My post about optimism and action, pulp heroes, and the roleplaying game Spirit of the Century has proven to be one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written. It seems to have become a small-scale meme, bouncing around from reader to reader, echoing in other blogs, other places…
One place it echoed was on the gaming podcast Canon Puncture (if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, the pertinent segment begins right around time-mark 24:34):
I really enjoyed these guys’ comments.
Many of you know I have a book about to come out (Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom) chronicling Doctor Spartacus Wilde’s dire battle with mutated eldritch amphibians in the jungles of South America.
Not to spoil anything, but the Wildes saved the day, as is their wont. But you know that already, because the earth still exists, and you’re reading this.
The threat may not be over, however. Scientists recently discovered a tiny beast, the smallest frog known in the world, in the Peruvian Andes (perhaps not far from the area of the Wildes’ final battle with the Frogs of Doom).
What evil lurks in the heart of this frog?
From National Geographic:
…But scientists searching the Andes mountains’ upper Cosnipata Valley in southern Peru, near Cusco, spotted the coin-size creature–a member of the Noblella genus–in the leaf litter of a cloud forest between 9,925 and 10,466 feet…
“The most distinctive character of the new species,” scientists write in the February issue of the journal Copeia, “is its diminutive size.” Females grow to 0.49 inch (12.4 millimeters) at most. Males make it to only 0.44 inch (11.1 millimeters).
What’s most surprising is that the frog lives at such high elevations…In general, larger animals are found at greater heights.
Yes, in general. But if these tiny monsters are indeed another variety of the Frogs of Doom, perhaps they are arcanely adapted to the higher elevation.
And if so…what sinister purpose do they have in our world?
[UPDATE: The shop is now closed. It will probably reopen later with items featuring the actual cover art by Tim Gabor.]
A good while back, I opened a Cafe Press shop of Doc Wilde merchandise. It has largely gone unnoticed and unseen, though a handful of sagacious souls made their way to it and enriched their lives with the purchase of an item or two.
The items on the site showcase the original (unused) cover art by Australian master comic book artist Gary Chaloner:
As I’ve written before, this isn’t the artwork that will be on the actual book. But I have always loved it (I have one of the large posters framed in my living room, and this version of Doc still peeks from the Doc Wilde logo I use on the website) and wanted to let you get a chance at it before I take it offline.
It’s April 1st as I write this. I’ll leave the shop open and Gary’s art available through Wednesday, April 8th.
So this is really limited edition merchandise. It won’t be available again, and I don’t actually expect many sales in the next week, so if you do get any of it, and Doc Wilde becomes popular, the items will probably be quite collectable (especially if you ever get me and/or Gary to sign yours).
If you visit the shop, make sure to read the item descriptions, I had a lot of fun writing them. Here are a couple:
Doc Wilde Preppy Shirt
Infiltrate a cult of power-mad evil golfers in this comfy shirt sporting the Wilde logo over your courageous heart.
Doc Wilde Trucker Hat
Use small words, spit tobaccy, and wear this ventilated cap sporting the Wilde logo next time you’re hunting a bad guy at a NASCAR event. (Hey, I’m from Georgia, I can say this stuff).
Remember, this is your last chance at this stuff, it comes down Wednesday, April 8th, 2009. The shop can be found here:
I had my eye on this book on Amazon for ages before I decided to take a chance on it. I’m a bit skittish, having bought small press and self-published books before that turned out to be utter crap…heck, I recently bought a very popular YA adventure novel by a writer whose books sell millions of copies and it was one of the worst written tomes I’ve cracked open in years.
So, yeah. Skittish.
But I finally bought Warren Stockholm’s The Sting of The Scorpion, allegedly the first issue of Scorpion Magazine, though this was published in 2006 and there’s still no sign of a second issue. But things happen, and it is the product of a small press.
The Scorpion is a pulp hero in the tradition of The Shadow, but even more in the tradition of The Spider (both of whom I wrote about here). He’s dark and deadly and armed and dangerous, clad in a black-veiled fedora and a black leather trench coat, brutally taking the fight to the criminals that plague his city, Steeltown.
While the hero is fashioned from a very readily recognizable pulp archetype, Stockholm does some interesting things with The Scorpion and the world he inhabits.
For one thing, the tale takes place in an alternate history in which Germany won the second world war and occupied America for sixty years. America has only recently booted their wretched asses out and is rebuilding itself. The milieu is an intriguing amalgam of the thirties and the late twentieth century, as if the culture sort of froze in place under Nazi rule, but technology moved forward.
