE VRIL AGENDA, the Air Chief decided it was time to give Adam a call.  We dropped him a letter explaining the book's plot etc, how excited we were  about the project and then inquired if he would be at all interested in doing the cover for us.  Several days later Adam replied affirmatively.  His schedule was pretty full up, but if we didn't mind waiting a few more months, he would agree to signing on.  Well, that decision was a no-brainer and we told him we had no real deadline.  At this point Adam asked if we'd produced any kind of art at all or if we had any definitive concepts for what the cover should be.  The Air Chief immediately sent him the poster Rob had put together and Adam liked it a great deal.  Enough so that he opted to make it his composition and a week later send us his own pencil roughs of that image done in his style.  Both Rob and the Air Chief were thrilled and he was given the green light to proceed.

Now a few more months go by and then we get a letter from Adam saying he has begun work on the cover painting for THE VRIL AGENDA.  The above image was the next piece we received.  It was superb and everything we had hoped for.  The only suggestion the Air Chief had was to lighten the color of Jim Anthony's hair, reminding Adam that in this picture he is 70, though fit, his hair should be mostly all silver color.  Adam agreed and informed he still had a few more elements he wanted to add to the painting to include the swastika on the zeppelin.  By now Rob and the Air Chief were really excited.

And so another week goes by and voila, Adam turns in the completed cover, considerably lighter than the previous version, with all the detailing in place.   The Air Chief was thrilled beyond words.  This is simply one magnificent pulp image.  But upon reflection, we realized Adam, by using up all the available space he could within the confines of the image, had inadvertently created a real problem for us.  How on earth could we add the title, our logos, the author's names and anything else to sell the book…without covering up way too much of a truly gorgeous piece of artwork.  The old Air Chief was really scratching his head on this one and relayed his concerns to Rob, not believing there was any way to wrap this up with all that added stuff and not in some way diminish the impact of the overall image.  Of course the Air Chief should have had more faith in Mr. Davis.  Honestly, since becoming our partner in this pulp venture, Rob has become one of the most talented book designers in the business.  We should have know he'd figure out a way to make Adam's picture soar….at the same turning into an actual book cover.

Rob's ingenious solution was to add a orange/brown border that would match Adam's palette of colors, with ample space at the top for the book's title.  From that point on, it was just a matter of adding the other elements so as to not cover the primary heroes or their background.  He cleverly used the same font he had whipped up for the original poster way back when, and a thinner, more art deco type for the character's names and the bottom tag line.  When the Air Chief saw the final, completed cover, he about jumped out of his chair to yell…WAHOOOO!!!   Since releasing the book, earlier this past week, we have received nothing but enthusiastic praise for this cover, which truly credits two amazing artists, Adam Shaw and Rob Davis, work in sync to produce something so damn beautiful.

And of course, the book IS now on sale at available at Amazon in both hard-copy and on Kindle.  It is a fantastic read, one of the best we've ever published.  We hope you'll give it look-see.

And that wraps up this week's Flight Log, Loyal Airmen, we hope you've enjoyed this peek behind the curtain on how great artwork evolves.  Thanks ever for stopping by and until next week, take care,

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we hope you are all enjoying this beautiful Spring season. In this week's Flight Log we are going to examine a great little horror flick that went on to be a huge cult classic and ultimately spawned several neat sequels and even a comic series of its own; FRIGHT NIGHT!

Written and directed by Tom Holland, FRIGHT NIGHT is a horror film released in 1985.  The film's plot follows young Charley Brewster who discovers that his next-door neighbor, Jerry Dandridge, is a vampire. When no one believes him, Charley seeks the help of Peter Vincent, a TV show who plays a vampire hunter, to help him stop Jerry from starting a massive killing spree.  The film is a wacky blend of suspense and black comedy that in the end won it much enthusiastic praise from moviegoers making it almost overnight an instant cult classic.

