Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

League of Utah Writers – Spring Conference – and a Pulp Fiction Class

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 29, 2017

I’ll be teaching a class with David West a week from Saturday (April 8th) at the League of Utah Writers Spring Conference. We’re currently scheduled for the first hour. The spring conference is a short one–not quite a full day–but it’s also inexpensive and a great chance to network and learn from local writers. The classes cover a range of topics on the craft itself, business, networking, goal-setting, and all the other things that touch on success in the writer biz. Or any creative biz, really.

If you are a local writer (or aspiring writer) in the vicinity of the Salt Lake area, I recommend it. You can get more information here:

League of Utah Writers Spring Conference

As for this class… it’s an expansion on one I gave last year at the Spring Into Books event. This will be a longer class, with more opportunity to delve into details. I’ve had an extra year of practicing what I preach, writing & selling stories, interviewing people, researching, and rubbing elbows with modern pulpists. I brought in David West with his wealth of experience to help teach the class.

Even more interesting is that the landscape has changed in the last year. A couple of years ago, when I started really digging into the subject and researching how the publishing industry and storytelling had changed over the years (partly because I’d had so much fun writing steampunk stories), there didn’t seem to be much traction with actively embracing the pulp aesthetic. That was totally okay, because although technology, culture, and even language has changed a lot since Lester Dent’s time, the whole point of the pulps was to tell entertaining stories that people enjoyed… and that editors would buy. That absolutely still applies, and the result might not even be something one might immediately think of as “pulp.”

However, since that time, I’ve seen a lot of new markets for “pulp” style short-stories appear. A lot more champions have appeared pushing for a movement to embrace the pulp aesthetic and push it forward today. It’s getting traction, from people with ideas and attitudes sometimes at odds with each other.  There’s a growing interest. Call it a movement, a revolution, or just another blip of passing interest in a revival, but it’s interesting how much difference a year makes. Whatever the case, I’m happy to be here, and to work with David to share what we’ve learned.


Filed Under: Events, Writing - Comments: Read the First Comment



  • Tesh said,

    This is something I’d love to sink time into with an eye to making money with it… but I just don’t have 54 hours in a day.

    Still, it’s great to see short fiction getting a bit more traction, especially the “superversive” and pulpy stuff.

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