I skipped over the second volume in Murania Press‘ new “Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents” series, so now I will go back and review The Penny-a-Word Brigade. It reprints a wide range of articles from the various writer’s magazines published during the pulp era by several of the major pulp fiction authors and editors (Writer’s Digest, Author & Journalist, Writer’s Review, The Writer, and Writer’s Market).
This is yet another such volume of works that should sit along side the various collections edited by John Locke.
On the author side, we have stuff from Walter B. Gibson, Lester Dent, Norvell Page, H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber, Frederick C. Davis, and other. On the editors, we have Joseph “Cap” Shaw (Black Mask) and Arthur Sullivant Hoffman (Adventure). The articles are organized in publication order.
From the authors, we get an article on air pulp scribe Arch Whitehouse, who wrote several serial characters in the pulps such as The Griffon. Here he gives advice on writing for the air pulps, even giving a list of “don’t’s.” From Norvell Page (The Spider), we get advise on how he writes. From Lester Dent (Doc Savage), we get an article on his well-known “master fiction plot,” as well as another article. From Walter Gibson (The Shadow), he speaks of his writing a million words a year for 10 years straight.
From H. Bedford-Jones is his long work on This Fiction Business. This one was originally serialized in 1922, and later revised in book form in 1929. It’s from the book that we get this work. It goes into all aspects of writing fiction up to getting it published. Hopefully.
As to the editors, Arthur Sullivant Hoffman contributes a work looking at plot and structure of stories, always a big issue for authors. Cap Shaw’s contribution is one on dialogue. We get two interviews with editors, one being Shaw, the other with Leo Margulies, who was a long-time editor at Thrilling. We even get a couple of articles from agents, giving market reports.
I like that we have articles that cover a variety of genres. In addition to the air pulp article from Whitehouse, we get articles on westerns (from Douglas Lurton and another from Rogers Terrill), and one showing the wide variety of detective pulp stories.
An interesting article included is an anonymous one from American Mercury, a more highbrow literary journal. It is a bit more cynical than the more positive articles from the others. It was added to prove a counter point, which I think was good.
All told, there are nearly 30 articles.
Now, I do have a few of complaints about this collection. The first is I would have liked to know where these works had originally appeared, more than just the date. Maybe for some this isn’t important, but I like to know. As many were originally reprinted in Blood ‘n’ Thunder issues, knowing where would also have been nice.
Second is I like John Locke’s collections as he added information with each reprinted article on the author so the reader had a better appreciation as to who they were. Most of this was given in the intro, so its not totally absent, but like seeing this sort of in with each article as I am in the happen of jumping around a work like this and reading something that interests me, and don’t want to have to go back to the intro and look up what was said about a particular one.
Third is I wish this collection has been made more visually interesting by seeing photos of the subjects, covers of pulp magazines, even some of the ads from the various writer’s magazines. This would have spiced up this collection.
But these issues are no reason not to get this collection.
This one will go on my shelf with the others in this series, and I look forward to future volumes in this book series. The fourth is already out and I’ve reviewed it as well.
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