The Miracle Menace

Coming soon from Altus Press www.altuspress.com, Will Murray’s latest Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, The Miracle Menace. Great cover by Joe DeVito.

Featured Author On NTD

I’m the featured author on NTD this week. I talk about my YA novel, “Three Go Back”, and my interest in paleontology. Plus there is a short bio included. There is a place for Comments at the bottom of the Page, so please leave a comment. My publisher doesn’t think I have any friends (LOL). Go here http://bloodredshadow.com/2013/08/26/the-genesis-of-tom-johnsons-three-go-back 

Tom

Most of my life I have had a deep interest in paleontology and entomology. In school, while we were reading Shakespeare, I was thinking about bugs. And during History class, I wondered what new discovery was being uncovered in fossil beds around the world. The only reason I passed 9^th grade History in the 9^th Grade was due to my artistic talent at the time. The teacher asked me to draw Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants.

I knew I wanted to write as far back as age ten, when I wrote a comic book story. Of course, it was terrible, but the fire was there. Then about age 25, while stationed in France, I started creating plots and characters, and putting them on paper. Naturally, the stories involved animals. One plot eventually became the Jur series several years later. I was finally living my dream, and creating stories to be read.

One of my favorite comic strips is Luann, and while reading the strip one day, I began thinking, why does’t that evil little Elvis guy hire a scientist to build a time machine, and accidentally send Luann and her girlfriends, Delta and Bernice back in time. Then someone could go after them, naturally. Well, I figured that would never happen, but I liked the idea. And that meant I started thinking about writing it myself, only not with Luann and her friends, but with girls in their mold.

Thus, “Three Go Back” was conceived. I set my tale in the future, where the common transportation system was teleport machines. My problem was coming up with the time machine angle for the story. Okay, so what if my characters were teleporting at the same time a magnetic solar flare struck the planet, burning out the teleport circuits, and turning it into a time machine?  Bang. That became my gimmick.

So using those concepts, my story almost wrote itself. My big problem was finding a publisher. You see, I used scientific names for the animals they encounter in their journey back through time, and publishers told me they would never find an editor who knew if the names were real, or misspelled, and were in the correct time period. They kindly but firmly rejected the story. I sent a proposal to Barbara Custer at Night To Dawn, who knew my background in prehistoric animal life, and my extensive study on the subject, and she took a chance. Actually, anyone with a computer can type the names I use and do a Google search, and it will show the data on any creature. But I understood the publishers’ decision to reject the book because of the editing difficulties. It can add a lot of work to an editor’s already hectic job. And you do come upon variation of names, which can confuse you.

I live in the Permian Basin of Texas, which is an area rich in Permian fossils. The Permian Period in our prehistory was over 250 million years ago, or roughly 60 million years before the dinosaurs, so this area is famous for reptiles and amphibians. There is an important dig in our area, the Craddock Redbeds, and Dr. Bakkar, a famous paleontologist brings a team up from the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences every year. Our town, Seymour even has a reptile/amphibian named after it – the Seymouria. So my childhood was naturally drawn towards the study, and that’s why I write so much about prehistoric life. They do say to write what you know and love.

Besides “Three Go Back”, and other novels set in prehistoric times, I also write action and adventure novels in the tradition of the pulp magazines of the 1930s and ‘40s, a period I also love. My interest varies from western to detective and space ships. Whether in the far-flung galactic worlds of the future, or the eons in our past, to the modern day mystery, I love the written word, and enjoy telling a story. I hope you will read my stories, and I’m sure you will see that love I project into my characters.

Blog http://jurnovels.blogspot.com

Blog http://pulplair.blogspot.com

Tom’s Amazon Page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008MM81CM

Tom’s Website http://www15.brinkster.com/jur1/index.html

Tom’s Bio

            I was born in 1940, going through elementary schools in Seymour and Wichita Falls, Texas. My dad was a cowboy and cook, and often worked at each profession, which required a lot of moves. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but I had more of a studious nature, and didn’t want to spend my life on farms and ranches. I was different from most kids my age, I didn’t want to be a cowboy, and never liked riding horses. My family lived something of an itinerant’s lifestyle, and we never stayed in one place long enough for me to develop friendships. In high school I was working on the ranch my dad was foreman of while other high school students my age were dating.

