Creator:
Rus Wornom
Characters
Commander
Denis Cushing (Founder M4)
Cobra
The mysterious M4, master of espionage and disguise, travels to the
frozen wastes of Ghutranh and encounters a diabolical trap set for him by his
arch-nemesis, the nefarious Cobra!
Trapped in an unearthly landscape of icy death, M4--Enigma Club
founding member Commander Denis Cushing--discovers a terrifying secret, and
must do battle with a team of assassins . . . and an unspeakable threat that
has survived in the Arctic snows for millennia. There he comes face to
face with a terror from beyond the seas of eternity . . . "In the
Mountains of Frozen Fire!"
"In the Mountains of Frozen Fire" has just been
published in the July/August issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
You can pick it up at Barnes & Noble, or order it at http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/toc2010-19.htm (all
the way at the bottom of the site).
I am a lifelong reader of the old pulp novels, such as Burroughs' John
Carter and Tarzan stories, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Robert E. Howard's Conan and
Solomon Kane stories, and the seminal Adventure Magazine. Burroughs
showed me that a writer is born in his heart, and that even a pencil sharpener
salesman could tell stories of extraordinary people in extraordinary
circumstances that could enthrall generations of readers. Once I
read A Princess of Mars, I knew that I wanted to tell stories that could
make people believe in worlds undreamed of.
I started a comic novel in the mid '90s about a Tarzan wannabe, and in
the middle of it, I got shaghaied by the idea that he lived on an island where
the old pulp heroes are still alive and well, saving the day from monsters and
thugees, evil scientists and aliens. I based the characters on all the
old pulp tropes--starlets, mad doctors, jungle heroes, gangsters, mysterious
crimebusters and dangerous spies. And on the island, I created a
place for my characters to mingle and tell tales of their heroics and exploits.
THE
ENIGMA CLUB is a contemporary pulp adventure novel, currently being
marketed by my agent, Andrew Zack of The Zack Company. It's the story of
how the discovery of an obscure pulp magazine sends the novel's hero in search
of the Enigma Club, supposedly located on a forgotten island in the Gulf of
Mexico.
What he discovers is a land forsaken by time--Cayo Arcana. The
Enigma Club is a haven for adventurers, explorers, heroes, starlets,
scientists (mad and otherwise), warriors and spies, all members of a classic
gentlemen's club created by and for all the pulp archetypes from the
Golden Age of Adventure.
THE ENIGMA CLUB recreates the pulp era of the '20s and '30s, and
also makes an impossible tale and the impossible locale very real and
almost interactive, integrating artifacts--photos, sidebars, excerpts from
fictional books and pulps, telegrams, and even vintage postcards--to create a
world that the reader feels could possibly exist.
My original intent with THE ENIGMA CLUB was to include a
sample pulp story for each of the Club's charter members, as published between
1911 and 1953 in the Club's pulp, The Enigma Club All-Adventure Magazine.
However, the novel became too long, so I included only one story,
"Sky-Gods of Ixtamal," to represent the themes inherent with the pulp
era: adventure, wonder, lost races, fantastic technologies, and everyday
characters who embody the heroic ideal.
Two other stories were already finished, and the first of
these, "In the Mountains of Frozen Fire," is a tale of
Commander Denis Cushing, Agent M4 (a.k.a. the Mongoose), whom I created as
a cross between James Bond, Artemus Gordon and G-8. My inspiration for
the story was a painting by Frank Frazetta, The Frost Giants, with a
little Lovecraft and a lot of Robert E. Howard thrown in. My goal was to
tell a period story, using the tropes of Howard, Lovecraft and traditional spy
fiction, while also serving up a dose of 21st Century humor--along the lines of
Indiana Jones meets SNL.
No comments:
Post a Comment