Folks who like high-flying adventure - or low-flying with plenty of barrel rolls and dogfights adventure - might wish to know that the latest anthology featuring my work is now available in shops and e-shops. Here's what the publisher's press release has to say about it:

FIRST VOLUME FROM PULP OBSCURA DEBUTS-
THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT!

January 30, 2012

Pro Se Productions, a leading Publisher in the New Pulp Movement, announces today the release of the first collection from its PULP OBSCURA line. Pro Se, in conjunction with Altus Press, noted Publisher of Pulp reprints as well as the home of Will Murray’s new Doc Savage novels, developed the PULP OBSCURA line to spotlight characters from the classic days of Pulp Fiction that are considered unknown or rare in the modern era.

“This concept,” stated Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor in Chief of Pro Se, “is really the brainchild of Altus Press’ founder and publisher, Matt Moring. He saw the potential in many of the characters he plans to reprint the original adventures of via Altus Press to be used in new stories by modern day writers. The characters he and I discussed are in the Public Domain and therefore free writers to tackle and publishers to print. Out of that rose PULP OBSCURA, a name I’d come up with a year or so ago out of my own thoughts of one day focusing on rare characters that most people, even the hardcore Pulp fans, don’t know exist.”

The first PULP OBSCURA volume is THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT. The title character originally appeared in FLYING ACES Magazine in the 1930s and was written by Donald E. Keyhoe, an author known later in his career for his writing on UFOs. Appearing in numerous tales into the 1940s, Knight was considered a flying detective type, an agent of the government who used the cover of millionaire flyboy to investigate plots, usually those involving things such as lost valleys or other oddities, against America.

As stated on the book itself-
From the past flies new tales of one of Pulp’s forgotten heroes! Pro Se Productions in conjunction with Altus Press presents the first volume in its PULP OBSCURA line! Bringing adventures and heroes lost in yesterday blazing to life in new pulp tales today! Six high flying, wild and weird adventures from I.A. Watson, Barry Reese, Frank Schildiner, Joshua Reynolds, Terry Alexander, and Adam Lance Garcia!

Come fly with this hero of the airways as he battles threats to America from the common to the extraordinary! The first new stories since 1942!

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT is available now from Pro Se Press as a Kick Off Special for PULP OBSCURA. Altus Press’ volume which this New Pulp book is a companion to, THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT, VOLUME ONE, will be out within days. In the future, Hancock explained, Altus’ reprint volume and Pro Se’s New Pulp companion volume will be released on the same day. “We did this,” Hancock said, “as a special gift to those who have been following the development of PULP OBSCURA and readers eager to see what we’re doing. There’s been a lot of buzz about this project, which we all greatly appreciate, and we wanted to reward that.”

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT features a spectacular cover by Mike Fyles and the cover design work of Sean Ali. Interior Format and Design is the work of Matt Moring and the ebook design is by Russ Anderson. THE NEW ADVENTURES OF RICHARD KNIGHT is now available via Pro Se’s Createspace store at https://www.createspace.com/3783368 and will be available via Amazon in print within the week, $12.00 in print. It is also available for $2.99 for the Kindle on Amazon and in various formats at www.smashwords.com and coming soon to Barnes & Noble for the Nook.

This first release from PULP OBSCURA is featured in the following trailer-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db2iXbQzm_s

PULP OBSCURA-Bringing Heroes Lost in Yesterday Blazing to Life in New Pulp Tales Today!

Pro Se Press- www.prosepulp.com
Altus Press- www.altuspress.com

Expect me to spam up the board with news about a Robin Hood magazine story and some other stuff fairly soon.

IW

...this posting was blocked by the spam filter - until I added the full stop at the end of the title!

Doesn't that mean it's working perfectly?

Yes, it has some sneaky detection of long all-caps titles, since spammers seem to use those.

I wasn't using all capitals, just the text you see in the posted version minus one full stop.

Not complaininmg, just commenting.

What it does is use a point system, where certain features of a post add points to a total. So the subject line might have pushed it just a half a point over the limit where the filter is activated.

Here's what I had to say about the character and his cast in a recent interview:

Richard Knight is from that breed of heroes so common in the 30s and 40s and relatively rare now, the man who women want and men want to be. He's handsome, rich, competent at everything he does, and moral. Few know that he's also a top government agent and airman. He's Bruce Wayne with a designer biplane. What makes Knight of note is the combination of air ace and detective. He's the government's go-to troubleshooter for any aviation mystery.

However, as with quite a few such heroes there's really only one girl for him; in this case a Spanish princess from a lost civilisation whom he rescued in his debut adventure. Benita Nayarre is a definite contender for the Olive Oyl Kidnapee of the Year Award, since she's carried off in every single one of the original stories I've read. Fortunately she's of the brave-captive-struggling-against-her-captors school of heroines so she doesn't come across as too wet and useless. She usually manages the Lois Lane trick of discovering the vital clue while she's a prisoner, so that's alright. Benita's unusual upbringing gives her a different perspective than many typical 30s romance interests.

Knight also has one of those dim, loyal two-fisted buddies who is there to ask the reader's questions, to occasionally foul up so the hero doesn't have to, and offer reactions to show how clever the main character is being. Lt. Larry Doyle's a great character in his own right, Ben Grim without the orange rocks. Fiction shies away from the loyal companion friend who doggedly accompanies the genius hero these days, but Doyle's a fine example of how that can work.

The fourth and final regular cast member is Knight's boss, Head of Military Intelligence Major General John Brett. He's a typical old-school C.O., straight, square-jawed, honourable, patriotic, and loyal to his men. He comes from the days before mounting public cynicism expected all bosses to be dumb, corrupt, narrow-minded, or restrictive. He doesn't have to bawl Knight out like Captain Dobie with Starsky and Hutch. Knight doesn't have to work around him like Axel Foley with his superiors. It's Brett's straight-arrow nature that makes him interesting in the cast; kind of like having a 60-year old Captain America as your chief.

The formula is pretty simple, from a simple time, but that's the charm of the character and his stories. It's stripped-down mystery and action where the plot drives the narrative on. That's not to say that Keyhoe didn't provide emotion or character, only that he used primary colours to paint his literary canvas to achieve a clean, concentrated effect.

And apologies about the late Amazon delivery. For the 55% of my fee they take you think they'd be more prompt. In compensation I e-mailed you a link and code to download a free review copy of Richard Knight. Unfortunately Comcast still hates either you or me and bounced two attempts back as spam. Sorry about that too.

http://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-bad-guys-die-by-ia-watson.html

I only check that comcast address sporadically these days anyway. Try sending it to my vizh310 gmail account (dot com)

A very good list indeed!

I'd add "Villain thinks he's invincible", that he's covered all of the bases, scoured the earth of his personal kryptonite, and that as a result he's already won...the hero can't possibly represent a threat. Therefore the villain mocks the hero for not accepting this, and in his arrogance allows his enemy to "take his best shot" or overly toys with his adversary instead of eliminating the danger to him. He never realizes until it's too late that the hero facing him has obtained the one key to his destruction after all.

I'm talking about Sympathetic Failure. The hero fails to defeat the villain, and the consequences are disasterous, but we see the heartbreaking effects of that failure on the hero and it makes him/her appear more sympathetic and human.

Yes, technically the villain doesn't die physically in this one, but he or she does disappear as far as the plot for that particular movie is concerned (though maybe not the entire franchise).

The ending of Terminator 3 is an example of that.

I.A. Watson’s Homepage