Just got the Cross Plains Review from early February in house, and fellow blogger [redacted] made the front page with news of his then-impending talk about his new Howard biography. The text of the article, written by Project Pride newshound and Cimmerian contributor Arlene Stephenson, is available at the Cross Plains Library website, and is reprinted below with relevant hyperlinks.

MEET THE AUTHOR FEATURES MARK FINN
Cross Plains Review, Thursday February 8, 2007

The popular Meet the Author series sponsored by the Cross Plains Public Library will feature [redacted] next Tuesday, February 13. 7:00 p.m. at the Community Center.

Although Finn, who now lives in Vernon, was born in Abilene, he admits to spending most of his formative years in exotic locations like Sweetwater, Maryneal, Brownwood, and of course. Cross Plains!

As an early and precocious reader, Mark discovered the writings of Robert E. Howard at age 12. Like so many, he became hooked for life. Icing on the cake to the young reader was to discover that Howard had grown up and written his many adventure stories from Finn’s own back yard. As a result of his life long interest in Howard’s wide variety of stories and poetry, Finn has become a frequent visitor, and is one of our top ambassadors who is always quick to tout Cross Plains to the world.

Finn decided at an early age that he wanted to become a writer when he “grew up.” He laughs that his “earliest fiction has thankfully been lost to the winds of time, and no tears will be shed for them.” However, those early efforts did have value as he continues to hone his writing skills from past efforts.

To date, Finn has two books of fiction and hundreds of articles, reviews and short stories to his credit. He also does double duty as the Creative Director for the Violet Crown Radio Players, where he writes, directs and occasionally performs old time radio scripts. His original audio theater version of King Kong was recently nominated for a B. Iden Payne award for best sound production.

Since 1995, Finn has been a regular attendee of the annual Robert E. Howard Days. Right here in Cross Plains, he met a number of colorful people from around the world who would later become his friends and fellow scholars in the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. Like many of these scholars, he agrees that Robert Howard’s greatest gift to Cross Plains was worldwide recognition.

In 1998. Finn became part of the writer’s collective known as Clockwork Storybook. along with Bill Willingham, Chris Roberson and Matthew Sturges. They produced a number of stories and books before disbanding in 2001. Among their more interesting accomplishments was a special online REH tribute issue, wherein all of the stories written for the month dealt in some way with an original REH manuscript — a manuscript that was digitally provided with the generous help of the Cross Plains Public Library, of course.

By 2004, Finn was getting serious about compiling a biography of Howard and was once again working with Roberson and MonkeyBrain Books. The two-year project is now in publication as Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard and is gaining publicity as the first book-length biography written on the famous Texas author in over twenty years. Over the years, Finn has brought approximately 30 people to Cross Plains in the interest of showing them his favorite author’s old stomping grounds. Among them was his wife, Cathy Day of the Violet Crown Radio group, who commented on their drive back to Austin, “You know, it’s really frustrating to me that Howard isn’t being appreciated as a Texas author.” The Library is proud to note that Cathy’s comment is the premise of Finn’s coming visit — to discuss Howard as a Texas author influenced by Texas history, economy and environs.

Although this event is free to the public, donations are always welcome. Refreshments will be served as patrons mix and mingle and visit with Finn, who will gladly autograph books. Call the library at 254-725-7722 for more information about the evening.

Submitted by Arlene Stephenson

I didn’t know anything about the Clockwork Storybook REH tribute, Mark will have to enlighten us about that at some point.

The Cross Plains Library website is well worth exploring for Howard fans. Researchers wanting copies of the REH typescripts in the Library’s holdings can check out their acquisition PDF here. They also have some choice REH items for sale, so check out the For Sale page. I can also recommend another book on that page, On the Banks of Turkey Creek by James Nichols, which relates his growing up in Cross Plains only a few years after Howard’s time and contains much of interest for fans of Howard who want to learn more about that community and the people Howard knew, such as Lindsey Tyson and Dave Lee. You also might want to acquire copies of the Cross Plains Oral History Project, which has captured the reminiscences of such people as Jack Scott, Zora Mae Bryant, Lois Garrett, and Troy Crockett, all names familiar to attendees of the annual REH Days due to their first-hand experiences with the Howard family during the 1930s. And Charles Rodenberger, known for the part he played in the very first Howard Days (an event which Bill Cavalier covered at length for The Cimmerian, in V3n6‘s “How Robert E. Howard Saved My Life”) has a series of book reviews on the site, including one on the Robert E. Howard 1970s paperback collection The Last Ride. It’s an interesting review because it addresses some of the antipathy felt towards Howard by factions of the populace of Cross Plains who decry his treatment of bloodthirsty barbarians as heroes.

