Pulp magazines have influenced writers, artists, film directors, software developers, and countless others over the years. Our “PulpFest Profiles” focus on contemporary creators who have drawn inspiration from these rough-paper fiction magazines.
I must admit that I didn’t know much about John Wooley when I was asked to interview him. I quickly learned that John is a man who wears many hats — writer, novelist, lecturer, filmmaker, radio and TV host. His specialties include movies, literature, and music. He’s also a pop-culture historian.
He has written, co-written, or edited nearly 50 books, including the new 1930’s-set horror trilogy — THE CLEANSING — with Robert A. Brown. Additionally, he’s co-written TWENTIETH-CENTURY HONKY-TONK — with Brett Bingham; RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE; WES CRAVEN: THE MAN AND HIS NIGHTMARES; and SHOT IN OKLAHOMA. John’s nonfiction work has appeared in TULSA WORLD, TV GUIDE, and FANGORIA magazine.
Besides that, John has scripted a number of documentaries, including the Learning Channel’s HAUNTINGS ACROSS AMERICA and OKLAHOMA MILITARY ACADEMY: THE WEST POINT OF THE SOUTHWEST. He wrote the made-for-TV feature DAN TURNER — HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE (1990) and the award-winning independent movie, CAFE PURGATORY. His scripting extends to comic books and graphic novels, including PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE and THE MIRACLE SQUAD, which he co-created with artist Terry Tidwell.
Along with movie historians Michael H. Price and Joey Hambrick, John does a monthly podcast called FORGOTTEN HORRORS. For the past 18 years, he has also hosted a weekly western-swing radio show and writes, co-hosts, and co-produces a weekly TV program, FILM NOIR THEATRE, for public television.
(SLW) Hello John, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your writing career is impressive, to say the least! When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
(JW) I’ve wanted to write ever since I can remember. My grandmother on my father’s side was a writer and poet, so she was a big influence. And there’s a pulp connection there. Daisy Bacon, the editor of LOVE STORIES, once hosted a party for my grandmother in New York. I believe she did some work for the love pulps, but Ms. Bacon’s biographer Laurie Powers and I haven’t found anything under Mary M. Wooley’s name. At least, not yet.
I got my first rejection slip— from THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION — at age 14. At twenty, I sold my first story, a comic-book script for Warren Publishing’s EERIE. It was published in the March 1971 issue. So yeah, I’ve been at it a while.
(SLW) What are your proudest accomplishments as a writer?
(JW) After a half-century of writing, I can’t say that I’ve ever felt any prouder than when I went to my dormitory mailbox at Oklahoma State University in 1970 and pulled out an envelope with a check for 25 bucks from Warren Publications, representing my first sale. I didn’t descend from the stratosphere for days.
(SLW) You’ve been successful in both fiction and nonfiction. Please tell us something about your nonfiction writing career.
(JW) I’ve done a great deal of nonfiction; in fact, it’s pretty much paid the bills. As an entertainment writer for the TULSA WORLD newspaper for 23 years, I learned the not inconsiderable skill of making anyone sound interesting, which has served me very well since I left the newsroom in 2006. I’ve probably done 10 or 12 work-for-hire books — history and biography — in that time, with more on the way.
By the way, while at the WORLD, I was the first person in the world to say in print that Garth Brooks was going to be a star. He’s a good guy, and he’s never forgotten that.
A lot of my nonfiction concerns entertainment — for instance, SHOT IN OKLAHOMA, which deals with the movies shot in my home state. The Oklahoma Historical Society named it Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History for 2011. Because of my nonfiction writing, I’ve been inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame. I was also the first writer to be inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
(SLW) You’ve published in many different genres — mystery, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and biography. Which are your favorite genres and why?
(JW) I love horror and hardboiled fiction the most, as well as entertainment and pop-culture history. Like a lot of pulp fans, I deeply appreciate what cartoonist R. Crumb called “the good old stuff.”
You can see my love of old-school horror in THE CLEANSING trilogy: SEVENTH SENSE, SATAN’S SWINE, and SINISTER SERPENT. My co-author, Robert Brown, and I are both big pulp fans. Not only did we set the story in the 1930s, we consciously referenced pulps all through it.
Otherwise, my pulp-style writing has mostly been concentrated on the Dan Turner character. After editing the first collection of Turner stories in 1983 (with the blessing of his last remaining heir), I wrote four Dan comic books for Eternity Comics and the movie DAN TURNER, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE. They were all based on stories by one of my big pulp heroes, Robert Leslie Bellem. My newest Dan Turner story — in HARD-BOILED CHRISTMAS STORIES — was cut from whole cloth.
