Return with us to those halcyon days of yesteryear, when writers of pulp fiction made a precarious living-sweating out plot details, trying to make their hackneyed characters seem fresh, working insane hours, often typing until their fingers bled. And usually for just a penny a word. In this collection of articles from vintage writer's magazines, those journeymen scribes explain how-and why-they did it. Represented in these pages are pulp fiction's leading lights: Lester Dent, Frank Gruber, Frederick Davis, H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many more. The tips they presented to aspiring fiction writers are, for the most part, still applicable today. And they make fascinating reading, bringing back to life a long-gone phase of American popular culture.