Writing Report -- May 1, 2026

I apologize for missing most of the Fridays in April but I was recovering from a nasty cold / bronchial illness that hit me just as we were returning from a three week trip to New Zealand.

New Zealand, by the way, is an incredible place and I plan to write about it at length…eventually.  But being as sick as I was, I wasn’t able to get caught up on all the stuff I needed to let lay lax while we traveled, and then news things popped up that demanded more immediate attention, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

On top of that I have two novel first drafts I need to start editing and research I need to complete on another novel that’s anxious to be born.

Normally I post twice a week here:  A factoid / flash fiction on Tuesdays and a non-fiction piece (which includes poetry) on Fridays.  The Tuesday fictoids are scheduled for several weeks to come, no problem there, but I was only able to schedule enough non-fiction posts to cover the period we would be in New Zealand, anticipating I’d have plenty to write about when I got back.

Well…I do…but the best laid-schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley, as the poet once penned.  So here we are.

. . .

I do want to post a brief memorial to Gerry Conway (1952 – 2026).  While I became familiar with Gerry’s work long before I met him, I really enjoyed working with him and his first wife / occasional co-writer Carla on the G. I. Joe series.  Our orbits intersected frequently for several years after that but then health problems began plaguing him and we would only see each other face-to-face at the occasional convention.

Fortunately we stayed in touch through the miracle of the Internet and it was always a joy to touch base with him every couple of weeks, even if only to exchange a couple of lines.

As they say in the song, you never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Gerry wrote in a variety of media and genres, but he was always serious about what he wrote, even for lighthearted fare such as My Little Pony.  He took a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders for creating the Punisher for Marvel comics, originally a sympathetic villain but a villain nonetheless.  He felt dismayed by the public’s perception of the Punisher as an anti-hero, especially when some police officers -- who should be the natural born antithesis of the Punisher -- adopted his skull logo as a not-so-secret code for other officers more interested in exceeding their authority than in protecting the community. 

He regularly railed against them and was no doubt appalled that Kash Patel sells sneakers with the Punisher logo on them as merch to line his own pockets.

R.I.P., Gerry.

© Buzz Dixon