Princess of Az-Lium?   Well, it's a bit of a gag isn't it.  Princess of Asylum.  You don't have to be crazy to work for them, but it helps.

The first time I did one of these things, it was for a fairly noble purpose.  Bill Hillman was having health problems, and I wrote him a novel to cheer him up.  I’m not sure it did him any good, but he recovered nicely, so I don’t suppose it did him harm.

This one?   Well, it's rather less elevated.  Asylum pictures did its own Princess of Mars, whose trailer I found on YouTube.  I liked it quite a bit.  And, happily, I ended up liking the whole movie.

But you know how it is, some of us got up on our high horses.   Traci Lords as a blonde Princess of Mars?  John Carter as a modern soldier?  The green men didn't have enough arms, the thoats didn't have enough legs, Traci Lords was too old for the part, and besides she was a skank, yadda yadda yadda.

Look, I'm as much of a nerd as the next Trekky.  Hell, I'm a bigger nerd.  I am the uber-nerd.  But at some point, people have to get a grip.

I don't know where the idea came from really.  I think it was cussedness, a reaction to the purism of it all.  Or maybe at some level, I have this gentlemanly instinct, and I don't like to see women, including Traci Lords, disparaged in such an ugly way.  It probably was that simple.

I was willing to accept a blonde Princess of Mars, what the hell, eh.   Of course, a blonde Princess would have to be an Orovar...  The ancient vanished white race of Mars, generally considered, but not quite extinct.  And an Orovar Princess, well, to be a Princess, she'd need a whole lost city, wouldn't she?

Why not call her Tay See Lors, a small tribute to the actress?  Which would give me a face and a voice to write a character around.  And why not make her an actress of some sort?   The whole 'Xena/Buffy, Warrior Woman' thing had been done to death.  I thought it would be more fun to have Tay See Lors surviving by her wits and acting talent, rather than being handy with a rapier.

Of course, if I was doing these little in-jokes, why stop there.  Why not have Anthony Sabato Jr. show up as a hidden Earthman on Mars, Ton Sabat (though him I left a soldier)?  Chacko Vadaketh becomes Vadak Eth, and so on.  And why not use Asylum movies for chapter titles?  Sometimes I got silly, the horn-headed, tusked Tars Tarkas, played by Matt Lasky got renamed Aspar Aguus, you can figure it out for yourself.  Oh, and I threw in all sorts of references and in jokes, references to the Mars novels of Otis Adelbert Kline, Leigh Bracket, Lin Carter as well as Burroughs.  Have fun spotting them.

In the end, it’s a strange little hybrid, conceived as a sort of reproof, sprung as a gag, but evolved into what I think is quite a good little adventure novel.   So good, I think, that I might just redo it sometime as a more mainstream fantasy.  Who knows.

My only reservation is that some of the people at Asylum might not have the same sense of humour.  Traci Lords might not appreciate being rendered as a fiction character, though Tay See Lors comes off quite well.  On the other hand, I’m a bit worried that Antonio Sabato, Jr., may want to turn me into a pretzel if he ever gets close enough.  And people like Paul Bales or Mark Atkins might not appreciate my misuse of them.  Sorry, as part of the gag, I’ve just stolen a lot of names and titles, no harm is meant.  For the record, Paul Bales is probably not a sadistic but brilliant one-eyed desert pirate.

As with Torakar, this novel is a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and to marvelous imaginary shared Mars that he and other writers concocted, and to the whole world of pulp writing.   I promise two chapters a week, heroines, heroes, villains and monsters, lost races, adventure, derring do, romance and all that good stuff, in the grand old style.

So climb on, fasten your seat belt, and welcome aboard for the wild ride.  Next stop: Barsoom.