Apropos to my last post is news that Cross Plains Universe, the book of Howardian-themed stories written by Texans and given away at the World Fantasy Convention, has become a hot item on eBay, with each copy offered being sold for $35-$40. For those of you who want a copy, especially one signed by many of the writers who attended the con, keep your eyes peeled. One copy was recently offered with a “Buy It Now” price of $25, and someone snapped it up right away.

Those of you who read The Cimmerian will be privy to a behind the scenes story in November about how the book almost was derailed at the last minute by Paradox Entertainment lawyers on the warpath. All week at the convention I heard various stories about the incident, and it soured a lot of people on Paradox’s stewardship of the Howard legacy. With luck it was a one-time faux pas, and in the future the newly formed REH foundation will help to prevent such things from happening.

UPDATE: Paradox’s Licensing Manager Leigh Stone writes in to say that the sundry stories floating around the con about the production of the book were “entirely untrue,” while Rusty Burke assures me that Paradox “bent over backwards” to help with the book and hence have been unfairly mis-characterized as bad guys in this scenario. This flatly contradicts the numerous anecdotes we all heard at the con, so I’ll be sure to include the Paradox/REH Foundation side of things in the TC trip report as well.

UPDATE #2: The WFC people have announced that they have extra copies of this book, which can be had for $19 here. Of course, if you want the signed copies, you’ll still have to haunt eBay.