(SLW) I’m curious about your connection to Robert Leslie Bellem and Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. Please tell us more about that and how you found Dan Turner’s distinctive voice.
(JW) I could talk about Bellem all day. While I can’t remember the exact first story I read, I remember either trading for or buying several HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE pulps from my fellow fanboy Bart Bush in, I think, the summer of 1968, and being absolutely blown away by the stories. I’d just never read anything like them.
Maybe a decade later, when I got the urge to try and sell a Turner collection, I tracked down Bellem’s brother-in-law in Atoka, Oklahoma, and went down there to do an interview. By the way, he was convinced that Robert Urich’s “Dan Tanna” character in the TV show VEGAS was a knockoff of Turner.
I think I was able to find Dan Turner’s voice simply because I’d read and loved so many of those crazy Bellem stories. I should say that Fries Entertainment, which put up part of the money for the Turner movie, kept trying to tamp down that voice, citing the failure of THE MAN WITH BOGART’S FACE as evidence that people didn’t want their detectives too flippant, or some damn thing. They kept rewriting Turner’s best lines. It was a struggle, and I certainly didn’t win all the time.
(SLW) Have you written other pulp fiction?
(JW) I’ve occasionally done other pulp, like the prose story in Pulp 2.0 Press’s THE TWILIGHT AVENGER graphic novel. It also reprints several of the stories artist Terry Tidwell and I did during the black-and-white comics boom of the 1980s and early ‘90s.
(SLW) Let’s talk about your new trilogy, THE CLEANSING. How did your partnership with Robert A. Brown come about?
(JW) Robert and I go back to the 1960s; we were two of the originators of OAF — the Oklahoma Alliance of Fandom — back then. Some years ago, Robert began writing me letters on 1930s stationery, pretending to be a WPA folklore worker who runs into a big nest of witches in the mountains. Finally, I realized he wanted to write a book with me, and we were off.
(SLW) How has the series been received?
(JW) While we’d always like more sales — thousands instead of hundreds would be nice — the CLEANSING books have been very well-received. Not surprisingly, pulp fans are the ones who really understand what we’re doing.
(SLW) What’s next for you? Can we premiere any juicy John Wooley gossip here?
(JW) Juicy John Wooley gossip? I’d like to tell you that Nicole Scherzinger won’t leave me alone, but the fact is that the only news I can really think of has to do with our Cleansing characters, Robert and John. I’m happy to report that we’re going to be in a new anthology, SHERLOCK HOLMES: STRANGER THAN FICTION, due out this summer from Belanger Books (and edited by my friend and PulpFest regular Ray Riethmeier). We’re also scheduled to be in a holiday novelette collection from Babylon Books, publisher of THE CLEANSING trilogy.
Additionally, OLD FEARS, the horror novel I wrote with Ron Wolfe, is now in “active development” at Sony Pictures Television. It was first published in 1983 and refuses to die.
My thanks to John Wooley for a great conversation! I certainly enjoyed discovering more about him and hope that you will, too. Find out more about John on the following social media:
Website: https://johnwooley.com/
Newsletter: https://johnwooley.com/newsletter/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wooley.john
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnswooley
Forgotten Horrors Podcast: https://forgottenhorrors.podbean.com/
A professional journalist and illustrator with over thirty years of experience, Sara Light-Waller is an accomplished new-pulp fiction author/illustrator with two books out and more on the way. She is also the winner of the 2020 Cosmos Prize for her illustrated short story, “Battle at Neptune.” A huge pulp fan, Sara is especially fond of science fiction pulps. She is also a member of the PulpFest organizing committee, a regular contributor to our homepage and THE PULPSTER, and often reads for PulpFest‘s “New Fictioneers” program.
THE CLEANSING trilogy — published by Babylon Books in 2018 – 2020 — features covers designed by Brian S. Roe. Written by Robert A. Brown and John Wooley, the series unfolds in the form of letters written by Brown to his friend, John Wooley. Set during the Great Depression, the trilogy consciously references pulps throughout its entirety.
HARD-BOILED CHRISTMAS STORIES — with cover art by David Saunders, creator of PulpFest’s Munsey Award — features John Wooley’s original Dan Turner story, “Santa’s Slay Ride,” as well as selected stories “ripped from the moldering pages of the thrill-a-minute magazines of the 1930s and ’40s.”
Wooley became interested in the work of Robert Leslie Bellem during the 1960s, when he acquired some issues of Trojan Publishing’s HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE. Pictured here is the tenth issue of DAN TURNER — HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE. Dated January 1943, it features cover art by H. J. Ward.
