Ian Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins: A Collection of Essays

With a new Bond movie coming this year, it feels appropriate to ring in 2020 with a new book about Ian Fleming and his master spy. And one that I contributed to.

Over the last few years, the Literary 007 website has been collecting essays around what Fleming called the Seven Deadlier Sins. Everyone knows the Seven Deadly Sins of Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath. But Fleming wrote that even worse than those were Avarice, Cruelty, Hypocrisy, Malice, Moral Cowardice, Self-Righteousness, and Snobbery. Literary 007 asked writers to consider one of these Deadlier Sins and discuss how it manifested in Fleming's life and especially in the Bond novels. I got to write about self-righteousness and I'm really happy with how that essay turned out.

Now that all seven essays are done, they've been collected into a volume called Ian Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins: A Collection of Essays. It's available in paperback and electronically. It's a cool book with some meaningful things to say not just about Fleming and Bond, but also about human nature.

I'm in Athena Voltaire Pulp Tales

I think I've mentioned this all over social media, but keep forgetting to do it here, too. There's an Athena Voltaire prose anthology coming out soon and I wrote one of the stories in it.

If you're not familiar with Athena Voltaire, she's an awesome comics character created by Steve Bryant. She's a pilot in the days leading up to WWII and she has all sorts of pulpy adventures featuring lost treasures and Yeti and vampires and secret societies and of course Nazis. Her comics adventures are all worth checking out and I couldn't be happier that I got to write a story for her. Mine features a forbidden island and a cameo by Errol Flynn, because that's the kind of company Athena keeps.

Anyway, I hope you'll check it out. There's lot of other cool writers in it, too, like Tom King, Corinna Bechko, Gabriel Hardman, Genevieve Pearson, and Will Pfeifer.

The KAMnibus is coming

My advance copy of the Kill All Monsters Omnibus, Volume 1 showed up today. And it is a glorious monster-killing weapon all by itself. Dark Horse did a really nice job with the package and I can't wait for people to read it.

Coming to comic book shops on July 19. Give your shop order code MAR170061 if you'd like to pre-order.

Coming everywhere else in August.

The Kill All Monsters Omnibus will be here soon!

If you look at page 65 of this month's Previews catalog (that's the one with the March 2017 cover date for stuff hitting shops in May 2017), you'll see the solicitation for the Kill All Monsters Omnibus, Volume 1. Because of the way the book market works, our ginormous hardcover isn't actually hitting in May with the single-issue comics being advertised in the same catalog. We're coming out on July 19.

And we'll be everywhere. It'll be very easy to find the book, especially online. But if you prefer to buy it at your local comics shop on the day that it comes out, now is the time to let them know that you'd like a copy. Or if you forget, they can special order it for you later. That works, too.

It's going to be awesome. I just this week got to read the whole thing for the first time and I'm really happy with it. Jason is, too. We can't wait for you all to see it. It's going to be a brick of a book: 368 pages containing the previous Ruins of Paris volume (slightly edited, so the original book is still a unique object), the continuation and conclusion of that story, the complete Dark Horse Presents story (reformatted for widescreen presentation), a whole new story set in a different part of the Kill All Monsters world, and pin-ups by some amazing artists. And all of that for about $25.

It's almost here, you guys!

Panels for Primates (with a story by me) available for pre-order on ComiXology

A while back Simon Roy (Prophet) and I contributed a very short, but action-packed short story to the Panels for Primates webcomic anthology. For those not familiar, Panels for Primates was a charity comic to raise money for the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky. It was free to read, but the intention was that if the ape and monkey stories moved or entertained you at all, you were invited to contribute.

As a huge fan of these animals, I was thrilled when editor Troy Wilson invited me to work with Simon who helped me pack a ton of action into two pages, including giant cephalopods, tiki-men, a sinister elephant, a mad tortoise, slime-monsters, werewolves, mummies, giant monsters, giant robots, and dinosaur-riding gorillas. Our story also featured that most famous of Kentucky primates, Daniel Baboon, whom I really want to do more with one of these days.

