Aaron Smith's Blog, page 5

SPARKS

The process of writing a story usually begins, at least in my experience, with a question. In the case of my vampire novel, 100,000 Midnights, the question was “What happens when a human being, blissfully unaware of the existence of the supernatural, finds himself drawn into a world of shadows, immortals, and horror?”             That question started the ball rolling and I soon had the first in a series of short stories that I later merged into a novel and had the good fortune to have published. But now, more than two years since I started to write the story, I find myself looking back on the process and wondering exactly how the pieces fell into place after I’d asked the initial question that became the core of the plot. I don’t mean I wonder how each event in the book took shape. That much is obvious: a story rolls like a snowball down a mountain and picks up not only speed but detail as the writer becomes more comfortable with his or her characters and themes. What I do mean is that I began to wonder why this particular writer chose, consciously or not, to answer the story-starting question in the particular way I did. What outside influences worked their magic on my mind in order to cause my brain and then my typing fingers to spit that story out onto the page?             Looking at the novel, I realize that the primary theme is much simpler than mortal meets immortal. In fact, it’s perhaps the most common theme in all of storytelling: boy meets girl. But as I think of many of the stories I’ve written, I see a pattern. I have a habit of using a specific variation of that common theme. Quite a lot of my work could be categorized as stories of ordinary boy meets extraordinary girl.             Using this theme was a natural pattern for me to fall into because I’ve been there. Like Eric, the protagonist in 100,000 Midnights, like Jason in my first novel, Gods and Galaxies, and like a few other characters I’ve written about, I’ve often felt that I didn’t quite fit in with what society seems to consider social success and, maybe, normalcy. Not that I was ever that odd or a complete outcast, but the general tone of my life, at least for the first twenty-five years or so, was that of a loner and an eccentric in the eyes of others, and my life may have seemed dull and mundane, to others and certainly to me. There’s a bit of me in all my characters. Like Jason, I’ve always been both fascinated and appalled by religion, interested in mythology but critical of the damage often caused by its believers. Like Eric, I’ve always had a fascination with the past, a feeling that maybe, at least in the corners of my mind where fantasy outweighs reality, I’d have been happier to have lived in a different era. I suppose I’ve always felt like an outsider in my time and place, a stranger in a normal land. For Eric and Jason, their dull lives are thrown into unfamiliar, exciting, and ultimately better (even if more dangerous) territory when they each encounter a very unusual woman. For Eric she’s a 300-year-old vampire; for Jason, she’s royalty from another galaxy. Both men make the jump to a brighter reality because of someone who comes very unexpectedly into their lives.             My own experience might not sound as dramatic. My wife isn’t an alien, isn’t an immortal blood-drinker (which is good because I don’t even like needles at the doctor’s office!), but the experience of discovering her was no less powerful.             Because of my solitary nature and my feeling of never really fitting in completely, I long held the expectation that I would always be alone. Then she appeared. I met the woman who would become my wife while filming a movie. I had done some acting several years earlier, studied the art, performed in some Shakespearean stuff around the New Jersey area, had fun with it, but stopped when I got tired of people who were more interested in being actors than they were in the actual work that goes into acting. Theatre became one in a long list of former hobbies that had worn out their welcome. So I stopped. But I got a call out of the blue one day asking if I’d be interested in a small role in an independent film an old acquaintance was making. I agreed to do it, having nothing to lose. When I said yes that the offer, I had no idea just how much I’d end up gaining.              I arrived on the set and there she was, working as a member of the film crew. She wore a Wonder Woman t-shirt and barked orders at actors in a voice that still held a trace of the accent she’d brought with her from Poland a decade earlier. At some point in that chaotic day of takes and retakes and debates over the delivery of lines and the torturous pauses that eat up time between shooting, electricity passed between us, magnetism, a hint that there was more going on than the filming of a movie. When the day was at its end and I asked her to call me, I was different. For once in my life, despite all my history of social awkwardness, I felt no fear, no hesitation, as if, for once, the universe was rooting me on, wanting me to win.            I would have been crushed if she hadn’t called, felt like a lottery winner who has the ticket snatched from his hand by a strong wind before getting a chance to claim his prize. But she did call me, and the rest is history.            It’s been almost a decade now and she’s with me every day when I wake up, every night when I go to sleep. During that decade, many things have changed. I own a house and I’ve become a writer. That second thing, the writing, I don’t know if I ever could have done without her. I write the words, but she encourages me because even when I don’t think I have another sentence in me or another story to tell, I know that she believes I do, and that convinces me. Before her, on my best days, maybe I could look in the mirror and hope to see Clark Kent staring back at me. But now she smiles at me and for at least a moment, I believe I can be Superman.             There’s an old saying about a great woman behind every great man. That’s not quite right. I try to be a good man, don’t know if I’ll ever qualify as great, but I know that beside me—not behind but beside me—there’s a great woman. Unlike the women I sometimes write about, she’s not an alien with royal blood or a vampire with all the powers of the undead…but sometimes I think she does have some kind of superpower. What else could possibly explain how she puts up with me and my moods and my frustrations, frequent depressions and all the other things about me that must be aggravating at times?            I don’t know how she does it. I don’t think anyone else could. But I know one thing for certain. Everything I’ve accomplished and everything I’ll accomplish in the future is a fire started by the sparks that came from her.            As writers, we have to exaggerate events. A simple love story often isn’t enough. There has to be more. And so somewhere in that story is placed a fantasy element and in my writing it’s usually the extraordinary woman who changes the life of the ordinary man. I imagine the events and put them into words, but I don’t have to imagine the emotions. When one of my characters discovers the feelings of joy and wonder and chaos and surprise and disbelief and potential that come from finding the one person in an infinite universe of beings who can make him feel that way, I’m not making anything up. I’ve been there and I’ve done that.  

