Happy #NationalWritingDay everybody! Today I'm looking back at that essential item all writers need, love and occasionally bash their heads against: the typewriter!
What? You're still writing in longhand? Tsk...
All pulp authors love a typewriter! Here's Michael Avallone - "The fastest typewriter in the East" - on how to write well quickly...
If you think you don't have time to write, remember this: Ray Bradbury began writing Farenheit 451 on a pay-by-the-hour rental typewriter in the UCLA library.
At his peak pulpwriter Orrie Hitt could write a book every two weeks, bashing them out on a Remington Royal typewriter with a carton of smokes and a bottle of Bourbon for sustinance.
Gruselroman legend Helmut Rellergerd (aka John Sinclair) is still writing stories on his old Olympia typewriter to this day - sometimes one a week!
Typewriter Repair Man! He's the hero we've been looking for...
Olivetti service advert, 1953.
The first novel written on a word processor was Bomber, published by Len Deighton in 1970. Deighton had an 91kg leased IBM MT72 carefully winched into his London home through an upstairs window.
It'll never catch on you know...
If you're not sure how to use a typewriter heres's a guide to the 1954 Olivetti Lettra 22.
Other typewriters are available...
And if you get bored writing... well you can always type a picture of Kojak'a head. Who loves ya baby!
Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.