9/17/07

Okay, after years of resistance…here is my very first blog.

Rather than talk about my cruel shoes or how I prefer Peter Pan peanut butter to Jif, this inaugural post will deal with a topic a bit more relevant to my professional life. Later, I’ll get into personal stuff. 

The publication this past May of the 41st Outlanders novel, Skull Throne was significant in a couple of ways...not only did it introduce new concepts into the mix, it brought back a few familiar characters from past books.

But more than that, Skull Throne marked the tenth anniversary of the Outlanders series. Unsurprisingly, that anniversary came and went without acknowledgement from Gold Eagle(my congratulatory Pick-Me-Bouquet must've gone astray).

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, an adventure series that lasts a decade is not much of an accomplishment, but in the world of mass-market paperback publishing, it's pretty remarkable...especially when you take into account that Outlanders has never been promoted outside of the Gold Eagle line itself.

Midlist category fiction has taken a lot of hits over the last twenty years. The time of the ongoing action-adventure series peaked in the early 1990s and has been steeply declining ever since.

The handful of series that came out from other publishers around the same time as the debut of Outlanders are long gone.

As it is, Outlanders had to sink or swim on its own merits. It found its own devoted audience and it's been swimming ever since.

Back in late 1995 when I was contracted to create the series that eventually became Outlanders, I didn't expend much thought on the possibility the series might see ten years of consecutive publication...or that Kane, Brigid Baptiste, Grant, Domi, Lakesh and all of the other characters would become parts of popular culture. 

Of course, what was finally published as Outlanders wasn’t the first concept I submitted. What I initially came up with, ironically enough, was similar to the format/premise of Stargate SG-1, nearly two years before the first episode debuted on Showtime. 

Stargate SG-1 became exceptionally popular and has the distinction of being the longest-lived SF series on TV. It, like Outlanders, lasted a decade.

In light of SG-1’s ongoing popularity, I can’t help but wonder how my original concept (entitled Major Arcana) would have been received if I hadn’t recast it as a post-nuke series with an eleventh hour connection to Deathlands. 

I guess there’s really no way to tell. At any rate, I managed to work a lot of the stuff from Major Arcana into Outlanders over a period of time.

With a decade of hindsight, I've permitted myself to take a certain amount of satisfaction in the series' longevity and fan-following, but more than that, I'm gratified that an audience continues to enjoy sharing the adventures of the Cerberus warriors.

I’m also gratified that Outlanders weathered "re-interpretations" by a fill-in writer that bore no relationship to my (and the fans') vision of the series and characters.

I'm also deeply appreciative of  friends I've made during my career as "James Axler"... people like Ron Miles, who for many years virtually handled the majority of the promotion for both Outlanders and Deathlands, gratis, with his site, JamesAxler.com.

I'd particularly like to thank Chris Van Deelen, who has been an active supporter of Outlanders from its first year onward. He's been a trusted bulwark for a long time now.

More than anyone, I thank my beautiful and talented wife, Melissa, without whom (as I have stated before), Brigid Baptiste would be only a name.

And to all of you, my dedicated readers and fans, I extend a very sincere and heart-felt thank you.