FIX THE REALITY, NOT THE FANTASY

When I was a little boy of five or six, my grandmother would sometimes tell me bedtime stories about Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and witches that caught and ate little children. She left out some details, such as the specifics of the Ripper’s methods and the fact that his victims were prostitutes, but these were suspenseful, frightening tales anyway. Dracula drank people’s blood, the kids didn’t always escape the cannibalistic old witch, and Jack really did murder his victims. The stories made me shiver; maybe I had nightmares. But they also made me think. I could, I was sure, figure out a way to escape that witch if ever I crossed her path. I wanted to be the hero who drove a stake through the bloodthirsty count’s heart. I wanted to be the detective who finally caught old Jack. Looking back, I realize that hearing about horrible things made me dream of being the one who solved the problems.              At about the same time, my grandfather on the other side of the family bought me my first comic book. It was an issue of Batman, drawn by the amazing Gene Colan, one of the finest comic artists of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I started reading it immediately. In the story, Batman faces vampires. The issue ended with a cliffhanger, a powerful image of Batman with two little punctures in his throat after having been bitten by one of the undead. I was terrified. I wanted that wretched magazine out of my sight. Grandpa took it and gave it to the kid next door, who was a few years older than me. It wasn’t until I was eight that I took another shot at reading comics. This time, it went much better and I grew to love that medium. But despite the trauma cause by that Batman story, I later came to realize that it did a very good thing for me. Much like Grandma’s bedtime horror stories, it jolted my imagination awake, an effect that would have a major role in shaping the person I was to become as I grew older.
            It wasn’t just in reading that I found violent, sometimes frightening events. I took part in them too, in the way that children have for thousands of years, by playing. My cousin and I would become Batman and Robin (after the traditional twenty minute prelude of arguing over who would get to be who) and run around punching imaginary villains.             When I was old enough to understand that my grandfather had served in World War II, I made him tell me stories about it (he left a lot out of course, I later realized). It sounded heroic to me, intriguing. I had a toy army helmet and used to crawl around the yard, hiding behind bushes evading enemy patrols and shooting at them when the opportunity arose. Grandpa joined in the game sometimes, giving me tips on strategy. He even made me a toy rifle out of wood. He saw it for what it was, a kid having fun. Sure, he’d been through Hell over in Europe, but he was able to appreciate that kids like playing soldier. He’d probably done the same in his childhood. Even as an older man, he’d sit and watch westerns and I know for a fact that he spent many hours of his childhood on a horse nobody else could see as he shot Indians.             So I, as a child, fought crime as Batman, shot Nazis in World War II, explored alien worlds as Captain Kirk, and went off on a thousand other adventures, most of which involved violence of some sort. My escapades were even assisted by a man who knew the horrors of real violence but could understand the difference between the terrible reality and the child’s impulse to fantasize.             Years later, I have good memories of those days. Even more importantly, I can look back and see how far those early imaginary experiences have taken me. I grew up to be a writer. I spend plenty of time now thinking about ways to murder people, doing research on different kinds of weapons, figuring out ways to have characters narrowly escape death, sometimes unscathed and sometimes scarred and permanently changed. Yes, there’s a lot of violent, gruesome stuff that goes on in my mind. But guess what? For one thing, it helps pay the bills! And…it goes from my mind to the page and has no effect at all on the rest of my life. In my novel, 100,000 Midnights, a young man lives a peaceful and mundane life until he’s drawn into a world beyond what he once thought existed and forced to use his wits and sometimes resort to violence to survive. Would I want to be in his shoes and have to fight and even kill to survive? No, not in reality, but I think it makes for a good story. I, and my readers, and most people can distinguish between fantasy and reality, enjoying the wonders of imagination without wanting such events to be true.                That’s right. I’ve never fired a real gun, not even once, and I have no desire to. I hate violence. I’ve been in one fight in my entire life, a seventh grade, after school fistfight. I won that fight, but I felt dirty and guilty afterwards and have never wanted to be involved in anything like it again. So here I am, decades after a childhood of pretending to shoot and fight and go to war…and what did it leave me with? I have a successful marriage, I own a house, I’m a published writer, and I’ve never been in legal trouble or intentionally harmed another human being in any way. I think I turned out all right.             With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about some recent events in the world and, specifically, in the Unites States. The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 were an unspeakable tragedy. The massacre of all those innocent people, most of them children, is so disturbing that I can’t adequately describe how it makes me feel. In the shooting’s aftermath, the debate about gun control is loud, divisive, and prominent. I’m glad it’s being talked about. We need to examine that issue closely and decide what to do about the availability of such deadly weapons.             But I’m not writing this to talk about the politics of real weapons. Something I find very disturbing in recent years has to do with the kind of weapons that aren’t real, that can’t hurt anyone. Children are being punished for using their imaginations, and that really bothers me.            This didn’t begin in the wake of the Newtown incident, but instances of it have been all over the news since, so it’s heavily on my mind now. A seven-year-old boy in Colorado is suspended from school after throwing an imaginary grenade while pretending to save the world. A fifth-grader is scolded and searched for bringing a piece of paper shaped like a gun to school. A Pennsylvania girl of 5 is suspended after suggesting that she and her friend shoot at each other with Hello Kitty bubble guns!             