Dale J. Roberts: Dale has been reading comic books, pulp fiction, and just about everything else as long as he can remember. He is supported in his reading hobby by his wonderful wife and two amazing children. Dale wrote two stories for the Fading Shadows magazines, a Dr. Death and a Dr. Mystery story. Unfortunately, he passed away several years ago after a long illness.

Dale J. Roberts: Dale has been reading comic books, pulp fiction, and just about everything else as long as he can remember. He is supported in his reading hobby by his wonderful wife and two amazing children. Dale wrote two stories for the Fading Shadows magazines, a Dr. Death and a Dr. Mystery story. Unfortunately, he passed away several years ago after a long illness.

INTRODUCING NEW PULP AUTHOR STEPHEN PAYNE

Stephen Payne: I’ve known Steve for a couple decades now. From Ruston, LA, Steve contacted us when we started publishing Classic Pulp Fiction Stories, and said he wanted to write pulp fiction. I don’t remember if I suggested Secret Agent X, or if Steve suggested the character, but in the May 1996 issue of CPFS we began the six-part serial of The Freezing Fiends, the first Secret Agent X novel since March 1939. Steve wasn’t finished; he had become a fan of pulp author G.T. Fleming Roberts, and made the Secret Agent X character his own. 

In the February 1997 issue of Double Danger Tales, Steve’s second novel, Master of Madness appeared in a three-part serial. The third novel, Halo of Horror was published as a three-part serial beginning with the October 1998 issue of DDT. With the end of the FADING SHADOWS genre magazines, Steve took a break from writing to concentrate more on his profession, but has been working on numerous plots for the character. Meanwhile, “Master of Madness” and “Halo of Horror” were both reprinted by Matt Moring of Altus Press, and 14 years after “Halo of Horror”, Altus Press is releasing Steve’s fourth Secret Agent X tale. The Resurrection Ring is a titanic novel of 170,000 words, the longest Secret Agent X novel ever written. I thought it was about time we introduce this amazing writer to everyone.

INTRODUCING NEW PULP AUHOR TERRY NUDDS

Terry Nudds: Terry was born in 1949 and got into books via the traditional avenue of comic books. He spent the 60s doing lighting and sound for such bands as B. B. King and Alice Cooper. His attempts at writing never went very far, but it was a lot of fun trying. After a thirty-year career in electronics, he is now retired and sells books online, specializing in pulps and related material. Two of his favorite pulp characters are Wade Hammond and the Moon Man, and he’s written new stories about both characters for the FADING SHADOWS magazines. He lives in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Terry has written 3 stories for WEIRD STORIES, one story for CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES, and one story for DOUBLBE DANGER TALES.

New Pulp Author Therese Drippe (Dagenais)

New Pulp Author Therese Drippe (Dagenais):

Therese Drippe (Dagenais): Therese was still a teenager when she got involved with our FADING SHADOWS magazines. Her mother, Colleen Drippe was already writing SF stories for our magazines. Therese has an abundance of talent, both as a writer and artist. I believe we used some of her art in our magazines, in fact. She and Tom coauthored a Black Bat novelette, Crimson Harvest, which first appeared in DOUBLE DANGER TALES #31 (September 1999), then again in TALES OF MASKS & MAYHEM V #1 (2005). She also wrote a story for CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES #40, and DETECTIVE MYSTERY STORIES #8. We are still in touch with both Colleen and Therese. Marriage and family have curtailed Therese’s writing and artistic endeavors, though I believe she has worked on some of her mother’s SF covers. With her talent, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Therese. She can still write new pulp stories like a pro, and I bet she’ll be back some day with a real thriller.

New Pulp Author Colleen Drippe

INTRODUCING NEW PULP AUTHOR: Colleen Drippe

         The FADING SHADOWS’ magazines literally had hundreds of contributors turning out new pulp stories every month, from 1995 through the end of 2004. Unfortunately, we did not collect all of their bios at the time. Thankfully, Ginger started doing this when she was publishing her anthology series, TALES OF MASKS & MAYHEM. She was selecting stories from our old fiction magazines, and decided to add author bios in the back of each issue. So, basically, what we have here are authors that wrote for our magazines. But elsewhere I have invited other new pulp authors to submit bios.

