This was a year in which I got to enjoy two creations called “Avatar,” and how often does that happen? Perhaps it’s a sign.
The first was the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender…
The second, of course, was James Cameron’s science fiction epic Avatar, in theaters now earning a billion plus dollars.
Let’s talk the Cameron film first, saving the best for last. Continue reading
Anyone reading my book, my blog, or probably even the bumps on my head will know that I love pulp adventure. The first three Indiana Jones movies (especially Raiders). The Depression-era novels starring Doc Savage, The Shadow, and The Spider. The modern pulp adventure novels of Matthew Reilly and James Rollins. The Rocketeer and The Phantom and Planetary in the comics.
Last year, early on, I saw news somewhere about a pulpish game that was due out in the fall, and it interested me enough that I put a note to myself on my Google calendar to look it up after it came out to see if it was as good as it looked. When I did, and read the reviews I could find, I ordered it immediately, and gave it to my son for Christmas.
That game was The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac, from AEG and Dust Games, and it rocks. Continue reading
Buy Now!
In May, my first book finally came out to great reviews and sales good enough to get Putnam to contract me for the next two books in the series. An adventure inspired by the pulps of the 1930s, I intended it for both kids and adult readers. Gratifyingly, it has done quite well with both.
For those uninitiated in the adventures of the family Wilde, you can find loads of info (and an excerpt) at www.DocWilde.com.
Elizabeth Bird is one of the most respected reviewers associated with Publishers Weekly, and was one of the critics I went out of my way to try to get to review my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. I read her blog regularly and enjoy her insights, and looked forward to seeing what she had to say about my fledgling effort.
Well, months passed, and the magazine seemed unaware of the book, and it didn’t appear on her blog. I’d pretty much given up on ever seeing anything from her, or PW, but then she posted an entry in which she gave tiny reviews of a bunch of books she’d read last year but hadn’t gotten around to reviewing.
This is what she said about my book:
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom by Tim Byrd – I appreciated how the book just leapt headfirst into the action, catching readers up after the fact, and also how I can now hand kids something when they come asking me for books “Just like Indiana Jones” (which really does happen).
Buy Now!
A review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom over at Curled Up With a Good Kid’s Book:
A true tale of adventure, this book takes off at break-neck speed and never slows down. Doc Wilde is a golden hero, of the type we haven’t seen since Flash Gordon (in the Buster Crabbe version) faced off with Ming the Merciless. Brian and Wren, young though they are, use their wits and their innate sense of justice to stand beside their father all the way. They’re the kind of sidekicks that comic book superheroes can only dream of finding, and they are certainly a credit to the Wilde family with its history of outlandish exploits and fair-minded pursuits.
The rest is here.
Keith “Kez” Wilson is a master of the mashup, taking artwork and cover designs from Bantam’s Doc Savage paperbacks 0f the 1960s-80s and combining them with imagery from genre films to incredible effect.
Here’s the haunting tale of Doc’s encounter with an angry amphibious atavist…
(Hmmm…perhaps a cousin of the Frogs of Doom…?)
And here, his dread meeting with a golem fashioned from corpse parts…
The latest is a very special Christmas adventure involving the most famous supernaturally illuminating ruminant of all…
I’d read these books. Kez has a bunch of ’em, all cool. You can check them out at his site.
Buy Now!
The Saturday before Christmas (December 19, 2009, from 3-5 pm), I’m going to be at Eagle Eye Bookshop in Decatur, GA for a reading/discussion and book signing. Eagle Eye is a fantastic indie bookstore, well known for its author events.
It being the Yule, I figured I’d do something special. So instead of just doing the usual reading from Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, the first book in the series, I’ll be reading the opening chapters of the second book, Doc Wilde and The Mad Skull, which will see print a while down the line.
This will be a rare opportunity to get a peek at a book that’s still being written, prior to any editorial input. First draft pulp, straight from my swashbuckling brain pulp.
Afterward, there’ll be a casual discussion about the book(s) and I’ll be signing Frogs of Doom. Which is not only a fun pulp adventure tale for kids and adults, but a FANTASTIC holiday gift. ;)
Over at Goodreads, the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group is discussing my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom (it was the official common read for November, but the discussion is only really just beginning).
I’d like to invite any and all of you to join in, or at least hop by and take a peek:
Pulp Magazine Authors & Literature Fans Home Page
“Common Reads” Discussion Board
If you’re a reader and you’re not taking advantage of Goodreads, you should be. It’s a great site for sharing and discovering books, and there’s a lot of dialogue between not only readers and other readers, but readers and writers.
