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Interviews October 20, 2019

Cauliflower Catnip: Pearls of Peril

Excerpt from my tribute, “The Creative Works of Joe Wehrle, Jr.” from The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018:

I first became aware of Joe’s work in 1981 when he published the Big Little Book, Cauliflower Catnip: Pearls of Peril, advertised in Alan Light’s The Buyer’s Guide. The book remains one of the most impressive self-published productions I’ve ever seen. I asked Joe about the project’s evolution.

“I guess Cauliflower Catnip is kind of an amalgam of many influences.” The anthropomorphic dogs of Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (TAD) comic strips, the hardboiled detective fiction of Nero Wolfe, and the sound of Thomas “Fats” Waller’s voice.

“I began to explore who Cauliflower Catnip was in a series of one-panel cartoons. I’ve long suspected that I’m too slow to do a regular daily strip unless I get an assistant or the concept is extremely simple. I enjoyed turning out the panels, but I could see they’d go nowhere. Besides, I wanted a detective story continuity with Cauliflower. How could I progress the suspense by drawing single panels? Had anyone ever done something like that? Of course they had—and called the results Big Little Books!

“So—how to get other people interested in Cauliflower, too? The character cavorted, full-blown, inside my head, and I felt I could sense the mood of the story and the type of cronies and adversaries he would encounter. But I hadn’t yet written a word of it.

“The Buyer’s Guide had fairly inexpensive ad rates at the time, and I had some old comic stuff to sell. So I created a block ad, with my sale items at the bottom, and a single-panel cartoon above, to scale with the old Big Little Book pages, with short text paragraphs to the right. For several weeks, I don’t know how many, a comic panel and corresponding text appeared in every issue of TBG, andI started to get encouraging mail from fans. As we approached the end of the story, I began to solicit advance orders for the actual book.”

Joe’s bibliography appears on the Larque Press website.

Vault October 17, 2019

25 Short Short Stories from Collier’s

An excerpt from Steve Carper’s series “One-and-Dones” that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7–9:

Galaxy Novels; The Barmaray Company
25 Short Short Stories from Colliers, Collier’s being a mainstream magazine rival to the Saturday Evening Post, is not a title anyone would normally associate with either Galaxy or novels, but connections do exist. The inside back cover has an ad for Galaxy, and the inside front cover offers a charter subscription for Galaxy’s sister magazine, Beyond Fantasy Fiction. Both magazines had just been purchased by Robert Guinn, a fixture in the New York publishing scene as a printer with access to paper, vital in 1953 when the Korean War dried up paper supplies. Despite the clear Galaxy lineage, Galaxy Novels is simply a misnomer for this title. The true publisher is The Barmaray Company, Inc.

Now Available from McFarland: Steve Carper’s Robots in American Popular Culture, a comprehensive reference volume that includes a companion website: robotsinamericanpopularculture.com.

Interviews October 16, 2019

Ellery Queen Dec. 2007

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Dec. 2007 Vol. 130 No. 6 Whole No. 796
Contents
David Handler “The Man Who Couldn’t Miss” art by Laurie Harden
Edward D. Hoch “Gypsy Gold”
Jon L. Breen: The Jury Box
Patricia Smiley “Party’s Over”
Bill Crider: Blog Bytes
Jon L. Breen “A Run Through the Calendar”
Loren D. Estleman “Wild Walls” (Valentino) art by Mark Evan Walker
Caroline Menzies “The Bathtub Oracle” (Dept. of First Stories)
Peter Turnbull “The Mummy” art by Allen Davis
Marilyn Todd “Room for Improvement”
2007 EQMM Readers Award Ballot
Anton Chekhov “A Malefactor” (Passport to Crime) translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Martin Edwards “An Index”
Maria Hudgins “Murder on the London Eye”
Michael Bracken & Tom Sweeney “Snowbird” art by Mark Evans
Index: Vol. 129 and Vol. 130
Classified Marketplace
Indicia and Masthead

Publisher: Peter Kanter
Editor: Janet Hutchings
Editorial Assistant: Emily Giglierano
Excutive Director Art & Production: Susan Kendrioski
Senior AD: Victoria Green
Cover: Rafael de Soto

144 pages $3.99
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine website

I asked Michael Bracken about what it was like to write with a partner on “Snowbird.” Below is an excerpt from his interview in The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018:

In the early-2000s I edited five anthologies, and Tom had a story in each of them. When I pitched an anthology of private eye stories to a regional publisher, the publisher was interested only if all the stories were set in Texas and the contributors were Texans/ Texas residents. The only way Tom, a New Englander, would get a story in the anthology was if he collaborated with someone in Texas. Me.

