This is your life, Nicholas Ahlhelm

So of course I start my own personal blog here… and my internet dies. Story of my life, folks. I’m posting this from the local library right now, where most of these posts will probably come from for most of the next week.

On the writing and editing front, I’ve been doing some final proof corrections on Modern Pulp Heroes, reading through the pile of stories for Aliens Among Us and working on my next (and final) Pulp Obscura tale for Pro Se Press. So not doing much at all.

I’ve been watching way too much television through the power of library rented DVDs in my spare time. I’m currently ¾ of the way through Smallville season 6, half way through the Iron Man anime and finishing up the first season of Leverage. I have the second series of Luther waiting in the wings when I finish those.

Related to all that television watching, I’ve also started reading Liz Braswell’s Nine Lives of Chloe King, the inspiration for the rather good ABC Family show of the same name. In a move surprisingly opposite to my usual preferences, I think I like the show better. That being said I still have the second two books to finish, so things could approve.

Any golden age comic fan should immediately go buy a copy of Showcase Presents All-Star Squadron immediately. I’m only four issues in, but it’s already my favorite comic purchase of the year so far.

There’s only so much time in the world and that’s about all I have here. I’ll still try to keep this blog updating every couple days though, so stay tuned for that.

If anyone has any questions they want answered by me, your illustrious author and publisher, please feel free to ask at my Formspring.

Pulp Empire closes out 2010 with a special Christmas story!

Over at Pulp Empire, Libby Cudmore has written a wonderful little Christmas noir short called “Merry Christmas, Mr. Taylor” just in time for the holidays! PE will be taking next week off so this is your last chance to get some holiday pulp cheer in before the end of the year!

And remember that all three Pulp Empire books are still available at our Lulu Store. Ms. Cudmore's tale is featured in our most recent edition. If you're interested in doing some Christmas shopping a little late or just want a good deal on great books, also remember that Lulu is running all kinds of great holiday sales with their Daily Deals. So feel free to pick up a copy, won't you?

Space-sharing with the Examiner

Here’s the dealio, blogosphere fans. In order for this blogging thing to actually be meaningful for me, I need to be able to occasionally work towards making a few pennies off of it. Everyone that clicks on a google link on here or MHP or anyone of my sites helps, but in order to make a real go of it, I need to also be able to pull in a few cents for posting as well. Otherwise, Metahuman Press, Pulp Empire, Arc, and The Dead Walk Again may eventually disappear in to the netherverse of the internet.

With that in mind, I have recently signed up to try my hand at being an Examiner. For those unfamiliar with it, Examiner is basically an attempt to make a massive multi-national internet newspaper. It’s success is somewhat limited on the local level, but it is a sure-fire way to make a bit of money. So while you will see some regular columns and reviews continue here (such as Thor’s Day, some of my blog posts will just be short introductions that lead over to Examiner pages. Please, please, please follow those links and enjoy all the quality commentary you love at this site plus a little extra (like more wrestling content) over at the Examiner.

And thanks for reading!

...and we're back!

Oh yes we are.

And we should be back to semi-regular updates starting tomorrow. I am still working on monetizing this site more to keep it functional as a whole, but for the time being I will be running it like it has been running. For the time being, if you’re reading this, please go down a bit and click on one of those Google links. Every button press makes us a few extra bucks. It’s those impressions that are currently paying to keep the Metahuman Press family of sites alive so they are kind of important.

Now for the news from around the MHP family.

Metahuman Press

The old warhorse has debuted two new stories in the last few weeks with David Perlmutter’s offbeat The Pups and ShoaKi Girl by Charlie Thrun. Today we debuted David Kachel’s follow-up to Legacy, entitled Diary of a Genius. And the best news is that it will be running weakly. Five chapters over the five weeks of December!

Pulp Empire

Pulp Empire continues to chug along nicely. New stories have went up every Thursday. Right now we are running a 15% off sale on the first two books at the Pulp Empire store, so be sure to go pick those up. The sale will continue for the next few days, so get them while they’re hot. And need I mention they make a great gift?

Arc

Arc will update throughout December with the continuation of Tyler Marsh’s prose adventures. Stay tuned as things start to get a little crazy next week.

The Dead Walk Again

We need submissions! If you like zombies, please, please, please! send us your zombie stories for our little online journal. I would like to have an inventory before it launches in a few months.

A Few Tweaks....

I am going to come out of blogular silence for a bit with a few updates.

The Metahuman Press site has been updated with a few new visual tweaks, mostly thanks to updates on both WordPress and the ArrasTheme. It may need a few more before I'm fully appreciative of the new look, but everything should be accessible as of now.

No new Arc this week, folks. I've been a bit under the weather as has the family, so I just didn't have time to layout and edit the Tyler Marsh chapter I had planned. Tyler will be back next week, I promise.

Pulp Empire volume three should be available to purchase near the beginning of the month. Right now the first stories, "An Incident in a Small Town" by Travis Heermann and "The Other Fellow's Shoes" by G. Lloyd Helm have gone up, so you can check them out at the site.