Recently, I blogged about Earth2.net’s podcast of the Doc Savage radio adaptation NPR did back in the eighties. At the time of my post, only chapters 1 & 2 (of seven) had been broadcast.
They’ve now broadcast the entirety of the story, and I’ve updated the pertinent post with all the links: original post.
Buy Now!
The latest review of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom is from author Kevin Gerard at fantasyfan.org:
I became a kid again after reading three pages of this story. When we were young, all of us watched the biggest cartoon show on television – Johnny Quest. Johnny traveled the world with his father, Dr. Benton Quest, a guy who knew everything, could make anything, and never settled for failure.
Dr. Spartacus Wilde makes Dr. Quest look like the kid with the dunce cap in the corner of the classroom.
The full review is here.
Recently, I posted about a screenplay that Steve Antczak and I wrote called Blood of Eden, which got fairly close to becoming a Die Hard movie.
In that post, I mentioned that the producer’s “coverage” (a detailed summary/review of the script for in-house use) had been leaked, but I wasn’t able to find it.
Thankfully, “belzecue” posted a comment to that entry, pointing to a copy of that coverage posted to a screenwriting news site.
Because the coverage is, naturally, full of spoilers, I don’t want to just dump it here or just post the URL, lest it ruin the reading of the actual full script for someone. It has a tricky twist or three I don’t want you to have spoiled.
So, I’m going to post a heavily redacted version first, editing out most of the plot details, but leaving in the writer’s general opinion of the story.
Then, after the jump, I’ll post the entire coverage, in the hopes that people won’t read it until they’ve read the actual script (you can find the link to it in the original entry). To make the read easier, I’m adding some paragraph breaks where there weren’t any, as the original uses huge blocks of text that won’t read well online.
EDITED, NON-SPOILERY VERSION
Title of Submission: Blood of Eden
Author: Tim Byrd & Steve Antczak
Date Covered: 9/2/99
Genre: Action Adventure
STORY
This screenplay’s story is a very complex and sophisticated tale, presenting its drama and tension in an undersea setting. While there are more and more space- and sea-oriented films these days, this screenplay stands out on the merits of its excellent writing and the incredibly detailed, yet believable, environment in which it takes place. I have some plausibility questions, but they are minor and can be easily addressed….
CHARACTER
While the characters’ main personalities and motivations are clear, I’d like to see them developed a bit more…In this story, it’s very refreshing to see all the bad guys (the ninja) referenced by name, rather than by Ninja #1, Ninja #2…it’s a nice thing to have the bad guys be real people names…
DIALOGUE
Dialogue in this screenplay is a mixed bag. Overall, it’s fine, and it’s especially refreshing to hear the Japanese bad guys using realistic dialogue. Unfortunately, this quickly unravels into typical American macho expletives. The contrast of Japanese thought and phrasing versus the language we are used to hearing is one of the points which made this screenplay unique. Also, some of the American dialogue is either weak (“then the bad guys struck”) or too obvious as exposition (Travis and Desmond comparing backgrounds). In an otherwise very fine screenplay, dialogue is an area that could use improvement.
THEME
“Blood of Eden” is more action-packed than theme-packed, but does touch on several interesting topics, including nationalism versus Pacific Rim countries, maternal and paternal instincts, heroism and honor.
WRITER’S STYLE
The writers do a stellar job of writing action, weaving a tense, sophisticated and compelling tale. Their descriptions of environment and physical action, in particular, are exemplary. All of the hand-to-hand scenes are vividly depicted. The descriptions of the Edensphere do a great job of making the complex “seeable.” Lots of the action and other descriptions are almost literary in their quality, such as the spattering of bullets, the rushing of walls of water, etc. The writers’ challenge is to bring the quality of their characterizations and dialogue up to par with the rest of the screenplay, but I’m sure they can do it.
STRUCTURE
The structure here provides a strong foundation for the story. All scenes are vital and either propel the action or impart necessary information…
SETTING ORIGINALITY
The writers have done a great job of imagining and describing an entire undersea environment and the rules for survival there. Edensphere’s location in the Pacific, however, is unclear. It’s not too far from San Francisco…but it’s clearly far enough north to be in frigid waters. From the “Northern Pacific” slug lines, I kept imaging someplace off the Alaska coast.
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
This screenplay has great potential as a very entertaining and marketable commercial venture. It gets off to a good start, jumps into action very quickly and keeps the action going til the very end…
And now, the un-redacted version… Continue reading
The September 1934 issue of Doc Savage Magazine offered an action-packed tale called Fear Cay, which in addition to being a solid pulp adventure also featured the second appearance of Doc’s gorgeous and daring young cousin, Patricia. (I recently reread the tale as I got into the right mood to write the next Doc Wilde novel for Putnam).
