Hi, Electric Team co-creator Leighton Connor here. You may only be familiar with my comics work, but I also write short stories sometimes. For instance, right now I’ve got two stories on sale on Amazon, called The Rosamund Trap and The Flaxman’s Anomaly. Both are stories of Ross Fulton, Occult Detective. “The Rosamund Trap” tells the story of how Ross comes out of retirement and meets his new assistant, Ted; “The Flaxman’s Anomaly” is about Ross and Ted tracking down a ghost at their local superstore. Each story is only 99 cents. So affordable!

 

        


A Few Words on the Existence of Ross Fulton

Some people have noticed that, when I mentioned these stories on social media, a fellow named Ross Fulton sometimes comments. So I would like to clarify that, yes, I have a real life friend named Ross Fulton. Many years ago, I was thinking about how Ian Fleming named his famous spy after the ornithologist James Bond, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny to name a fictional detective after Ross Fulton?” I don’t know, there was something about the name I liked.

At first I thought only the name would be the same, but as I wrote the story, details of Ross’s life crept in—at the time, the real Ross lived in Marietta, and delivered pizza, and so the fictional Ross did, too. The story ended up with a lot of references to reality. However, you don’t have to know Ross to understand the story; it was never intended as just an in-joke, and fictional Ross makes perfect sense on his own.

As I continued to write these stories, the fictional Ross Fulton developed more in my mind, so that the stories are about this imaginary detective much more than they are references to the real person. I never asked real life Ross what his opinion was on department stores, for instance, before deciding on fictional Ross’s (he loves them). Fictional Ross is kind of a jerk, because that makes the stories more entertaining, but this is not a commentary on real Ross. Please do not assume that anything in these stories reflects him or his life. I haven’t seen real Ross in years; he’s living in Chicago now, and I wish him all the best. Since I did use elements of his life in creating the fictional Ross,  I asked for his permission before I started releasing the stories on Kindle, and I am going to be giving him a cut of the profits, should there be any. So don’t worry, Ross is not being exploited in this situation.