That Pulp Novels Article!

Or,

How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By Tina Anderson
[8th Grade]

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During summers home when I was a kid, my father used to trek down to the smoke shop [cigars, comics, newspaper, tobacco, if your dad needs it, they sell it!] on Brighton 6th and get the latest edition of True Detective magazine. True Detective was not just a mere crime mag, it had honorable beginnings with its inception in the mid 1920’s, yet by the time the 80’s rolled around, and I was tagging along with pops to smoke shop, it appeared to most as nothing more than a Playboy to crime junkies. Competition from television and true-crime novels made selling the book fierce, so when all else failed...tie a chick-vic up on the cover with her menacing, but somewhat attractive, perp. The covers, despite their sexy-evil appearance, were very much below par to what was inside; stories by writers like Ann Rule and Joe Koenig were the norm and always gave me something to read on days when my brother and his fag friends hijacked the Coleco Vision. >_<

True Detective gave me a taste for ‘pulp fiction‘ [no not the Tarentino film!]. Pulp Fiction or ‘pulps’ are just inexpensive mass market paperbacks.

Many seem to think they’re locked down to crime or porn, but the truth is, there’s a ton of genres, mostly crime/mystery [detective/crime],sci-fi, fantasy/adventure, westerns, war, sports, ‘the sweats’ [these were books written for men, by men! Argh!], romance [ew!], adult only [porn], and horror/supernatural. I used to hit the round wire-racks at the smoke and just ogle the covers. Some were scary, most were hot, and others were just plain exciting. The paper stock was marginal, print quality was…meh…but the back always read like something I just shouldn’t be reading. My father, would find what he wanted (His own pulp mags and the big 3 skins [Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler]) and then tell me to put what I was getting the shelf, so he could pay for it and go. Needless to say, from the ages of 10 through 14, I amassed quite a healthy collection of pulp fiction and Wonder Woman comics. I tended to buy the horrors at first because as a young person they scared me, and the monster and occult books always had the best covers! As I got older and more mature, [more perverted], I became addicted to gay pulp novels, because they had hot guys on the covers, and some seriously hot stories inside. 0_0; Man, they were extremely explicit and raunchy and they were everything I loved about pulp. Being in my late teens, the more realistic something was, the better–but not so realistic that Mary Shelley might have written it. That’s the allure of Pulp, you don’t need a thesaurus to read it.

I took my daughter to the comic shop last week to score some manga and lo and behold there was a little rounder-rack that resembled the ones I used to browse at the smoke shop. Dark Horse, I love you. Inexpensive fiction that doesn’t take itself so seriously…is back! I picked up Scarface, the Beginning by L.A. Banks, Pandora’s Bride, from the Bride of Frankenstein line by Liz Hand, the Ghost in the Shell SAC novels…the first of which, Lost Memory, I’m reading now. Aliens and Predator!! Scarface was excellent, and if you know the sort of fiction I write, then you know why I love this book. Banks writes in the style befitting the mood of the plot, because that’s what pulp is all about! Seriously, if you’re into literature [technically flawless novels that rely on being stylistically perfect with intellectual execution] then pulp ain’t for you! I want to read a book that sounds like it’s been written by someone riding in the car with Tony Montana…not somebody with a PHD in Writing. 0_0. Most pulp is tailor made for readers that enjoy comics; dialogue is to the point, characterization is king, and every book is disposable, even if the story is memorable.

I must be honest, writing script has killed my prose. I write so much for ‘artists’ that I’m hindered when I write for ‘readers’. Mr. Gynocrat says, read more, you’ll write more…but there’s nothing in stores I want to read. 0_o. Now there is! ((^_^)) I’m very much looking forward to the October release of The Mummy, Dark Resurrection by Michael Paine…now if only DH Press can get a bit more ‘True Detective’ style with their releases…