Colleen Drippe: Colleen wrote mysteries and SF, and was very prolific. She appeared in four of our magazines: CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES #54, 55, 57, 59, 68, 78 & 79. EXCITING UFO STORIES #2 & 3. ALIEN WORLDS #2, 3, 11, 19 & 33. and STARTLING SCIENCE STORIES #11, 15, 19, 24 & 32. Since those long ago days she has continued writing SF novels in a series of priests populating the universe. Check out her novels, Gelen; Freightliner; and Sunrise On the Icewolf. These are exciting action novels in space and on other worlds.

Award Certificate

Award Certificate given to John French for 3^rd Place during the 1997-1998 period, for a story appearing in CLASSIC PLUP FICTION STORIES. Every year we gave out these certificates for the best three stories appearing in our magazines each year between June & May the following year. Sadly, we didn’t keep a record, though each Award is listed somewhere within our magazines. Nor did we keep copies of each certificate, and John French is the only one to contact me with scans of his.

New Pulp And New Pulp Heroes

New Pulp And New Pulp Heroes

Clancy O’Hara’s PULP #7

The hero pulp magazines ended in the summer of 1953, while genre pulp magazines continued through the late fifties, and even into the 1960’s. One had the gall to hang on until about 1972. But the end had arrived. Men’s adventure paperbacks were taking the place of those old magazines on the racks, and digest magazines replaced the SF, Mystery, Western & Romance pulps.

The pulp magazines had kept to a strict moral code watched over by publishers and editors, though some of the covers might have gave a different impression of what was inside. By 1953, however, the hero pulps were not immune to the changing time, and the morals were beginning to evaporate. The final issues of The Phantom Detective, Dan Fowler (G-Men Detective), and The Black Bat (Black Book Detective) contained strong hints of sex and rougher language. But by then their time was dying, and the paperbacks had taken over for good.

Jerry Page’s The Armadillo

Let’s concentrate on the pulp hero, or I might use the term NEW PULP HERO at this phase. When did it start? That’s easy. The first we absolutely know of for sure, was Jerry Page’s The Armadillo, a masked hero that appeared in print just a few years after the hero pulp magazines ceased in the mid 1950s. By the 1960s there were new stories of The Shadow, to prove that OLD PULP HEROES were not dead. And others were writing clones of Doc Savage and Tarzan, like Phil Farmer and Lin Carter, among others. I don’t have a good track on all the new pulp heroes that were strangely appearing in paperback, but I could name some, if pressed. Even major comic book houses like Marvel and DC were bringing their characters out in prose paperback editions.

Tom Johnson’s The Black Ghost

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a concerted effort to maintain this new pulp/new pulp hero tradition until 1995. In January of that year – dated Winter - it all changed. The culprit was Clancy O’Hara’s PULP FICTION MAGAZINE - changed to PULP, A FICTION MAGAZINE with the third issue and just plain PULP with the seventh issue. And the first new pulp characters to arrive in Clancy’s magazine were Aaron B. Larson’s Haakon Jones, and Tom Johnson’s The Black Ghost, both appearing in early issues. In June 1995, Tom & Ginger’s FADING SHADOWS magazines kicked off with CLASSIC PULP FICTION STORIES and ran through December 2004, and the new pulp/new pulp heroes were claiming their place as “new pulp fiction”. Clancy may have been the first to call it NEW PULP, but we at FADING SHADOWS called it NEW STORIES IN THE PULP TRADITION. I’m not really sure when the NEW PULP banner started, but I imagine someone at Pro Se could fill us in.

As the reader can see, NEW PULP is really quite old. I still prefer NEW STORIES IN THE PULP TRADITION, however. Doesn’t that make sense? But whatever we call it, since 1995 NEW PULP FICTION has been going strong, and we’ve definitely seen some interesting characters show up on radar. In January 2015, the modern day pulp fiction will be twenty years old. Haakon Jones and The Black Ghost will also share that honor.