Mark’s long-awaited biography of Robert E. Howard debuted to much fanfare at the World Fantasy Convention, and now it is available for purchase at Amazon.com and other fine bookstores. If you are also planning on buying the new Del Rey Kull volume (and come on, who isn’t?) you can buy both together at Amazon and save some dough.

As it turns out, Blood and Thunder isn’t 400 pages as advertised at Amazon and elsewhere, but only 254. Still, it is chock full of things Howard fans have never seen before. Never-before-seen photos of Hester Howard and Cross Plains, excerpts from the Cross Plains newspaper during Howard’s time, lots of information about the oil booms, Texas history, and the art of the tall tale. The book thankfully has an index, too.

Judging from the comments of various people who have read it, reactions have been largely positive. Even de Camp friend Darrell Schweitzer admitted to me on the last day of the Con that, despite some small errors of fact regarding pulps and such, he found the book an enjoyable and informative read and thought that it brought credit to Howard and the field of Howard studies. The introduction by Joe Lansdale, unlike the wretched Michael Moorcock foreword for the embarrassing Hippocampus REH critical anthology, is appropriately learned and reverent.

At a cost of only $10.85 at Amazon, the first biography on Howard in twenty years deserves to be on every Howard fan’s bookshelf. And with Christmas coming up, it’s a great and inexpensive gift for any Howard fans you may know who might otherwise not know about it. Hopefully this will be the start of a series of biographical treatments of Howard — Lord knows his life was rich and complex enough to support many different interpretations and degrees of focus.

The latest Cross Plains Review contained an unexpected delight: a picture of 96-year-old Lois Garrett enjoying herself at the Cross Plains High School Homecoming. The paper says that she was the homecoming queen for 1928, which was the year before Robert E. Howard finally kicked his pulp writing career into high gear. A bit later that same year, in December of 1928, Howard’s story “Drums of the Sunset” ran in serial form in The Cross Plains Review. Perhaps Lois read it — she once sat down with me and showed me her scrapbook, and among the very first pasted entries was a 1920s Review article that talked of the naming of the school mascot as The Buffaloes, a name still used by them today. The person who chose the name back then? Lois Garrett.

Those of us lucky enough to have attended Howard Days in past years were privy to meet and talk to Lois and her “partner in crime,” the late great Zora Mae Bryant, mother of Jack Baum and heir to the Howard estate. Both were always full of stories and good humor. Lois has been ailing over the past few years, so it’s nice to see her out and about at such a function. She is one of the last living embodiments of the time and place in which Howard lived.

Cross Plains resident James Nichols, in his fascinating look at the history and personages of Cross Plains, On the Banks of Turkey Creek (a book available for purchase at the Cross Plains Library) describes Lois and Zora Mae as living legends in town. Mentioning their ages, he quips “there ain’t enough fingers and toes in the whole family to figure that one up!” The entire book is filled with such folksy humor tied to numerous stories about Cross Plains, including a bit on Howard and several details about some of REH’s closest friends. If it’s not a part of your collection, you need to grab a copy.

PS — In other news, Era Lee Hanke reports that visits to the Howard Museum are still going strong into the fall, with three separate groups in the last week alone. Everyone in Project Pride is looking forward to the visit by attendees of the World Fantasy Convention on November 1. If you are one of the people joining the bus trip and visiting Cross Plains for the first time, you are in for a heck of a treat. Brings lots of pazoors, as the gift shop is pretty packed and you may find yourself dropping a lot of dough on Howard items.

One of the first — and still ranked among the best — websites dedicated to Robert E. Howard just announced the achievement of reaching its tenth anniversary on the web: The Barbarian Keep. The Lord of the Keep, Ed Waterman, was instrumental in spreading Howard’s reputation on the Internet and bringing together like-minded Conan fans. He not only created The Barbarian Keep but also the REHupa website, and then he spent years adding content to both and popularizing them across the Internet. In the wake of Ed’s efforts the membership of REHupa skyrocketed, and thousands of fans were able to rediscover an author many hadn’t read since childhood.