As for the hero, in classic pulp fashion, The Scorpion by day is a wealthy paragon, living in the tallest building in the city, assisted by a mysterious Asian woman, dedicated to his mission against evil…but he’s not just a hero with a dark past, he’s a hero with a really dark past. And he’s not really human, in some very interesting and dangerous ways. Richard Wentworth dressed as The Spider to scare criminals into thinking he was a monster; Kurt Reinhardt becomes The Scorpion because he is a monster.
Reinhardt is a compelling protagonist, the action frequent and brutal, the city a violent and noirish place, and the plot interesting. Not only that, but Stockholm can actually write very well (though this is possibly the worst copy-edited book I’ve ever read all the way through). I do have to warn readers of delicate tastes away, however, because this is a very grim and blood-splashed work.
I enjoyed the hell out of this story. I wish there was a Scorpion Magazine #2, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Unlike some other attempts at modern pulp I’ve read (or tried to read), this one’s going on the shelf with my Doc Savages, Shadows, and, of course, that other arachnid, The Spider.
You never know where you’re going to find a nugget of crystalline wisdom, something that gives you pause because of its brightness and clarity, that makes you think about how you’re living your life, and how you should be living it.
I found one of these nuggets recently. The unlikely place I found it? Continue reading
UPDATE: This event has been rescheduled from Friday, May 15th to Saturday, May 16th.
It’s official: Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom will debut May 14, and two days later I’ll have my first ever signing:
The Day: Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Time: 7 pm
The Place: Little Shop of Stories in beautiful downtown Decatur, GA.
Little Shop is one of the finest bookstores in the Atlanta area. It lives next to the Starbucks in Decatur, GA., and is mostly dedicated to books for young people, but also has a smart selection of grown-up fare for grown up kids.
It’s one of those small bookstores that springs from a place of obvious vision and love, with a warm, knowledgeable staff and comfy couches. They’re very active in the community, working with schools and literacy programs as well as helping organize the famous Decatur Book Festival. And so much stellar talent has passed through that the wall behind the counter is like a museum, covered with wonderful sketches and notes from writers and artists who have visited.
I’m thrilled and proud to be officially debuting the Wilde’s adventures at Little Shop, and hope to see you there!
Order Now!
I just received my first HUGE review for Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, from Kirkus Reviews (Wikipedia: “Kirkus has long been a respected, authoritative pre-publication review source within the literary and film industries”). And it’s, quite frankly, a rave:
When their scientist grandfather disappears again, 12-year-old Brian, his ten-year-old sister, Wren, and their world-renowned father, Dr. Spartacus Wilde, are off on an adventure to kick off Byrd’s debut novel and the first volume in a new series. The high-tech Indiana Jones-type tale takes the adventurers to the uncharted South American jungles of Hidalgo to find Grandpa Wilde, who had researched dark matter and the possibility of traveling to other universes. The problem is that Frogon, a dark god from another universe, wants to take over ours. Besides finding Grandpa, the Wildes must face a glut of frogs-spy frogs, man-frogs, saber-toothed frogs and the dark elder god frog-and save the universe.
Written in fast-paced, intelligent prose laced with humor and literary allusions ranging from Dante to Dr. Seuss, the story has all of the fun of old-fashioned pulp adventures. A tale “terrifying and dark, of indescribable horrors and eldritch mysteries,” this is sure to be Wilde-ly popular, and readers will anxiously await future installments.
So far, everybody likes it. The Wildes are off to a good start.
Just a reminder: the book comes out May 14th, but can be ordered already at this link. If you plan on getting it, please pre-order, because a book’s initial sales are crucially important in building its success.
Author Will Murray just gave a short review of my upcoming novel:
Over the weekend I read Tim Byrd’s young adult Doc Savage pastiche novel. Let me say that DOC WILDE AND THE FROGS OF DOOM is a pulp-pounding ribbiting croaker of a tale! It mixes a 21st century version of the Man of Bronze and his extended family of adventurers with evil Lovecraftian frogazoids infiltrating our reality via the South American republic of Hidalgo.
This particular review is significant. Murray is one of the most renowned and knowledgeable pulp scholars in the world, so he knows good pulp adventure when he sees it. But more importantly, among the fifty-plus novels he has written are seven official Doc Savage novels, published under Lester Dent’s pseudonym “Kenneth Robeson,” and he is the chosen executor to Dent’s literary estate.