Perhaps the most gratifying detail in this morning’s coverage of the box office brawn of Zack Snyder’s 300 is the news that in Greece the film demolished records for a March opening. Gotta say, though, the part of me that has always taken the outcome of the Peloponnesian War personally can’t help wishing for a few riots at midnight screenings in downtown Athens.

Meanwhile still no word on audience reactions in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Qom…

Most of us will recognize the following:

There is not one foot of British ground, not one handsbreadth of soil in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales that has not been drenched with blood — my own blood — the same that courses through my veins. In every war, I have had kin on both sides.

All over the Isles they have marched and countermarched, fought, bled and died, or conquered — men whose blood is in me: Gael, Briton, Saxon, Dane, Norman; Irishmen, Scotchmen, Englishmen.

Along comes an Oxford geneticist, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, to assert that all of the Britannia-bloodying tribes and peoples Howard listed were in fact “immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers who first ventured into the chilly, empty lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.” His article “Myths of British Ancestry” serves as a calling card for his 2006 book The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story , which occasioned a New York Times article this week, “A United Kingdom? Maybe” by Nicholas Wade.

For Oppenheimer, author of the earlier Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World, the British Isles are “a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age.” He regards the notion of “a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the center of the continent, which shrank to a Western rump” once the legions marched north and westward, as hopelessly outmoded, and drop-kicks “migrationism,” that war-fueled motor of “The Hyborian Age,” on the basis of fact-gathering employing Y chromosomes and maternally bequeathed mitochondrial DNA. Prior to its repopulation by far-striding Iberians, Oppenheimer posits an unpeopled Britain “wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years.” (But can we be sure? What about the ancestors of the Worms of the Earth?) He speculates that the possibly non-Celtic Belgae who straddled the Channel may have been responsible for English as “a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion,” and draws upon the work of Dr. Peter Forster of Anglia Ruskin University, who, as the NYT article puts it, sees “the Angles and the Saxons [as] both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule.” Ahem–score one for Robert E. Howard!

(Continue reading this post)

Over at the REHupa blog not-quite-elder-statesman and pulphound-of-Tindalos Morgan Holmes debuted yesterday with a post entitled “A Howard Fan’s Journey Into the 21st Century: Part 1.” When I got to know Morgan in the mid-Nineties, he steered me to [redacted]’s five-novel Bard series (along with David Drake’s The Dragon Lord the most efficacious methadone with which to treat an addiction to Cormac Mac Art) and “Death’s Friend,” arguably the single best story Charles R. Saunders has written about Imaro; I steered him to David Gemmell. As Howard fans are in the habit of doing we also swapped origin stories, and Morgan’s was an eye-opener for me. Happening along in the wake of the baby boom, he essentially skipped the Sixties and that portion of the Seventies that preceded the proto-purist epiphany of the Berkley Conan collections. He had in a sense to double back later on to read Conan the Buccaneer and Conan of the Isles in the Ace reprints–O happy youth, to have Karl Edward Wagner cater his very first Cimmerian-themed party, one that wasn’t crashed by the emetic Sigurd of Vanaheim. To this day Morgan is not spirited away to a rec room reverie of Watergate hearings and Elton John singles the way some of us are whenever Barry (Windsor-)Smith’s tour de force work on “Red Nails” (The decidedly non-vegan stegosaur! That Tolkemec!) is mentioned, and he has no strong opinions about Roy Thomas either way, although my guess is the sword-and-sorcery savant in him might have enjoyed Conan the Barbarian fare like the two-part Elric guest-shot, the John Jakes-plotted issue, the adaptations of Norvell Page’s Flame Winds, a David A. English story, and Gardner Fox’s Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse, or Thomas’ “Shambleau”-homage “The Garden of Death and Life.”