In 1985, NPR produced serialized radio plays based on two of the Doc Savage novels, The Thousand-Headed Man and Fear Cay (which they renamed Fear Key, assuming, I guess, that people these days are too stupid to figure out what a “cay” is). These radio plays were very well done and a lot of fun, and are really tough to get hold of these days.
The web radio show Earth-2.net’s most recent podcast features the first two chapters of Fear Key. If you’re a fan of the Man of Bronze, or curious about him and his adventures, it’s worth a listen. Hopefully they’ll be running the remaining five chapters, but if they don’t, I think I have them on some hard drive somewhere and I’ll post them if anyone wants.
Hear the adventure here.
UPDATE: They have now posted the rest of the chapters of the show. The link above is to chapters 1-2, this link is to chapters 3-4, and this link is to chapters 5-7.]
So I just finished reading DC’s Batman/Doc Savage Special, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Great cover by J.G. Jones. Inside…hmm.
As a prologue leading into the pulpy First Wave books DC will start publishing next year, it works fairly well in establishing the alternate universe in which these characters coexist. As a story, it kinda fails. Writer Brian Azzarello brings a noirish attitude to it, and gives an interesting take on the heroes, but narratively it just hangs limply and ends on a trite note.
It’s not helped by the artwork by Phil Noto, which lacks the visual dynamism that comic book storytelling really demands, and the book’s color palate (I assume colored by Noto himself, as no credit is given otherwise) is dreary in an obvious attempt at making it feel more noir. It just makes it seem unexciting.
And I really don’t like Noto’s take on Doc Savage, especially the coloring he’s given.
All that said, I’m still looking forward to seeing what they do with First Wave, though with more trepidation. It will feature art by Rags Morales, and the advance images that have been shown are great, a lot better than the art in the comic at hand.
Also, I have to say, in spite of the underwhelming story in this book, I’m intrigued by Azzarello’s comments and notes about the various heroes who will be operating in this pulp, non-superpowered world. He has clearly studied the original characters in depth and put a lot of thought into fleshing them out psychologically and making them somewhat more realistic than might usually be the case. I’ve seen a few comments by devoted pulp fans who detest this approach to the classic characters they love, but I like well-developed characters, and at least in principle I find Azzarello’s ideas pretty cool.
My main reservation along those lines is that, if this comic is any indication, he may have too much noir and not enough pulp adventure in his approach. This could work fine for Batman, but not for characters like Doc Savage, who really need to be somewhat over the top. More realistic I can enjoy. Mundane, not so much.
Art by Ruben Procopio
It’s no secret that Doc Savage, Lester Dent’s pulp hero from the 1930s and 40s, is a huge inspiration for my own character, Dr. Spartacus Wilde (who saves the Earth from Lovecraftian batrachia in Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom). I grew up on paperback reprints of the Doc Savage novels and they, along with other pulp sources I’ve written about, are strong strands of my literary DNA.
In fact, Grandpa Wilde (Spartacus’s father), the original Doc Wilde who was famous in the thirties and forties, is my intertextual acknowledgment that the original hero is parent to the current hero, but also speaks to the fact that the younger Wilde is his own man. As similar as he is to Savage, he is also very different in ways, not least of which is that he is a warm, emotionally accessible family man, unlike the stern and remote man of bronze.
Unlike The Shadow, the only character more popular during the pulp era, Doc Savage isn’t very well known these days, though his influence on characters ranging from Batman to James Bond is widespread. But there are still quite a few fans, many having grown up on the same books I did. One of them is Shane Black. Continue reading
I just came across the latest review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, and it’s from someone who knows ’em some pulp.
Order Now!
Back in March, I blogged about some oddly inspiring material I found in a new roleplaying game I’d bought (Optimism, Action, and How To Be The Neighborhood Pulp Hero). The text in question “caused a synaptic hiccup and made me think about my life.” Pretty darn cool for a game manual.
The game, Spirit of the Century, is not only the best-by-far pulp game I’ve ever found (and I know most of them, all the way back to the first, 1982’s Daredevils from Fantasy Games Unlimited), it’s quite possibly the greatest face-to-face rpg. I’m reserving final judgment till after I actually have time to play the game, at which time it’ll get a full review here.
My copy of SotC had some issues, alas, but Fred Hicks, one of the game’s co-authors, exhibited some first class customer service and sent me a new copy. These are truly good guys in an industry with an often razor-thin profit margin. I was greatly appreciative at this, so I sent him a signed copy of my book.
Well, apparently Fred read the book, because on October 20th, he gave it a quick review on his blog.