Tom’s writing style—that is, the way he uses words and structures sentences—is (or was then) similar to mine, but his approach to writing is quite different. Where I throw something on the page to start and then figure out where I’m going, he likes to start with the theme and build backwards from there.

So, we went back and forth, writing and discussing as we went. I would write a bit and turn it over to him. He would edit or revise what I wrote and add more. I would edit/ revise what he wrote and add to it. All the while we held email discus- sions on the side about where the story was going, what we needed to research to move forward, and so on. (We even roped in a third writer—Çarol Kilgore—to aid with some research. Part of the story is set on the Gulf Coast and Carol provided us with details neither of us could get otherwise.)

Writing the way we did, it’s quite difficult to know now who wrote which passages, but after several months we had a complete draft. Unfortunately, the regional publisher was no longer interested in doing the anthology.
It is true that collaborating means twice the work for half the money, but Tom and I created a story neither of us could have written alone, and it was the first sale either of us made to EQMM. So, it was well worth the effort.

TDE Update October 13, 2019

Bud’s Art Books Catalog

The Digest Enthusiast No. 10 in Bud Plant's Incredible Catalog

The latest edition of Bud Plant’s Incredible Catalog is now available. The Digest Enthusiast No. 10 is featured on page 14 under the Pulps & Pulp Fiction category, but all ten issues are available from Bud’s Art Books website, along with hundreds of other pulp-related publications like The Pulpster.

Bud Plant’s Incredible Catalog is available in a full color printed copy at various paper and collectible shows across the country and by mail, or you can download a copy of the PDF from the homepage of Bud’s Art Books website.

Vault October 5, 2019

The Jackie Robinson Story

An excerpt from Steve Carper’s series “One-and-Dones” that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7–9:

The Jackie Robinson Story was a hit movie starring Jackie Robinson in 1950. It was co-written by Arthur Mann. And so we come across the movie tie-in digest, which was also titled The Jackie Robinson Story and published by F.J. Low.

Now Available from McFarland: Steve Carper’s Robots in American Popular Culture, a comprehensive reference volume that includes a companion website: robotsinamericanpopularculture.com.

Interviews October 3, 2019

Wehrle and Warren

Excerpt from “The Creative Works of Joe Wehrle, Jr.” from The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018.

“Around that time [early 1970s] I also illustrated one script for Warren Publications’ Vampirella, and wrote one for them which was beautifully delineated by Esteban Maroto. I found Warren Pubs hard to deal with, though, slow with the money and critical of the work, although I thought I did a fairly good job for my first pro comics work. They ran the Wehrle/Maroto story over and over, but I never saw a nickel after the $12.00 or so they originally paid for the script.”

Joe’s first story, “Monster Bait,” written by Don Glut, appeared in Vampirella No. 9 (Jan. 1971). “Wolf Hunt” written by Joe and illustrated by Esteban Maroto first appeared in Vampirella No. 14 (Nov. 1971).

Joe’s bibliography appears on the Larque Press website.

Interviews September 25, 2019

Michael Bracken’s “A Matter of Policy”

Excerpt from Michael Bracken’s interview for The Digest Enthusiast No. 8:

TDE: Another Shayne story, “A Matter of Policy,” about a crooked claims adjuster, is tightly plot-ted, with elements that all come together by the story’s end. Are you a plotter or pantser? What’s your writing process today and how has it evolved over the years?

MB: I had to reread “A Matter of Policy” because I didn’t remember it, and I was pleasantly surprised how well the story holds up after all these years.

Alas, nothing in my notes reminds me how this story came together, so I’ll talk more generally about my process.

I am a combination plotter and pantser—a plantser, if you will. Many of my stories begin when I write an opening scene that introduces a character or characters and an inciting incident. Too often, that’s all I have. Then the story sits—sometimes a few days, but occasionally several years—before I return to it. I may then plot the next few scenes or the entire balance of the story before continuing the writing. So, I often begin a story as a pantser and finish it as a plotter.

Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Vol. 49 No. 2 Feb. 1985
Contents
Hal Blythe & Charles Sweet writing as Brett Halliday “The Quick and the Dead”
Mike Taylor “The ‘B’ Murders”
Stewart Street “Music Man”
Joseph A. Sekelsky “The Charm Bracelet”
Mel Washburn “Sweet Sister”
Alan Warren “Smithereens”
Michael Bracken “A Matter of Policy”
Richard Connolly’s Purloined Letter (art quiz)
Lane Marsh “A Delicate Situation”
John Ball’s Stiff Competition (book reviews)
Best By Mail (classifieds)

Publishers: Edward & Anita Goldstein
Editor: Charles E. Fritch
Art Director: Robin Schaffer
Founder: Leo Margulies
Cover: Pecoraro
5.25” x 7.75” 130 pages $1.75

Vault September 22, 2019

The Vice Czar Murders

An excerpt from Steve Carper’s series “One-and-Dones” that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7–9:

An ad for The Vice-Czar Murders by Franklin Charles is on the inside back cover of The Case of the Deadly Drops. No publisher is mentioned, but we know that an R. W. Company went one-and-done with a book of that title. And that’s all we know. The R. W. Company is as evanescent as the Edell Company. The address given is 11 East 44th Street, in midtown Manhattan, far removed from the then-backwoods of Brooklyn. Nor was The Vice Czar Murders published by Phoenix, nixing that connection. Yet, guess what? Its inside back cover is an ad for The Case of the Deadly Drops. Additionally, the covers of the two books are suspiciously similar in style and coloring, the back covers are identical yellow squares with white borders, and both were distributed by IND, the Independent News Company. It’s all but certain that the two companies are connected in some way.

Now Available from McFarland: Steve Carper’s Robots in American Popular Culture, a comprehensive reference volume that includes a companion website: robotsinamericanpopularculture.com.

Vault September 21, 2019

Fawn the Dark Eyed comic strip

Joe Wehrle Jr, The Digest Enthusiast, Clarion, Sense of Wonder, Fawn the Dark Eyed, The Menomonee Falls Gazette No. 42

Joe Wehrle, Jr.’s story “The Bandemar” appeared in the first Clarion anthology and the comic version in Bill Schelly’s Sense of Wonder No. 12.

“Several years later,” Joe explained, “I resurrected the idea, and Fawn, with a slightly different storyline, was published for 36 weeks in The Menomonee Falls Gazette from Wisconsin, an all-comic newspaper.

“Toward the end [of Fawn’s run], I got those commissions from Lava Mt. Records to do H. P. Lovecraft portraits for their record jackets, and those took a lot of time, so the Gazette guys were alternating Fawn with something else on a bi-weekly basis. Then their paper just sort of fizzled out. They continued to run a handful of strips that they had al- ready paid for in their Comic Reader, but they were completely broke as far as the Gazette was concerned. It’s probably a wonder they were able to publish as many issues as they did.”

The cover of The Menomonee Falls Gazette No. 142, September 1974, featured the debut of the Fawn the Dark Eyed comic strip. The strip appeared in issues 142–161, 163–171, 173–176, 178, 179, 181, 183, and 188.

Joe’s bibliography appears on the Larque Press website.

Interviews September 19, 2019

Michael Bracken: Excerpt from the Interview

In his interview for The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, Michael Bracken gives us the background on one of his early stories:

“Vengeance to Show in the Third,” my first appearance in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (October 1983), was heavily influenced by reading a great many Dick Francis novels, and I was clearly trying to write an American Dick Francis story. At the time I wrote the story, I lived in southern Illinois, near a racetrack where I placed several losing bets, but I had a personal connection as well. My first wife grew up riding English and, through connections made in that environment, knew people who owned race horses, and she briefly worked as a groom.

In a way, that describes how I do a fair bit of my research: use personal connections. If I don’t have the necessary personal experience and I can’t find what I need with an Internet search, I reach out to friends and family. Additionally, other writers are a great resource, and I have tapped them for information about Catholicism, the odor of a fired handgun, and the like.