I was one of those people. It was largely Ed’s two sterling sites that rekindled my interest in Robert E. Howard circa 1999, and put me on the long winding path to the editorship of The Cimmerian and to projects like this blog. And it was there that I learned all about the Glenn Lord Legal Defense Fund, the history of the editing and pastiching of Howard, and the existence of genre publications such as The New Howard Reader and The Dark Man. Who knows how many other fans Ed’s efforts have created over the last decade?

Lately Ed’s largely been out of fandom, but interested readers can enjoy his thoughts on Howard’s philosophical leanings in the essay, “The Shadow from a Soul on Fire: Robert E. Howard and Irrationalism,” which appeared in 2004’s The Barbaric Triumph. Lovecraft acolyte S. T. Joshi of “REH was a subliterary hack” fame haughtily singled out “Fire” for particular derision in The Dark Man #8, implying that Howard was de facto incapable of formulating anything resembling a profound philosophical position. Ed’s measured and superbly reasoned response in the following issue remains a classic ass-kicking in the field, one of the most lopsided intellectual battles I’ve ever seen.

All of this is ample reason to celebrate Ed’s decade of internet scholarship. So drop on over to the Keep and visit or revisit the treasure trove of riches to be found within. Here’s looking forward to the next ten years of webmastering excellence from one of the pioneers of Robert E. Howard studies on the Internet.

With the Austin-tatious honoring of REH at the 2006 World Fantasy Convention now as much of a near future mega-event as all those pre-Halloween cable channel reruns of Pumpkinhead, it might be worth our while to revisit some past WFC glories (“Past Award Winners and Nominees” can be clicked on year by year at the bottom of this page), beginning with the very first one, which was held in that reification of H.P. Lovecraft’s soul, Providence, Rhode Island. Robert Bloch surmounted his youthful gibe about sending Conan to cut out paper dolls in Valhalla by copping a Life Achievement Award. Karl Edward Wagner was up for the Short Fiction Award for “Sticks,” as was T.E.D. Klein for “The Events at Poroth Farm,” but both lost to Robert Aickman — no disgrace there. Ian and Betty Ballantine won a Special Award (Professional), and all these years later we can amuse ourselves by imagining that the judges singled out the Ballantines sotto voce for having ensured that Lin Carter would never quite be able to raze his own reputation to the ground and sow said ground with salt. [You can view many pictures from the first WFC here].

In 1976 the WFC moved to New York City, where Fritz Leiber won a Life Achievement Award (The Robert E. Howard of a different space/time continuum would have been only 70 years old and might have been one of the judges, were he not being called up onstage to accept a Life Achievement himself). Leiber also nabbed the Short Fiction Award for one of his best stories, “Belsen Express,” beating out David Drake’s “the Barrow Troll” (How could anyone not warm to a title like “The Barrow Troll”?). Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return defeated Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot for the Novel Award; don’t agree with that at all. Avram Davidson’s The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy edged Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories for the Collection/Anthology Award, and with all due respect to Davidson, Ellison wuz robbed. More gratifyingly, Frank Frazetta won the Artist Award (spare some empathy for the other fantasy artists of that period; Frazetta’s presence would have been rather like letting Achilles compete in a Most Efficient Death-Dealer contest at Troy), and KEW, David Drake, and Jim Groce won a special award (Non-Professional) for Carcosa Press.

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If you recall, back in July I introduced Cimmerian readers to Wikipedia, the enormously popular free encyclopedia online, and encouraged fans to improve Howard’s rather weak entry. Well, exactly zero people took me up on the offer, so eventually I decided to improve it myself. The results are now up at Wikipedia for all to see.

I have included citations for the introductory paragraphs, and will try to add more as time permits. Howard’s biography has grown from a single small blurb that basically stated “He wrote a few stories and then killed himself” to a lengthy biography that attempts to touch on all of the major elements of his career. A Legacy section has been added, along with a Critical Appreciation section.

Most important to me, however, are the opening paragraphs which hit the reader as soon as they click on the page. The full scope of his achievement is presented in a few short paragraphs: “famous writer…creator of a literary icon…inventor of Sword-and-Sorcery…ranked with other great classic American authors.” This is the kind of thing that incoming interested parties should be reading, with citations for everything.