1985 CAST
Chris Saradon as Jerry Dandridge
William Ragsdale as Charley Brewster
Amanda Bearse as Amy Peterson
Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent
Stephen Geoffreys as Edward “Evil” Ed Thompson
Dorothy Fielding as Judy Brewster

Of course once Hollywood has a hit on its hands, can a sequel be too far behind?  This in 1988 they released FRIGHT NIGHT PART II with William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall reprising their roles from the first film and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace.  The story begins a couple of years later.  Charley, as a result of psychiatric therapy, now believes that Jerry Dandridge was nothing but a serial killer posing as a vampire.  He no longer believes such things as vampires actually exists.  Now in college, Charley and his new girlfriend, Alex, go visit his old friend, Peter Vincent.  While there, Charley looks out the window and sees four coffins being loaded onto a hearse. As they are leaving Vincent's apartment, Alex and Charley encounter four strange men accompanied by a beautiful, mysterious looking woman.  She is Regine Dandridge, the vampire sister of Jerry Dandridge.  Soon enough of our trio of heroes are battling the undead once again.

Of all the films, FRIGHT NIGHT PART II is by far the weakest.  It lacks the verve and energy of the first film and although not totally horrid, again, it fails to engage the audience and is just a lackluster vampire flick easily forgotten.

1988 CAST
Willima Ragsdale as Charley Brewster
Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent
Traci Lind as Alex Young
Julie Carmen as Regine Dandridge

Considering the poor performance of the movie's sequel, one would have expected that was the end of FRIGHT NIGHT.  But how do you keep the undead from rising again.  Naturally it is bloody (pun intended) impossible and a year later the Chicago based NOW COMICS picked up the mantel and began producing a FRIGHT NIGHT comic series that would last almost three years.  The genius of the comic series is the publisher had them bring back “Evil” Ed even though he had been killed off in the first film. Whereas they resurrected him as Charley's wacky vampire buddy and he pretty much became the real star of the series for comic fans.  Everybody loved “Evil” Ed.  By 1990 the NOW COMICS was gone and once again so was FRIGHT NIGHT.  But as the comic had proven, you just can't keep a good vampire buried forever.  Only this time the reawakening would have to wait twenty-one years.

In 2011 FRIGHT NIGHT fans were surprised and thrilled to see a brand new remake of the 1985 movie; this time with a star studded cast.  Now young Charley Brewster and his Mom are living in Las Vegas when they discover a new neighbor had moved in next door.  He's a likeable, handsome fellow named Jerry who easily wins over Charley's Mom with his charms.  Then Charley's best friend, “Evil” Ed Lee informs him that lots of students from their high school have gone missing ever since Jerry moved into town and soon the boys discover his dark, gruesome secret.  Needing help, Charley goes to Vegas to enlist the aid of stage magician Peter Vincent, reported to be an expert on vampires.  At first Vincent thinks he's crazy and kicks him out but soon events prove the boy right and Vincent joins him in battling the undead fiend.  With a cast that includes Colin Farrell, David Tennant and Toni Collette, this remake is totally the equal to the original film and is a fun, horror-comedy ride from start to finish.  In fact, Chris Saradon, who portrayed Jerry Dandridge in the original version makes a surprise cameo appearance as a motorist killed by the vampire in the middle of the movie.

2011 CAST
Anton Yelchin as Charley Brewster
Colin Farrell as Jerry
David Tennant as Peter Vincent
Toni Collette as Jane Brewster
Imogen Poots as Amy Peterson
Christopher Mintz-Plasse as “Evil” Ed Lee

And just as the original was followed by a sequel with a sexy lead, so the 2011 remake would follow suit with its direct-to-video FRIGHT NIGHT 2.  Directed by Eduardo Rodrigues, it features an entire new cast and is pretty much repeats the exact same plot storyline as both the original FRIGHT NIGHT and its remake only with a foreign setting this time.  Charley, Ed and Amy are exchange students in Romania with Charley trying to reconcile his relationship with Amy as she suspects him of cheating.  On their first night in their hotel, Charley spots a beautiful woman biting another woman through the window in the building across the street.  That woman is revealed later that night to be Gerri Dandridge, their college professor who will teach them about Romanian history and culture.  Eventually Charley discovers she is really the Lady Elizabeth Bathory, known as Lady Dracula, who remains young by bathing in the blood of her victims.  Dandridge/Lady Bathory is played by the sexy Jaime Murray of sci-fi fame for her roles in WAREHOUSE 13 and DEFINACE, both on the Sy-Fy Channel.  Whereas in this new version. Peter Vincent, who Charley seeks out for help, is the star of a Ghost Hurnter TV series which just happens to be filming in the same town.  Naturally, Vincent at first doesn't believe him, but eventually comes around and together they battle the alluring vampire to save Amy's life.