Panels for Primates is no longer available for free for the exact reason that it's being published by Monkeybrain on comiXology with proceeds still going to benefit the Primate Rescue Center. There are actually two editions: a version for grown-ups and a kids version called Panels for Primates Junior. Not that the grown-up version is necessarily dark and gruesome. Simon and my story is all-ages appropriate and appears in the grown-up version, but Junior is particularly geared towards kids.

Both editions will be available to read on November 25, but can be pre-ordered now. And in addition to the stories from the webcomic there are also brand new primate stories by people like John Byrne, Jeff Lemire, Douglas Rushkoff, Jamie Delano, Molly Crabapple, and J. Bone. It promises to be a great read for an even greater cause.

My first work as a writer about comics

About a month ago, Sean Kleefeld wrote a blog post called "My Short Career as a Letterhack," in which he talks about writing to comic book letters pages in order to get on the radar of editors. I can relate, because when I first got it into my head that I wanted to write comics, that was an approach I took too.

For me, it wasn't so much about being remembered by editors as it was simply a way of connecting to the comics industry on a deeper level than just reading the books. I started seeing some of the same names pop up on comics pages a lot (possibly even Sean's; I know I read at least those Marvel Knights issues he was published in) and figured that I could do that too. And since it would mean submitting a piece of writing to an editor and competing with other pieces of writing for print, I saw it as sort of a first step towards being published.

Sean posted a cover gallery of comics that his letters appeared in, so I'm doing that too. My time writing letters was much shorter than his, ended when I got reliable access to the Internet and was able to write about comics that way. But I had a good time with it and was able to figure out what kinds of letters editors were looking for.



Milestone had a Letter of the Month deal where they'd send one letter-writer a signed copy of the issue in which he or she was printed. I got picked for talking not only about Hardware, but Milestone in general and what it meant to me.





I grew up a Marvel kid, but tried a bunch of DC comics shortly after their Zero Hour event and wrote in to tell them about that.



I was a huuuuge Azrael fan, and loved getting to gush about that character to the folks making comics about him at the time. Sadly, the series didn't stay awesome it's whole run, but the issues with Barry Kitson on art were amazing.



I'm also really happy that I got to tell Peter David and Company how cool their Aquaman was.



My last published letter was the nerdiest of all as I expressed my appreciation that Malibu's Deep Space Nine series offered a more plausible explanation for the existence of Thomas Riker than Star Trek: TNG did on TV.

Project updates on Avenger, Kill All Monsters, and Christmas Carol

Proofed my story and wrote my bio for the Avenger anthology last week. It's exciting to see that book coming closer and closer to being a real, physical object. The Mike Kaluta art above isn't from the book, it's from The Golden Age site, but it's a nice representation of the Avenger's heritage and where he deserves to sit in the pantheon of pulp hero deity.

Got back some comments from James Powell (my editor) on the ending to Kill All Monsters. I thought I had a nice, dramatic ending for it, but that was until I read James' ideas on how to make it better. I'm giving myself a week to think through how best to implement them, but it's going to improve the book dramatically once I do.

I don't want to quit writing while I'm thinking about KAM, so I started working on something that I'd planned to save for later, a comics adaptation of A Christmas Carol with my friend and frequent collaborator Jessica Hickman. I'm talking about it against my better judgment, because I've learned the hard way that a thousand things can go wrong with any project and it's usually best to wait until things are done and official before blabbing about them.

This project's a little different though, mostly because it's a labor of love. Jess and I are both doing it because we're passionate about the story and want to do a definitive version of it. As long as I'm critiquing other versions, I want to put my money where my mouth is and figure out what a perfect version would look like for me. Jess does too.

So expect to see more about this as we go. I'd like to chart our progress and capture lessons learned, including what happens after the story's completed and we need to get it into public. I imagine that we'll pitch it to some publishers, but we both want to see this thing enough that we'll self-publish it if need be. That's becoming easier and easier to do these days.

A dark and stormy night

Still working on getting the Kill All Monsters Kickstarter ready, but that's a joint effort that's required the juggling of multiple people's schedules. Meaning that I've been able to squeeze in some actual writing here and there. I've finished my re-write of the next-to-last chapter of KAM and with any luck I'll be done with the whole thing by this time next week.

