Alan J. Porter's Blog

2025 was a year like no other in my career so far when it comes to the number of books containing my words released into the wild over a given year. Not one, not two, but six titles.

Bristol Brabazon: The Ocean Liner of the Skies and its Ongoing Legacy (Air World)

No disrespect to the other titles on this list, but this is the one that means the most to me. My chance to tell a story I’ve been wanting to tell for 30 years. The research was a combination of a journey down memory lane to the early days of my career, along with a voyage of discovery in various archives. The added bonus was the fantastic group of aviation experts I met along the way. I never tire of telling the Brabazon’s story and its impact on modern aviation each chance I get, and this book let me do that. The launch signing at the Aerospace Bristol museum at the Brab’s home airfield was a highlight of the year too.

Saloons, Jungles, and City Streets (Lemon Hog)

For years, my friend, and occasional co-author and editor, Rick Klaw, had been telling me I should do a collection of my historical adventure short stories, but I could never figure out a theme – until I realized that a group of them all fit in a common time frame. Revisiting the adventures of Allan Quatermain and Sherlock Holmes was fun, while adding in new work featuring Bill Hickok and Johnny Ringo just gave the collection another flavor to open with. Proud to see this one come together. – Thanks for the prodding, Rick.

Masked Rider: Tales of the Wild West Vol. 4 (Airship 27)

The Bill Hickok stories included above first appeared in this anthology of Western tales. This was my first published Western, and it was an honor to be included and add another genre to the list.

Jack of All Comics (Becky’s Books)

It’s always an honor to be included in one of editor Jim Beard’s excellent pop-culture essay collections. This volume on influential comics artist and creator Jack Kirby was a perfect excuse for me to revisit some of his seminal work. In particular, his run on Marvel’s Machine Man – a character I felt was Kirby’s own personal avatar, reflecting his thoughts and ideas during the early 1970s on the page in a way that only Kirby could.

Outside In: Can Live With It  (ATB Publishing)

I really enjoy contributing to these Outside In volumes, having now participated in the recent Doctor Who themed one, plus the three Star Trek volumes of which this one, covering Deep Space Nine, is the latest. My contribution this time is a look at the Bond pastiche episode “Our Man Bashir.”

Shakespeare Adjacent (2 Jokers)

I’ll admit I have a thing for the Bard, so I jumped at the chance to participate in this anthology of Shakespeare tales told in a new way. It was also a chance to play around with an idea I’d had floating around for a while – What if Henry V was a space opera? The result, my short story, “Non Nobis Solum,” is my attempt to answer that question. 

Thanks to all my publishers for their faith in my words, as well as their support during the creative process. It’s been a blast.

I’m delighted to announce that I have signed a contract with McFarland Books to research and write “Too Many Bonds: The Making of Casino Royale ’67” (provisional title).

This will be the story of the strangest James Bond film ever made where the behind-the-scenes drama eclipsed the on-screen.
We aim to get the book out around the film’s 60th anniversary in spring 2027.

I’ll be posting updates on the progress of the project in my newsletter, which you can subscribe to HERE.

I’m delighted to announce that I have signed a contract with McFarland Books to research and write “Too Many Bonds: The Making of Casino Royale ’67” (provisional title).

This will be the story of the strangest James Bond film ever made where the behind-the-scenes drama eclipsed the on-screen.
We aim to get the book out around the film’s 60th anniversary in spring 2027.

I’ll be posting updates on the progress of the project in the monthly James Bond Lexicon newsletter, which you can subscribe to HERE.

If you enjoy the occasional blog posts here on my website, or would just like to keep up with what I’m working on, my thoughts on various books, movies, comics and more I now have a weekly newsletter that will provide all of that.

Can’t See The Forest is a new newsletter available on Substack, or direct to your email InBox with a FREE subscription.

Each edition of the newsletter will have one or more stories or updates inspired by what I’ve been working on, or things that have caught my attention during the week. 

You can check it out and sign up for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION just by clicking HERE

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If you enjoy the occasional blog posts here on my website, or would just like to keep up with what I’m working on, my thoughts on various books, movies, comics and more I now have a weekly newsletter that will provide all of that.

Can’t See The Forest is a new newsletter available on Substack, or direct to your email InBox with a FREE subscription.

Each week the newsletter will have one or more stories or updates inspired by what I’ve been working on, or things that have caught my attention during the week. 

They will fall (sometimes loosely) into one or more of the following categories.

Brabazon Bits – updates and side notes while working on the “Bristol Brabazon: Lost Airliner of the Skies” bookPages and Screens – Thoughts on things read and watchedWord Slinging – Updates on various writing projectsPodcast Procrastinations – Updates on my adventures in podcastingWeekly Web Round-up  – Summary of stuff I’ve inflicted on the internet over the previous seven days.

