Lance Star: Sky Ranger Volume 3 Launch Interview: Ron Fortier

With the release of the third volume of Lance Star: Sky Ranger from Airship 27 Productions and Cornerstone Books, we here at Sky Ranger Central talked to the creators, writers, artists, and publishers involved with the latest installment in the Lance Star: Sky Ranger series.

First up is Airship 27’s Air Chief, Ron Fortier.

LSSR: Tell us a little about yourself and where readers can find out more about you, your work, and Airship 27 Productions?

RF: Okay, then, here’s the surface facts. I’m 64 (soon to be 65), live in Fort Collins, Colorado and have been writing comics, fantasy and sci-fi professionally for past 35 years. My webpage is (http://www.airship27.com/) where I update a Flight Log every Friday morning. This is the one central place people can learn more about Airship 27 Productions, what books we’ve done and which we have coming out.

LSSR: Who is Lance Star? What makes pulp characters like Lance and the Sky Rangers appeal to you as a writer, a reader, and a publisher?

RF: Lance Star is a character we, myself and several Airship 27 writers, created to emulate the great 1930s aviation pulp heroes like Bill Barnes, Dusty Ayres and G8 to name a few. I’ve always had a fascination for flying and been a huge fan of exciting aviation adventure stories. As a publisher, I believe that appeal reaches thousands of people and so creating an aviation hero for our line was a must in my book.

LSSR: Lance Star: Sky Ranger Volume 3 is now available. What can readers expect in this new edition?

RF: That’s an easy one. They can expect four fast paced action adventure yarns that send Lance and his Sky Rangers all over the globe pre-WWII to combat various threats and villains such as Oklahoma cattle rustlers to Chinese terrorist in the far orient. This volume has more spills and thrills per page than you’d find in a half dozen other titles.

LSSR: Cornerstone Books and Airship 27 currently have two Lance Star: Sky Ranger anthologies in print and there are Lance Star: Sky Ranger eBooks, iPulp Fiction individual digital editions, and a Lance Star comic book. What’s next for these pulp heroes?

RF: Would you believe audio? Yup. Airship 27 Productions is just now partnering with Broke Sea Audio productions to develop sound recording of our titles. Of course we are just in the formative stages of this development and with 39 titles in our catalog, it will be a while before all our books available in this fun audio format. But that is the plan. Once any Lance Star title is produced as an audio book, our readers will be able to buy them on-line as downloaded files, or in beautifully packaged discs offerings. Needless to say we are extremely excited about this New Pulp venture.

LSSR: The Airship 27 Print-On-Demand library is currently changing venues. Where and when will previous editions be re-released?

RF: Right. We recently closed down our Print-On-Demand on-line shop for several sound business practices that needed our attention. Over the next year, we will be uploading all our titles to another such outfit, Ka-Blam and have begun that process. Once a book’s files have been set up there, then the book will be made available via their retail site, www.IndyPlanet.com – Note, one of the reasons for this move was to lower the prices of our POD books. At Indy Planet, all our titles will sell for $15. This is a saving of several dollars from the old shop. Note, all three Lance Star titles have been uploaded and will soon be on sale there.

LSSR: Any upcoming projects you would like to plug?

RF: We’ve just completed our third Jim Anthony Super Detective title, “Mark of Terror” by writer Joshua Reynolds which we hope to have on sale by the end of Sept. See attached cover by painter Jeff Herndon. This is an exclusive first to this site. And our recent release of DAMABALLA by Charles Saunders is still getting overwhelming positive response from the pulp community as it debuts the very first African American pulp avenger ever. It is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other reputable book sellers. Finally, a real tease here, we hope to release the first ever full length LANCE STAR – SKY RANGER novel some time in 2012. That’s going to be big.

LSSR: Thanks, Ron.

RF: My pleasure Bobby, thanks for the opportunity.