When I was in the fifth grade, the teacher told us to write a story about anything. I concocted an epic battle between soldiers on an army base and the horde of ninjas who were attacking. It was violent, it was action-packed, it was pretty powerful stuff for a ten-year-old, and I was proud of it. I got an A because it was creative and I spelled everything correctly! But considering some of those news stories I just mentioned, I suspect the teacher’s reaction might have been different if I was in the fifth grade now. It was a story. That’s all it was. Not a warning, not a threat, not a terrorist manifesto, not a cry for help from a demented mind! It was an adventure story written by a kid who liked to dream.              I have to wonder what would have happened to me had I grown up in today’s immediate-suspension atmosphere. Is mentioning a gun or committing a pretend (and sometimes heroic) act of violence all it takes now for a teacher or administrator to put a permanent mark on a child’s record by suspending them? These are children using their imaginations. Do people really believe that any child who pretends to fire a gun or toss a grenade or throw a punch has the real potential to grow up to inflict bodily harm on others? Do we really think that little of the intelligence and empathy of our children that a moment of imagination must be stomped on instantly before the six-year-old who points his finger and yells, “Bang, Bang!” grows up to be a serial killer or hitman or founder of a renegade militia?                  Are we to ban all types of play that contain an element of imaginary violence? Teachers should encourage children to be good to each other, teach them that real violence and real war are terrible things, but harshly punishing a child for pretending sends a very wrong message. That real violence should be avoided is what should be taught, not that thinking about it or playing at it is something that will not be tolerated. What’s the next step after that? Do we make sure kids can’t have access to books or movies or any other material that might make them think about violence? What about Shakespeare? Should we shield the kids in English class from the violent betrayal of Caesar or the suicides of Romeo and Juliet or the murderous deeds of Macbeth?  Not that I’m predicting the widespread banning of books, but it falls along the same lines of logic as suspending a kid for pretending to be a soldier or a cop. We can’t deny children the right to their imaginations because a few of them are going to grow up to be criminals. That’s going to happen anyway; it’s inevitable. If we pull kids out of school and tell them that playing has consequences like that, we’re going to scare them out of using their imaginations. Do we really want to go down that road?            Honestly, we’d be better off accepting the fact that people of all ages imagine all kinds of things. Pretending and fantasizing is part of being human and includes all aspects of life. We dream about success and money and sex and love and death and fear and war and everything else that makes us who we are. Some of us use our imaginations in positive life-changing ways and share them with the world as writers or actors or artists. Others, the few who quite possibly have issues that go far deeper, lash out at their fellow human beings in the worst possible ways. But telling a little boy or girl that the imagined scenario that just went through their mind is some kind of crime risks taking more away from the world that it ensures protecting it from.              We live in a world of harsh realities, about which children must be taught the facts and guided in the essentials of behaving responsibly in such a world. But we also live in a world where stories are told, fiction is created, and art is made. The imaginary worlds created by human beings bring joy to people even when the contents of those worlds are violent or frightening. And since fiction is an altered reflection of the world we really live in, it’s often going to contain the things that exist in our world, things like guns, swords, and bombs. People fight in reality, so people fight in fiction. But we have to learn to attend to the problems of reality without stepping on the wonders of fiction. Children are exposed to guns and battles and war through fiction. They see such things in movies, read about them in books, and, being children, imitate them. So what? That’s what kids do. The vast majority of children, I think, have the sense to have fun imitating the action scenes they see on TV or film or read about without thinking it’s all right to do anything to truly harm anybody. Play, at its best, is mental exercise. The imagination is one of the most important of all the things that make a human being special. To make a leap of ridiculously lazy logic and assume that a child having a pretend adventure that involves a bit of dangerous action is a step away from shooting his classmates or becoming the next Hitler is not only absurd, it’s an excuse to say you’re addressing a situation while what you’re really doing is ignoring the real situations, the real problems you should be looking for ways to solve.             I won’t claim to know the solution to the problem of violence in society, of people who shouldn’t have deadly weapons obtaining them, of the potentially dangerous mentally ill sometimes going unnoticed until it’s too late, but I know the solution is not to extinguish the fires of imagination the moment those wonderful sparks ignite in the mind of a child. We’re putting far too much at risk if we start doing that.             In conclusion, I’d like to share the memory of a conversation I’ll always cherish. More than twenty-five years after being scared witless by that Batman comic, I got to meet the artist, Gene Colan, at the New York Comic Con. I told him exactly what had happened, how that comic had scared me, but how I later came to love his work, and how I gave that story credit for delivering a jolt to me and setting my imagination to work. I told him his work had a lot to do with me growing up to be a writer. Then, this man whose work meant so much to me smiled and said, “You know, when I was a little boy, my father took me to see Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. That movie gave me nightmares for weeks…but it made me love being scared, made me love horror, made me want to draw things that would make people feel how I felt in that dark theatre. If my work did for you what that movie did for me, I’m very happy to have accomplished that, and I wish you all the success in the world.”
            I walked away from that conversation with a tear in my eye and joy in my heart. A few years later, when I heard that Gene Colan had died, I was glad I’d had a chance to have that talk with him and glad to have been part of the cycle of inspiring fear that went from Karloff to Colan to me and, hopefully, to somebody who gets a thrill or a scare out of one of my books someday. I cringe to think what might have happened if any of the links in that chain had been told it was wrong to imagine anything dark or dangerous.    

