Kickin' The Willy Bobo With: THOMAS DEJA

Derrick Ferguson: Who is Thomas Deja?

Thomas Deja: You know who I am, you....

Oh.  For the readers.

I’m a lifelong New York resident, author, and podcast celebrity. 

That sounds really arrogant, doesn’t it?

DF: Where do you live and what do you do?

TD: For the last 23 years, I have resided in Ridgewood, on the Brooklyn/Queens border.  This seems to be my destiny, as I’ve lived in Highland Park, Brooklyn and Woodhaven, Queens--both on the border--during my youth.  As for what I do, these days it’s mainly struggle for existence.

DF: For those folks who don’t know you, give us a brief history of your background.

TD: Born in Brooklyn.  Moved with my mother after her divorce to Queens.  Went to Hunter College in the 80's and studied Media--and oddly enough, only just recently got the degree I earned there.  Was a freelance consultant and temp during the 90‘s.  Have been writing since I was eleven, and a professional one (i.e. have been given a check for the privlege of publishing same) for almost twenty-five years off and on.  And now...novelist.

DF:One question I get asked all the time is where and how did we meet. What’s your version?

TD: Here’s how I remember it.

When I was writing Daredevil for Bill K’Tepi’s MARVEL: YEAR TWO site, I received a fan letter from you praising me for the references I made to Stu Hart’s Dungeon and Derek Flint.  We conversed through email back and forth and somehow discovered that a) we shared a lot of commonalities and b) we were a matter of miles from each other.  One of us gave the other a phone number, and we started talking, which led to me inviting you to the Horror Writers Association of New York’s private screening of Hellboy--where we sat with F. Paul Wilson, who I did not know you were a major fan of--and our friendship has grown since then. 

DF: How long have you been writing?

TD: At the risk of being a cliché, almost my whole life.  I used to attach a bunch of looseleaf paper sandwiched between construction paper together with brass fasteners and write ‘books’ which invariably featured different imitations of giant monsters beating each other into paste, although I also recall a series featuring a masked detective called ‘The Curlew’ and one that pitted Frankenstein’s Monster against The Creature of The Black Lagoon.

As far as professionally, I began placing pieces in the seminal Brooklyn-based satire-and-stuff ‘zine Inside Joke in the very late 80‘s.  This led to my placing about three dozen stories in various small press magazines like After Hours, Rictus and Not One Of Us, and, after some bumps along the way, where I am now.

DF: What do you love most about writing?

TD: I had a friend once who would tell anyone who met me that I was ‘so bardic’...and I guess that’s true.  I write because I am compelled to tell stories, and publishing them in little booklets and online sites for cash means you’re not just a crazy person boring those around you with tales of the folks in your head.  And when I connect with people, let them feel what I felt when I let those voices out, that’s the greatest feeling.

DF: What’s your philosophy of writing?

TD: I once interviewed Ben Manilla, a local morning DJ, for my college newspaper, and he told me there’s only one reason to be a writer--because when you look in the mirror and ask yourself ‘what do you want to be when you grow up,' you can think of no other thing to be.'

There are two other things I hold very dear to me regarding writing.  One is that if you write to move yourself, you will move others.  All too often, I read novels that come off as nothing more than script treatments that we’ve been asked to pay for, stories that are written because they feature what will sell, not what they’re passionate about.  Those stories end up having no soul.  You need to put something of yourself in what you write to truly make a connection with your reader, and I try my best to do so every day.

The other thing is that the ability to write is a muscle; you have to build it up, you have to maintain it, and if you don’t, you lose it.  You have to write every day, you have to constantly seek out new stories to tell in your head.  If you start recycling other tales, or telling other people’s stories under your name...well, you’ve misplaced your drive.

DF: You used to work for FANGORIA magazine. What did you do for them and how was it working for them?

TD: Considering that I ended up working for them by accident, quite a lot.  I started working there as the writer of their Episode Guides for The X-Files--the guy they originally assigned flaked out on them on the day my friend, and Fangoria editor, Michael Gingold and I were having lunch, and I said ‘I’ll do it’--but I also ended up doing book and movie reviews, author profiles and even briefly edited their online literary magazine for a while.

I had my disagreements with the magazine at times, and there were some hairy moments (some X-Files fans were so scary I wrote a story, ‘Baron Wyvern Wants Your Love,' as an act of catharsis), but for most of the almost twenty years and three owners I was with them they were great employers.  There was a stretch of about ten years where I didn’t have something in the magazine proper.  It was only until that growing belief that paying freelancers was optional that I had to stop working for them.  Trust me, if it wasn’t for that, I’d still be cranking out book reviews.

DF: You were involved in writing Marvel and DC fan fiction for many years. Why fan fiction?

TD: Because I went through something traumatic in 2000, and I couldn’t write the horror fiction I was known for at the time.  When Bill K’Tepi, who coordinated a pair of PBeM games I participated in, decided to start DC: YEAR ONE (and later MARVEL: YEAR ONE), he asked me to take on Green Lantern in one and Daredevil in the other, and I’m glad I did.  Those years when I did fanfic kept those writing muscles supple during that time when my muse had crawled into a closet and cried herself into a coma. It also helped that I received some positive reinforcement, particularly due to my lesser known series such as THE SWORDSMAN and BIRDS OF PREY, that kept me from abandoning my craft thoroughly in the midst of my angst.