FRIGHT NIGHT 2 is a terrific addition to this franchise and extremely well acted and directed.  It stands right up there with the Farrell/Tennant remake and we recommend it highly.

2013 CAST
Will Payne as Charley Brewster
Jaime Murray as Gerri Dandridge
Sean Power as Peter Vincent
Sacha Parkinson as Amy Peterson
Chis Waller as “Evil” Ed Bates

So there you go, Loyal Airmen, the story behind the little monster movie that, like its central protagonist, has manages to stick around for a long, long time.  Will we be seeing more of FRIGHT NIGHT?  Who can say?  You just can't keep a good vampire down.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, we certainly hope all of you are enjoying this great Spring weather.  Baseball season has finally arrived and Valerie and the Air Chief have been thoroughly enjoying seeing our Red Sox back in action.  As you read this Flight Log, April 5th, they are home in Fenway receiving their 2013 World Series Rings in a ceremony before today's afternoon game.  Here's hoping they have another great season.  GO SOX!!

Speaking of winners. one of our big pulp winners from Airship 27 Productions last year was our first Captain Action novel, THE RIDDLE OF THE GLOWING MEN by writer Jim Beard.  As you'll recall, this was our first ever title based on a licensed property and it was a joy for us to produce. Well we've just followed up with the sequel, HEARTS OF THE RISING SUN, now available from the same writer at Amazon.com in hard copy and on Kindle within a few days.  In this new thriller, Captain Action, Miles Drake, travels to Japan in 1968 where a set of mysterious gems have been unearthed that possess incredible power.  He must prevent his arch enemy, the twisted alien fiend, Dr. Evil from getting his hands on them and to do so he will the need the help of a very famous classic pulp hero of old.  We don't want to spoil the fun so check out that great cover (above) by Michael Youngblood and head on over to Amazon to pick up a copy of this great adventure novel.  The Air Chief guarantees you'll love it.

                              
                                                                     WRITER ROMAN LEARY

Another big seller from 2013 was BROTHER BONES – SIX DAYS OF THE DRAGON by Roman Leary of North Carolina, the only Brother Bones adventure not written by the Air Chief.  Chuckle.  Both it and the gorgeous cover were nominated for this year's Pulp Factory Awards which will be announced later this month at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Con.  Here's a great shot of Roman as was featured in a local town newspaper article about him and his writing career.  Way to go, Roman!  We predict a stellar career for this gifted writer.

And finally, you know what never gets old?  Getting comics in the mail, especially those the Air Chief has written…which is what happened earlier this week.  Amongst the stash delivered by the U.S. Post Office were copies of MR.JIGSAW # 12,  RON FORTIER'S TALES OF THE MACABRE # 5 and our own complimentary copy of Lil Comics GRAFIX CHRONICLES # 2 which contained a short horror strip we penned.  All three titles are available for sale at (www.IndyPlanet.com).  We hope you'll give them a look and as ever, we thank you for you support, both for our comics and pulp books.

And there you go for the first week in April, Loyal Airmen.  Take care and see you back here next week.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greeting Loyal Airmen, with Spring in full gear, things around Hangar 27 HQ have been has hectic as ever and all in a truly positive way.  Starting with the release of our newest Airship 27 Productions pulp anthology.

The Green Ghost was another of the hundreds of bizarre pulp heroes from the 1930s and we are thrilled to bring him back into action with this first volume of his all new adventures.  It features four great stories by Michael Panush, Chris Bell, Greg Hatcher and Erwin K. Roberts.  The fun of this series is the hero, George Chance, was a former stage magician who turned vigilante and began helping the law solve some truly weird cases.  Anyway, the book went on sale at the start of the week and is now available at Amazon in both hard copy and E-book for their Kindle line. 