What's Coming on Halloween?

I was asked to participate in a blog hop called "The Next Big Thing" in which authors are answering a series of 10 questions about their next project.

Also participating today are the following authors, so check out their blogs when you've finished with mine!

 Malena Lott
Heather DavisKelly ParraDani StoneLucie Smoker  For my part in today's blog hop, I'll be answering questions about a novel I have coming out around Halloween of this year.   1: What is the working title of your book?Chicago Fell First was my working title and it’s now become the official title.
2: Where did the idea come from for the book? The initial spark of the idea came from something my wife mentioned to me. She works for Verizon Wireless and has heard dozens of ridiculous stories of the ways people manage to find to damage their cell phones. She came home one day and told me that people have taken to using rice to dry out water-logged phones! This sounded so absurd that it stuck in my head and became an incident in the first chapter of the book and the rest of the story kind of grew out of that little seed. As soon as I heard that, I knew I could find some kind of weird angle to the idea, but I wasn’t sure what it would be until I started writing. 

3: What genre does your book come under?It’s a horror novel in the zombie sub-genre.
4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?Whenever I’m asked that question about any of my books, my mind usually turns toward whatever movies or TV shows I’ve been watching the most lately. In recent weeks, I caught up on Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, so I’d probably end up pulling people from those series to cast the Chicago Fell First movie. That would work just fine for me, since those shows are loaded with excellent actors. But…I don’t want to name any specific character/actor matches because I’d rather let the readers see the characters however they form in the mind during the act of reading the book. 

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?When a city is overrun by an unimaginable horror, a group of strangers try to save themselves from what could be the end of the world.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?Chicago Fell First will be published by Buzz Books, for whom I’ve previously written short stories for the anthologies Prom Dates to Die For and Something Wicked.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?It was written well over a year ago, so I don’t remember the exact time frame, but I’m a pretty fast writer, so I don’t think it took more than maybe three months for the first draft.
8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?Well of course it has things in common with other zombie books, but those are factors that are kind of essential to the sub-genre. Those kinds of similarities are impossible to avoid. That pattern of people coming together to form a temporary "family" to survive a horrible situation is one of the core themes of horror, from Dracula to The Walking Dead and everything in between. 
9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?The aforementioned rice story started the ball rolling and it just went from there as the story built itself and I decided that zombies would be the focus. The human characters in the story came from a variety of different places. The fact that one of the main characters is a cancer survivor is due to the fact that a friend of mine was battling cancer around the time I was writing this book, although she and the character are much, much different. Another character is loosely based on a waitress in one of our local diners. Others just pop into my head when I need someone to move the story along. 
10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?What I really wanted to do with this book was focus on the human beings. The zombie outbreak and all its gore and horror and destruction is the backbone of the story, but the way the people deal with it is the face of the book. At its heart, it’s a story about how the worst of circumstances can bring out the best in people, much like the way those who survive a war often come home stronger because of their experiences.  
So those are my answers regarding Chicago Fell First. Look for more news about the book as we get closer to October. This will be my first full novel with Buzz Books. They've previously published my two young adult paranormal stories in their anthologies, Prom Dates to Die For  and Something Wicked, so I'm, thrilled to be working with them again. 


  

My Fourth Visit to Baker Street

I'm pleased to announce the release of SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE Volume 4, which includes work by writers I.A. Watson, Andrew Salmon, Bradley H. Sinor, Bill Thinnes, and my story, "The Problem of the Coincidental Glance." Here's the official press release and the cover!


HOLMES RETURNS
Airship 27 Productions proudly announces the release of the fourth volume in its most successful anthology series to date; SHERLOCK HOLMES – CONSULTING DETECTIVE.  “These are the books our fans keeping demanding more of,” reported Ron Fortier, Managing Editor of Airship 27.  “Readers around the world just can’t seem to get enough of the Great Detective.  Considering the popularity of shows such as SHERLOCK on BBC and ELEMENTARY on NBC, it’s clearly obvious that the crime solving team of Holmes and Dr. Watson are still as popular as ever.”
The time and place, Victorian England on the cusp of a new century where the marvels of science will spur the Industrial Revolution to new heights of cultural wonder. And yet amidst this societal upheaval, the dark elements of human kind continue to worm their way through the streets of London and its surrounding countryside.  Murder and mayhem remain and thus the work of Sherlock Holmes continues; his powers of deductive reasoning the crucial bulwark to stem this tide of villainy.
Here are five new adventures of Holmes and Dr.Watson written in the traditional style of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Writers I.A. Watson, Aaron Smith, Bradley H. Sinor, Bill Thinnes and Andrew Salmon deliver a quintet of truly memorable cases to challenge the famous crime fighting duo.  From the murder of a man who collects clockwork automatons to the theft of a valued Japanese sword, our heroes are once again called into action confronting a diverse set of mysteries guaranteed to entice the world’s greatest Consulting Detective.
Fortier relishes the debut of this new volume considering the overwhelming acclaim of the first three in the series.  “Amongst those books were four Pulp Factory Award winners,” he recalls happily.  “Two for Best Pulp Short Story of the Year, one for Best Pulp Cover and another for Best Interior Artwork.  The literary and artistic bars for this series have been set extremely high and we would have it no other way.”
The Pulp Factory Awards denoting the best pulp story and art from the previous year are voted on by the members of the Pulp Factory Yahoo Group and presented to the winners each year at the Windy City Paper & Pulp Show.
Sporting a cover by Chad Hardin with interior illustrations and design by Rob Davis, the fourth volume in this bestselling series also features a fascinating essay, “The Mystery of Mr. Holmes,” by I.A. Watson.  Here is grand adventure as Sherlock Homes fans around the world have come to expect from Airship 27 Productions.
PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Now Available at Create Space – (https://www.createspace.com/4137813)At the Airship 27 Website – (http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/index.airshipHangar.html)At Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615758231Then at Indy Planet (http://indyplanet.com/store/)

Here There Be Marsh-kins!

Today I'm doing something I've never done before on this blog. I'm reviewing a comic book. The reason I don't do this more often is very simple: I don't read many of them anymore. I grew up reading comics. I loved them. For much of my childhood, my dream was to draw or write them someday. I have, in fact, done some work writing comics (though not drawing them, as my artistic skills have atrophied to rust-covered clumsiness after many years without practice). I'll always love the medium of comics, but the entertainment form and its industry, once so wonderful, has fallen far in recent years. Readership has shrunk to a portion of what it used to be, the great old characters are often written in mangled, off-model versions that bear little resemblance to what made them great to begin with, and it's almost impossible to get a complete story in one issue anymore so that it often feels like buying a comic book is like paying for a piece of a puzzle instead of a whole experience in story and art. I still think of comics as a great art form, but any time I spend reading them now usually involves reprints of older material that was impossible to find when I was younger. In many ways, it breaks my heart to see what's become of one of my favorite forms of storytelling.