Doc Wilde is my tribute to the Doc Savage stories I loved as a kid, and Will’s comments are basically official validation by Lester Dent’s direct literary descendant. That’s pretty cool.
Will Murray's PYTHON ISLE
Do you know Cthulhu?
If you knew Cthulhu as we know Cthulhu, oh, oh, oh what a god…
I’ve always loved scary stories. One of the few positive memories I have from my childhood was staying up with my father and watching classic Universal monster movies in a rocking chair. I loved scary comics like Creepy and Eerie and monster comics like Marvel’s Werewolf By Night (I remember, when I was about 9 or so, scrambling around the desolation of our suburban neighborhood by moonlight in a torn shirt pretending I was the werewolf). I could quote Edgar Allen Poe, and read all the horror I could get hands on, from Dracula to “The Monkey’s Paw” to Something Wicked This Way Comes. Well, I read most things I could get my hands on. But horror was among my favorites. Continue reading
I’ve written about my old friend Karl Edward Wagner before. Back in the day, I caroused through various conventions with the brilliant red-bearded wildman, having a hell of a great time.
In my youthful naiveté, I didn’t realize the booze that was fueling his fun was symptomatic of a deep self-destructive streak which would lead to his death at the age of 49. Continue reading
Just a quick note to let you know there’s now a spot to sign up for the Doc Wilde newsletter at the Doc Wilde site.
For the moment, this just gets you on the mailing list for any news that pops up, like upcoming signings or licensing deals or whatever. But in the works is an actual monthly newsletter that will include both the latest news and things like “Doc Wilde’s Cliffhanger Survival Tips.”
If you sign up, don’t fret about getting virtual tons of email from us. We know how annoying it is when people spam you over and over and fill your Inbox. We want this to be a way for you to get your Doc Wilde news while it’s fresh and to enjoy some new content, not a way for us to badger you till you hate the sight of our emails appearing on your screen.
To sign up, jump over to www.DocWilde.com.
Over on Goodreads (www.goodreads.com), I recently joined a great reading group called “Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans.” The group discusses, as you might figure, pulp fiction, and every month chooses a book to read and talk about in the forum. Last month’s choice was Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, which I didn’t have time to get to (but read many years back, and remember enjoying it).
This month, the choice is Fritz Leiber’s The Swords of Lankhmar
(That’s not the cover of The Swords of Lankhmar
Fritz Leiber (along with Robert E. Howard and a few others) was instrumental in the actual creation of the fantasy genre known as “sword and sorcery.” Leiber, in fact, was the man who coined the term. His stories are sardonic and bawdy and full of wit, full of action and invention, comic and tragic, sometimes damn near Shakespearean…If your notion of heroic fantasy literature is based on the yards and yards of Tolkien ripoffs and D&D novels (themselves, ultimately, Tolkien ripoffs for the most part), Leiber will prove a true literary treat.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two of the greatest characters in fantasy, a pair of good-hearted rogues of flexible ethics and decidedly Dionysian morality, as adept with their wits as they are with their blades. Fafhrd is a towering red-bearded barbarian from frosty northern lands, the Mouser a slight trickster from the urban sprawl who dabbles a bit in the arcane (with often questionable results). They adventure through the world of Nehwon (read it backwards), which is full of corruption and vile magics and things to do. And the adventures are so well written, they tickle the mind:
…Then [Fafhrd] shrugged and said loudly, “What’s so special about these rats? Do they do tricks?”
“Aye,” Slinoor said distastefully. “They play at being men. They’ve been trained by Hisvet to dance to music, to drink from cups, hold tiny spears and swords, even fence. I’ve not seen it–nor would care to.”
The picture struck the Mouser’s fancy. He envisioned himself small as a rat, dueling with rats who wore lace at their throats and wrists, slipping through the mazy tunnels of their underground cities, becoming a great connoisseur of cheese and smoked meats, perchance wooing a slim rat-queen and being surprised by her rat-king husband and having to dagger-fight him in the dark. Then he noted one of the white rats looking at him intently through the silver bars with a cold inhuman blue eye and suddenly his idea didn’t seem amusing at all…
Simply put, there is no finer writer than Leiber in fantasy, and he’s a damn sight better than most in any genre:
The Demoiselle Hisvet stood as tall as the Mouser, but judging by her face, wrists, and ankles was considerably slenderer. Her face was delicate and taper-chinned with small mouth and pouty upper lip that lifted just enough to show a double dash of pearly tooth. Her complexion was creamy pale except for two spots of color high on her cheeks. Her straight fine hair, which grew low on her forehead, was pure white touched with silver and all drawn back through a silver ring behind her neck, whence it hung unbraided like a unicorn’s tail. Her eyes had china whites but darkly pink irises around the large black pupils. Her body was enveloped and hidden by a loose robe of violet silk except when the wind briefly molded a flat curve of her girlish anatomy…
If you’re a completist, the first book in the series is Swords And Deviltry
The new Doc Wilde site is coming along nicely.
