I’ve been a Tarzan fan as long as I can remember. It started in my early childhood, watching black-and-white Johnny Weissmuller movies on TV, before my family moved to France for several years. At some point, I started reading the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs–not just Tarzan’s adventures, but those of David Innes in Pellucidar, Carson Napier on Venus (or Amtor, as the locals call it), and John Carter on Mars (Barsoom), and more.
Beginning in the early 1970s I also read the comics, thrilling especially to Joe Kubert’s Tarzan and Michael Kaluta’s Carson of Venus. Later, I became friends with the late Richard A. Lupoff, who wrote one of the best overviews of Burroughs and his creations, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. Dick’s book gave me a greater appreciation and understanding of ERB and his characters.
Still, I never really imagined that I would get to write a Tarzan book. But fast forward several decades, to when my friend Bob Boze Bell, publisher of True West magazine, and I attended the 2019 Dum-Dum—an annual celebration of ERB and his work—in Willcox, AZ. There I met Christopher Carey, Director of Publishing for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., the company that Burroughs himself established in 1923 to protect his financial interests and to publish his own work, when he decided he could do it better than the big New York publishers could. Chris and I chatted and quickly bonded over mutual enthusiasms. And lo and behold, late last year he got in touch and asked me to write a Tarzan novella!
It’s available for preorder now, in paperback, hardcover, and signed, limited-edition hardcover editions, directly from ERB. I should be getting bookplates to sign any day now, and they look incredible (as do the cover by Douglas Klauba and the frontispiece by Chris Gardner)! It takes place immediately after the events Burroughs described in Tarzan and the Lion Man, and it’ll be released this summer. If Tarzan fans like it half as much as I liked writing it, it’ll be a big hit.
In Other News
With the recent publication of Passage to Pedregosa, all three Cody Cavanaugh novels are now available. You can find them here: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, Bookshop.org, Walmart, and everywhere else books are sold online, in paperback and ebook. I’m hoping there will be more, but that’s really up to the readers (and the sales figures). Meanwhile, I’m hard at work on the second book of the Major Crimes Squad: Phoenix police procedural series.
And Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell’s next book has been announced and the cover released! Sisters of Sorcery is an amazing novel featuring several of Marvel Comics’ female magic users, mostly focused on Clea. You’ll definitely want this one on your shelves!
#Tags: books, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Tarzan, Westerns