But then, once in a while, something comes along that makes me feel like comics used to make me feel: entertained, thrilled, nostalgic, appreciative of both art and storyline, and happy that I spent the $3.99 it costs for a comic book nowadays (that part of it makes me feel old! They were 65 cents when I got my first one!).

When I heard that IDW Publishing, one of the better of the current comic book companies, had announced MARS ATTACKS POPEYE! I burst out laughing. What an awesome idea for a crossover! Brilliant.

Everyone knows who Popeye is (or should), so I won't explain that here. For those who aren't familiar with Mars Attacks, it was a series of luridly illustrated trading cards, released in 1962, that told the story of Martians invading Earth. The images on the cards were bizarre, violent, often shocking. Mars Attacks was adapted into a movie, directed by Tim Burton, in 1993.

Anyway, hearing of the upcoming MARS ATTACKS POPEYE comic book, I decided right then and there that I'd have to read it when it came out. It was too outrageously ridiculous an idea to ignore. And when I heard who would be creating it, I was even more interested. I was familiar with writer Martin Powell because of his work on many pulp-related characters and concepts. Terry Beatty, the artist, I knew from his 1980s comic book series Ms. Tree, among other things.

So, with the background done with, I can get to the meat of this review. I'll start with one simple statement:

This was as close as you'll ever find to a perfect comic book.

Popeye and his entire cast, including familiar characters like Olive Oyl, Wimpy, Eugene the Jeep, Alice the Goon, The Sea Hag, and Poopdeck Pappy, are portrayed just as you'd expect them to be. These are the classic comic strip and cartoon characters brought back in a way that is a load of fun whether you've been a fan of Popeye for decades or are just discovering him now. This is very much a Popeye story that includes the Mars Attacks martians. The story moves quickly, has a few moments and bits of dialogue that will make you laugh out loud, and contains the action you'd expect to see in a classic Popeye cartoon. Regarding the dialogue I just mentioned, Martin Powell does a wonderful job of making Popeye talk like he always has (Looky what we got! The Marsh-kins is gonna get th' tar whupped outta dem! I sez they is!). My only complaint about the story is that I sincerely wish it was longer. The fun was over too soon.

As for the art, Terry Beatty demonstrates his adaptability as a cartoonist by depicting Popeye and cast perfectly, making them look like they'd just walked out of one of EC Segar's classic comic strips. He also adapts the Mars Attacks martians in such a way that they remain recognizable as the aliens created by Wally Wood, Bob Powell, and Norman Saunders, but also seem to blend seamlessly into the style of Popeye's world. To mesh two very different styles of art into one story and make it work is an impressive accomplishment and Mr. Beatty deserves a lot of credit for that.
To rave about the art some more, not only do the characters look the way I hoped they would, but the panel layouts and pacing of the story tell the tale in basic, old-fashioned comic book style without trying to rely on any unnecessary tricks. These are simple 4 to 5 panels pages until the one glorious and perfectly timed double-page spread that comes out of nowhere and accomplishes just what I assume it was trying
 to do.
I was also impressed by the book's coloring and lettering, both of which are also the work of Terry Beatty. The color, unlike the overly flashy, computer-generated glare you find in many modern comics, is old-fashioned here and looks like it would fit in on any comics-bearing newsstand of the last 70 years. In other words, this comic book looks like a comic book, not like it's trying to masquerade as something else. And the lettering too is appropriate for the nostalgic style of the story.

As I said when I began this review, it's very rare that a newly released comic book can make me feel any of the magic that the comics medium is capable of in its best moments. But there are exceptions. Today I found one of those exceptions. Well blow me down, that was a good read!

Going Holmes Again

I spent much of my day today working on my next Sherlock Holmes story. This will be my fifth tale of the great detective. I'm a decent amount of the way into it, but still have a while to go.

When I was done for the day, it hit me! The feeling I get at some point in writing each new Holmes story. There are moments in the process when I suddenly feel like one of the luckiest writers in the world. How many writers can say they've had a chance to write their absolute favorite character in the world and see that work published? I consider myself very fortunate to have had that opportunity.

Back in 2008, I was thinking about trying to get into the business of writing. I was looking around online and came across an ad that said, "Pulp writers wanted."  I didn't know too much about pulp back then, just that it was a style of fiction, particularly in magazines, that was a popular form of entertainment in the first half of the twentieth century. Of course I'd heard of the major pulp characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage, but that was mostly because I'd read their later incarnations in comic books. Looking back to those times, I'm amazed at what a pulp virgin I was! I knew Conan also from the comics, but hadn't yet read Robert E. Howard's other characters like Kull and Solomon Kane. I had yet to discover one of my now favorite writers, the unmistakably unique HP Lovecraft. There was so much material that I know love that I hadn't yet encountered then. It seems longer, in many ways, than 5 years ago.

But one character who I already knew very well and who is at least related to the pulp world if not, in some opinions, purely a part of it, was Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had been my favorite character for years. I'd first read his adventures as a boy of maybe 9 or 10. I've read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes mysteries at least once and many of them multiple times. I've seen as many Holmes movies and TV series as I've been able to find, enjoying the work of actors like Arthur Wontner, Basil Rathbone, Ronald Howard, Peter Cushing, Nicol Williamson, Christopher Plummer, Jeremy Brett, and now Benedict Cumberbatch in the role.