Plus it led me to contacts that led to my return to original fiction several years down the line...including yourself.  If it wasn’t for my years in the Fanfic mines, I wouldn’t have created Don Cuevo--who began as a character in BIRDS OF PREY--or ONYX REVOLVER, which led to the creation of The Chimera Falls Universe.

DF: Tell us about The Shadow Legion. Who are they and why do they exist?

TD: The Shadow Legion grew out of my frustration with super-hero comics as a whole, comics in general, and DC’s ‘New 52‘ specifically.  It was the news of DC’s total line-wide reboot, and the anger than it engendered in me, that prompted me to write up a fanfiction proposal where I renovated a number of DC characters suggested to me by my friends.  When I finished the proposal, however, I discovered that the characters had strayed so far from those characters’ original conception I might as well make them original characters...which led to me sending the proposal out to some of my writer friends, which led to Ron Fortier of Airship 27 to name those characters 'The Shadow Legion’ and offered to publish their adventures.

As for what the Legion are in the context of NEW ROADS TO HELL....they’re a quartet of mystery men who find themselves charged with the protection of Nocturne, The City That Lives By Night.  As readers will learn, Nocturne is something of a nexus for supernatural activity, and something is growing within its city limits that has attracted the likes of Black Talon and Dreamcatcher to its shores.

DF:Tell us about NEW ROADS TO HELL.

TD: NEW ROADS TO HELL is the first book in the Shadow Legion trilogy.  My hope is that the trilogy, and the ancillary CASEBOOKS, will provide a history of the heroic history of Nocturne before we hit the present day.  It formally brings all four of our heroes together, provides origins for two of them, and debuts what many of the people who read the book so far feel is its breakout character...namely, the Girl With The Talent For Murder, Rose Red.  And when she decides that triggering a race war is just what’s needed to give her control of Nocturne’s underworld, well....

DF: You’ve created an entire original superhero universe. How did you do it and what advice would you give to aspiring godlings who want to create their own universe?

TD: I did it by starting small.  People forget that Marvel and (especially) DC didn’t start out with a universe; their individual comics started weaving in and out of each other naturally until they became a coherent shared world.  That’s what later attempts at creating a universe like Dark Horse’s Comics Greatest World failed--they forced it, presenting their universe as fully formed.

Advice?  Know what you want going in and grow it slowly.  I knew the kind of stories I wanted to tell, I knew the characters I needed, I knew the events I wanted in the initial trilogy and I started building my own world from there.  I also planted seeds that could potentially lead to more of this universe, but I’m not going to feel compelled to elucidate them until a story comes along.  A lot of the coolness of the Marvel Universe was the way Stan, Jack and Steve hinted at a greater tapestry without requiring us to learn everything.  That’s the sort of feel I want to capture in The Shadow Legion and its ancillary stories.

DF: Prose superhero stories is a genre that is growing in popularity. To what do you attribute this to?

TD: I think Prose Superhero Fiction is growing in popularity for the same reason New Pulp Fiction and Superhero Movies are popular--there’s a large base of readers who have a taste for action-oriented, colorful, over-the-top adventure with a strong moral center who are no longer being serviced by superhero comics.  They still want to read about dashing heroes and dastardly villains in crazy costumes without having one tear the head off another one.  Hell, they want to escape from the tough times we’re living through, and if they can’t get it through Marvel or DC, they’ll get it through Van Allen Plaxico’s Sentinels, or Lee Houston Jr.’s Alpha, or my own stuff.

I just hope those readers enjoy my admittedly blood-splattered baby and want to see it grow in future collections and novels.

DF: Tell us about your future plans for The Shadow Legion.

TD: Well, the next thing you’ll see is ‘A Waltz In Scarlet,' a novella featuring The Ferryman and Dreamcatcher that’ll appear in Airship 27‘s Mystery Men And Women V. 4. When we last see Ferryman, he’s...a little disconnected from his humanity, and in the story we see what happens when his abilities bring him into contact with his human emotions.  Plus, there’s a big ol’ scary new menace.

That novella will be collected in The Shadow Legion Casebook V. 1.  If NEW ROADS TO HELL is a graphic novel collecting a major Shadow Legion storyline, the Casebooks (there’ll be one appearing between each novel) represent one of those plastic bags of comics you’d find in Walmart with random issues of each Legionnaire’s solo series.  I already have three of the novellas, featuring Ferryman, Black Talon and Nightbreaker, in the can, so the collection may come out sooner than later.

After the first Casebook will be the second novel, which takes place in 1966.  If New Roads were Nightbreaker’s and Ferryman’s story, then the next novel will focus on Black Talon and his relationship with Dreamcatcher.  There were some things revealed about the price the Talon pays for his powers, and we’re going to explore how that shakes out, and why his ‘patrons’ in the Circle of Life are so approving of his choice of mate.  I hope that, just as New Roads was reflective of the Golden Age of Comics, the new novel will reflect the Silver Age, as a more science-fictiony menace rises to wage war on humanity and the Legion and its new allies.

DF: Any other projects you’ve got in the works you can tell us about?

TD: I think I can safely say that my pair of Western Heroes--the frontier exorcist Don Cuevo and the steampunk scientist Doc Thunder--will make appearances soon through Pulpwork Press’ third volume of How The West Was Weird and this year’s Christmas Annual respectively.  There’s a novella for Monster Earth 2.  There’s some stuff I can’t talk about just yet--including another novel that’s in the Chimera Falls Universe, but has a more science-fiction-y bent to it.  So yeah, I’ll be pretty busy.

