Through
the 1930s and 40s, a man named Lester Dent wrote 159 novels, most of them Doc Savage novels. Comic book writer Stan Lee credits Doc Savage as part of his inspiration for writing superheroes.
Frederick
Faust wrote under ten pseudonyms, including Max Brand, famous for his westerns.
Faust also created the character Dr. Kildare. No total number is available but
he is credited with writing over 500 novels between 1910, at age 18 years, until 1944
when he died working as a war correspondent in World War II.
That’s
500 novels in 30 years. That’s 16 novels a year.
Raymond
Chandler, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London and Tennessee Williams all wrote pulp
fiction at one time.
It was called pulp fiction
These books were printed mostly in magazines
made with the cheap, wood pulp paper.
But
out of these cheaply printed pages came works of genius. And not all of them
went on to wealth and fame, many (and there were many) just made a living
writing story after story, always with a deadline, always with a magazine
editor hovering.
And
then those magazines went away. Those job opportunities dried up. Lester Dent earned
first $500 then up to $750 a month for his Doc Savage novels. This was in the
1920s. That’d be a very delightful amount to make NOW!
But of course there is no more pulp fiction…………or is there?
What
else would you call an indy published ebook?
Modern Day Pulp Fiction.
You
can write as fast as you can. You can release books as fast as you can write
them. And you can make money (if it goes well) in a steady stream.
Dean
Wesley Smith has written over one hundred novels.
H.M
Ward releases a novel every few weeks.
This
sounds like an amazing outpouring of prolificness, right?
But
if I write 1000 words a day, couldn’t I release a novella every 20 days? Would
a new novella a month even be hard? Especially if you got a recurring character
like Doc Savage or, in the case of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a pulp fiction writer, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.
Just
start telling stories and posting them as ebooks. Constant new content.
Has
anyone done this? We’ve had people who hang around Seekerville do this right?
Can anyone sustain it?
I
want everyone who reads this to think about it. Today, consider if you’d like
to try this. I’ve got contracts and they keep me hustling so I can't. But this is so
interesting, so tempting.
What
a fun idea.
Me
and Tarzan. Me and Dr. Kildare. Me and Roy Rogers or no wait... Me and Coy Codgers.
I can make him old…and cranky—Codgers and his wife Gale. Coy Codgers and Dale Blevins…and their … well, anyway, I’m
not going to write that here and now…..someone might be tempted to steal Coy
from me!!!
Someone
said to me this weekend that all the modern Amazon ordering we do, it’s
honestly just a throwback. Montgomery Wards used to be strictly mail order
right? It was slower but it was how you got nearly everything that wasn’t in
the small local stores. The huge department stores, like Wards and Penneys, are
a product of the modern times. Don’t think of Amazon as new, think of it as
old.
And
now pulp fiction is back.
 |
| Cary Monnealy |
Does
anyone want to give it a try? I think the real secret isn’t FAST, it’s constantly
coming up with something NEW. Ruthy has talked about that before. Get a few
books ready and release them one after the other. Then keep it up.
Who would your hero be? Tarzan? Can you come up with a superhero? An adventurous Doc Savage? A man who travels in outer space? Let your imagination go wild and tell me about your recurring Queen of the Werewolves heroine and her ongoing effort to make the world safe for 'nice' werewolves.
Who would your hero be? Tarzan? Can you come up with a superhero? An adventurous Doc Savage? A man who travels in outer space? Let your imagination go wild and tell me about your recurring Queen of the Werewolves heroine and her ongoing effort to make the world safe for 'nice' werewolves.
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for Long Time Gone, by Cary Monnealy....oh wait, no...who is that Cary person?
The drawing is still on though.