A new partner site, The Dead Walk Again is now accepting story submissions. We are looking to launch it full time beginning next Spring, but we really need to get some content up and running. So if you like zombies, please be sure to check it out, and maybe even submit something!

This blog will remain mostly quiet for the next few weeks as I participate once again in Nanowrimo. Once November has passed, I will be back to blogging (semi-)full time, so stay tuned for more updates. For more regular updates, you can also follow me on Twitter.

Buy Pulp Empire Volume Two!

It’s been available for a few weeks now and I just wanted to throw out a reminder that you can now buy Pulp Empire Volume Two through our Lulu store! We have thirteen all new stories, and you can preview several of them over at the Pulp Empire website! Go read a couple and be sure to pick up your copy!

Pulp Empire: Now Accepting Submissions for Volume Two!

Pulp Month is over, but the work of Pulp Empire is far from done. We really do want to help continue the pulp fiction revolution through our website and print media, and to do that we need to continue bringing new pulp fiction to the market! So we are out to find stories by you, the pulp fiction and superhero loving fans of America, for the upcoming second volume of our Pulp collections!

You can check out our submissions page for more details!

This is everyone's chance to get in on the ground floor of a great initiative. I hope to see some submissions come our way soon!

Pulp-Powered Prose: Doc Savage!

We have spent quite a lot of this month so far discussing Pulp comics and will continue to discuss a few more as we go. Why? Because many of the best pulp-inspired stories come out of modern comics. It’s one of the reasons I consider Pulp Empire so important.

But one place the pulps are still alive is in noted pulp historian Anthony Tollin’s series of Doc Savage reprints. Produced through Nostalgia Ventures, this thirty-five volume (so far) series reprints two classic Doc stories per issue with a combination of classic covers and the more up to date James Bama covers from the sixties and seventies. Inside, you will find a historical essay or two, and more importantly, two great adventures of Doc, Ham, Monk, Johnny, Renny, and Long Tom.

I have picked up a few so far, mostly through my local Half Price Books, but I would recommend everyone start from the beginning of the classic series. That means finding a copy of Doc Savage #14: “The Man of Bronze” & “The Land of Terror”. It features the first two stories of the classic pulp hero; stories that clearly have inspired everything from the A-Team to Superman.

“The Man of Bronze” introduces Doc and his team and sends him out on his first major adventure. He goes to South America to find his father’s killer and in the process finds a secret tribe, a group of tribal assassins, and a greedy business man. And a whole hell of a lot of gold.

“:The Land of Terror” is more gruesome than the usual Doc tale as Doc and company travel to a lost bit of the world where dinosaurs still walk the earth. While not as good as “The Man of Bronze” and far more violent than other Doc tales, it still makes a decent second novel in this collection (if for no other reason than it was the second story).

An autobiography of Doc writer Lester Dent and a history of the character’s origin as written by pulp historian Will Murray close out this volume.

And that leaves thirty-five more volumes to go!

While Doc remains a mostly forgotten hero in a lot of the world’s eyes, a new series at DC and an upcoming movie project seem set to bring the character to explosive life once again. In the mean time, go find a couple copies of these amazing pulp replica editions. I suspect you will find yourself just as engrossed by the epic adventures as I was. Recommended.

April is Pulp Month!

Starting Thursday we begin a month long celebration of pulp fiction in honor of the newest site in the Metahuman Press family: Pulp Empire!

So stay tuned as we bring you reviews of everyone from the Avenger to Tarzan and beyond!

A Metahuman Press family update

So the last couple weeks have been rough for Metahuman Press and its sister sites. From a terrible, unresponsive host company we moved to a new host. That took nearly a week, but things were up and running well. Then the ol’ internet vanished from existence for a few days. And a few other family issues and computer problems have made content additions a little hard to come by.

That will change next week as we introduce a new schedule that will see publications Monday through Friday on we bring new contact from across the MHP family of sites. Check out our new schedule below:

• Monday: Tales of the Living Legends (new page)
• Tuesday: Arc (new page, starting with exclusive content that bridges issue 1 & 2)
• Wednesday: Metahuman Press (at least one new story every week!)
• Thursday: Pulp Empire (new updates including preview content & classic pulp stories until the site goes fully live on April 1, 2010!)
• Friday: Tales of the Living Legends (new page)

Plus we will continue to update here with semi-regular reviews, opinion pieces, and the like, some of which will be cross-posted to the other sites. So stay tuned for March 15, as things explode for MHP and its family!

Website Transfer

I am in the process of transferring all the files and databases from one server to the other. This will probably result in some downtime (no more than a day or two I would guess, although if my old server continues to vanish it may be longer). Unfortunately, we made some errors in the first attempt and have to switch nameservers back around which adds several hours.

I hope to have the sites back up and running by Friday.

Again all my apologies to our fans. We will have the problem remedied ASAP.

Thank you.