The new thing I did last week though was to finish up a short story for a comic anthology. Don't wanna say more until it's been approved, but it's a thriller and (as the title of this post suggests) takes place in an isolated, old mansion on a dark and stormy night. I like how it turned out, so fingers crossed that the editor will too.

(Image via Papergreat)

Kill All Monsters: The Banner (and Forbidden Island)

If you're trying to spot Jason at Emerald City, C2E2, or any of the other shows he's going to, this is what you're looking for. It'll be looming over his table like a... well, like a giant robot. Can't wait to sit beneath it at C2E2.

I don't know if I've mentioned that Jason and I are going to be at C2E2 with copies of Kill All Monsters, Volume 1: Ruins of Paris. Yes, we are.

In mostly unrelated news, the Forbidden Island story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is a go for the anthology I wrote it for. More details about that as official announcements are made, but I'm excited that the editor liked it.

The Forbidden Island

This is exactly what I look like when I'm writing.

I hate when other people write posts like this, so I apologize, but I spent a heck of a lot of time writing actual fiction last week and want to stop and celebrate for a minute. I turned in a short story for a prose anthology that I'm looking forward to talking about more later if the editor doesn't hate it. Hopefully he won't because it's about a missing woman, a forbidden island, a sinister industrialist, and a heroic pilot. And I had a blast writing it.

We'll call it "The Forbidden Island" for now, because that's how original I am with titles. If it actually makes it to publication, I'll reveal more.

I co-wrote a movie. Wanna see?

If you've got nine minutes and want to see a musical, modern-day Western that I had something to do with (featuring geeks vs. bikers), here's your hook-up.

The film was made in 48 hours as part of the Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project. My sister was the production manager and she invited me to join her on the writing team with her friend Erin. I had a blast doing it.

Got a New Book Coming | The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible

I've got a story in the upcoming Avenger anthology: Roaring Heart of the Crucible. Not Marvel or Mrs. Peel, but the Avenger; singular.

He's a classic pulp character from the '40s, created by the guys who created Doc Savage and The Shadow, and written mostly by a man named Paul Ernst. The Avenger has a powerfully touching origin story in which his wife and small daughter are passionlessly murdered in an unbelievably horrifying way, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike, say, Batman, where that tragedy is usually played out in a few panels, the first Avenger story is all about his attempt to uncover what happened, take his revenge, and come to terms with his own role in their deaths. That last part may be mostly in subtext, but it's heart-wrenching stuff nevertheless.

The Avenger doesn't actually go by that name in the stories I've read. His real name is Richard Benson and that's pretty much what people call him. He gathers together a small team of like-minded people who've also been treated unjustly by criminals and they form an organization called Justice, Inc. They all have their areas of expertise, so it's kind of like a super team, though only Benson has what you might call super powers.

Due to the shock of losing his family, Benson's lost all pigment in his skin and hair, and his facial muscles have been paralyzed. He's able to do this thing where he can move his face around with his fingers and change his appearance. That's tough to explain scientifically, but before he became the Avenger, Benson was kind of wealthy, globe-trotting, Indiana Jones-like adventurer, so I imagine that something he encountered in those days combined with his shock to give him his ability. I wonder if anyone's told that story. I still have a lot of Avenger reading to do.

What fascinates me about the character is the theme of emotional vulnerability. He has so much rage and hurt inside him, but he's physically incapable of expressing it. I'm intrigued by how that affects his team, who have their own heartaches, but seem to follow Benson's lead in keeping that stuff swallowed up.

My story takes place really early in Justice, Inc.'s career, just after my favorite member of the team has joined. Her name is Nellie Gray and she's an awesome butt-kicker with a deceptively fragile appearance. She's also my emotional hook into the team, so I wanted to tell a story from before she's fully assimilated. If I get the chance to write other Avenger stories, I'd love to follow her some more and explore how Benson's team affects the way she expresses herself and relates to people.

Not that it's all character stuff for me. This is a pulp hero after all, so there's also plenty of action and a string of robberies committed by a murderous, bulletproof scarecrow.