Yes, Holmes has been with me for a long time, but I never thought I'd get a chance to really write him and see that work published.

So I responded to that ad, fully expecting to be told to get lost, considering my lack of writing experience at the time. But, to my surprise and delight, Ron Fortier, editor for Airship 27 Productions, answered my email and asked me for a short writing sample. I came up with something quick (it involved a vampire punching Adolph Hitler!) and sent it in. He liked it! I was stunned when Ron got back to me and told me he wanted me to write for his company! And I only got more excited when I realized why his name sounded so familiar. Ron had written some of the Green Hornet comics I'd enjoyed as a kid. Of course, I no longer think of Ron as "The Green Hornet Writer." Yes, that was great work and I'll always be happy I read it, but Ron is now a good friend and a man who's given me more encouragement and great advice over the years than anyone else I know. He's much more to me than the guy who wrote the Green Hornet!  Thanks, Ron!

So I was in with Airship 27 and ready to get started. Then the almost unthinkable (in a good way) happened. Ron asked if I'd be interested in contributing to a Sherlock Holmes anthology they were planning. How could I possibly say no? My first writing assignment fulfilled a childhood dream! It doesn't get any better than that!

So now we're in 2013 and I've had more than one Holmes story published. There was "The Massachusetts Affair" in SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE Volume 1; two stories: "The Adventure of the Injured Inspector" and "The Adventure of the Mummy's Rib" in SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE Volume 3; and the novel SEASON OF MADNESS in which I got to do a full story starring Dr. John Watson, Holmes' friend and assistant and quite possibly my second favorite fictional character!

And now, very soon, my fourth Holmes story will be available. I won't reveal the title of it here, but you can be sure I'll blog about it when it's available. So I thought it was time to start working on the next one. It won't end there either, because I have ideas for at least two more after that.

In closing tonight's blog entry, I'd like to thank Ron Fortier again for allowing me to do everything I've done when it comes to writing Sherlock Holmes. I also want to sincerely thank Rob Davis, who illustrated all my Holmes stories; Mark Maddox, Brian McCulloch, and Shane Evans, who worked on the covers; Pedro Cruz, who illustrated the Dr. Watson novel; and the other writers whose work was included in those books.

Finally, here are the covers from the books I just mentioned, along with Amazon links for anyone who hasn't read them yet!

http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Consulting-Detective-Vol/dp/1934935506/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1357611254&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Consulting-Detective-Vol/dp/1613420099/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357611254&sr=1-2


http://www.amazon.com/Season-Madness-Doctor-Watson-Adventure/dp/1934935581/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1357611254&sr=1-5

A Busy Year

As I type this, we're in the last hour of 2012 and I'm looking back at the work I've had published in the past year. It's been a productive year and I'm pretty happy with what I've managed to get done. Here's a recap of the books containing my work that became available over the past 12 months.

The second Hound-Dog Harker story, "Hyde and Seek" appeared in DR. WATSON'S AMERICAN ADVENTURE (Airship 27 Productions)

http://www.amazon.com/Watsons-American-Adventure-Erwin-Roberts/dp/0615631290/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1357015486&sr=1-6


My first young adult story, "A Kiss on the Threshold," was in PROM DATES TO DIE FOR (Buzz Books)
http://www.amazon.com/Prom-Dates-Die-Paranormal-Stories/dp/1938493001/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1357015530&sr=1-9


My vampire novel, "100,000 MIDNIGHTS" was released by Musa Publishing

http://www.amazon.com/100-000-Midnights-ebook/dp/B008DQTYN2/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015554&sr=1-15


The first volume of JUNGLE TALES (Airship 27 Productions) finally came out and included my story, "The Path of Life and Death."
http://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Tales-1-Aaron-Smith/dp/0615659977/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015576&sr=1-4


My first published science fiction story, "One Last Shot at Glory" appeared in the anthology of military-themed science fiction BATTLESPACE.
http://www.amazon.com/Battlespace-Military-Science-Fiction-Anthology/dp/0615665225/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015598&sr=1-1&keywords=battlespace


I returned to writing the Black Bat in "Unholy Terror," in BLACK BAT MYSTERY Volume 2 (Airship 27 Productions)
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Bat-Mysteries-Aaron-Smith/dp/0615689507/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015625&sr=1-7


I did my second young adult story of the year, "Spectral Media" in SOMETHING WICKED (Buzz Books)
http://www.amazon.com/Something-Wicked-Stories-Lena-Brown/dp/1938493060/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015625&sr=1-8


And my hockey player turned detective, Lt. Marcel Picard, returned in "Lieutenant Picard and the Holy Grail" in PRO SE PRESENTS # 15 and received some truly awesome reviews!
http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Se-Presents-November-2012/dp/1481122959/ref=la_B0037IL0IS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357015625&sr=1-1


It's been a great year for me and I'd like to thank all my editors and publishers, the writers who contributed work to the anthologies and magazines my work appeared in, everyone who wrote reviews of my work, and especially everyone who bought and read any of my stories!

Happy New Year to you all!!!

Break Time!

My first published story came out back in early 2009 in the Airship 27 Productions anthology SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE Volume 1. Since then, I've been on fire with the desire...or the need...to keep writing. I think I've done pretty well so far, with 26 published stories out there. I've made it a point to write every single day during that time, usually doing 1,000 words a day and only not working if I was too sick to do anything at all (which rarely happens) or taking one, and only one, day off after finishing a big project like a novel. Of course, I've been working a day job too.

Lately, I'm tired. Between pumping out as much work as possible, working a lot of hours at the day job (which gets much busier around the holidays), I'm feeling burned out. My wife reminded me, the other day, that I'm not a robot!