But what surprised the Air Chief the most was writer Greg Hatcher went and focused his entire weekly blog on this book and his entry in it.  It is a wonderfully written, concise history of the character and the Air Chief urges you to check out Greg's blog and check it out.  (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2014/03/26/wednesdays-big-announcement/)  Greg is a dynamite writer and we hope to make him a regular amongst our Airship 27 creative crew.

As regular visitors to this Flight Log know, in the past month we've released some truly unique books, all of them firsts for us and naturally we've been apprehensive as to how well these books have registered with all of you.  Well, as ever, you Loyal Airmen have come through with flying colors.  The Air Chief's first ever exclusive E-Book, THE WIND UP KID, selling on Kindle is a qualified hit and is picking up all kinds of great reviews from our readers.  Please, check it out on Amazon.  Again, it is only .99 cents for a download to this 48 page novella pretty much described as a steampunk-weird-western and see what other readers have said about.  One even suggested he would like to see these characters come back in more adventures.  Now there's an interesting idea.  We'll wait and see if other readers share that feeling.  One thing is sure, we certainly will be doing more E-Books in the future.

Our other original offering was the black and white art book – NOIR – The Art of Rob Moran.  Not only is this book selling well at Amazon and also accumulating some truly rave reviews, Rob has taken it upon himself to spice things up by offering special, unique collectibles to people who buy his book.  Read the following carefully.

The first 20 people who buy a copy of the book…and then leave a review on the Amazon page will all get an NOIR postcard mailed to them from artist Rob Moran and signed by him.  Thus they will have his autograph to file away with their copy of his book.  Again, this applies only to the first 20.

Then, from the names of these 20 generous souls, Rob is going to draw a name  (out of a hat no doubt) and the lucky fan will be send an ORIGINAL piece of art by Rob!!!  Yup, one of these 20 fans will end up owning an original piece of Rob Moran art.  Now that's is something special.  The last the Air Chief checked, there is still time for people to get into this by going to Amazon and buying their copy of the book.  As ever, thanks so much for your continued support and good luck to the lucky winner.  We'll gladly post the winners name after the drawing has been held.

Continuing with this theme of unusual products from Airship 27 Productions, you will recall that last year we released our first ever childrens' book – BARRY BASKERVILLE SOLVES A CASE by writer Richard Kellogg and artist Gary Kato (again still available at Amazon).  The story of a smart ten year old boy who wants to grow up to be like his hero, Sherlock Holmes.  The book has been a big hit for us since we released and next week we will be released its first sequel; THE RETURN OF BARRY BASKERVILLE.  Once again Richard and Gary have done an amazing job and the new book looks fantastic.  Stay tune, we'll have all the info about it right here next week.

And finally, come Monday, March 31st, the World Champion Boston Red Sox open their 2014 season against the Baltimore Orioles.  Considering 85% of last year's team is back, we have high hopes the Sox will be able to repeat with another championship season.  Something not done since the 90s Yankees.  All fingers crossed….GO SOX!!!

And that does it for this week's Flight Log, Loyal Airmen, as ever thanks for stopping by, enjoy the warm weather and we'll see you back here next week.
Ron – Over & Out!!
  

Greeting Loyal Airmen, here we are with the Spring officially here.  In a few more weeks baseball season will open up and we cannot wait to cheer on our World Champions of 2013, the Boston Red Sox.
In the meantime, there's always lots to do around the old Hangar 27.

Several years ago, the Air Chief discovered on-line a truly talented artist named Rob Moran who hails from Scotland.  Rob has won numerous awards for his work which includes everything from webstirps to graphic novels and book illustrations.  Rob began posting some of his work on-line and the Air Chief soon became a huge fan.  What we noticed immediately is that Rob loved to draw images from the classic black and white gangster movies of the 1930s and 40s.  Here were the great cinematic tough guys like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson to name a few.  He also drew, extremely well, the famous femme fatales of those Noir classics.

We were so impressed that when it came time for us to start work on writer Terrence McCauley's wonderful gangster novel, PROHIBITION, we went begging Rob to join the team and do the art for it.
Much to our delight he agreed and ended up winning the Pulp Factory Award that year for Best Interior Illustrations.  Last year we once again managed to cajole him in working on Roman Leary's pulp thriller, BROTHER BONES – SIX DAYS OF DRAGON.  It should come as no surprise to you that Rob has also been nominated for that particular project.  The results of this year's voting to be revealed in April at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Con.