Anyway, the book comes out in March and has stories by lots of cool writers: Matthew Baugh, James Chambers, Greg Cox, Win Scott Eckert, CJ Henderson, Matthew Mayo, Will Murray, Bobby Nash, Mel Odom, Barry Reese, Chris Sequeira, John Small, and David White. It'll be over 300 pages of Avenger action for only $19 (less than $13 on Amazon). There's also going to be a limited edition hardcover for $33.

Here's how Moonstone describes the collection:

The greatest crime-fighter of the 40’s returns in a third thrilling collection of original action-packed tales of adventure, intrigue, and revenge. Life was bliss for millionaire adventurer Richard Henry Benson until that fateful day crime and greed took away his wife and young daughter…and turned him into something more than human.

Driven by loss, compelled by grief, he becomes a chilled impersonal force of justice, more machine than man, dedicated to the destruction of evildoers everywhere. A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both, Benson has been forged into an avatar of vengeance, possessed of superhuman genius supernormal power. His frozen face and pale eyes, like a polar dawn, only hint at the terrible force the underworld heedlessly invoked upon itself the day they created…The Avenger!

Quote of the Day | The Writer at the Bar

By way of explaining what I've been doing today instead of blogging:

Michael Moorcock once commented that the man hanging around in the bar at night telling people he's a writer is not a writer, because if he were a writer he'd be at home writing.

--Warren Ellis.

I'm at home writing; finishing the Neal McDonough story. Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Image via Polished)

Writing Update | The Neal McDonough story

I'm just about finished with that jungle girl story I told you about and after that I've got to work on one for a character I can't talk about, but would be played brilliantly by Neal McDonough if someone were ever to do a movie version.

I'm sorry that's all I have today. Still cramming for the Neal McDonough story (as I'm now thinking of it) by reading the character's original adventures. After that I've got two more pulp stories and a short comic for a suspense anthology to write. I love being busy; the challenge is to keep it all organized. Wish me luck.

Writing update | Monsters killed; girl needs jungle

Just a quick writing update today. Last week I finished the first draft of the complete script for Kill All Monsters. Or for the first volume of Kill All Monsters, anyway. I'm not saying whether or not the Kill Team succeeds in its mission to take out all the monsters, but I will say that there's definitely room for a sequel if the first book does well. That first book is a complete story though, with a definite end, and that end is now written. That's a huge deal for me.

Our editor, James Powell is looking over the draft and there will be rewriting, but in the meantime, I'm able to move on to others things. I have four projects in the queue and the first is a short text story for a jungle girl anthology. I don't want to say what it's about yet, but I will say that the book's editor sent me the above Alberto Vargas painting with a note that it reminded him of my story. And I can totally see why.

Kill All Monsters is returning

I don't have any details for you yet, but plans are made and they're really cool ones. Stay tuned.

Stuff I Wrote: Hunt the Winterlands

I contributed a story to this fantasy anthology. It's a shared-world anthology with all the writers creating stories in a harsh, snow- and ice-covered land. Mine deals with a tribe of Snow Elves (a race that I probably didn't invent, but have never heard of before), focusing mostly on a young mother and her talking baby. Only, just like human babies, Snow Elf babies aren't supposed to talk either, so it kind of freaks her out and makes her wonder if something horrible has happened. Which it kind of has.

Anyway, it's available on Amazon both in print and for the Kindle and I hope you'll check it out. If you don't feel like checking it out now, it's also in my store and there's a permanent link to that on the sidebar. Much thanks.

Pulptacular!

If you're a fan of adventure writing, you might be interested in my Pulptacular column at the New Pulp website. I think I mentioned the column here when I first started writing it, but it took me a while (and some great help from Mike Bullock) to find my focus for it. It's a different animal now and I'd love it if you gave it another look.

It started with a post about how inexperienced I am with pulp. Or at least, with the specific characters and stories that most people associate with pulp. I know the hell out of James Bond and Tarzan, but little about Doc Savage and The Shadow. For that reason, I've traditionally resisted calling the kind of fiction I like "pulp," preferring "adventure fiction" instead. It created a mental barrier for me in exploring the world of New Pulp. Though New Pulp encompasses a wide variety of genres and sub-genres that I'm interested in reading, it has deep roots in the classic hero-pulps that I'm most unfamiliar with. How was I supposed to write a column about that?

