Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The eJournal Project Now Has A Name

So around 1 AM last night, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, I was contemplating a name for this new eJournal Project. I wanted it to be something that sold the project, something that told the reader what they were getting into right away. I thought of titles like:

The Post-Modern Pulps Review Journal

or

The Serial Action & Adventure Fiction Review

But you know what? These are the sorts of convoluted title structures that you'll see on peer review medical journals that talk about skin disorders, or ecology periodicals talking about the life of the mealworm. That is not our kind of journal, no sirree.

This is a journal for people who love to read about automatic shotguns spraying terrorists with storms of high-velocity steel, chattering Uzis stitching drug dealers across the chest with streams of hollowpoint slugs, and karate kicks to the groin so powerful they shatter a bad guy's pelvis and send them into lethal shock.

That kind of journal needs a title with a little more bite, so to speak. Short, sharp, and to the point. Like a bullet punching through a bad guy's x-ring, or a blade biting into flesh. A title that resonates both with the sorts of titles we're dealing with, titles like The Executioner, Able Team, Phoenix Force, Black Berets, Hard Corps, and The Death Merchant. Something that pulls us back to the Vietnam-era roots that define, for me, the genesis of what I call Post-Modern Pulp Fiction.

A title like Hatchet Force.

Short, sharp, and to the point, indeed. It also hearkens back to the MAC-V SOG days, which I think is critically important when you're talking about a sub-genre of fiction that owes its genesis to the Vietnam War.

So now our journal has a name, it has contributors, and content is coming in. I will provide future updates, but I hope to get issue #1 out the door some time in mid June.

Again, many thanks to all of you who have provided your support - I literally couldn't do this without you guys.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome name! I just started reading "Behind the Lines", one of the very few SOG memoirs out there so maybe I can write a review for it when I'm done.

Hank Brown said...

I dig it!