Another quick note on the websites I run

Yeah, they are down again. It should be fixed within a week as I am currently researching other hosting services. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. It sucks as much (if not more) for me too.

A Quick Note on Metahuman Press, Evolution Comics, and Arc

Currently all my sites are down for unknown reasons. I am trying to get in touch with the server company but as yet have been unsuccessful. Hopefully we will be back online soon.

Pulp Empire is up!

A couple weeks ago, I proudly announced the return of Pulp Empire. At the time, it was only a link to a simple submissions page. But not anymore! The full site can now be seen! We will see a few more simple revisions before the first story goes up on April 1st, but this is it.

It’s the ground floor of something new. Feel free to stay awhile.

Pulp Empire is back!

In a move I have been working towards for a few years now, I am proud to announce the return of Pulp Empire to the computer screen. The former Pulp Empire ran as a sub-site to the defunct Wei Empire and Metahuman Press for a couple years before it was retired to move focus further on to MHP. But with nearly 100 years past since the early days of the pulps, I think the time is back for some new pulp for the new century. And a new logo:



Right now, we are actively searching for pulp story submissions. Please view the guidelines at our submissions page. The best part of this project is that we will be making a print edition available for every 3 to 4 months of stories! That means the potential for actual money going in to the hands of our contributors, something MHP has yet to be able to offer. Check the aformentioned submissions page for more details.

Timeline 19: Origin of Mister Haunt Notes

Just like Claus vs Kong before it, The Origin of Mister Haunt is a re-purposed, revised, and reformatted story from my old Pulp Stories Monthly e-magazine. Unlike Claus vs Kong this one needed a rather large rewrite from its much earlier version, which includes about fifteen hundred additional words in all.

Mister Haunt is my quintessential pulp character in the Quadrant Universe. Over his next couple appearances (I have more waiting to be rewritten), you will see elements of the Shadow, the Saint, and Doc Savage all pop up on the page. That being said, I want to make sure Haunt is his own man, and as we learn more about the mysterious character, I think you will find he is truly different.

I hope everyone enjoys the first shot of Mister Haunt. Let me know if and when you want more.

Where's Freedom Patton?

So in case no one noticed Freedom Patton did not appear again today. The reason is quite simple: I have decided to put the series on hiatus for the forseeable future.

The Letters From Libertad sequence I am currently working on is just not coming together the way I want it, and the Freedom and Justice arc I had planned after it just isn’t gelling at all.

So Freedom Patton is now on hold. I know I will bring it back whenever I complete Letters From Libertad. I am two and a half chapters in to it (which is half way) so I really see it being done with the next six months or so. I just need to find a way to reenergize the characters as they just feel like they are treading water to me right now.

In the mean time I plan on starting (and finishing) my current projects. I am well under way on Champion City volume 2. I just hit the 100 page mark the other day. I don’t plan on posting it until I actually finish the entire story though, so it will probably be some time mid-year before it starts to post. Epsilon will reach its first climax with chapter 13, then I will start the build for the big battle in chapter 25. I have a rough plan for the series well past 30, so don’t expect it to go anywhere anytime soon.

I have two new projects which I want to get under the way entitled Crimelords and Living Legends. I am still debating which to start first, although I am currently leaning towards Living Legends as it strangely falls in sync with December debuting projects from Dynamite, Marvel, and Image. I started to develop Living Legends as a comic project over two years ago, but my attempts at bringing it to fruition in 2006 pretty much fell flat on their face. Finding an artist willing to work on a project with 18 leads proved to be a bit harder than I thought it would be. So I can at least say I came up with the idea first. My plans are for it to be an ongoing as well so I probably will try to get at least a few chapters done before I make a firm decision.

Crimelords is a concept that has been floating around my head for well over a decade. It dates back to at least 94-95 when I was creating characters hand over first in high school. I still have notebooks sitting around the house with hundreds of issues worth of one to three line plots for years worth of comics. In fact, just about every character in Epsilon takes their name from those old plots. Trust me when I say that I won’t run out to character names anytime soon! But I digress....

Crimelords is a hodge podge of a few different story ideas from those days, and would focus on the bad guys of a new locale in the quadrant universe: the city of Valhalla. Valhalla has a rich history already developed and Crimelords will cover only about a year worth of it. This one would run about a year or so by my calculations.

I am also working on how I want to continue My Name Is Charon. I have the basic plot ideas of where I want it to go all formulated, but I still am not sure how I want to lay it down on paper. More Charon will be on its way though, rest assured.

And this doesn’t even take in to account my three planned comic projects: Arc which has issue one current in the art stages and issues 2 through 5 in various stages of writing; Out For Vengeance, a fun little piece of meta-fiction reintroducing the first hero in an eighty year legacy to the world; and Bombshells which will mix my love of pro wrestling, attractive women, and superheroics. Expect to see more on Arc sometime soon with Bombshells and Out For Vengeance following quickly behind.

All that and I am brainstorming the return of Pulp Empire as well. More on that as it progresses, so stay tuned right here for more on that.