Robert J. Hogan (author)

Robert Jasper Hogan (1897-1963) was an American author, mainly of pulp fiction and later western fiction. He is notable as the creator of G-8, published by Popular Publications. Unlike other pulp authors, all his works appeared under his own name rather than house pseudonyms.

Robert Jasper Hogan was born in Buskirk, New York on 4 June 1897. The son of a Dutch Reformed Minister, the family name was changed from Van Hoogen. His education began in Schenectady and led through Blair Academy prep school in New Jersey to graduation from St. Lawrence University. In the summer of 1917, he and a friend trekked west to Colorado for some cow-punching and ranch life. The name of that ranch was the G-8.

While in Denver, Hogan was photographed in the newspaper as being the first man in the area to take the new Air Service examination. After enlistment in January 1918, he took ground school at Cornell and was sent to Eberts Field, near the small town of Lonoke, Arkansas, for flight training.

Discharged after the Armistice, Hogan took post graduate work at Harvard and eventually reentered aviation. The late 1920s found him a sales manager and airplane demonstrator for the Curtiss-Wright Corp. in Syracuse. Operations manager of that branch office was Harold O. Nevin. While an Air Service squadron commander in France, Nevin had done some intelligence work due to a facility in French acquired during boyhood near the Canada–US border. He had picked up the sobriquet “Bull” for his football fame at Syracuse.

Nevin was also a good story-teller and often enthralled the imaginative Hogan with tales of his wartime adventures. When visiting Nevin’s home, Hogan and his wife were both impressed by a photograph on the wall showing three American officers striding abreast along a Paris boulevard. With their Sam Browne belts, boots and swagger sticks, there was an essence of brotherhood and elan that was inspiring, despite the casual agent of war. One of the three was Bull Nevin; and another was named “Nippy” Westover — prototypes of the soon-to-be-created “Bull” Martin and “Nippy” Weston.

Airplane salesmen were expendable after the 1929 collapse, and Hogan soon found himself placed upon his mettle. To fill a leisure moment, he read one of the new aviation pulp magazines. Afterwards, he is reported to have said, “Hell, I can write better than that!” and a short while later he sold his first story to WINGS for $65.00.

Moving from Florida to Manhattan, to be near the pulp markets, he found a jungle of competition. Nearly 300 writers lived around New York and an estimated 1000 others mailed in manuscripts from around the world. Hogan’s main effort was among the half-dozen air story magazines, although he did write sport and western stories to broaden his earning stance. Noting the quality of Popular Publications air magazines, he was determined to become one of their regular writers. In 1932 he succeeded with Smoke Wade.

...
Wikipedia