----- Original Message ----- From: "William Denton" <
buff@pobox.com> To: <
rara-avis@icomm.ca> Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000
11:15 PM Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Mike Shayne Month!
<snip>
> What was in a regular issue? A Shayne novella and a
couple of non-Shayne
> short stories?
The Shayne novella, at least one novelette, and five or six
short stories. At one point in the magazine's history, back
in the late Fifties and early Sixties, the Shayne stories
were only about 10,000 words. In those issues, there was
usually a novella by some other PI writer of the time, often
Frank Kane. Some of his Johnny Liddell novels were expansions
of novellas that appeared in MSMM. This is about the time
that Lynds started writing novelettes about a PI named
Slot-Machine Kelly, the prototype for Dan Fortune. In the
last year or so of my run as Halliday, I also wrote some
shorter Shayne stories due to lack of time.
<snip>
> How did you feel about ghosting in Halliday's name?
Any sense of stepping
> into the shoes of the writer's who'd gone before? Do
you ever meet other
> writers who were Halliday and reminisce?
I'd been reading Shayne novels for years, so I really enjoyed
having the chance to write about the character as Brett
Halliday. For a long-time fan, it was quite an honor. I've
never had a problem writing about other people's characters
or under other names. I've spent a large part of my career
doing just that. (Of course, it's nice now that most of my
work is published under my own name, I won't dispute that.)
While I was writing Shaynes I was also corresponding with
Mike Avallone and Dennis Lynds, and then later after I
stopped I was in contact quite a bit with Hal Blythe and
Charlie Sweet, who took over the series. Earlier this year on
the Internet, I happened to run into a writer named Mike
Taylor, who did one of the Shaynes after I left. It was fun
talking about those days with him. It may be a little stretch
to call MSMM the last pulp, but in many ways it was, and I'm
glad I got to be part of it.
Best, James
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