Derrick Ferguson: Anything else we need to know?

Thomas Deja: If you buy my book, I’ll be your friend.  You buy enough of them, we’ll have cake.

Hard to believe I’m still single, huh?

THE SHADOW LEGION: NEW ROADS TO HELL is available in paperback and for your Kindle from Amazon

THE NOCTURNE TRAVEL AGENCY

Kickin' The Willy Bobo With: JOEL JENKINS

Derrick Ferguson: Who is Joel Jenkins?

Joel Jenkins: I'm a husband, father, ordained elder of the Church of Jesus Christ, writer, musician, and firearm enthusiast.

DF: Where do you live and what do you tell the IRS you do for a living?

JJ: I am a resident of the heron-haunted and misty-mountained Great Northwest.

The IRS doesn't much care what I do for a living, they just want their increasingly exorbitant cut, to support an unwieldy central government that has unconstitutionally usurped authority over welfare, health care, and education. According to the Constitution, these are powers which are NOT designated to the Federal government and reserved for the states, if they so choose to exercise them. By usurping these powers the federal government becomes unduly influential over the states, and the citizen has less ability to effect change—not to mention the fact that the federal government absorbs much of those tax dollars just to support its corpulent bureaucracy, and a relatively small portion actually returns to the people for which those dollars are designated.

DF: How long have you been writing?

JJ: I started writing shortly after I learned to read. At age eight I sent my first manuscript into Highlights for Children. It was a story of time travel and dinosaurs. I received a kind and encouraging letter back from the editor explaining that manuscripts should be typed instead of handwritten.

DF: What’s your philosophy of writing?

JJ: First, I want to tell an imaginative, rousing and vivid story that entertains. Second, even if the protagonist has few or no redeeming qualities, I want to illustrate that good will triumph over evil. Sometimes this may be illustrated by showing the long term consequences of evil actions, even though it may seem that evil has temporarily won the day. I hope to inspire people to good and selfless action through my writing.

DF: When it comes to genre there’s no way to pin you down. You’ve written westerns, blood-n-bullets action adventure, children’s books, heroic fantasy…is that a conscious choice or do you just write what you like?

JJ: I've made a conscious decision not to limit myself to any specific genre. Other than that, I write where my muse takes me, and she takes me in any number of odd directions—some of which I never anticipated.

DF: You wear several hats; small press publisher, writer, editor…which one brings you the greatest satisfaction?

JJ: The hats of small press publisher and editor stem from, or facilitate, writing.  I enjoy these other hats, but if they take too much time I start to resent that they are stealing away from time I could be writing something.

DF: You were writing New Pulp long before there was a New Pulp Movement. How does it feel seeing the explosion of pulp influenced writing and characters springing up in recent years?

JJ: It used to be that a reader who enjoyed highly imaginative fast-paced, and action packed stories had limited options in modern fiction. Now, we are seeing a wealth of options, and a lot of great fiction is coming out. I think it's a great thing.

DF: The organizational structure of Pulpwork Press is somewhat unique. Can you describe it and how it works?

JJ: I can't describe it great detail because some of the shadowy figures behind Pulpwork Press are actually members of the Twelve Unknown Men, who for reasons known to them alternately work for nefarious and noble purposes.

DF: There are plenty of New Pulp publishers out there now but Pulpwork Press was around long before some of them were even thought of. Do you feel that sometimes Pulpwork Press gets overlooked by the community and readers?

JJ: The New Pulp community is an awesome group of creative individuals, but there's little point in getting competitive or jealous about getting the lion's share of attention within a relatively small community. The key is to attract readers from the market as a whole and the New Pulp community, including Pulpwork Press, has a lot to learn as to how to accomplish this.

DF: Where do you see Pulpwork Press in five years?

JJ: On the run from the law and uploading our latest manuscripts via encrypted connections.

DF: Let’s talk about your work now…in particular, Lone Crow who has been showing up quite a bit in recent years. Who is Lone Crow and why the fascination with him?

JJ: Lone Crow is an infamous Native American gunfighter who roamed the wild west earning respect with his pistols. In my stories, he tends to encounter the weird, strange and supernatural, and he's been one of those characters who I haven't been able to stop writing stories about. Next year we'll see a book called Lone Crow Collected, which is a collection of quite a number of those stories which have been published elsewhere, and a good chunk of them which have have never been seen before.

DF: Tell us about STRANGE TRAILS.

JJ: Strange Trails is the brainchild of James Palmer, the head editor at Mechanoid Press. He decided to gather a group of weird west adventures and asked me to contribute a story. I wrote The Steam Devil, where Lone Crow finds himself in the company of the much-feared lawman Bass Reeves. They explore the wreckage of a derailed train and find more than they bargained for.

DF: Tell us about THE WEIRD WORLDS OF JOEL JENKINS

JJ: This is my most recent book and is a collection of short stories and novellas that range over nearly a 25 year period of my published writings. We've got western gunfights, vampire hunters, ghost impersonators, the rock vocalist Matthias Gantlet taking on the heavyweight champion of the world, the assassin Monica Killingsworth doing an interview, and even an audacious sequel to a post-apocalyptic romance story that you wrote. Before each story, I provide a bit of background information, just in case the readers might find it of interest.

DF: There have been PULPWORK CHRISTMAS SPECIALS for the past two years. Are we going to see one for 2013? And is this going to be an annual event we can look forward to?

