Greetings Loyal Airmen.  This time tomorrow the Air Chief will be in Columbus, Ohio attending the second annual Pulp Fest.  Along with my pal and partner, Rob Davis, we will be setting up shop with our Airship 27 Productions table filled to overflowing with lots of great pulp novels and anthologies.  So we hope a lot of you Loyal Airmen will be stopping by to check out the goodies and saying hi.  And as always, any Loyal Airmen who comes to any of these conventions wearing Airship 27 swag from our Cafe Press on-line shop will get 50% any one book our table. Our way of saying thanks for you continued support.  How do you find the shop? Simply click on to our dirigible logo on the left of this column, which will then take you to our on-line bookstore.  Scroll all the way down to the bottom of that page and you'll find the link to the Cafe Press shop.  Believe us, there are lots of cool items there.

And speaking of our Airship 27 titles, this past week we proudly released our 28th book. It is one we are all extremely excited about.

Last year we released the first volume of the brand new adventures of the Green Lama with stories by Kevin Noel Olson, Peter Miller and Adam Lance Garcia.  Note, Adam received a Pulp Factory Award nomination for his story in that book.  After its release, Adam had an idea of writing a full novel length GL adventure and we happily encouraged him to do so.  The end result is THE GREEN LAMA – UNBOUND, one of the finest, most exciting and original pulp adventures we've ever had the pleasure of reading.  This great book is beautifully enhanced by the art Mike Fyles, himself another PFA nominee.  Mike had done the cover to our first GL book and this time asked to do both the cover and nine black and white interior illustrations.  We were more than happy to grant him his wish.  Mike recently began doing covers for Marvel and we are thrilled to have such a talented artist in our bullpen as well.  And of course rounding out the entire package with his gorgeous design work is Rob Davis, who is himself a PFA winner for his interior art on our first ever Sherlock Holmes anthology.
So as you can see, Loyal Airmen, this is truly an All-Star creative team and the book itself reflects their hard work cover to cover.  We hope you'll stop over to our on-line shop an order a copy.  Of course in another week or so the book will be available at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles etc.

Which is a nice segue into our second item of news this week.  Ever since we began Airship 27 Productions, we have always looked for ways to get out books out to a wider audience.  Alas getting our titles into book chains has always been near impossible.  As for converting to the digital market for things like Kindle and iPad, there is a very complex transfer process that we have yet to overcome. When trying to alter our book files for these digital readers, we lose all our interior illustrations.  They, Kindle and iPad etc. are just not sophisticated enough to translate pages of artwork. So we keep hoping someone will eventually devise a program that makes that possible.

Whereas our publisher Cornerstone Book Publisher yesterday took a major marketing step forward when he signed a contract, via Ingram Distribution, with the outfit that makes the Expresso Book Machines.  If you are unaware of this revolutionary on-demand invention, well hang onto to your hats Loyal Airmen.  This is a machine that is being sold to bookstores and libraries.  Each unit has hundreds of digital book files taken directly from the exact same pdf files we use produce our Airship 27 books.  A customer goes to the screen catalog, chooses the book they wish to buy, inserts their credit card and hits the Start button.  Within 5 to 8 minutes a brand new, store-quality book is printed up, collated, glued and given a four color cover then dropped into a retrieval slot!  If you think this is radical, we suggest you find their You Tube model video on-line which shows one in action.  At present the company that makes these amazing  machines has 35 of them in operation throughout the US and in several foreign countries.  There is one in the public library of New Orleans.  One in McMaster University Bookstore in Ontario Canada, another in the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA.  And on and on and on.

We personally see these amazing machines eventually appearing in every bookstore, coffeeshop and shopping mall across the land.  In just another few weeks, once our publisher delivers the files, all 28 Airship 27 titles will be available to be purchase from an Expresso Book Machine.  My Loyal Airmen, the Brave New World is here and we think it's grand.

And there you have it for this, the last week of July.  Once again time is whizzing by us.  Take care, stay well, and go read a pulp book.  We would be most grateful.  See you back here next week.
Ron – Over & Out.