POP-A-LOOZA: AMAZING HEROES My Secret Origin As A Freelance Writer

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post looks back at my brief tenure with the first magazine to ever pay me for freelance writing, a comic book fan magazine called Amazing Heroes.

I've reprised a couple of my Amazing Heroes pieces as blog posts here: a history of the 1960s DC Comics series The Secret Six (my first freelance sale, written, sold, and published in 1984) and "Who's...WHO?!," an A-Z romp through some lesser-known DC characters. My AH experience was part of my freelance reminiscence "Money For Words," and it's a key element in The Road To GOLDMINE, my memoir of trying to survive the '80s, and the start of my twenty years (1986-2006) as a contributor to Goldmine magazine. Comics AND rock 'n' roll--I'm a Renaissance pundit.

I'm still writing, of course; maintaining a daily blog is evidence of that, right? I made my first fiction sales in 2019. In 2021, I finished writing my first book, a non-fiction work about music. That book has a tentative publication date in late 2022. My other big project, the long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), is nearly done--a mere seven chapters (out of 175 +) shy of a complete first draft--but needs professional representation to get to a publisher. I will be shopping for an agent in the new year.

Every story starts somewhere. My story as a freelance writer began in 1984, when I made my first sale to a magazine about comic books. My freelance debut as a contributor to Amazing Heroes serves as the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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