So the at least slightly atypical route that Morgan took to the Road of Kings prompts reflection that Time’s winged–and scythed–chariot has cut down the vanguard that met Robert E. Howard in the pulps as surely as it took the World War One veterans who still turned out for the Memorial Day parades of my childhood. The (few thousand?) readers who were initiated by the Gnome Press Conans can’t be far behind them. Assuming the Del Rey editions stay in print or at least serve as the template for subsequent re-launches, as the years drift or whiz by, for an eventual majority of Howard fans the jeremiads and j’accuses about posthumous collaborations, the “cut from the same cloth” generalization, Prince Conn, Juma the Kushite, Conan the Conqueror-versus-The Hour of the Dragon, and of course “The Treasure of Tranicos: Felony or Misdemeanor?” will be as distant and difficult to grasp as the Arian heresy and the Albigensian Crusade are for us. Not that the hoped-for traffic jam on the Road of Kings is likely to turn into a garlanded, starry-eyed, singing-from-the same-hymnal pilgrimage; the paradigm for Howard fans (except, overwhelming anecdotal evidence suggests, at Howard Days) will almost certainly remain Breck Elkins and buffalo hunters forced to “share” the same saloon…

Those of you who have been enjoying the Cimmerian Blog over the past year will be gratified to know that a brand new full-fledged blog has debuted over at REHupa.com. Three longtime stalwarts of that fine organization — Official Editor Bill “Indy” Cavalier and former Official Editors Morgan Holmes and Rusty Burke — have taken over the reins of the day-to-day management and updating of that site. That trio is set to feed you regular doses of Howardiana — news, reviews, and esoteric arcana from their secret Howard vaults. Between the three of them they have well over fifty years of Howard experience under their belt, so you know you’ll be getting some good stuff.

Indy has already popped up the first post titled “The Blog of Black Indy,” which introduces the bloggers and gives us some details on all the Howard events you should be planning for this summer. Meanwhile Rusty told me that he has some miscellaneous stuff tucked away in The Burkives that he’ll be sharing with you soon, so keep a lookout for that.

In case it’s not obvious, this is a Really Cool Thing. Having a second blog out there dedicated exclusively to Robert E. Howard should create a lot of back-and-forth between our blog and theirs, with posts from one side generating interesting responses and additional information from the other. It’s the kind of friendly competition which spurs everyone on to greater productivity, and ultimately creates a much more dynamic online presence for Robert E. Howard. I know of very few authors of any stripe or level of success that has two blogs dedicated exclusively to their life and work.

When you stop to think about it, it’s yet another way that Two-Gun Bob is proving himself to be more than capable of handling any amount of thought and scholarship people care to undertake on his behalf. I always hear people from outside the Howard field say, “Don’t you ever run out of things to write about REH?” Well, let’s see — REHupa’s been in existence for thirty-five years straight, there are several regular Howard magazines cranking out new material, there’s a yearly Howard festival with panels and tours, there’s panels at conferences like the Popular Culture Association shindigs, and there are endless books, fanzines, and reprintings of his writing.

No, I don’t think we’ll be running out of things to talk about anytime soon.

In fact, I’m hoping that this is the beginning of a trend. So far we have a Cimmerian blog, a REHupa blog, and a REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog, not to mention other Howard-related sites like Bill Thom’s Coming Attractions blog. I would think that it’s only a matter of time before The Dark Man gets their online act together and starts a blog for the REH academics, or that Paul Herman adds a blog to Howard Works and populates it with an assortment of Howard heavyweights. The more the merrier. As it is we are so much more alive than our sister fandom of Lovecraft studies that it’s scary, but if a few more fans get into the act, who knows what heights of scholarship and entertainment can be achieved online?

So bookmark REHupa.com and add it to the REH sites you stop by each day. I’m sure you’ll find a lot of pleasant surprises there as they ramp things up, along with contributions from other REHupans as well. Being a web-connected Howard fan just got a whole lot more fun.

STEVE ADDS: I can just about handle the concept of Lovecraft studies as “our sister fandom,” despite squamous-and-rugose issues, but draw the line at referring to the new REHupa venture as “our sister blog.” Those three guys are all hairy enough to have done time in the Forest of Villefere.