JJ: Since we give away the Pulpwork Christmas Specials for free, we depend upon the charity of talented and in-demand writers. They have to be willing to contribute work that normally they would be getting paid for doing. Thus far, in the tradition of Christmas, they've been very magnanimous and have offered top-notch Christmas fiction.  I've completed a quite lengthy Monica Killingsworth tale for this year's Christmas Special, and I hope to be receiving some further contributions soon.

DF: ONE FOOT IN MY GRAVE is a book you’ve lived with for a long time. Tell us about the background of the September Peterson character and why this novel is so important to you.

JJ: September was a friend of mine since my youth. He suffered from a lung condition called cystic fibrosis, which makes life hard and generally short. On his death bed he requested I write his life story … and he had quite an action-packed story to tell.  So bringing this project to fruition had a very personal meaning to me.

DF: Tell us about THE GANTLET BROTHERS: SOLD OUT.

Sold Out will be published later this year and is the third in the Gantlet Brothers series: the first being The Nuclear Suitcase, and the second The Gantlet Brothers Greatest Hits. The Gantlet Brothers escaped across the Berlin wall in the 1980's and proceeded to become one of the world's premiere metal bands, but they also had a penchant for violence and it seemed that trouble often crossed their path … either that or they went looking for it. My regular readers know that I've never shied away from killing major characters, and they'll likely see at least one major character meet a grisly end in this thriller.

DF: What’s a typical Day In The Life of Joel Jenkins like?

JJ: I like to get up early, eat, write, hit the punching bag and lift weights before heading to work. This summer we've had particularly good weather and a few mornings I've been able to write while enjoying the sunshine on the balcony.  Things have been slow at the day job, so I've had extra time in the morning, making it a particularly lazy summer. As a result my writing output has more than doubled.

Derrick Ferguson: Anything else we need to know?

Joel Jenkins: I've already divulged far too much for my own safety.

THE VAULTS OF CALADREX

PULPWORK PRESS

Kickin' The Willy Bobo With: H.H. NEVILLE

Derrick Ferguson: Who is H.H. Neville?

H.H. Neville: I am a Seattle native that refuses to leave (except for routine trips to Yokohama), a volleyball-playing fiend and an Earl Grey enthusiast. I run a makeshift book orphanage where books just tend to show up, and I take good care of them. Sometimes I even write words, but am a bit uncomfortable with the term “writer.” I tend to prefer “fictionista.”

DF: What do you do to keep yourself in cheese and crackers?

HHN: I am a web and graphic designer. You have probably received an email with something I’ve done. Or at least your spam folder did. We’re tight like that.

DF: In the interest of full disclosure we should inform the good folks reading this that we’ve known each other for a while. Would you care to elaborate?

HHN: Heh, yes we have. This might seem a little creepier for you than me, but you’ve known me since I was fourteen. That’s when I crawled onto the internet, sheepishly posting fiction to a website that by some stroke of good fortune you stumbled across. You graciously reviewed some fiction on that website. Eventually you got around to something I wrote. You weren’t that impressed. You said it was more a history lesson than a story. You were, of course, right, and to this day (some fourteen years later) I still remember that!

DF: How long have you been writing?

HHN: It will sound rote, or trite, but forever? I remember being in early grade school and folding notebook paper into little books where I wrote stories about sword-fighting foxes that I would then illustrate. I’ve always had a pretty intense imagination, and writing seemed like the best way to relieve some of that pressure.

Seriously writing? Even though I got published once in my preteens, I never really started taking it seriously until a little bit a go. It was just something I did because I enjoyed it. I had no goals other than share things I’d written. Sharing is big for me.

DF: What writers have influenced you?

HHN: Above all else, Lewis Carroll. Without him, I’d have no imagination at all. I warn you that as a book snob, this list will get long: Verne, Frank L. Baum, ERB, Chabon, Raymond Chandler, Dostoevesky, William Gibson, Huxley, Ishiguro, Jacques, Melville, Millhauser, Murakami (Haruki and Ryu), Orwell, Christopher Priest, Salinger, Steinbeck, Wilde, Vonnegut (and all the Beat Generation), and, yeah, give me the hook already!

I’m a literary guy. I read everything from pulps, to alt. lit., YA to classic, and even though I write a lot of superheroes, I tend not to be influenced by too many comic book writers. Almost none, actually (except Japanese dudes like Shirow, Otomo, Tezuka, etc.). I try to take a very literary approach to capes and cowls.

DF: You were very active in what we called the Heroes Community of fan fiction. What would you say was your major contributions during that period?

HHN: Strife and consternation? I don’t know, really. A majority of my works have been wiped away. I think above all else, I challenged the status quo. A lot of the guys who are comic book guys didn’t get a lot of what I was trying to do. I never wanted to tell a story that left a character in a holding pattern; if I couldn’t push the characters to uncomfortable places, I didn’t want to do it.

Beyond that, I’m known for my stylistic prose; it’s dense and florid, and a lot of the times, very abstract. You can thank my love of The Beat Generation for that.

What I’m most proud of though, is as I got older, I tried to turn around and give advice to the younger generation like so many did for me. I loved to help spitball and world build, which I guess makes sense now that I’m doing that with The Generation Project.

DF: Why fan fiction at all? Why not just start out writing your own original superhero characters?

