2013 SCRIBE AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED AT SAN DIEGO COMIC CON

All Pulp congratulates the nominees and winners of the 2013 Scribe Awards.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is pleased to announce the Scribe Awards for 2013 were handed out at Comic Con San Diego.  IAMTW congratulates the following winners:

In the Original Novel category: Robert Jeschonek for Rising Sun, Falling Shadows, a Tannhäuser book.

In the Adapted Novel category: Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson, based on the album by Rush.

In the Audio category: The Eternal Actress by Nev Fountain, a Dark Shadows story.

Acknowledging excellence in this very specific skill, IAMTW's Scribe Awards deal exclusively with licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books.  They include original works set in established universes, and adaptations of stories that have appeared in other formats and cross all genres.  Tie-in
works run the gamut from westerns to mysteries to procedurals, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, from action and adventure to superheroes.  Gunsmoke, Murder She Wrote, CSI, Star Trek, Star Wars, Shadowrun, Resident Evil, James Bond, Iron Man, these represent just a few.

Congratulations to the winners!

The nominees were:

ORIGINAL NOVEL

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell
Pathfinder: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt
Mike Hammer: Lady, Go Die! By Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Star Trek: The Persistence of Memory by David Mack
Star Trek: The Rings of Time by Greg Cox
Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows by Robert Jeschonek
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell

ADAPTED NOVEL

Poptropica: Astroknights Island by Tracey West
Clockwork Angels by Kevin Anderson
Batman: The Dark Knight Legend by Stacia Deutsch
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox

AUDIO
Dark Shadows: Dress Me in Dark Dreams by Marty Ross
Dark Shadows: The Eternal Actress by Nev Fountain
Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Project Nirvana by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright

Congratulations also to author Ann Crispin who was named Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

Read More

FORTIER TAKES ON MIKE HAMMER IN 'COMPLEX 90'!

ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier

COMPLEX 90

By Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

Titan Books

244 pages

Available May 2013

Beginning a new year with a new Mike Hammer novel is a cause for jubilant celebration.  In his short preface to the book, begun by the late Mickey Spillane, Collins informs us that the setting is 1964 and “Complex 90” is in part a sequel to the 1961 Mike Hammer novel, “The Girl Hunters.”  For those of you unfamiliar with that private eye classic, a brief summary is in order. 

“The Girl Hunters” opens with our down-and-out hero discovering that his secretary, and one true love, Velda, has returned from the dead.  Having lived in an alcoholic haze since her disappearance seven years earlier, he learns that Velda had been on a spy mission for the government, captured by the Russians and thrown into one of their of their prisons where she had endured physical tortures until managing to escape.  Now back on U.S. soil her ordeal is far from over as the Soviets send a specialized assassin team to terminate her permanently.  Instead they run into Hammer and it he who does the exterminating.  You can easily enjoy “Complex 90” without having read “The Girl Hunters,” but why on earth would you settle for one great Mike Hammer book when you can enjoy two?

Okay, back to this “sequel” of sorts.  The cold war is still in full tilt, even though Hammer and Velda have slowly gotten their lives back on a normal track.  Then an old colleague recruits Hammer to assist him as a bodyguard for a controversial senator throwing a lavish cocktail parting in his New York penthouse.  Hammer sees it as an opportunity to make a few fast bucks.  In the middle of the soiree, an assassin attempts to shoot the senator but instead guns down Hammer’s pal. Hammer takes a slug to the leg before sending the killer through a window eighty stories up via a hot lead tivkry from his .45 automatic.  So much for an easy few dollars.

Suffering only a flesh wound, Hammer is soon back on his feet.  Immediately he is offered a new assignment; that of bodyguard to the senator during his fact-finding junket to Moscow. The senator wants Hammer to replace his dead friend who was scheduled to accompany him.

No sooner are the two in Russia then Hammer is arrested and imprisoned by the KGB for being a spy.  Fortunately for the savvy P.I., they detain him in a city facility and he waste no time escaping, leaving half a dozen bodies behind.  By the time he makes it back to the States, he’s left a trail of forty-five dead Russians creating an international incident.  Now the Russians are clamoring for his hide and the State Department isn’t any too pleased with the notorious New York private-eye.  What bothers Hammer is why he was kidnapped in the first place and why the Commies are so hell bent on bringing him back to the U.S.S.R.

Finding the answers to those two questions is the major plot around which this fast paced thriller revolves and like all Mike Hammer tales, there’s plenty of two-fisted action along the journey.  Collins prose never lets up for a second propelling this reader to a slam-bang climax that had us needing a drink when it was over.  Cold war intrigue, sexy femme fatales and in the middle of it all, one tough son-of-bitch throwback whose conservative patriotism will not be shaken by gun-toting foreign agents or two-faced  Washington politicians. 

In a time of when America is being torn apart by a culture war, Spillane’s Mike Hammer is a cleansing storm that makes no excuses for loving ones country and doing whatever it takes to keep her strong.  Makes us wish we had a lot more like him.

Read More