Greetings loyal airmen.  We'ge got tons of stuff to cover today.  Most of it good news, some a bit more dissappointing, but hey, let's get to it.  First up, I think people who are into model flying are fantastic.  There's an old field behind our county courthouse where, on most summer weekend afternoons, you will find a couple of these model enthusiasts revving up their scale model aircrafts and launching them into the blue skies.  The talent to build these models and get them airborne amazes a klutz like yours truly.  Well, guess who has his picture in the new July 06 issue of FLYING MODEL (see cover above)?  Yup, it's your old Airship Captain.  How on earth did that happen?  Well, as you'll recall, I am now in the process of editing a brand new series of pulp adventures for Wild Cat Books.  The first of these, due in just a few more weeks, features a classic flying hero from the pulps.  When FLYING MODEL editor, and pulp fan, Larry Marshall learned of this, he wrote me a nice letter and asked if it would be okay for him to promo our book in his excellent magazine.  Of course I was thrilled and even sent Larry a snap shot of myself looking very authorish (ha).   So a few days ago the mail arrives and in it was this copy.  I'm on page 53, if any of you out there are readers.  Thanks so much for the promo, Larry.  It was a real thrill to find my mug in such a very cool showcase.  You just never know where your love of pulps is going to take you.

Likewise one of the real joys of operating Airship 27 is all the wonderful people it has allowed me to meet, the new airmen who've signed on and become good friends.  One of these is Maine artist, Michael “Mitch” Mitchell.  I mentioned Mitch a few weeks back and included a link to his own site where he does this wonderful Coffee Break comics project.  The more I got to looking at Mitch's artwork, the more I started thinking he'd make a very fine pulp illustrator and posed the offer to him.  Mitch was excited about the challenge and this past week I sent him a copy of a short pulp story done by another associate.  Sort of Mitch's try-out exercise.  To date he's done three small pieces from that yarn (see wonderful illo above) and I've been delighted.  My hunch was totally on the money with this.  So now I've created a new pulp artist.  Ha.  Yahoo.  You will all be seeing lots more of Mitch's cool stuff in the future.

And speaking of things you will see here at Airship 27 brings us to the bummer topic of this week's log entry.The above illustration was done by Rob Davis for my Spider story to be published in the Moonstone anthology now in production.  When I was asked to contribute to this project, I was also told I could recruit any professional artist I desired to do the accompanying illustration.  As all of you loyal vistiors know, Rob has pretty much illoed most of my pulp books and I went to him immediately.   Over the past couple of weeks, in our gallery section, I've posted this truly great piece in its various stages of development.  Well, no sooner does Rob get it completed and off to Moonstone then we get a noticed from them that they've changed their thoughts on the artwork issue?  Yup, its totally changing the rules after the game has started, and it stinks.   What they decided was that they didn't want lots of artists, but only one.  So Rob, and a half dozen talented professionals, were given the boot, uncouthly and very much unprofessionally.   Rob's a real trooper and he and I exchanged several e-mails this past week on our feelings and reactions to this Moonstone snafu.   Rob is philisophical and just moving on, but not before posting the finished piece up at his site and I promised to do the same here.  At least you loyal airmen will get to enjoy it. (Note its also in my gallery permanently now.)   Rob is currently working on new illustrations for my new Captain Hazzard novel as well as handling all (to include the cover) for our up and coming Secret Agent X book.   Success, as we both believe, is always the best solution.  And for all you airmen planning on attending the Chicago Comic Con next month, be sure to look Rob up.  He's going to be there with lots of his great artwork to display.

And finally, to end this week's entry on pulps, I want to recommend a truly fun book to all of you.  Paul Malmont's THE CHINA DEATH CLOUD PERIL takes two of the greatest pulp writers of all time and makes them the heroes in their own unbelievable adventure.   Walter Gibson was the magician turned writer who was the mastermind behind the Shadow and his colleague, Lester Dent, was the creator of the near super human Doc Savage.  Together these two men provided more chills, spills and thrills for America's kids growing up int he Great Depression than any other pair of writers.  Month after month they pumped out the most fantastic tales that captivated an entire generation.  Malmont deftly weaves in historical data with his own imaginative what-if as he puts Gibson and Dent on a collision course with a fiendish madman set upon destroying New York's Chinatown with a cloud of poison gas.  Malmont brings the mid-30s to life and his portrayal of Gibson and Dent is just perfect.  This was one of those books I hated to put down at the end.  It was like visiting with old friends.
No true fan of pulp history or literature should miss this terrific book.

And that loyal airmen wraps us up for another week.   Next week we hare hosting the first ever Fortier Comics Creators Pool Party.  We've invited some twenty odd friends and fellow writers and artists to spend an afteroon of fun and who knows what with us and it looks to be a ball.   But of course there are tons of things to do first. Going to be a fast week.   Oh, and before I forget, my son Scott has added improvements to our gallery section which now make the images clearer to view.  In the past the program had difficulty translating image sizes to the right proportions and thus left us with some fuzziness.  That's all gone now, and as you browse through them, they all appear very sharp and clear.  Thanks, Scott.

All of you take care and continue to enjoy the summer, it last only so long.   Ron, over and out.

LAST OF THE TOUGH GUYS
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