HHN: There’s a real beautiful agility with fan fiction. The people reading your work already have a pretty vast knowledge of the characters, their motivations, physical appearance, what have you. It allows you to work with that; skimp on certain aspects of storytelling that are usually necessary, and focus on the things you want to, either because you enjoy them, or because you want to get better. It’s the quickest way to write (especially when you’re learning), because you can just do it, almost reflexively, and the audience will follow. The readers will also be able to pick out weak spots in your skill sets because they know how things should be. There’s no guesswork.

You can’t do that when every bit of a character and the stories they’re in are new. You’ve got responsibilities as a writer to tell a story as completely as you can, and when readers don’t have that existing knowledge, it requires a lot more maturity and effort.

DF: Tell us about THE GENERATION PROJECT

HHN: The Generation Project is a shared-continuity superhero universe. It will span the website, and print and e-book anthologies and individual novels. All the characters on the website are free for any writer to pick up and write. I have about 200+ characters ready to insert into the continuity (with about fifty bios on the site) currently. Writers are of course allowed to introduce their own.

However, some writers struggle with world-building, which I certainly do not. Anyone who has seen one of my 100+ page character or plot bibles knows this. So, I can take care of that part for them.

Sharing is also really important to me. I like writers to share ideas, concepts, characters. I love co-writing. So this was key to doing The Generation. Sharing can be rough though, so we’ve installed some great tools to make it easier, like the bios, the world bible and a sliding scale timeline where anyone can pick up a character at any time in their life and write a story. That character might get introduced by one writer one week and the next, killed by another writer. Ownership is democratic in the purest sense.

DF: Name your three favorite characters and tell us why they are your favorites.

HHN: That’s like picking favorite kids, man! Which, by the way, if anyone tells you they can’t: they’re lying.

Paper Tiger (Page Turner) easily at the top. She’s somewhat autobiographical. She’s freakishly in love with books. Nothing else really matters to her. She’s got this Marlowe meets Thoroughly Modern Millie demeanor; she’s intelligent yet aloof, totally self-confident, despite glaring flaws her mother loves to point and just really complex. Plus, her powers are only limited by her vast imagination, and making sure she has enough paper to transmute!

The Ouroboros because he’s the kind of self-indulgent I think a lot of us would be if we were hanging out with the world’s greatest Capes. He’s the ultimate self-promoter, and showman and actually won’t help anybody unless there’s either a news reporter or a movie starlet within an earshot. He fancies himself a ladie’s man, even if he’s kind of repulsive. He’s Houdini meets Chaplin and a whole bunch of Snidely Whiplash. Plus, I just love escapists. That’s not a “superpower” per se, but it’s certainly superhuman.

Man From Mars. It’s a shameless ode to Blondie. He’s the quintessential stuck in the 80s guy. I know a lot of people like that; they just won’t let that decade go. He was a fixture at CBGBs and isn’t quite willing to move on. He’s part of the main team after The Generation destroys itself, and he’s clinging to nostalgia like a lot of folks are. He’ll be a good cipher for readers even if his nostalgia has nothing to do with The Generation. His power set is fun. Whatever he eats, he absorbs into his body. It might be a guitar, or lettuce. Who knows. Maybe something useful.

DF: Is it safe to say that superhero prose fiction has arrived and is here to stay?

HHN: Definitely. Superhero prose has always been around. I have countless of them from when I was a kid, but no slight on Greg Cox, Christopher Golden, Dean Wesley Smith and some of those guys, but it just wasn’t gonna happen for them. They weren’t going to make superhero prose a “thing.” They peaked at the wrong time. Now with a new superhero movie every two weeks, they’re part of the “pop creature” as I like to call it. Audiences crave it in all mediums, devour it. They’re not quite the new zombie (or paranormal romance), but as I spend a lot of time in bookstores, I get to see they’re right there in a comfortable third.

You’ve got the stuff by Adam Christopher, Michael Carroll, and a bunch of folks in all arenas, and even now a She-Hulk book that is one part Peter David and another Sex and the City. X-Men novels are coming back. Everybody’s doing them. When the YA shelves are saturated with a trend, it’s big. Fourteen year-olds are the ultimate tastemakers. What they want, everyone does.

It actually made me resist doing this site for a split second. Did I want to devote so much effort to a saturated market? Yeah, because it’s fun, and people are eating it up for that reason.

I think as long as we’re willing to explore what it means to put on that Cape from every angle, it’s a plenty big sandbox. That’s the goal with The Generation. I want to look at these characters from every angle, from every genre. If someone wants to do a romcom, let’s do it; if somebody wants an alt. lit. story about the collateral damage people suffer indulging these heroes, cool and of course, the old school four colour type of story doesn’t hurt either.

DF: Unlike their comic book/graphic novel cousins, superhero prose doesn’t have the benefit of artwork to help tell the story. But what can a writer do in prose that he can’t in a comic book?

HHN: I don’t think it’s a matter of what one can do over the other. I think it just takes a lot of imagination and ingenuity to do things in one over the other. Comic books are awfully kinetic. It takes a lot of work (and a lot of panels) to deliver depth, though. One well written paragraph can handle a forty-eight comic book spread a lot of the times when it comes to earnest character development. Can a novel be kinetic, though? Sure, and a lot of comic books can be deep, too.

I think the greatest advantage to prose is the investment factor: reading prose usually takes a greater investment on the reader’s behalf, so accordingly, writers will likely have to find ways to give that investment a payoff. We often think of that as a gift to the reader, but it is just as much to writer.

