Welcome to my new online home!

My name is Aaron Smith. I'm a writer and this is my brand new blog, Gods and Galaxies! The title of the blog is also the title of my new novel, my first full-length novel, published by Wild Wolf Entertainment. It's a tough book to categorize, even the publisher said so. It's a science-fantasy story with a romantic plotline running through it, some philosophical stuff, a lot of action and violence, and even a little sex. If that sounds interesting, check it out! You can find it on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble's website by following one of these links:

  http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Galaxies-Aaron-Smith/dp/0982341768/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299366132&sr=1-1

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Gods-and-Galaxies/Aaron-Smith/e/9780982341766/?itm=1&USRI=gods+and+galaxies+aaron+smith

As for my other work, I've had a bunch of stories published by a wonderful company called Airship 27 Productions, which is devoted to bringing back all the fun and excitement that used to be found in the great pulp fiction of the first half of the 20th century. You can find all the Airship 27 books on Amazon too, or by going to their online store:  http://stores.lulu.com/airship27

Working with Airship 27 has given me the opportunity to work with many of the great pulp characters of the past, heroes like The Black Bat, Dan Fowler:G-Man, and the World War I flying aces The Three Mosquitoes. It's also given me a chance to live one of my dreams, getting to write stories about one of the greatest of all fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes! That was an incredible experience and I hope my work on that project managed to capture the spirit of the character and didn't set Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spinning in his grave! You can find my first Holmes story in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volume 1. 

After that first Sherlock Holmes book (and there are more to come) I was given another great Holmes-related opportunity. I wrote a short novel featuring Holmes's companion, Dr. John Watson. The book is called Season of Madness and as far as I've been able to find out is the first time anyone's written a book to feature Watson without Holmes! In Season of Madness, Watson teams up with another literary doctor of the time, John Seward from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

In addition to working on all those classic characters, my editor at Airship 27, Ron Fortier, has encouraged me on several occasions to create some new characters that, I hope, fit in well with the period piece pulps we publish (say that fast ten times! I think I have too many P's in that sentence). There's Hound-Dog Harker, partially inspired by the old character Bulldog Drummond, but he also happens to be the grown-up version of little Quincey Harker, the child of Jonathan and Mina who Bram Stoker mentions at the end of Dracula. As an adult, Harker works for the British government. He's a World War I veteran and 1930s British agent whose adventures usually manage to intersect with the worlds created by some of the great adventure, mystery and science fiction writers of the early 1900s. In a way, I guess you could say that Hound-Dog Harker's world is my tribute to some of my influences, like Bram Stoker (obviously!), Conan Doyle, HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The first Hound-Dog Harker story, "Attack of the Electric Shark" can be found as a bonus story in Season of Madness. And there will be more Harker stories coming very soon.

I've also created The Red Veil, a character in the tradition of the Shadow and the Spider, a ruthless pulp vigilante, but this one happens to be a woman. The Red Veil is Alice Carter, a young woman who takes the law into her own hands after her husband, a police officer, is killed and the real reasons for his death are covered up by some crooked cops. The Red Veil's first appearance was in the Airship 27 book Mystery Men (and Women) Volume 1.     

 Besides writing pulp stories for Airship 27, I also write short pulp stories for the magazines published by Pro Se Productions, a great little company run by editor Tommy Hancock, who seems to somehow have more than the usual allotment of 24 hours in his days, judging by the amount of pots he has on his creative stove at any given time. My stories have been showing up in the magazines Fantasy and Fear, and Masked Gun Mystery. Those can be found through Pro Se's site.  http://www.proseproductions.com/Press/PulpMags.html

In the first two issues of Masked Gun Mystery, you'll find the first two cases of my modern day homicide cop, Detective Lieutenant Marcel Picard, a former NHL hockey star who now hunts down killers.

In Fantasy and Fear issues 2 and 3, you'll find the first two parts of my vampire series. The first story is called 100,000 Midnights and the second is A Study in Shadow. That 3rd issue also contains another of my short stories, City of Nevermore, which is sort of my tribute to HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.


If anyone reading this decides to check out any of the books or magazines where my stories appear, I'd love to hear what you think about them, so feel free to comment.

I've never had a blog before and I'm looking forward to posting here and putting up information about new projects and talking about whatever happens to be on my mind. I hope anyone reading this enjoys it too.