After talking it over with Mike, I decided to own my inexperience and make Pulptacular a column for New Pulp beginners. I outlined my plan of attack and went to work exploring the various New Pulp publishers from a high level perspective; creating a sort of primer to these companies and trying to figure out what each of them uniquely contributes to the New Pulp landscape. Many of the companies I've been profiling self-identify as New Pulp endeavors, but not all of them do. What's interesting to me is their shared love of adventure fiction and the extremely different ways they choose to express it. Some produce prose, some produce comics, and one group I talked to produces audio plays. Some reprint (or translate) classic pulp in new formats, some tell new stories with classic characters, and some create new characters inspired by the old ones.

Following is a list of the publishers I've talked to so far and if you visit the New Pulp publishers page, you'll see the list I'm working through for future columns. I hope you'll find it useful.

Airship 27 (new prose stories featuring classic characters)
Pro Se (new prose stories featuring new characters inspired by the classics)
Age of Aces (primarily prose reprints of classic air-combat stories)
Altus (prose reprints of classic adventure stories of many genres with a special love of Lost Civilization stories)
Black Coat (English translations of classic, French adventure stories; mostly prose, but some comics as well)
BrokenSea (audio plays ranging from original creations to fan fiction and straight adaptations)
Dark Horse (new comics stories featuring classic and new characters)
Dynamite (new comics stories re-interpreting classic characters for a new audience)

New Pulp

I've tended to describe the kinds of stories I love to write and talk about as "adventure fiction," but another way of labeling them is Pulp. In fact, I've pretty much abandoned the more-encompassing Sci-Fi as a genre that I like. I dig Space Pulp: robots, aliens, rayguns; that kind of thing. Jungle adventure stories started in the pulps too. As of course did Robert E Howard's Conan, and Lovecraftian horror. So many of the stories I've enjoyed my entire life fall under the Pulp umbrella. Depending on how broadly you define Pulp, maybe all of them do.

At SpringCon a couple of weeks ago I got to sit next to Mike Bullock (The Phantom, Lions Tigers and Bears), someone I've known for a long time, but didn't know that well. Mike's one of the major writers in the current Pulp revival and one of the best things about that weekend was getting to know him better and just chatting about Pulp for a couple of days. I left the weekend excited about the genre (or, more accurately, the collection of genres) and determined to do more writing in it. Especially prose, which I've been neglecting for comics projects the last few years. Comics projects are fun and I'm going to keep doing them (especially Kill All Monsters, of course), but they take a while to get going and there's no reason I couldn't be cranking out some short stories at the same time.

Something else that came from my conversation with Mike was the discovery that he and Tommy Hancock (another long-time acquaintance and current Pulp revivalist) have started a New Pulp blog dedicated to talking about today's Pulp fiction. So of course I asked if I could chip in. Mike and Tommy graciously accepted and my first post (part of a new column called "Pulptacular") went up at the end of last week. It's about some of the new Pulp TV shows coming out next season and there are some good ones. So check out the post and if you like adventure fiction, follow the site. It's going to be a great place to stay caught up on this stuff.

Read My Stuff: Panels for Primates

For those who aren't familiar with it, Panels for Primates is a charity anthology webcomic on the act-i-vate site that's meant to raise money for the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky. It's entirely free to read, but if the ape and monkey stories move or entertain you at all, you're invited - but not obligated - to contribute.

I'm a huge fan of these animals, so I was thrilled when editor Troy Wilson invited me to contribute a short, two-page story. And even more thrilled when he told me I'd be working with the awesome Simon Roy. Between the two of us, we packed a ton of action into two pages including giant cephalopods, tiki-men, a sinister elephant, a mad tortoise, slime-monsters, werewolves, mummies, and I'm self-indulgent enough to have thrown in giant monsters, giant robots, and yes, gorillas riding dinosaurs. It also features that most famous of Kentucky primates, Daniel Baboon. Please go check it out.