One of my biggest pet peeves with superhero prose writers is when they try to emulate comic books. A simple 'Dangeruss punched him, he flew across the room and hit a wall' is really just an action line in a comic script. It doesn’t make good prose. Use the medium for what it is. Color in the lines, don’t just draw ‘em.

DF: So why should people check out THE GENERATION PROJECT?

HHN: I’d say they should check it out if they like superheroes, of all different walks. We’re going to explore them every way we know how, and some we don’t just quite yet. We’re trying some exciting new things within the realm of shared-continuity universes which requires very little effort from writers, but a lot from its editors. We’re dedicated to making that work, and in turn making it a great place for readers and writers to just sit down and do what they love: create and read stories about superheroes.

Another goal of mine is to make this a safe place for all writers of all walks. I’ve got submissions being worked on by screenwriters, English professors, and aspiring writers. People who want so desperately to write a fun superhero story, even if they never have. We’re dedicated to equipping people to have fun both reading and writing. If you’re a screenwriter and hammer out a great screenplay, I’m a prose monster and we’ll work it out. If you’re a solid writer, but not a world builder, just plug in some of the characters from the site. I’m all about massaging something until the writer and reader have a product they can both be proud of.

DF: Where do you see THE GENERATION PROJECT in five years?

HHN: The definitive stop for superhero prose, and I mean that, earnestly. I want to be a force to be reckoned with, getting not just huge numbers of fans, but releases: individual novels, anthologies, continual free content on the website. I want to release YA books where the proceeds go to help Autism research. Perhaps that doesn’t mean we rival those comic book guys with their summer blockbusters, but I want to be at the forefront when people think about great superhero prose.

DF: What’s a typical Day In The Life Of H.H. Neville?

HHN: Wake up. Drink tea. Shower. Drink tea. Design some stuff. Drink tea. Make amazing food. Drink tea. Read. Drink tea. Write. Drink Tea. Sleep. Yeah, sounds about right.

Derrick Ferguson: Anything else we should know?

H.H. Neville: That Derrick Ferguson is a great, great man. Seriously, and not because of this interview. You’ve helped nudge me along to be a real-boy writer so many times, even if you never intended. So, cheers.

Oh, and that The Generation Project would love to have you all, both readers and writers, so come check us out, you hear? 

GENERATIONS OF CAPES

H.H. Neville

Calling H.H. Neville a real writer–like his genre of choice–would be fiction. At the rare points that he does manage to write, he fashions his work with visceral visuals, razorblade sharp style and shotgun brutality. He draws equal inspiration from Victorian Era literature, classic fables, Japanese pop-violence, steampunk, anime, grindhouse genres, hip-hop, neon-flavored pop culture, fashion-trends and really cool sneakers. He is, if anything a proponent of style over substance. Who needs plot if it’s pretty?

NEVILLE, NEVILLELAND, Home of The Beat Bastards

Black Pulp Gets PULPED! Featuring Walter Mosley!

In the latest episode of PULPED! THE OFFICIAL NEW PULP PODCAST, Tommy Hancock rides herd on the contributors to the historic best selling BLACK PULP from Pro Se Productions! This collection contains stories running the gamut of genre fiction that feature Black Lead Characters!  Westerns, Mysteries, Supernatural, Folklore, Pirate tales, Jungle stories and so much more fill the pages of BLACK PULP! Some of the most noted writers working today fill the volume as well!  Hear from Gary Phillips, Idea Originator and Co-editor as well as contributor to the project, as he discusses where the concept came from and reasons for it as well as his story.  Also, PULPED! co hosts Ron Fortier and Derick Ferguson appear as guests, each talking about their tales in this tome!  Authors Michael A. Gonzales, Gar Anthony Haywood, Christopher Chambers, Kimberly Richardson, D. Alan Lewis, and Mel Odom join in to discuss their stories as well as their viewpoints on the concept and the comments BLACK PULP has received, both negative and positive! This fantastic episode closes with Best Selling Author Walter Mosley contributing his thoughts on Pulp in general, BLACK PULP in specific, and what this thing we call Pulp, this style of writing, truly is and should mean to all of us.  The largest, best episode of PULPED! ever!  Listen, enjoy, and even learn as Pro Se's BLACK PULP gets PULPED!

Derrick Ferguson Takes The Train To GRAND CENTRAL NOIR

Compiled by Terrence P. McCauley

File Size: 349 KB

Print Length: 155 pages

Publisher: Metropolitan Crime Publishing (June 14, 2013)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Language: English

ASIN: B00DFA32KM

Okay, just bear with me for a few minutes, I cry your pardon. Those of you who have been good enough and indulgent enough to read my previous reviews both book and movie know that at times I can be somewhat long winded. But I assure you I do so for a reason and not because I’m in love with my own prose. And I’m trying to make a point here about GRAND CENTRAL NOIR that I think will illustrate exactly what I’m trying to get at when describing the feel of this anthology.

Most of you are familiar with Will Eisner and “The Spirit,” correct? Remember how every once in a while Mr. Eisner would tell stories that had nothing to do with The Spirit or maybe he would show up in the last panel or two simply because since the strip was titled after him he had to show up somewhere. In those standalone, Day In The Life stories, Mr. Eisner would tell short stories full of suspense, mystery, pathos, comedy, horror, crime or romance. Some of those stories were really very memorable. Well, at its best GRAND CENTRAL NOIR evokes the feel of some of those Will Eisner stories. And even when it’s not at its best, it reminded me of the “Naked City” TV show. Which also ain’t bad.