Anyway, all the while we were with with Rob, he began telling the Air Chief, and Airship 27 Productions' own Rob, Art Director Rob Davis, that he had lots and lots of these illustrations and had often hoped to one day collect them all in an art book showcasing his work.  Well, you don' t have to hit the Air Chief over the noggin when we hear a great idea.  Rob (Davis) and the Air Chief immediately loved the idea and volunteered to produce the book for him, if he would be willing to allow us that singular honor.  Happily Rob (Moran) said yes and earlier this week, Airship 27 Productions released its first ever pulp orientated art book – NOIR – The Art of Rob Moran.  See that gorgeous cover above.  The book is available at Amazon, its 8 X 11 and half inches with 70 pages of some of the most beautiful black and white illustration art you will ever see.  Sales have been brisk since we announced its release and if you are a true lover of art, we hope you'll give this your support.

The school kids here in Fort Collins, have been enjoying their week of Spring break out of school and happily the warm weather has been most welcome to all of them.  One of the major fun places in our city is the amazing Children's Museum of Discovery.  See photo above.  During this break week, the museum every year devotes every day of the week to a specific theme dealing with both creativity and science.  Friday is reserved for COMIC BOOK CREATING and the Air Chief and several of his comic book colleagues will be on hand at the museum all day to explain to these kids how comics are made, show them original art and talk about the creative process and how it relates to comic storytelling.  We did this last year and had a blast.  We're thrilled the museum director also agreed and invited us back again.

And finally, about a month ago the Air Chief gave an on-line interview about his writing career. You can find it here on line (http://maybeillbeback.podbean.com/2014/03/20/ron-fortier/) and we are told on I-Tunes as well. Enjoy and thanks to Corey Hodgon, the show's host for having us.

And there you have it for this week, Loyal Airmen.  We wish all of you a truly wonderful Spring, good weather and fun.  Get outside and enjoy the wonders of nature, they are all around us.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, this week's Flight Log is being recorded a full day early as tomorrow, Friday 14th March, the Air Chief will be at the Knowledge Quest Academy in Milliken, CO giving two presentations on How Comics Books Are Made.  We are told we'll have two audiences, each with approximately fifty students each.  Wow. That is going to be so much.  Hopefully someone will snap some photos and we'll be able to shared them with you here next week.

One of the realities of being a writer is the dreaded rejection notice.  Not everything one writes is going to be accepted and that's a difficult lesson for some young writers to learn.  It can be really disheartening to pour your time, sweat and imagination into a story only to have some editor reject it in the end.  But again, we do not know of a single writer who hasn't amassed a good collection of these pesky things during their careers, primarily during their beginnings in the field.

Yet some people think once a writer has established him or herself, then they never get another rejection slip.  WRONG.  Again, everything one writes is not always going to please the editor it is intended for.  Editors have a tough job, especially those who produce anthologies.  Part of their responsibility is choosing lots of stories that adhere to some set perimeter, are different but again fit together smoothly as a whole.  Recently the Air Chief was invited to submit a story to a Weird Western anthology being edited by a colleague.  Out intention was to deliver to him a short tale in the vicinity of four to five thousand words.  Unfortunately, as often happens with some stories, this one took on a life of its on and wouldn't end in that balloted space.  By the time the Air Chief had wrapped it up, it exceeded 14,000 words.  So even as we submitted it, we realistically knew our chances of selling it weren't high.  And sure enough, this editor rejected it.  Although not for its length, as he explained in his kind letter, but he felt its tone wasn't as “dark” as the other material being turned in.  Because of that, it simply just didn't mesh well with the other entries and so we got a rejection notice.

And let's be real, even though we expected it, that didn't make it any easier to accept.  Oh, not that this tale wouldn't be in this particular anthology, but that no one would get to read it.  Thus for the next few days we scoured the internet in hopes of finding as yet another anthology project that it might be better suited to.  Somewhere along this hunt, we mentioned the situation to our writer pal, Jim Beard.  He surprised us by suggesting, rather than find a book publisher, why didn't we simply put it up at Amazon as an E-Book for their Kindle library.  Having never done anything like that before, the Air Chief went to his pal, Airship 27 Art Director Rob Davis and he readily supported Jim's idea.  To the point of actually doing up a nice cover art image to go with the novella.