I just added a Doc Wilde blog (“The Blogs of Doom“) which will be more targeted in its focus than “Under An Outlaw Moon,” which is my personal blog, so you never know what you’ll find here. While there will naturally be some cross0ver, the content there should mostly be original.
Also at the site are a Gallery of great Doc Wilde art by comics artist Gary Chaloner, a Reviews page for Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, FREE Stuff including an excerpt from the book and a free short story, an Author’s Bio/FAQ, and a library of Suggested Reading.
Come on by and check it out. Don’t forget to sign the Guestbook.
Back in the day, I worked in the roleplaying game industry.
I’m not talking rpg video games, like World of Warcraft or Oblivion (more’s the pity, because the money would have been way better). No, I’m talking good old fashioned face-to-face, throwin’ dice, drinkin’ root beer and eatin’ Doritos roleplaying games. I got into them when I was a young teen, starting with the original Dungeons & Dragons and moving on to many others like Champions, Traveller, and Daredevils. In my twenties, here and there I’d manage to get some short-lived game together, a little James Bond or Ghostbusters here, a little Paranoia or Justice Inc there.
Then I happened across White Wolf’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse one day (in which players assume the roles of lycanthropic ecoterrorists fighting demonic corporate forces to save the wilderness and the Earth itself). Werewolves have always been my favorite monster, I’m a devoted environmentalist, and the game is steeped in animistic spirituality which is my soul’s cup of tea…conceptually, it was a perfect storm for me. That led to scattered White Wolf gaming, which in time led to me actually working at the company. Which led to a bit of other rpg work, most notably for Feng Shui and its stillborn spinoff Pulp! (none of that work saw print, unfortunately, as Daedelus Games collapsed, though I did put some of it online…by the way, any Feng Shui players out there still have copies of my stuff? I lost it all in a hard drive crash).
These games get a bad rap from some people, and D & D is often cultural code for loser. But the fact of the matter is that many people who sneer at roleplayers spend their time watching crap like Desperate Housewives or American Idol, deadening their brains while the gamers hang out together and engage in an activity that has its roots in campfire storytelling and improv theater, an activity that’s inherently social and that exercises the mind.
But I digress. A few years ago, I managed to run a game for a group of friends who managed, more often than not, for a while, to actually get together regularly to play. The game was Shane Hensley’s great Savage Worlds. Ultimately, unfortunately, it’s really tough to keep a game going over time because people are, in groups, pretty unreliable, and entropy sets in till things just unravel.
One of the things I did, as things were unraveling, was to try to establish “pick up games” outside the continuing narrative of the main game, that we could play if someone in the group didn’t show up. That way, we’d still be playing something, the group would hold steady in its routine, and we could restart the main game “next” time…
For the pickup games, I decided to run short sword & sorcery adventures, focusing mainly on mood and action (as opposed to an involved narrative and character development), and in the spirit of Savage Worlds I called them “Savage Tales.” And I wrote a short handbook describing the setting and telling the players how to design their characters for it.
Before the game evaporated for good, I think we actually played one such pickup game. Or maybe we just had an evening where we hung out and did the character creation. I can’t remember for sure. But I always liked the little handbook I put together, and the commentary within on the difference between epic fantasy (like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) and sword & sorcery (like Robert E. Howard’s Conan or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser):
If everyone can’t make it, we go to Europia. There, things are gonna be less epic saga, more survival skirmish. Conan could become a king in Europia, but Tolkien’d have his pipe crushed under some furred boot and be set to work the rest of his short life digging stones from cold earth.
There are no hobbity folk in Europia because they were eaten by snake-men aeons ago. The elves are mysterious and dark, and if you see one, it usually changes your life forever. The dwarves may exist or not, but grandpa says they eat human flesh. And the closest thing to an orc you’ve ever seen is that big ugly fucker down the bar you saw sodomizing an unconscious guardsman the other night…
Here’s the booklet. You might get a kick out of it. If you’re a gamer, you might even find something useful in it. But here it is.