While set in the modern day, this book LOVES pulp (and Lovecraft, for that matter) and makes a bunch of oblique and not so oblique references to it throughout. It’s a breezy, very fast read for an adult, but an adult will be entertained precisely because of those references. It’s like a fast mad dash through a landscape littered with mines that explode with geek-love every now and again.
To summarize the plot would be to tell the story of the whole book, so I’m going to leave that out of this. It’s a fun family romp, has good life lessons for kids, and features a boy child and a girl child who both compete with each other and value each other…And if you’re looking to get your kids primed with some excitement about high-pulp adventure…I think Doc Wilde would be a handy tool for giving that to ’em…
There’s a bit more, which can be found here.
Many moons ago, I was friends with Shane Black (who makes an appearance on the acknowledgments page of my book). He’s the guy who wrote Lethal Weapon and spent a few years wrestling Joe Eszterhas for highest amount ever paid for a screenplay (Shane’s personal best was $4,000,000 for The Long Kiss Goodnight, which was then run through the mediocritizer by director Renny Harlin).
Shane also wrote and directed the INCREDIBLE Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which is oceans full of fun, and has great performances by Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan.
But I digress.
Seriously, we’ll all be better off if you let Tim write the movie.
Shortly after Lethal Weapon 2 was released, I had what I figured was a great idea for a third movie in the series. I wrote a treatment, and Shane took a look. Continue reading
I conceived of the adventures of Doc, Wren, and Brian Wilde as a series, starting with Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom. That was the plan. As a writer, I decided, I am in the Doc Wilde business.
Putnam also saw the Wildes as a potential series, but largely avoided talking about that. They are, after all, a business. Profits must be made, books must be balanced. So they understandably played it close to the vest, waiting to see how Frogs of Doom did, both critically and commercially.
I kept with my plan, continuing to work on Wilde stuff, figuring that even if Putnam ultimately didn’t opt to publish more, I’d find some way to get these adventures out there.
As anyone who’s been following the reviews of the book knows, the Wildes have been extremely well received by the critics. I literally had one sort of negative review, and even it largely praised the book, though it wasn’t the writer’s cup of tea. Even Kirkus Reviews, which is notoriously tough, had only good things to say (Novelist Kimberly Derting commented “I’m awed, you’ve cracked the Kirkus code!”)
(Feel free to visit the Reviews page at the Doc Wilde website.)
As for sales… Continue reading
The name of the next Pirates of the Caribbean flick (with Johnny Depp returning as Sparrow) has been released:
Wait, what…?
On Stranger Tides? Isn’t there already a pirate fantasy of that name, as in the one called On Stranger Tides that I blogged about in my 1/8/09 entry “A Few Great Books“:
On Stranger Tides
by Tim Powers
Years before Jack Sparrow staggered into port on a sinking skiff, Tim Powers gave us the gift of a rousing swashbuckler of a pirate novel spiced with voodoo, zombies, and a Blackbeard infested with ghosts. This book has the distinction of being the one book on my shelf for years that I consciously planned to read to my kid when I eventually had one. And I did.
Anyone out there know if they’re adapting Powers’s book to the PotC milieu, or if they’re only just stealing his title…?
Click to Order
Among the great pulp heroes created by Robert E. Howard, author of the only true Conan tales, was puritan swordsman against darkness Solomon Kane.
The complete tales are currently available in this beautiful Del Rey book:
Click to Order
For the roleplaying games fans among you, one of the absolute greatest RPGs in years is this Savage Worlds gamebook by Shane Hensley:
Click to Order
And this trailer for the upcoming cinematic adaptation looks very promising.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
As promised earlier in the week, here is the second Amazon reader’s review of my novel Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom I really wanted to share with you.
Buy Now!
 It was everything I thought it would be, and more…………, June 7, 2009
I bought the book for two reasons: to support a local author, and to give my child something fun to read. I had no preconceived idea of the book, or its plot or style. Imagine my surprise when I read it AND LOVED IT !! I grew up reading fantasy books like THE DARK IS RISING series by Susan Cooper. I wanted my 10 year old daughter to have the same sort of experience. To be completely immersed in the story, and carried along by it. She read it all in one day, and only put it down to participate in required activities. I, on the other hand, read it very slowly, to enjoy it, and to understand the nuances. It stood up very well to both tests!! I am an avid reader but often find myself reading books and criticizing either a plot turn as predictable, or character development as being lacking, or worse yet sometimes the language usage or vocabulary is repetitive. My only complaint is that I wanted to find out what happens next in the series… and that’s what Doc prescribed, right? keep ’em wanting MORE!! |
Under An Outlaw Moon 