The idea of not writing, even if it's only for a short time, has often made me feel guilty or lazy. After all, being a writer is not just what I do, it's a big part of who I am and  it makes me feel valid and useful and keeps me interacting with people since I have a tendency to become a bit of a hermit otherwise.

But, as I said, I'm tired. Looking at what I've done in just the past year makes me a little less guilty. In 2013, I'll have at least 2 novels coming out, maybe as many as 4 if certain things fall into place. I also have a handful of short stories coming out in various places over the next few months and 3 more that have been sent off and will hopefully be accepted. I don't think I have much to be guilty about!

So, I'm taking a little vacation from writing. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a month. I don't know how long yet. I just need to recharge, rest, let my enthusiasm and energy come back. I intend to reread some old favorite books, the ones that shaped my imagination to begin with. I plan to attack the pile of new books I've been meaning to get to. I'll still be jotting down notes and ideas. I never get writer's block. Stories are always forming in my mind. I can't stop that from happening and I wouldn't want to.

Those of you who run blogs to which I contribute, don't worry about that; you'll still be getting the work I'm scheduled to deliver. But I need to take a short rest from writing stories. A break will, hopefully, make the work I do when I get back even better than what I've done before.

A Winter's Tale

I can't believe it's December already. This year has flown by. As winter approaches, I've been asked to participate in another blogging event presented by Buzz Books, publisher of the two Young Adult anthologies that included my work in 2012, Prom Dates to Die For and Something Wicked.

First, the details of the Buzz Books blog tour and what they're offering readers for the holidays. Then, at the end of today's blog, a free short story with a Science Fiction Christmas theme, written by me.

To celebrate the holiday reading season, Buzz Books invites you to come along for a Sleigh Read. Get any Buzz Book (paperback or ebook) and we’ll gift you or someone you choose an ebook from our list (of equal or lesser value). Send your receipt of purchase to buzzbooksusa (at) me (dot) com and let us know which title you’d like gifted, the e-mail address to send it to, and nook or Kindle version.
Bloggers and authors will be featuring holiday posts and reviews from today through Dec. 31st. See the tour below and stop by those sites for a chance to win an ebook.
Thanks for celebrating stories with Buzz Books this year! We love our authors and readers.




Sleigh Read Tour Stops:
F Nov. 23rd: Author Malena Lott | www.malenalott.com
M Nov. 26th: Mom in a Minivan
W Nov. 28th: Author Dani Stone | www.danistone.net
Th Nov. 29th: Earthbound Books
Sa Dec. 1st: Author Peggy Chambers | peggylchambers.wordpress.com
Tu Dec. 4th: Fiction State of Mind
W Dec. 5th: Blogger Julie Barrett
T Dec. 6th: Author Heather Davis, TMI Mom
F Dec. 7th: Bookgasm guest post by Lucie Smoker
Su Dec. 9th: Author Aaron Smith – free holiday story
Th Dec. 13th: Author Jennifer McMurrain reviews Next Left
Fr Dec. 14th: Fantasy’s Ink guest post by Heather Dearly
W Dec. 19th: Chick Lit is Not Dead featuring Something New
Th Dec. 20th: Chick Lit is Not Dead featuring Next Left
F Dec. 21st: Chick Lit is Not Dead featuring Sleigh Ride



And the free, very short story:


                                                            SCIENTISTS                                                            By Aaron Smith                     
The scientists enter the Terran realm. There are many of them and they all coordinate at the same time in each cycle. For three-hundred and sixty-four trips around the local sun they have watched. On the three-hundred and sixty-fifth night, they enter the targeted space and begin their work. It is the small ones that interest them the most, for they prefer to study the Terrans in their purest forms, before the prejudices of age and experience wipe away the ability to think freely and imagine and perceive without assumption.              The point where it is easiest to open the wormhole is at the northernmost part of the planet. From there they emerge and divide the world into pre-assigned regions and the gathering of data begins, just as it has once every Earth-year for centuries. The portal opens and the mighty Quantum Steeds, animals specially bred for survival in the turbulent time-space jumps, carry their masters into the atmosphere.               The timing of the work to coincide with the Terrans’ observation of the celebration of their mythology has worked well, for it has been known to happen, on rare occasions, that one of the small test subjects wakes during the visitation and catches a glimpse of the scientist. One of the convenient aspects of the specific way in which the Terran mind works is that it interprets information in the way it most expects to be correct, often cancelling out the true nature of its perceptions.  The specimen’s momentary fright will soon turn to an expression of delight as it mistakes the intruder for a figure it longs to behold. The small ones sometimes tell their older counterparts of the sightings, but the adult Terrans dismiss the reports as imaginings.                The scientists travel quickly through the dark hours of the Terran cycle. Because time works differently on their kind and its technology, they cover more area than the native species of the world would be capable of. Their equipment is specifically designed for the mission. They clothe themselves in scarlet protective suits to withstand the things in the atmosphere that would otherwise poison them. Sensory tentacles protrude from the upper front region of the suits, pulling information into the portable data banks, recording both positive and negative readings about the behavior and personalities of those whose lives they analyze. The results are always double-checked.             The scientists are not without the ability to appreciate irony and humor. Some among them are amused that what the Terrans usually imagine extraterrestrial intelligences to be like is so inaccurate, for the scientists are not green or gray and do not bear antennae.  Yet, at the same time, obese elderly males wear attire designed to imitate the protective suits and sensory tentacles and stand on the intersections of travel routes requesting currency to be dropped into metal receptacles to purchase nutrients for those without such resources.             There are some among the scientists who wonder if their influence, unintentional of course, on the symbolism of the Terran society, has polluted the civilization they have worked so hard to study.                    

