Passing for local could be life or death. A British spy in WWII might lose everything over the way a button was sewn, or how he held up three fingers. It’s the tiniest details that betray us—on the battlefield, in foreign lands, or even just trying to order coffee after moving countries. Trust me: I’ve lived it. The wrong Tuesday nearly gave me a migraine.
Can we talk about the death grip serial killers have on romantic suspense?
Why am I talking about pulp fiction? (No, not the movie — which got its name from Tarantino’s inspiration for the story.)
Two reasons: Classic SF got its start in the pulp magazines. And my Ptolemy Lane Tales series was my nod to classic hardcore pulp fiction.
Classic pulp stories are often decried for their simplicity and dependence upon erotic elements to move copies. The criticism overlooks one of the primary functions of pulp stories: They were written to entertain.
And my god, they did that in spades.
At their peak of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, the most successful pulps could sell up to one million copies per issue. In 1934, Frank Gruber (writer) said there were some 150 pulp titles.*
Have you ever been curled up with a romantic suspense novel, flipping pages like your life depended on it, and paused just long enough to wonder, Wait, do all bullets do the same thing? No? Just me?
Today, SRP author Mark Posey released a short story in a new A Gathering of Stories anthology: St. Patrick’s Day.
From SRP Author Tracy Cooper-Posey: If you’ve been around my books long enough (and if you haven’t—welcome!), you might have