Of course, Wikipedia is a collaborative medium, and everyone who wants to can edit or change anything they want. My original entry has already undergone numerous emendations. A Lovecraft fan named Nareek changed “Conan the Cimmerian” to the less accurate “Conan the Barbarian”, giving the rationale that the character has been known by that appellation since 1954 (and even though Howard has been dead since 1936, and even though Wandering Star’s textual restorations make sure to use “Cimmerian”). A de Camp crone has also dove in and changed all of my fairly neutral yet accurate descriptions to pro-de Camp propaganda, using de Camp’s own technique of subtly altering the wordage to benefit Sprague, the same way Wagner’s Berkley introductions were cleansed. Nareek, who although primarily a Lovecraft fan seems to have taken it upon himself to monitor Howard’s page, deleted some of the de Camp-skewed changes, so the fight is on.

Someone else (I’m guessing [redacted]) added information about the World Fantasy Convention and Mark’s forthcoming biography. It won’t be long now before all of my carefully worded prose will be edited and mangled beyond recognition, some of it an improvement, much of it inaccurate. But that’s the Wikipedia way, and it’s fine by me. If I want my words to remain untouched, I’ll write a book or a personal website. But the important thing is now the REH Wikipedia page has a substantial amount of information on it for people to play with and savor. There’s also a crystal-clear version of the famous REH picture gracing the page, which you can click on for higher-resolution versions.

With luck, people visiting this page to learn about Howard will now leave there being much more informed. So go over, read through the whole works, and if you see something that you think you could improve, click on “edit” and have at it. Maybe read the Wikipedia guidelines first so you aren’t doing more harm than good (i.e. things like including details that are outside of the scope of an encyclopedia, or putting too much of a personal slant on your writing, or listing things that cannot be verified or cited by existing texts.) And if you’re feeling adventurous, create some of the other pages Howard needs there, like a page for your favorite story, or for Howard’s parents, or for his lesser-known friends, or for different editions of books.

I’ve also been seeding Howard into other areas of Wikipedia where I think he deserves to be mentioned. For example, he is now on the list of American autodidacts. He is also listed on the Jack London page as a guy who was influenced by London. The possibilities are almost limitless. I noticed that REH is not listed on the H. P. Lovecraft page in the “influences” section — I don’t want to know what kind of outrage such a move would unleash in Lovecraft-land. In any case, the REH page is now a going concern, nudging him that much higher in the grand scheme of things. Enjoy.

MARK ADDS: Outstanding work, Leo. No, it wasn’t me that added the WFC info, but you will notice my fingerprints on the Sailor Steve Costigan entry.

It’s a strange, strained, overly scripted day in lower Manhattan — how could it not be? Complaining that this culture we’re stuck with is given to hype and hucksterism is about as useful as complaining that the ocean is wet, so instead I’ll mention that the sky is a high-alert hornet’s nest of gunships and newschoppers, but otherwise the precise shade of azure that we’ve come to think of as “September 11 blue.” In the past 5 years the financial district has morphed into a dual-usage, newly residential neighborhood, swarming with young couples towing or being towed by their toddlers and pets — and that’s certainly one in the ‘nads for Thanatos and his cave-dwelling, video-releasing lieutenants.

My co-workers and I have long since finished swapping memories of that morning, so this blog will come in handy. Can’t forget the suddenly de-officed paperwork, more than any previous human civilization could have produced, snowstorming down on us after being converted to confetti by some apocalyptic document shredder. And as long-suffering REHupans can attest, I tend to think in literary allusions and resonances, so that when I try to recall the wordless but oh-so-vocal reaction of the thousands of evacuees and rubber-neckers on Greenwich Street as the second tower despaired of further verticality, it’s the famous first sentence of Thomas Pynchon’s masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow that flashes through my mind: “A screaming comes across the sky.” I associate the tongue-coating taste of the destruction that drove us northward, block after block after block, with Gollum’s rejection of the proffered lembas bread in The Two Towers: “Dust and ashes, we can’t eat that.” Robert E. Howard comes into it, too, what with his prescience about cult-like conspiracies based in Afghan hill-forts, dreaming of globalized murder, or my thoughts of a high school friend who died that morning and the fact that he’s still unavenged. Like so many here, I’d do the avenging myself if granted the chance; some situations just cry out for the Old Testament rather than the New (It occurs to me that part of the genius of “The Dark Man” is that de facto representatives of both — Turlogh and the priest — are allowed to make forceful cases, and neither discredits the other).