Three days later THE WIND UP KIND, a weird western steampunk type novella, appeared at Amazon and an exclusive E-Book for their Kindle Readers.  It sells for .99 cents a download and we hope you'll be curious enough to go to Amazon and give it a look-see.  We particularly love the sketch Rob did up as it totally captures the two main characters perfectly.  It was a really fun story to write and now we hope lots of you Loyal Airmen will get to enjoy it as well.  If you should be so kind as to download it and read it, please do leave us a review.  This is our first ever E-Book and we're anxious to see if we should do more of them.  Thanks ever.

On the more traditional comic front, this past week also saw the Redbud Studio release of RON FORTIER'S TALES OF THE MACABRE # 5.  This one features two stories, THE MONSTER VS THE MACHINE as illustrated by Erik Roman and a World War II spy thriller, LA FEMME LIBERTE…as drawn by John Polacek…as ever both scripts by the Air Chief.   The cover was provided by Rob Davis with colors by Shannon Hall.  The book is available at (www.IndyPlanet.com) and as ever, the Air Chief is having a blast with these.  We hope you are as well.

And that's it for this week, Loyal Airmen.  As ever, thanks for stopping by and we'll see you back here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday this week and so we are 40 days way from Easter and the coming of Spring once again.  After a long, arduous winter, we are sure most of you are more than ready for green grass, flowers and lovely, warm air. Bring it on, Mother Nature.  Although the Air Chief is keeping busy as ever here at Hangar 27 HQ, not too many things have been released of late, though quite a few are coming down the pipeline.  So we figured we just show off a few pieces of artwork you might enjoy.                                                  

Several years ago the good folks at Twilight Star Studios launched my comic series, RON FORTIER'S TALES OF THE MACABRE.  All of this from our good pal, Bill Gladman.  Naturally the Air Chief was extremely flattered.  Enough so that we, the Air Chief and his pal, artist Rob Davis, began running the self same series via Rob's own Redbud Studio.  We are soon to be releasing issue # 5 of that series.  Whereas, for lots of various reasons, Twilight Star has opted to end their version and they are going to warp it up in a big way by publishing an extra large size issue that will feature the amazing cover above.  It was illustrated by artist Christ Metzer and colored by Lisa Moore, both dear friends of the Air Chief. They, Twilight Start, hope to have this special issue out in April at their Gem City Comic Con in Springfield, Ohio.  Now Redbud Studio is not going to be reprinting this issue as we have plans to continue the series and the strips in this will all appear in future regular-size issues of the Redbud version of TALES OF THE MACABRE.  Though, at a later date Rob and the Air Chief have discussed the possibility of doing a giant edition collection four or five single issues into one massive tome.  Should we pursue that idea, this will most likely be the cover image that appears on it.  So stay tuned….and allow the Air Chief a heartfelt thanks to Bill, all his crew at Twilight Star Studios and especially to Chris & Lisa.  We are blessed to have such great and talented friends.

Speaking of such generous and thoughtful people, we were much surprised and delighted to find the above mock-pulp cover posted on our Facebook page this afternoon.  Its the product of pulp fan Dale Harris who thought it would be very cook to team up our hero, Brother Bones, with the Shadow. And the above is the result.  We absolutely love it.  There's a lot coming your way in regards to Brother Bones – The Undead Avenger.  Airship 27 Productions hopes to release his third book, TAPESTRY OF BLOOD in a month or so, with all new stories by the Air Chief, interior illustrations by Rob Davis and a gorgeous painted cover by Patricio Carabjal that will blow you away. There's also a Role Playing Game module in the works and hopefully more audio adventures.  Again, stay tuned.

