Our afternoon programming schedule at PulpFest 2026 comes to an end with our annual panel featuring contemporary writers of pulp-inspired fiction. Every year, it proves to be our most popular daytime presentation.
We hope you’ll join PulpFest 2026 on Saturday, August 1, at 2:30 pm, as we welcome authors John C. Bruening, Win Scott Eckert, William Patrick Maynard, and Will Murray to our afternoon programming stage, with Jim Beard moderating.
These five contemporary writers of popular fiction will discuss the process of working with intellectual properties that require formal legal permission to avoid copyright infringement. Think Tarzan of the Apes® or the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe™. They’ll also discuss the licensed characters they liked to read before they became writers, how they got their first licensed gigs, the importance to them of tie-in work in general, and how they see the future of such projects.
John C. Bruening, the co-founder of Flinch! Books, is the creator of the critically acclaimed Midnight Guardian pulp hero series. A writing professional for over forty years, with a background in journalism and marketing, Bruening found his niche in evoking the pulp classics of yesteryear. In addition to his work for Flinch! Books and the Midnight Guardian series, John has written tales of Captain Hawklin, the Green Hornet, and Robert J. Mendenhall’s Intrepid series.
Win Scott Eckert is the authorized legacy author of Philip José Farmer’s Patricia Wildman series, as well as the coauthor of the Doc Caliban/Secrets of the Nine novel, The Monster on Hold. A lifelong Edgar Rice Burroughs reader, Eckert wrote the authorized Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe novels, Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar and Korak at the Earth’s Core, with Pellucidar: Land of Awful Shadow andTarzan Unleashed forthcoming. His other professional credits include authorized tales of the Avenger, the Green Hornet, Honey West, the Phantom, Zorro, and other characters.
The licensed continuation author for the Sax Rohmer Literary Estate, William Patrick Maynard is the second of only two licensed Fu Manchu continuation authors since Rohmer’s death in 1959. The author of nearly 300 articles concerning popular culture for numerous magazines and websites, Bill has written Fantomas stories for Black Coat Press, a Metropolis pastiche for Airship 27, Sherlock Holmes adventures for Titan Books, MX Books, and Edge Publishing, and Zorro for Bold Venture Press.
Will Murray has written extensively about Lester Dent’s Doc Savage, as well as countless other pulp and pop culture topics. The literary agent for the Lester Dent properties, he has written over twenty adventures of Doc Savage (with two featuring The Shadow), a solo adventure featuring Pat Savage, four novels about the Popular Publications hero, The Spider, as well as new adventures of Cthulhu, John Carter of Mars, Doctor Death, G-8, King Kong, Operator 5, Secret Agent X, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and more. You can find Will’s books at adventuresinbronze.com.
Our moderator, Jim Beard, became a published author when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time, he’s written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic book stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. His prose work includes the novellas Green Hornet: How Sweet the Sting and Kolchak: The Last Temptation; co-editing and contributing to Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone; a story for X-Files: Secret Agendas; three books of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series and another on Star Trek comics; the Sgt. Janus occult detective series of novels; Monster Earth, a shared-world giant monster anthology series; Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure; and more. Jim also provided regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website, for over seventeen years. He is now the publisher at Becky Books and the co-publisher at Flinch! Books with John C. Bruening. Jim is a regular presenter at PulpFest.
PulpFest 2026 begins on July 30 and runs through August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania. In addition to honoring the centennials of Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories, we’ll also be celebrating the sesquicentennial of writer Jack London’s birth, and more at this year’s convention.
The general public is welcome to attend our programming free of charge. To learn more about our presentations, please click the 2026 Schedule link found on our website.
For those who also want to enjoy our dealers’ room, you can join PulpFest by clicking the register link found on our website. And don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree. They’re going fast!
Remember, in addition to your membership in PulpFest 2026, you’ll also be a member of Doc Con 2026, FarmerCon XXI, and The Shadow Con 2026. That’s four conventions for one price! You can’t beat that deal.
If you’re interested in selling at PulpFest, all of our tables have been reserved. Please write to convention chairman Jack Cullers at jack@pulpfest.com to be added to our waitlist.
Our featured image is excerpted from Mark Wheatley’s dust jacket art for The Monster on Hold, a Doc Caliban and “Secrets of the Nine” novel by Philip José Farmer and Win Scott Eckert. It was published by Meteor House in 2022.
Our lead image was adapted by William Lampkin from Joe DeVito’s original cover art for The Spider: The Grim Gray Ghoul, a novel that is forthcoming from Will Murray.
Our second image is Christine Clavel’s cover art for the first edition of William Patrick Maynard’s The Terror of Fu Manchu, published in 2009 by Black Coat Press.
Our final image is Daniel Horne’s cover for Zorro – The Daring Escapades, edited by Audrey Parente & Daryl McCullough for Bold Venture Press in 2020.
Trademarks Tarzan®, Tarzan of the Apes®, Korak™, John Carter®, John Carter of Mars®, Barsoom®, Edgar Rice Burroughs®, Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe™, ERB Universe™, and Master of Adventure™ are owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Associated logos, characters, names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