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Indiana Bill Cavalier, REHupa’s benevolent dictator and longtime Official Editor, makes it a point to go to the annual Gen Con gaming convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. He’s a hardcore role-player, you see, and Gen Con is the largest gaming convention in the world. This year, however, Indy got a shock when he discovered that Paradox Entertainment has been hard at work planning to host a Robert E. Howard Day next year at the Con, complete with panels, Guests of Honor, and lots of dealers.

Cimmerian readers already have the lowdown from Indy in V3n8 (August, 2006) — if you haven’t snapped up that ish to learn all the details, then as usual you’re missing out on much Howard information. In the meantime, here are high-res copies of both the left and right pages from the Gen Con flyer above announcing the event:

We’ll be posting more information on this blog as it’s learned. Gen Con 2007 is scheduled for August 16-19, so mark your calenders and start saving your lunch money.

Halloween is looking to be extra-special this year. On that Tuesday, Del Rey is slated to release the latest book from the Wandering Star gang, Kull: Exile of Atlantis. Interested readers can visit Dale Rippke’s website Heroes of Dark Fantasy for a listing of the volume’s contents, or cruise on over to Amazon.com to reserve your copy now for only $10.85.

In addition to what should be a serpent-riddled Introduction by this blog’s own Steve Tompkins, the book contains an essay by Patrice Louinet titled “Atlantean Genesis” that is sure to expand on the many textual discoveries already revealed in The Dark Man #6’s “A Short History of the Kull Series.” There are also numerous unpublished fragments, a variant of one of Howard’s best poems — the Kull-themed “The King and the Oak” — and of course a cataclysmic tsunami of illustrations by the talented Justin Sweet. Justin’s work evokes Frazetta more than any of the other Wandering Star artists, and those wishing to see a preview of his work should click over to his website, or visit this page for an in-depth demonstration of how he paints everything on the computer (warning, there are lots of big images that take awhile to download).

Incidentally, for anyone who wants great hi-quality scans of all the Del Rey Howard covers, you can visit their public archive.

What I have been waiting patiently for are the hardcover editions to each of the Del Rey books. It’s been about a year since The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian appeared in hardcover, and since then nada. Back in May of 2005, a Howard fan posted information about a talk he had with Del Rey editor Steve Saffel, wherein Steve states that The Bloody Crown of Conan (a.k.a. Conan II) and The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane each sold only two-thirds the amount that The Coming of Conan did. This might have caused Del Rey to rethink their plans about releasing hardcovers of these titles. I hope not: The Coming of Conan was a great book at a great value, and it would be unfortunate if yet another hardcover set was derailed before it was finished.

How the hell is anyone supposed to blog in this weather?

Don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the woods, but here in LA the heat has been unprecedented — my God, Al Gore was right! One hundred degrees each day, which is bad enough, but the usual soothing ocean breezes that waft through apartments and car windows have failed, too, leaving even strong gusts dry and hot as hell. Unless you have AC — and many people in LA don’t, because you usually never need it — you are screwed. I can only imagine what the good people of Queens and St. Louis are going through.

Meanwhile, the July ish of The Cimmerian is still being put together with less than a week left in the month, and Howard fan Al Lane — who many of you met in Cross Plains at this year’s Howard Days — is in town and staying at Fortress Grin. For the last month Al has been on an ambitious vacation, driving solo from San Antonio westward and staying in campgrounds, each day visiting a plethora of museums, national parks, and events like ComiCon. Over the last few weeks he’s been to Nevada, Oregon, Northern California, and San Diego, and now he’s in the City of Angels, looking to have the kind of fun us pulp fans enjoy. Today was spent traipsing around Hollywood looking for various stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, ones specifically dear to a fan’s heart — Gene Roddenberry, Boris Karloff, Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, etc. We also hit some of the best movie book and memorabilia stores in the world, where after many years of looking Al was able to score some stills from sundry episodes of The Twilight Zone he’s always wanted. Made a pit stop at the Kodak Theater, site of the Academy Awards, where Al was suitably impressed by the gargantuan Babylon decor, stone elephants atop massive pedestals decorated with glyphs. Those of course are from the classic D. W. Griffith film Intolerance (1916), but I like to think of them as “The Towers of the Elephant.” You understand.

