2022 Writing Projects

It is almost year end. Time to take a look back at 2020 (which I forgot to review last January) and 2021 and then take a look at what’s ahead in 2022.

The pandemic made 2020 an unpleasant and often tragic year for many people, but even before the shutdowns started in March the year got off to an unhappy start with the death of Clive Cussler on February 24. Mr. Cussler left behind a truly memorable legacy and remains sorely missed.

Clive Cussler was true to character until the end, as demonstrated by his epigraph on the tombstone he shares with his wife Barbara.

On a more personal note, the shutdowns meant no comic conventions which meant no get-togethers with fans and old friends at places like MSP or local cons. I missed you all and hope we will have the opportunity to gather again in the future.

So what happened as far as writing projects are concerned in 2020?  Caliber Comics published my and Trey Baldwin’s graphic novel The Shadow over Innsmouth, my first adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story in over twenty years and my first comic of any kind in over ten years. Caliber also teamed up with card.com to offer debit cards featuring several Caliber properties, including several of mine. Later in the year Caliber teamed up with zazzle.com to offer a variety of different types of merchandise featuring many Caliber properties, again including several of mine.

Shadow over Innsmouth, Sherlock Holmes, Vanguard and Heroes and Horrors are just some of my comics available as debit cards through card.com. Other types of merchandise featuring some of my Caliber properties are available at zazzle.com.

My foray into the realm of short story anthologies continued in 2020 with my Sherlock Holmes pastiches “The Case of the Unparallelled Adventures” and “The Adventure of the Amibitious Task,” while my article “Dirk Pitt: Occult Detective?” was published in Occult Detective Magazine #7 in time to serve as a tribute to Mr. Cussler and his greatest and most famous character.

2021 was not as productive as 2020 but was definitely a busy year, due in large part to our move from Iowa to Utah. As comic conventions continue to open up again I am hoping to attend at least one this year.  On the writing front my novel The Adventure of the Coal-Tar Derivative: The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes & Dr. John H. Watson Against the Moriarties During the Great Hiatus” was published by MX Publishing and became my first audio book (available through Audible).

Meanwhile “The Adventure of the Ambitious Task” was adapted into a one-man show called “The Adventure of the Inescapable Crypt” by Jonathan Goodwin, winner of the 2020 Hamilton Dean Award from The Dracula Society. Goodwin wrote the adaptation and performed as Holmes (but also some other characters) for his Don’t Go Into the Cellar theater group as a Halloween program that was available live throughout the world as an online Zoom broadcast. If you didn’t catch it and would like to get an idea of what the production was like, you can click on the image below to see Goodwin portraying Holmes for the Kickstarter promotion for the production.

Finally Caliber Comics continues to reissue all of my Lovecraft adaptions. Each re-issue features re-scanned comics pages and updated editorial material so the books look better than ever. Also the re-issue of Dagon features a dazzling new cover by my collaborator on this story Sergio Cariello. The remaining individual adaptations as well as the two volume anthology collection H. P. Lovecraft Worlds should be published in 2022. And here is more good news! Re-issues of Caliber’s Sherlock Holmes graphic novels–which includes my pastiches Adventure of the Opera Ghost and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes–may be in the works in the near future. Keep your fingers crossed!

So what’s coming in 2022?

Getting settled in our new home will be the priority. That said, I am very excited to be writing a short story for an all-new anthology to be published later this year dedicated to an overlooked pulp hero created by one of the medium’s most popular authors. That is all I can right now, but I promise to share details here as soon as I have the okay to do so. Meanwhile Trey Baldwin is working on our latest Lovecraft comics adaptation, The Call of Cthulhu, which will hopefully be available from Caliber Comics before the end of 2022. I have also been submitting to various publishers more than I have in many years, but there is no way of knowing right now if any of these will be accepted. If anything is, I will let you know here. Work also continues on the second novel in my Lovecraftian series and I recently began outlining a possible second Sherlock Holmes novel. I have also been whittling away on a non-fiction book that looks at how superhero films have changed from their inception with Adventures of Captain Marvel in 1941 up to the launch of the Marvel Comics Universe with Iron Man in 2008. I am not going to lie, my finishing this is a long shot, but it is a manuscript I come back to when I need a break from other writing projects or there isn’t enough time to start working on a new project before something time-consuming happens, say like moving across four states.

So, hey, I’m keeping busy.

And that’s it for now. It has been quite a couple of years. Things are improving in some ways, but not so much in others. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do have every faith that we are near the end of this pandemic and that we will be all the better and stronger for it

Take care and I’ll see you all next year!