The last time I was at the grocery store, I grabbed a bag of shredded cheddar for various uses like sprinkling on chili or scrambling with eggs, but when I pulled the bag out to use I noticed it wasn’t actually cheddar at all. It was something called “Cheddar Melt Topping,” with the description “Shredded Imitation Cheddar Cheese” in smaller print. It tastes like some sort of packing material that’s been left in a moldy basement a while.
Imitation cheddar cheese my ass.
Which makes me think of Dracula.
Why does this make me think of the vampire king? It makes me think of him because I happen to be reading a novel called Seance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen, which is one of the books in his Dracula series. Years ago, I read Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tapes(which retold Bram Stoker’s story from the count’s point of view, and predated Anne Rice’s tape-recording-a-vampire book by a year), The Holmes-Dracula Files (which, as you’d expect, tells a tale involving the count and Sherlock Holmes, and is told in alternating chapters by Dr. Watson and Dracula), and An Old Friend of the Family (which brought Dracula to modern day Chicago). I loved these books, and always intended to read the remaining books in the series.
Saberhagen was (and I just found out the “was”, alas, is appropriate, as he died in 2007) a damn fine writer. Seance is excellent so far, and is another Dracula/Holmes adventure. So, how does fake cheese come into the picture?
The cover of Seance identifies Saberhagen as the “coauthor of the Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie novelization.” That there’s some serious fake cheese. For one thing, the movie called Bram Stoker’s Dracula was anything but. It was pretty darn cool, if I recall correctly (though I mostly remember a backlit Winona Ryder stumbling around in a nightdress), but it changed Stoker’s story a good deal for a movie claiming his authorship. And a novelization of a movie based (liberally) on the Stoker novel…Fake cheese.
In a just universe, there would be no such thing as a novelization of a movie made from a novel. Movie novelizations are more often than not a waste of trees, anyway, and to publish one that actually, by design, is intended to replace an original book is an atrocious idea. It disrespects the original author, and it disrespects every reader who picks up the novelization instead of the original.
I’m sure the fact that Stoker’s book is in the public domain, and available widely in editions that wouldn’t make the licensee any money, had something to do with the decision to produce such an abomination. And maybe financial need led a fine writer like Saberhagen to accept such hack work.
For my part, the book could objectively be the best damned novel ever written in the English language and I still wouldn’t let it in the house. It can stay out there with all the fake cheese I’ll be meticulously not buying from now on.
I’ve written previously about comic book wizard Gary Chaloner’s early involvement in coming up with possible artwork for the Doc Wilde series. He worked up some great designs that ultimately weren’t used (if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see them in comic book or animated form one of these days), but definitely need to be seen.
I just added a “Gallery” page to the revamped Doc Wilde site, and it’s loaded with Gary’s sketches. Check it out:
For a while, I’ve been using a subpage of this blog as the official site for Doc Wilde, but I’ve now launched a more respectable site that has much more to offer, including a free excerpt from my novel Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom.
Head over to www.DocWilde.com to join the adventure.
My day is off to a great start: my son’s out of school because of snow, and my novel gets its second review, from novelist Alex Bledsoe at Guys Lit Wire:
Tim Byrd’s rollicking Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is part Jonny Quest, part Doc Savage and all a massive hoot…it’s a balls-out adventure that, while light-hearted, never turns to self-referential mockery…
There’s lots more of the review here. Go see.
Hiya.
For anyone who’s missed me the past week or more, it’s because I’m firmly embedded in the legalistic tar pit pooped out by the court system for those of us who get divorced. But I’m still breathing. Mostly.
On happier fronts, it seems the review copies of my first novel, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, have started to land out there in the Land of Critique. And Ron Fortier, himself an active pulp wordsmith and scholar, is first out of the gate with a review at his site Pulp Fiction Reviews:
The Wildes are old fashioned heroes in the best sense of the word and their adventure is sure to thrill pulp fans, both old and new…
Click here to read the full review. In the midst of this other business, it really made my day.
All you Flair fanatics on Facebook can now share official Doc Wilde™ Flair with your friends.
The pic above is just one of several available. Just do a search for “Doc Wilde” to find the others.
And don’t forget, you can also find the Wildes adventuring with many other heroes on the “A Pulp Hero to the Rescue” app!
Under An Outlaw Moon 