So, as I have mentioned the notion has been bouncing around my head to try my hand a pulp style adventure. I have received some good advice that perhaps I should start with a short story first and then perhaps attempt a novel.

A few weeks ago my sweetie-wife and I was walking near the Antique Row area of Adam’s Avenue in San Diego and as we passed the Adam’s Avenue Bookstore, a treasure horde of used books and my favorite used bookstore in town, I popped inside to see if they had any of the old Doc Savage novels.

They had one: Fear Cay.

I bought it, and bought another book that my sweetie-wife wanted and we headed home. Now when I was a young teenager I discovered the Doc Savage novels shortly after discovering science-fiction in general. These were pulp adventures written in the 30’s about the superhuman hero/adventurer Doc Savage and his team of five fantastic men as they spanned the globe fighting evil. There are more than 180 of these novels and I think I have read maybe twenty, but my memory is one of fun, adventure, and a pseudo-supernatural mystery that always turned out to have a scientific explanation. Really just the sort of thing I am thinking about exploring. Armed with my pulp novel I settled in to read Fear Cay.

Wow. The prose is terrible.

The adventure unfolds pretty much as I remember most of these adventure unfolding, but I had no recollection at all just how clumsy, expository, and plain bad the actual writing was. I have worked my way through this book but I can attest that it was not a smooth and effortless journey, Certainly I do not want to imitate the prose style of something like this, only the atmosphere of grand adventure. I have a short story coming together for my own pulp hero and after I finish work on my novel that will be by next project.

As an aside, apparently writer/Director Shawn Black (Iron Man 3, Lethal Weapon, etc.) if planning on making a live action, period set, Doc Savage movie staring Dwayne Johnson as Doc. That should be interesting.