Fall Round Up, Part 3: All Kinds of Pulpy Goodness

JIGSAW WORLD
A major page in our current story, Jigsaw World, went up this week at www.adventuresinpulp.com. We just have five action packed pages left in Chapter One at which point we will take a break and start our fourth short story, Ashes of the Immortals, before moving on with Chapter Two of Jigsaw World. As I have pointed out before, Jigsaw World is unlike our other tales for several reasons. First, it was written and plotted to be an ongoing print book so I know the pacing has been much slower than our first three tales.  Your patience will be rewarded with a great story. I really do believe once the ball gets rolling and we starting getting Dan into and out of action, the vibe will be like one of the classic Flash Gordon series. The first story arc is four, 22 page chapters although, since we have decided to go digital, I may condense or expand (while the whole arc is plotted and outlined only the first 44 pages have actually been scripted). Once chapter one is concluded I will start a writer's commentary as I have done with all the other tales to date. I look forward to showing how this particular story came together. Pictured the framed original art for page 17 that my partner/artist Matt Childers gave to me as a gift.

ASHES OF THE IMMORTALS
I have often said that, as a writer, Adventures In Pulp was a big opportunity for me to experiment with form and style. Up until now all of the stories have been full script mode. Our Ashes of the Immortals short story is going to be different. With Jigsaw World, Dick Ruby and the Case of the Little Green Men and Hawk and a Handsaw, I created each one and gave Matt a full script. When we did Four Horsemen, Matt and I developed the characters together, then I went off and plotted and provided a full script. The plan with Ashes of the Immortals is going to take a alternative approach. Matt came up with the idea for Ashes of the Immortals; I developed his creation and plotted out the story beats. From there Matt is drawing the pages from the outline and I will go back and script the text based on his images. I know this sounds much like the old "Marvel Way" of doing comics. Truthfully, no one actually does that anymore. It became known as the "Marvel Way" because it was pioneered by Stan Lee.  But few know it was only out of necessity. He was writing almost everything they had, and just didn't have time to do full scripts. That was our  plan, at least initially. Matt has been hammered with outside work and our intent was that we would have Ashes of the Immortals completely ready by the time Jigsaw World wrapped Chapter One.  It looks like that's not going to happen, so I may be scripting as he finishes them. This reminds me of a thing Harlan Ellison used to do. He would do a personal appearance and would bring his typewriter and write a story while fans watched. As he finished each page, it would be put up in the window for all to see. No revisions. No edits. No tweaks. No backs-ies. That's a stressful way to write. He made it look easy, but then he is a true master. He loved the challenge. Out of necessity I may be embracing the challenge. Our grand experiment just got a little more grand and a little more experimental.

WIN SOME ARTWORK
Speaking of how busy Matt has been, his Army of Darkness short story can be seen in the new Oneshot 1992.1 by Dynamite Entertainment and arrived in stores this week. In celebration, he is doing a contest. Buy a copy of the oneshot and tweet a picture of you with the comic with the hashtag #AshRocks and you will be entered in a contest to win a FREE original sketch of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness hero Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) by Matt. For more info go to his website www.matthewchilders.com.

DON'T LET IT BE CURTAINS FOR MA RUBY'S BABY BOY OR OUR OTHER PULP HEROES.
As with all the tales at Adventures in Pulp, we fell in love with our experimental one-offs and later decided that they would all, in essence, be back door pilots. We would love to do more of Dick Ruby's cases. We would love to do more adventures focusing on our Sterling City heroes. We would love to see how the Good Witch and her Four Horsemen would fare in their new world and see how they would each get back home. Ideally it would be for a publisher.  That would give us more money and time to produce stories, but that means they have to notice us. If you like any of our stories at Adventures in Pulp, then please make some noise. Tweet about it. Post positive reviews and links on Facebook. The ideas are here, some are even already written. For example I have God is a Bullet, a 22 page done-in-one tale set in the Hawk and a Handsaw universe scripted. Also for that universe (as I said in last week's blog), I have an old Green Arrow idea that I am considering reworking into a Blue Quiver short story. We also have two new original stories each with a completed 22 page script to kickoff their respective lines. The first is called Destined about a war between science and magic as well as a hard sci-fi series about a team of interstellar bounty hunters called The Outer Worlds. But that's not all. I worked up a complete timeline for Matt to reference for any future Dick Ruby cases. For the first time ever, never revealed before, are some select excerpts (I had to delete a few things to hide some spoilers):

Personal Data:

Born in Brooklyn, New York:  June 22, 1917 Richard Reardon Ruby
Attended Cornell University: 1934-1938, graduated with a degree in criminology.  
Played professional baseball: 1939-1940 (minor leagues) 1941 (majors)

Enlisted in the Military Dec. 8 1941  Honorably discharged  Apr. 3 1943

Started detective agency: Dick Ruby Investigations October 1943

Cases:

The Case of the Beating Behind the Backstop

The Case of the Phantom of the Ball Park

The Case of the Mafia Monsters

The Case of the Crossroads Contract

The Case of the Mummy’s Mistress

The Case of the Mole Men Under the Mountain

The Case of the Chicago Sky Pirates

The Story of the Denizens of the Desert

The Case of the Hollywood Hell-Hounds

The Case of the Vegas Vanishings

The Case of the Time Displaced In-Laws

The Case of the Haunted Honeymoon

The Case of the Troll Under the North Avenue Bridge

The Case of the Great Lakes Ghost Ship

The Case of the Thanksgiving Theft

The Case of the Christmas Creature

The Case of the Cursed Cruise to Bermuda

The Case of the Time Traveling Vampire

The Case of the Rock and Roll Reaper

The Case of the Werewolf and the Rookie Detective

The Case of the Deadly Demons

The Case of the Retirement Community Clones

The Case of the Aliens Under the Ocean

 

So we have a ton of stuff waiting in the wings over at www.adventuresinpulp.com we just need fans who want to see it. If you love our site, convince a friend or ten to check us out and make some noise.