Speaking of pulps, last year, while attending the annual Windy City Pulp & Paper Con in Chicago, the Air Chief and Rob Davis were interviewed by a video recorder for a You Tube Series called MTC – Meet The Creators.  It runs 8 minute longs and shows the Air Chief waxing excitedly about all things pulps. If you'd like to check it out, simply cut and paste this URL into your search slot.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxHvbaRmMo)

Our thanks to video editor Ken Stouffer and his cameraman, Jack, for producing a truly fine video. And please, if you do check it out, do sign up as a subscriber to their show.  They hope to do many more of these excellent video interviews with other writers, artists and publishers.

And there you have it for another week, Loyal Airmen.  Thanks ever stopping by.  Keeping thinking Spring and we'll see you all back here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we've got a TON of things to chat about this week so let's get going.  Issue number eleven of our on-going comic series, MR. JIGSAW Man of a Thousand Parts is now out.

This one features the full length adventure The Pirates of Perchance, script by the Air Chief, art by Gary Kato and edits by Redbud Studio's own Rob Davis. This is our homage to the old comedy TV show, Gilligan's Island for those of you Loyal Airmen old enough to know what we're talking about. The book is available from (www.IndyPlanet.com).  Enjoy. It was a blast to do.

As most of you know, the Air Chief loves visiting local elementary schools and talking about writing and creating comics.  Last week he, and local professional artist Felipe Echevarria teamed up and visited a fifth grade class to talk about how writers and artists work together.  Here is the Air Chief with half the class talking about how to build a story.

Later Felipe and I teamed up at a digital board where he proceeded to draw a page from a script the Air Chief had written.  We'd shared the page with the kids and all of them got to see first hand how Felipe, as a professional graphic artist set about interpreting what we had put down on the script.  Both of us truly had a great time with these kids.

We've mentioned in the past that there are two awards given out these days for excellence in writing and drawing pulp fiction.  One is the Pulp Factory Awards which are presented every year at the Windy City Pulp & Paper show in April in Chicago.  The other was the Pulp Ark Awards which were handed out at the Pulp Ark Convention in Arkansas, as managed by Tommy Hancock.  Sadly there will be no PA Convention this year but happily Tommy chose to continue the awards, only with a name change; they are now the New Pulp Awards and today Tommy released the names of all the creators who made the final ballot.  Unlike the Pulp Factory Awards which only have 4 categories, the New Pulp Awards have a full dozen.

The Air Chief was thrilled to see so many of our Airship 27 Productions titles and creators represented throughout the various categories.  What was a genuine surprise was finding that we had been personally nominated in a few categories and for that we are truly honored and appreciated.

Last year we wrote a short story, “The Lawman,” for the Pro Se Press anthology, BLACK PULP. It has been nominated for Best Pulp Short Story.

We also wrote a Brother Bones adventure entitled “The Plastic Army,” which appeared in Pro Se Presents Summer 2013 issue.  It has been nominated for Best Pulp Novella.  Honestly, Loyal Airmen, we are simply bowled over by both these nominations and can't thank people enough for voting for us.  Note, the voting is open to the public at large and you can obtain a copy of the ballot on-line.  Just Google New Pulp Awards Ballot.  We thank you for your support.  No announcement has been made as to where these will be presented.  We'll keep you posted. 

Here's the link to downloading a ballot –
(http://newpulpawards2014.blogspot.com/p/new-pulp-awards-2014-official-ballot.html)

And finally, last week we mentioned the news of Fort Collins first ever comics event, the FoCo Comcis and Gaming Festival to be held at the Drake Center here in Fort Collins, Co. on Sat April 19th.  Well,
as of today, the Festival has its own Facebook page with pictures and articles on the sixteen guests who be appearing at this fun show. Here they are in alphabetical order –

Abe Akin, Mike Baron, Chad Blakely, Matt Campbell, Ron Fortier, Greg Guler, Jeff Herndon, Zach Howard, Todd Jones, Patrick Joel de Leon, Eric Meador, Ben Mikkleson, James Montoya, Lee Oaks, Tom Webster and Jolyon Yates.  As you can see, a really stellar line up…even with that Fortier dude.  Ha.  Again, go check out their Facebook page.  We are really looking forward to this first ever comic show in our fair city.

And that's it for this week, Loyal Airmen.  Again, go get that New Pulp Award ballot and vote for the Air Chief if you so desire. We appreciate all your support.  Till next week, stay safe,

Ron – Over & Out!