The concept behind GRAND CENTRAL NOIR is simple: all of the stories are set in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the largest train station in the world celebrating its 100^th birthday this year. I’ve been in Grand Central Terminal many times and it is truly one of the most magnificent structures in New York City. Thousands of people use The Terminal every day and just like they used to say on “Naked City,” they all have stories.

The stories in GRAND CENTRAL NOIR are crime stories but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for other elements to enter into these stories so that while crime is the driving force behind them, they certainly don’t all read the same. And that’s a testament to the talented writers that Terrence McCauley has compiled for this volume.

It’s never stated when I.A. Watson’s “Lost Property” takes place but it reads like a 1930’s screwball comedy/mystery and it’s an excellent choice to start the anthology with as it’s breezy, light and thanks to the rat-ta-tat-tat dialog a fun read with a conclusion that had me grinning from ear to ear.

“Train to Nowhere” by Charles Salzberg and Jessica Hall is set in modern day but it’s feel is very much that of classic noir. There’s a mystery to be solved here but I got the impression that the writers weren’t so much interested in the solution of the mystery as they were in evoking a certain mood and tone and they did indeed accomplish that.

For a while there I feared that Ron Fortier was telling me a shaggy dog story in “Fat Lip’s Revenge” but I should have known better. In the hands of an old pro like Ron it’s a story that at first appears to be going way out over there in the fields somewhere but once you get to the end you understand why Ron had to go out there to bring you back to here. Another story that had me grinning like an idiot by the end.

“Fortune” by S.A. Solomon ends just when it seems like it should be shifting into a higher gear. Not that it isn’t well written. It does a good job of getting into the head of the narrator but that ending is just too abrupt for me and left me feeling cheated out of a proper resolution to the story.

“Meet Me at the Clock” by R. Narvaez is a story that’s soaked in hopelessness right from the opening paragraphs. By the time Lew Conrad got on the train I knew that this story was not going to end well for him and I was right. And “Meet Me at the Clock” is one of several stories in the anthology that gave me the distinctive impression that the actual crime-related plot isn’t all that important to the writer. R. Narvaez is much more interested in exploring this day in the life of this second rater who deserves the fate he gets at the end of the story.

“Terminal Sweep Stakes” is what I like to call a Take No Prisoners Story. Amy Mars is telling a hard mean story about a hard mean man and she pulls no punches doing so. I have no idea if Grand Central Terminal has its own police force but the idea itself was fascinating enough to pull me into the story. The barbed wire and bourbon bite of the prose did the rest.

“Without a Hitch” by R.J. Westerhoff did have a couple of hitches for me. Including a time shift so abrupt and unclear that I actually wondered if somehow a chunk of story had been left out by accident. And the ending is way too anti-climactic and left me mumbling, “You mean that’s it?”

After reading J. Walt Layne’s “The Drop” you may be wondering where the crime element is as I did. I don’t think there is one and I don’t think Mr. Layne cares one bit. Again, this another story that I feel is much more interested in characterization and striving to craft a mood and atmosphere. This story feels ambitious, as if Mr. Layne was trying out a different type of storytelling from his usual style.

“A Primal Force” is a story about family and revenge that I admit I paid more attention to because I recently watched on Turner Classic Movies a really good biopic starring Ernest Borgnine about Joseph Petrosino, a New York City detective at the turn of the century who was put in charge of dealing with Italian criminal organizations such as The Black Hand. Petrosino and The Black Hand both play major roles in this story.

“Off Track” by Matt Hilton had me laughing out loud by the time I reached the end. Because it was a laugh that Mr. Hilton had truly earned as I admired the way he had me thinking one way and so smoothly turned the story completely around. The story’s like a great sleight of hand magic trick where the magician has you looking at one hand while he’s actually doing the trick with the other. One of my favorite stories in the book.

I really enjoyed W. Silas Donohue’s “Herschel’s Broom” because even though all of the stories are set in Grand Central Terminal, “Herschel’s Broom” is the one that to me was actually about Grand Central Terminal, if you get my drift and I think after reading it, you most certainly will.

“Timetable For Crime” by Marcelle Thiebaux is another story I really enjoyed as I like heist stories where whoever is pulling off the heist gets away with it. Criminals are oftentimes so inept in real life that it’s downright fun to see a smart criminal in fiction pull off the perfect crime. A great story that barrels along full tilt boogie from start to finish and never sets a foot wrong once.

“Mary Mulligan” is a story that’s safely in the middle of the road. There’s nothing about it that really makes it stand out but there’s nothing wrong with it either. The prose by Jen Conley is pleasant to read and the situation plays itself out in a fairly straightforward manner with no embellishment or surprises. I like Jen Conley’s prose and wish she’d really swung for the fences in this one. Still, this story is good enough that after reading it I made a notation to look up some of her other stories.

“Spice” by Seamus Scanlon is another story that like “Fortune” and “Without A Hitch” ends just where it was getting goood and I was looking forward to where it was going to take me.

Terrence P. McCauley serves up the piping hot action of “Grand Central: Terminal” as if fully aware his responsibility as clean-up is to leave readers wishing there were more stories to read and he does it with a razor-sharp spy vs. spy story. It isn’t a long story but it does a very good job of conveying a larger world outside the borders and I can very easily see more stories about James Hicks and I would love to know more about The University. If you were a fan of ‘24’ then you’ll get right into this story and enjoy it as much as I did.