You can check it out and sign up for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION just by clicking HERE

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After two years of work, the completed manuscript for my upcoming book on the majestic Bristol Brabazon is now in the hands of the publisher. They will work their magic to turn my prose into something we can hold in our hands and flick through actual pages.

Assuming everything goes to schedule Bristol Brabazon: The Ocean Liner of the Skies and its Ongoing Legacy will be published on 30 MAY 2025 in the UK and 30 JULY 2025 in the US.

It’s also available for pre-order on the Amazon UK, and Amazon US sites, as well as at Bookshop.org

Our intention is that the content on this website and in the weekly CAN’T SEE THE FOREST newsletter will always be FREE. Still, if you enjoy what you read here, or any other places I hang out online, and feel you would like to contribute, you can now leave a tip over at our new Ko-Fi page.

It’s new book time with the launch of GALLOPING AROUND THE COSMOS – a fun collection of recollections of first encounters with STAR TREK from a fine collection of today’s grown-up kids.

My own small contribution looks back at what it was like to discover the final frontier in the colorful pages of British comics six months before the show actually aired on the BBC.

You can pick up a copy for that empty slot on your bookcase right HERE.

This weekend, August 4 – 6, it’s time for return visit to one of my favorite conventions, ArmamdilloCon right here in Austin, TX.

Come along and escape the heat and join me for the following sessions:

Friday, August 4thStarship Smackdown – 4pmSaturday, August 5thSigning session – 11:00amThe MCU: What Was Phase IV? What Is Phase V? – 1:00pmWriting for Existing Franchises – 2:00pmReading – 4:30pmInsert Archvillain Here – 8:00pmThe Panel With No Subject – 9:00pmSunday, August 6th60 Years of Doctor Who – 10:00amAI Will Murder Us All In Our Beds – 1:00pm

This year we will also be set up in the Dealers Room where we will have a great selection of books, paperbacks, and graphic novels for sale under our FOREST COMICS & BOOKS banner. So stop by and pick up a few bargains to sustain your reading habit over the weekend.

It seems that I get around to doing these “Books That Made Me” posts on an infrequent basis. Well, this is the final one in the series and we round out the journey through my reading habits with some interesting choices.

If you want to check out the previous entries before we dive in you can find them here:

What I was currently reading, and a book that changed my life,A book I wish I’d written, and a book that influenced my writing,A book that changed my mind, and the last book to make me cry.The last book to make me laugh, and a book I couldn’t finish.A book I’m ashamed not to have read, and the book I give as a gift.

We kick this final round off with a real blast from the past –

My Earliest Reading Memory.

That’s very difficult to pinpoint accurately as there were always books around when I was growing up, but one book stands apart from the others in my memory. Tootles The Taxi.

A classic British children’s rhyming book from the always reliable Ladybird Books. I blame this slim volume for my life-long fascination with motor vehicles. There was something about the sequence of short rhymes, each dedicated to a particular type of vehicle that really stuck with me. And I always found the drawings of the anthropomorphic cars and trucks with their smiling faces comforting (funny how decades later I came back to that with my work on the CARS comics series – that connection only just occurred to me.) I have a more modern edition on the bookcase that my amazing wife bought for me one Christmas, but it’s that original early mid-1950s edition shown above that I’ve always remembered.

A Book I Think is Underrated

I’m not sure how the follow-up book to a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel can be “underrated,’ but Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr seems to one that is flying under most people’s radar – until they’ve read it. And then they just keep talking about it. We had a copy sitting on the table in our library for a year before I got around to reading it (despite Gill’s numerous hints that I should pick it up), but once I did I was blown away by it.

The best I can do is quote my own book review on Instagram.:

Simply put, this is one of the most brilliantly written and intricately plotted novels I’ve ever read. An absolute masterpiece in storytelling. I’ve never ploughed through a 600 page work of fiction so quickly. I felt a pang each time I had to step away from its pages to go do something else.

On the surface it’s a multi-plot story of the 15th century siege of Constantinople, a small town library in contemporary Idaho, and the inhabitants of a generational starship whose lives and fates are all interlinked by an Ancient Greek text.

Reach beneath that surface and it’s an examination of the impact of technology, the misuse of power, and social engineering. For the characters it’s a tale of self-discovery, hope, desire, family, trust, hope, and redemption all pulled together by a common thread of conjunction, coincidence, and connections.

But above all this is a book about the power and lasting legacy of books and storytelling.https://www.instagram.com/p/CnicAeEMHdo/

I’ve just recommended this to the fellow members of my book club – who again seemed unaware of its existence – and it will be our June selection. I’ll be interested to see what they make of it.

My Comfort Read

I didn’t have a moment’s hesitation in picking this book, and it seems a suitable one on which to round out this series. There’s only one book I pick up to reread on a regular basis every three to four years. It’s been a constant source of inspiration, wonder, and yes, comfort ever since I first read it during my college days.

Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece – DUNE.

And unlike Tootles The Taxi, I still have my original copy.