New Releases/Coming Soon:
- Robert Kroese: Heretic's Game: A Secret History Sci-Fi Adventure (The Cross-Time Crusade Book 2) (Amazon, Kindle Only)
- J. Ishiro Finney and Josh Finney: Boobs of Steel - Decoding the Amazon: [Busty Heroines vs. the Culture War #1] (Amazon)
- Pavel Gubarev: Torch of New Russia (Amazon)
- Antelope Hill Publishing: The Byzantine Empire by Charles Oman (Amazon)
- Imperium Press: Four Great Tragedies by William Shakespeare (site)
Notable Postings:
- The Author's Outpost Ep 12: RAZORFIST (YouTube)
- The Pulp Archvist interviewed author and editor Brian Niemeier regarding the latter's Soul Cycle series. (Substack)
- Alexander Hellene: "Lashed to the Mast" (Substack)
- 365 Infantry: "Red Light Bytes: 7-14-2023" (Substack), "A Piece of Cell Block M" (Substack)
Commentary:
Hollywood has decided to An Hero. First the Writer's Guild of America went on strike. Now SAG-AFTRA (the actor's union) voted to strike. The Hollywood Reporter put the story out on Thursday this past week. (Here)
Ladies and gentlemen, this presents a great opportunity for all of us.
That opportunity is to reach out to those who remain unaware that Current Year Hollywood is not their only entertainment option. While, alas, many of them will not be open to independent media such as ours what they may be open to will come from two sources that Current Year Hollywood has willfully ignored: their own archives, and foreign entertainment media.
For the latter, this is not confined to the big corporate media of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India. I remind you that Europe has its own media establishment, and while there is a poz problem there also it is not yet totally converged. (Yes, I mean continental Europe and not including the United Kingdom, Canada, or our friends Down Under due to Death Cult convergence being as complete there as it is in the United States.)
Mexico and the rest of the more developed Americas also has their own media enterprises; now is a good time to go see what the neighbors and the folks down the block are watching. Especially for younger generations, foreign media can and will easily replace what Hollywood formerly provided.
For those unwilling to accept foreign media, even if it is natively in English or dubbed into English, there are generations of archived media. Thousands of hours of films and television series, many of which are familiar to Baby Boomers and Generation X, are available either for free or are alreday part of the streaming service archives. Local library systems may have them on home video (i.e. DVD) to check out, and the Internet Archive has what they can get that is in the Public Domain.
If you want to own a hard copy, buy it now before any strike-related price hikes get into your store's pricing algorythms. (e.g. Fritz Lang's Metropolis) If you find guerilla uploads of favorites, do not publicize them. Share only on the down-low, and back them up as fast as you can.
Now, maybe you'll get lucky and the folks near you are open to reading for entertainment. Now you can cook with gas. In addition to showing them classics that they most likely never read, you can also take your chances at introducing them to the wealth of independent media in prose and comic form out there, especially if they already know of European comics (BDs, which are better comparisons to a lot of indies than Japanese or Korean offerings).
This is not just an opportunity for the authors. This is also an opportunity for the marketers. There will be a rare opportunity to pitch to a broad, suddenly underserved market and they need to be prepared to meet that opportunity and exploit it for all its worth. People like Cole & Anspach in particular need to hit this opportunity like they're dropping Rods From God on a hardened target and those sorts in the indie sphere are best able to exploit the opportunity through which the rest of us can follow.
Now is not the time to demure. It is the time for shameless self-promotion and cross-promotion, shouted from the rootops to all that could hear.
This also means it is the time to dial back any feuds in favor of a common prosperity; there's a bigger issue to tackle, and the pie is large enough for all of us. You feuding folks can sort things out after it's over.