Before wrapping up this review I know that the writers would want me to point out that when you purchase a copy of GRAND CENTRAL NOIR you’ll be helping out a wonderful cause: God’s Love We Deliver is an organization dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses. All proceeds from this book will be donated to God’s Love We Deliver. For more information about this organization and the amazing work that they are doing, please visit their website

So should you read GRAND CENTRAL NOIR? Sure you should. Not only will you be helping out a worthwhile cause but you’ll be getting eight stories out of fifteen that are absolutely first-rate. Call those the Will Eisner level good stories. The others are “Naked City” good which as I said earlier, still ain’t bad. Enjoy.

Fight Card: Brooklyn Beatdown

Brooklyn – 1954. Bare knuckler brawler Levi Kimbro battles his way through the bloody backroom ghetto bars of Brooklyn in pursuit of his dream of owning his own business. It's a hard and vicious road he walks and it becomes even more complicated when he falls hard for the electrifying Dorothea McBricker.

Dorothea's brother, Teddy, has fallen under the influence of notorious gangster Duke Williamson – a powerful man who is pressuring Levi to join his stable of fighters or face off against the human killing machine, ‘Deathblow’ Ballantine.  A knock-down, drag out, Brooklyn Beatdown is brewing, and Levi will need every ounce of his fighter’s heart if he wants to save not only himself, but the woman he loves ...

Available NOW for your Kindle!

On B-Boys and Pulp Culture: An Essay by Michael A. Gonzales

The essay below was done as a promotion for the short story collection BLACK PULP edited by Gary Phillips and Tommy Hancock. Enjoy!



On B-Boys and Pulp Culture:
Black Pulp edited by Gary Phillips and Tommy Hancock
by Michael A. Gonzales
Gonzales.gonzo@gmail.com

Planet Hip-Hop has always overflowed with folks into various forms of pulp culture. Over the years, I’ve interviewed many rap artists and producers who shared their love for Star Wars, crime movies, karate flicks and the novels of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines. Still, I was surprised when Queensbridge legend Nas told me in 1999 that he had once created a Black Pulp hero when he was a kid.

“I used to used to draw my own character called Sea God,” Nas told me. “I copied the body of Conan the Barbarian, but had him standing on the corner instead of in the forest.” Without a doubt, I’m sure Nas isn’t the only one with a stash of drawings and/or writings detailing the bugged adventures of urban champions.

Last year, when respected crime novelist/comic book writer Gary
Phillips invited me to contribute a short story to his latest project BLACK PULP (Pro Se, 2013), co-edited with Tommy Hancock, I immediately thought of that long ago conversation with Nas and decided I too wanted to create a hood hero.

Leaning back in my office chair, I closed my eyes and thought of my own pulp filled childhood growing-up in Harlem: of listening to old Shadow radio programs that were released on records, watching blaxploitation and kung-fu flicks every weekend, devouring the Marshall Rodgers/Steve Englehart’s version of Batman, discovering the weird worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, watching Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon serials on PBS and falling in love with the work of pulp artist supreme Howard Chaykin, the dude George Lucas requested to illustrate the first Star Wars comic book.

After an hour of drifting on those dusty memories, quicker than I could say, “Batman and Robin, Green Hornet and Kato or Easy Rawlinsand Mouse,” my own pulp heroes Jaguar and Shep were born. The lead character Coltrane (Jaguar) Jones owns a Harlem rap club called the Bassment and drives through Harlem cool as Super Fly in a fly sports car. His murderous friend Shep, who just got out of prison, becomes his badass sidekick as the two self-appointed crime fighters go in search of a music minded kidnapper.

Although I’ve never been big on constructing strict outlines for fiction, I knew that I wanted the period to be 1988, the last year Mayor Koch was in office. Crack was at its height, Public Enemy’s brilliant It Takes a Nation of Millions was rockin’ the boulevards, Dapper Dan was creating his bugged designer fashions and New York Citywas still on the verge exploding.

Recalling Fab 5 Freddy, who also appears in the story, telling me about the jazz/hip-hop shows he did with Max Roach at the Mudd Club in the 1980s, the finished story told the tale of a be-bop lover trying to rid b-boys and their music from the streets of Sugar Hill. While working on the story, I consulted with my good friend Robert (Bob) Morales, himself an accomplished comic book writer, co-creator of the black Captain America graphic novel "The Truth" and a pulp culture aficionado. Although he was working on a graphic novel about
Orson Welles at the time, he always found the time to talk. Once, when I thought the Paul Pope/John Carpenter-Escape from New York inspired climax might be too crazy, Bob reminded me, “It’s a pulp story…there’s no such thing as too wild.”

So, after several weeks of calling Bob, sometimes a few times a day,and writing, “Jaguar and the Jungleland Boogie” was finally finished. Sadly, Bob Morales died suddenly on April 17, so I’d like to dedicate the story to him.

In addition to my b-boy/be-bop tale, Black Pulp has a cool line-up of creators of color that include famed novelist Walter Mosley, who penned the introduction, Gar Anthony Heywood, Christopher Chambers, Kimberly Richardson, Mel Odom and others.

BLACK PULP

WALTER MOSLEY INTRODUCTION

BLACKADELIC POP