Sticks and Skates, Bullets and Brains

As most of you already know, I entered the world of writing via the genre known as New Pulp. I got my start writing previously established characters like the Black Bat, Sherlock Holmes, and Ki-Gor the Jungle Lord. I've also been lucky enough to work for several editors who have encouraged me to create my own pulp characters. There are three of my characters that have found prominent places in New Pulp publications. There's Quincy "Hound-Dog Harker," who began as a baby mentioned on the last page of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, and who I now occasionally write in his adult version as an agent of the British Secret Service in the 1930s. There's the Red Veil, my pulp-era female vigilante.

But the character of mine who seems to have caught the most positive attention from New Pulp readers is my modern day detective, Lieutenant Marcel Picard, a professional hockey player turned police investigator. Last week marked the publication of the third Picard story, "Lieutenant Picard and the Holy Grail," which appears in the magazine Pro Se Presents #15. This book is now available on Amazon in a Kindle edition or a print edition. Here are the links, for those interested in buying a copy:

   For Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Se-Presents-November-ebook/dp/B00AG49WXQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354378351&sr=8-1&keywords=pro+se+presents+november+2012

In print: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Se-Presents-November-2012/dp/1481122959/ref=la_B002M5AISA_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354974948&sr=1-1

On today's blog, I thought I'd explain how Lt. Picard came into existence.
A few years ago, I was eating dinner in a local Italian restaurant. The tables were pretty close together and I couldn't help overhearing the conversation across from us. A man in his late twenties was with his girlfriend. He was wearing a New York Rangers jersey and discussing his decision to stop playing in an amateur hockey league. It seems there had been an incident in which another player's skate had come dangerously close to slicing his face. He sat there telling his companion that he no loonger felt the risk of injury was worth the fun of the game.
This got me thinking about a similar situation in which such a decision would have more drastic consequences than a man simply giving up a hobby. At that moment, the beginning of Picard occurred.

Marcel Picard was a highly succesful hockey star, a high-scoring forward for the New Jersey Devils. In his case, about a decade into his playing career, an opposing player's skate did strike him, leaving a scar down the right side of his face. Picard retired early and joined the Sheriff's Department in Passaic County New Jersey, deciding to do something with more meaning than playing a game for a living. His decision is based in part on an incident in his childhood in Canada in which he figured out the identity of a local murderer before the police could.

I chose Passaic County as Picard's area of operations for two reasons. First, I grew up in Passaic County and still live there. The cities and towns that appear in the Picard stories: Paterson, Wayne, Butler, Woodland Park, West Milford, etc. are places I've lived in, worked in, or visited over the course of my life. Second, it's a county with a lot of variety. Paterson is a big city, once thriving but now decaying. West Milford is about as rural as it gets in New Jersey. And there are towns of every sort in between.

A few people have asked me why I chose to have Picard be a former New Jersey Devils player since I've actually been  a New York Rangers fan my whole life. The simple answer is that I know too much about the Rangers and I think I'd be too tempted to add too much Ranger-centric trivia to my stories! The Devils are the other local team and I know enough about them to use them if I must but not enough to let my passion for them interfere with the flow of the stories.

So that's how Picard came into being. As for the actual stories, each one started in a different way. The first one, "The Day He Found the Clown," had the weirdest beginning, sparked by a chance moment of coincidence. I was trying to come up with a story for Picard's first case when I picked up the telephone directory, the first edition we got after moving into our then-new house. I opened it to a random page and was amazed to see listed, as if it was a real last and first name, "Giggles, Mister"
When I was a kid in elementary school, every Halloween all the students from the first through third grades would be herded into the auditorium and forced to sit through a performance by an annoying clown called Mister Giggles. I couldn't stand him, although the other kids seemed to like him.
And that set the story into motion. I took my own childhood memories, changed Mister Giggles to Mister Chuckles, and increased my annoyance at the clown to the story's villain's extreme hatred for the clown.
That first Picard story was published in the magazine Masked Gun Mystery #1.

In Masked Gun Mystery #2, the second Picard story appeared, "Clean-up in Aisle Six." This is a murder mystery set in a supermarket, something that was quite easy for me to write because I've spent many years working in that industry. That issue of Masked Gun was also very special to me because the cover (which represented a story by my friend Barry Reese) was drawn by artist Norm Breyfogle, who was illustrating Batman comics when I was growing up! That issue is available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Se-Presents-Masked-Mystery/dp/B006BJ26JW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354974995&sr=1-1&keywords=masked+gun+mystery


So, as I said in the beginning of today's blog, the newst Picard story is now out and the response to it has been great! Three reviews have appared so far and all three have said some very, very good things about "Lieutenant Picard and the Holy Grail." Here's an excerpt from one of those reveiws:

 "Next up is another modern day mystery featuring ex-NHLer and full-time cop, Marcel Picard in LIEUTENANT PICARD AND THE HOLY GRAIL by Aaron Smith. This is not my first Picard mystery but it is by far the best and my favorite tale in the collection. The Stanley Cup has been stolen and it's up to Picard to get it back. No spoilers here, you'll have to read the tale yourself. The pace is great, the tone cerebral before the action really begins to heat up. The tale reads as if it's much longer and that's a good thing here as it covers a lot of ground in a relatively short space. Picard can play on my team any time. This one is a winner."

The other two reviews were just as good and I'm thrilled by the reaction to this story. There will be more Picard stories in the future. I have a good idea for the next one now and I'm hoping to collect them all in one volume at some point.

One of the great things about writing is how stories can be triggered at the most unexpected moments. If I hadn't gone to that restaurant on that night and sat at that table next to those people, Picard would not have been born and I'd have missed out on a great opportunity. 

To end today's blog, I'd like to thank Tommy Hancock, head editor of Pro Se Productions, for publishing the Picard stories and always encouraging me to work on the next one.