            When I turned 18, I joined the Army as an MP, and was off to see the world, never regretting my decision to leave the life my family had. I had some pretty good assignments, such as a three-year tour in France, but then there was a one-year period patrolling the DMZ between North and South Korea under fire, and 13 months in Vietnam. But I did enjoy my twenty years as a military cop, and took some college courses in the process.

            After retirement, my wife, Ginger and I started FADING SHADOWS, a small press imprint, publishing a hobby magazine, ECHOES, for the next twenty years, as well as half a dozen genre fiction titles, which re-fired my interest in writing.

            Today I leave the publishing for others, and continue my love of writing. It has been a good life, and I in no way degrade those men and women on ranches and farms. It just wasn’t a life for me.

The Pulpster #22

Copies of the latest issue of The Pulpster, are now available from Mike Chomko, Books. The 22nd issue of the award-winning program book, its biggest number yet, is the work of William Lampkin, administrator of the popular ThePulp.Net. Although Bill has designed The Pulpster since 2008, this is his first year as editor of the fanzine.

Like PulpFest 2013, The Pulpster #22 celebrates the 80th anniversary of the pulp hero boom of 1933, the 90th anniversary of Weird Tales, and the 100th anniversary of Fu Manchu. Leading off the magazine is a short article explaining how the August 1931 issue of “The Unique Magazine” sent a killer to the electric chair; next, PulpFest organizer Mike Chomko and Doc Savage author Will Murray look at the pulp heroes of 1933; William Preston, discusses his “Old Man” stories, inspired by Lester Dent’s Man of Bronze, while Murray returns with “On Writing Skull Island;” Echoes publisher and “New Pulp” author Tom Johnson explores Johnston McCulley’s “Rollicking Rogue” series, a precursor to the great pulp heroes; the writer authorized to continue the Fu Manchu series, William Patrick Maynard, details his longterm relationship with Rohmer’s devil doctor and Nathan Vernon Madison examines early yellow peril fiction found in dime novels and story papers; the longtime Street & Smith editor, Daisy Bacon, is profiled by Laurie Powers and the early science-fiction pioneer, Homer Eon Flint, is discussed by his granddaughter, Vella Munn; Monte Herridge explores Richard Sales’ Daffy Dill stories, a long-running series that appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly while Battered Silicon publisher and Sherlock Holmes expert, George Vanderburgh, offers a glimpse at the personal papers of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith; and closing out the issue is Pulpster editor emeritus Tony Davis’ “Final Chapters.”

With 52 pages, including ten in color, The Pulpster is a real steal at $11, which includes first class postage for buyers in the United States. Buyers outside the United States will pay more. Write to Mike Chomko at mike@pulpfest.com and order your copy today.

The cover art for The Pulpster #22 is the work of Walter M. Baumhofer. It originally graced the front cover to the July 1935 issue of Doc Savage Magazine which featured “Quest of Qui” as its lead novel.

The Bronze Gazette #67

The Bronze Gazette #67, July 2013

The latest issue of this great Doc Savage fan magazine has a nice article (with color cover reproductions) about the Doc Savage comic books by Matthew Hood, plus an art portfolio of the fantastic artist, Ron Wilber, illustrated Doc Savage and each of his Fabulous Five. None of this issue to be missed. As usual, this long running magazine continues to bring the best articles and artwork on Doc Savage in the pulp community. Published three times a year at Green Eagle Publications, 2900 Standiford Ave 16B, PMB 136, Modesto, California 95350. $15.00 for three issue subscription in the US. 

Cries of The Lost

Cries of The Lost (Mystery Thriller)

By Chris Knopf

Permanent Press www.thepermanentpress.com

ISBN #978-1579623326

272 Pages

Price $28.00

Rating 5-Stars

“A Non-Stop Thriller”

This is the sequel to “Dead Anyway”, the novel that introduced Arthur Cathcart. In the previous novel, his wife had been murdered, and Arthur shot in the head and left for dead. His sister, a doctor, nursed him back to health, but left him dead on records so the killers would not return for him. In that story, he tracked the killers down, but being a person who hates leaving questions unanswered, in “Cries of The Lost” he goes searching for the reason his wife was murdered. With him now is Natsumi Fitzgerald. They travel from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, and finally back to the US, every step of the way being chased by two opposing forces, as well as the F.B.I. The only clue is a coded message left on a Flash Drive in a safety deposit box in Grand Cayman.

This is a non-stop thriller from the first page to the last, filled with danger and death. Coming together at the end with assistance from gangsters before Cathcart unravels the mystery.

Tom Johnson

Detective Mystery Stories