After our Hollywood jaunt, we headed over to the home of Rah Hoffman and Donald Sidney-Fryer for hours of pulp talk and book signing. Those two — eighty-five and seventy-two years old respectively — are fountains of knowledge, and have thousands of stories to tell about the old days. Al was thrilled to hear Rah talk of Charles Hornig — editor of The Fantasy Fan and a correspondent of REH’s — coming over to Rah’s house in the ’40s, picking up one of his old copies of Weird Tales, and inhaling deeply of what he thought was the Sweetest Scent in the world — rotting pulps! Rah also told us of his friendship with Robert Barlow, and how he once bought Barlow’s copy of Ebony and Crystal by Clark Ashton Smith for $5. He showed us photographs of his visit to Smith in 1941, the first of several, where he rode from LA to San Francisco in the trunk of a car with none other than Emil Petaja, another corespondent of Howard’s. Emil was the guy who Howard sent his poem “Cimmeria” to, the copy with the now-famous inscription detailing its genesis. He also wrote a wonderful poem dedicated to Howard at his death that was reprinted decades later in Glenn Lord’s The Howard Collector. Rah even showed us the picture CAS took of Rah, perhaps the only known photo composed and shot by Smith himself. Al was most bowled over by Rah’s amazing Hannes Bok painting hanging over his fireplace, an original commissioned by Rah, with Rah giving Hannes the basic gist of the types of characters he wanted represented — a green naked demon lady, a strange bat-like creature — and Hannes taking it from there. All of this neglects the hundreds of other stories and artifacts which Al saw this night, plus he got all of his Smith books signed by DSF.

So even with the heat boiling our blood and frying our brains, the dog days of summer haven’t been a total bust. Tomorrow it’s another day of sightseeing with Al, checking out the La Brea tarpits, the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Natural History Museum, and — as a special treat — I’m taking him to the grave of one of his movie idols, the late great Bela Lugosi. Wednesday Al heads back to Texas, while I knuckle down and get the July issue finished. And hopefully at long last this heat wave will break, once again making it possible to think about blogging.

Stay cool.

As I rush to finish the July issue of The Cimmerian in time to call it a “July Issue,” I find myself not only remembering the stellar first half of the centennial, but also looking forward to the rest of the year. The cornerstone of the next six months will be the World Fantasy Convention in early November. It’s being held in Austin this year, a scant two and a half hours from Cross Plains, and Howard has been chosen as the theme of the convention. If you missed the January birthday bash and the June Howard Days spectacular, perhaps you can make this last Howardian blowout of the year.

For information on the event, head on over to the website set up by the Fandom Association of Central Texas (F.A.C.T.), the hosts and planners of the festivities. There you will find information on registering for the Con, booking hotels, special guests, the Howard bus tour to Cross Plains, and more. If you haven’t read it yet in the Dark Horse Conan comic book, you can download and peruse [redacted]’s short biographical treatment “Robert E. Howard: Lone-Star Fantasist.”

In addition to panels about REH, the show will feature Glenn Lord and Howard artist Gary Gianni, as well as the debut of [redacted]’s new biography Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. Howard fans scheduled to attend include Finn, Rusty Burke, Steven Tompkins, and Darrell Schweitzer among others. Lots to see and do, lots of friends to meet, lots of Howard to discuss and appreciate. As this is a professional con, you will also get to meet many of the authors and editors you have been admiring for years. And hey, if you’ve never been to Cross Plains or Howard Days, here’s your chance to take the bus tour and kill two birds with one vacation.

If you are planning to go and want to carpool or share a room, your best bet is to post on the major Howard email lists: Dennis McHaney’s REH Inner Circle and Terry Allen’s REH Comics Group. Room rates at the Renaissance Hotel (where the con is being held) are fairly steep, even at the convention rate, so if price is an issue search around for one of the many hotels close by — rates at those places can run up to half as cheap.