Fathers and daughters and psychic powers (WIP Wednesday)

I just sent off my next contribution to the Pen and Cape Society's The Good Fight series of anthologies. It happens to be the third story in The Second Life of DB Cooper.

Longtime readers may remember the first short about the psychic ex-secret agent from The Good Fight 2: Villains or the second from Legends of New Pulp. This story flashes forward about sixteen years from that second tale and picks up with a fifty-year-old Coop right around the turn of the century.

Like the previous stories, this one is built around a lot of psychic powers with a little weird esoterica in the backdrop. But at its core, it is about the relationship between Coop and his daughter, a woman he didn't know existed until the day she showed up at his doorstep. Like everything else in Coop's life since the day he ditched his old job and hijacked an airplane, it comes with a whole heck of a lot of complications.

I suspect this one will be a bit different than the previous two Coop stories as it hinges much more on hard decisions than the straight up adventure hooks of the previous tales. I certainly had a heck of a lot of fun writing it as I get a certain glee out of making Coop's life a living hell.

I've put the start on a project for Pro Se Productions as well this week. The book hasn't been officially announced as far as I know, so for now, it will be called PROJECT FOXHUNT. It's set at a unique point in history in a unique location and stars a character with some deep esoteric roots that I love. He's a figure I've used in the past but this will be a slightly different take on him. I'll go into more details on it once I get the go-ahead from the fine folks at Pro Se.

I have also started work on a project I've let sit fallow for too long. I had a trilogy of works online many moons ago that I've always wanted to do a complete rewrite on to get them ready for publication. Those stories: Mean Streets, The Long Hot Summer and Suicide Blonde, might be remembered by a few longtime followers of yours truly, but none have been seen for nearly a decade. I have started a ground-up re-write on Mean Streets starting with a new, more apt, title: NML: No Man's Land. I'll cover a few more details on that in the next update.

Today's image is from the other great tale that posits D.B. Cooper as a secret psychic agent of the government, Brian Churilla's The Secret History of D.B. Cooper. That book almost killed my plans for Coop stories when it was released way back in 2013, but while it's a great comic, it's pretty much as far away from my tale as can be possible. Still, dig Churilla's amazing work and if you're interested, pick up a copy at Amazon.

Writer's Update for February 3, 2015

I have spent the last couple weeks in between trying to get sites online working on the first story in a new series called The Second Life of D.B. Cooper. I finished the second draft on it just yesterday and it is off to the publisher now. It should pop up in just a few weeks as part of the Pen and Cape Society’s The Good Fight 2: Villains anthology. I missed out on the first volume of the series, but this one was a can’t miss for me, but I will talk more about that in the future.

The new story kicks off a tale that blends my work on Pulpsploitation with the Quadrant Universe and introduces D.B. Cooper in 1982 Key West, Florida. It also touches on psychic mind experiments, mystic esoterica and a few other oddball figures out of weird history.

I suspect Mr. Cooper will see a return appearance before the end of 2015, but I will have to wait on that announcement for awhile.

Now I am hard at work on kicking off the second year of Lightweight stories. Anyone that read the end of Lightweight: Graduation knows exactly how far away from the first year the new story will be. It should offer some interesting conundrums in the life of Kevin Mathis.

A Kickstarter will be on its way for year two in a couple more months, but I plan to finalize all orders on the first year of Lightweight first.

Today’s image is DB Cooper by Brian Churilla. Check out his The Secret History of D.B. Cooper for another oddball take on the mysterious hijacker well worth a read.