LEO RESPONDS: You ain’t lyin’, sister.

Wednesday is the final day to get those votes into Cimmerian central. There are some pretty close races, so a couple votes one way or the other can make all the difference, swinging things in a different direction. If you enjoyed the Centennial year as much as I did, and read things throughout 2006 that impressed you, then do the authors involved a favor — let them know what you think via your votes and your comments. I know from the reactions of past years that it means a lot to them. As Charles Hoffman stated in last year’s Awards issue:

I just want to make it clear how much I appreciate this honor. We live in a very materialistic society, and artistic or intellectual accomplishments that don’t bring a lot of money tend to be regarded with indifference. I have had, on occasion, to wrestle with feelings of futility. It’s therefore gratifying to know that others appreciate what one is doing, and that you’re making some sort of difference to someone. Therefore, I would like to formally thank The Cimmerian for presenting me with such impressive, solid, tangible evidence that my efforts have not been expended in a vain pursuit.

That’s what it’s all about, ladies. Right now some of the Howard scholars who worked their butts off last year to populate your bookshelves with good reading are struggling mightily to creep up in the voting, inching towards one of the coveted Skulls glowering at the top of the heap. Each of you who read or write for TC earned votes all throughout last year. You are potential kingmakers with the power to really make someone’s year special. Don’t waste the opportunity — use it! Take ten minutes to consider the nominees and get those ballots in before Thursday. Crom hath spoken.

We’ll, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Somebody snapped up the last pair of slipcases for Volume 1 and 2, so they are officially sold out, now and forever. I’ve already had a few people suddenly pop in since I posted the SOLD OUT sign and ask if I might possibly have an extra set tucked away somewhere for a rainy day that I’d care to sell. Terribly sorry, but nope. I imagine as time goes on we’ll see some pop up on eBay or at various conventions, as some folks die off or gafiate as per norm.

But here’s the thing for you latecomers: the slipcases for Volume 3 are coming soon. There will only be fifty made, and by my current count 37 of those are already pre-ordered and spoken for. If you have any thoughts about getting one, this is no time to dilly-dally — pop me an email and reserve one. You don’t need to send money yet, just let me know you will be buying one so I can guarantee there will be one available for you.

Even if you don’t have the ones for V1 and V2, you should get V3 now and then hunt down the others later. Heck, you might even consider buying two V3 slips now, and putting your V1 and V2 issues in one of them for safekeeping until such time as you get the original cases for those volumes.

A final option if you are a new guy just getting into TC and wondering how best to catch up: you can buy a Complete Deluxe Set of V1 or V2 while supplies last. There is a markup on these sets over the original list prices, but the price will only rise higher as more issues go out of print, so there’s no time like the present to make your move. When you stop to think about how expensive even some of the worst REH chapbooks from yesteryear are these days — solely due to passing time, growing scarcity, and increased interest in REH from collectors — you can imagine what it’s going to be like collecting Cimmerians in ten years when everything is out of print and there’s a universe of only fifty slipcased sets in existence. Don’t let yourself get into the all-too-common position of not buying something easily available now only to regret it later.

With dozens of TC‘s now in print for you to collect and store, the custom slipcases are by far the easiest and most elegant way to get the job done. Ask anyone who’s snagged a pair — they rock. I know one guy who also stores some of his old Necronomicon Press books in them, owing to the similar size.

Watching Clint Eastwood present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Ennio Morricone last night was as close as I’ll ever get to seeing Frank Frazetta give Robert E. Howard the Nobel Prize for Heroic Fantasy. Admittedly not an exact analogy, but close enough for rock-and-roll. Of course the sampler of il maestro‘s soundtracks should have concluded with the music from Harmonica and Frank’s ritualistic showdown in Once Upon a Time in the West, the ne plus ultra of a composer stepping in to co-write, co-direct, and co-act not just any crucial scene, but the crucial scene I would screen for xenoanthropologists from the Andromeda Galaxy who inquired about movies as an artform…

MARK ADDS: When they did their “Salute to Writers in Film” segment, I nurtured a hope that we’d get a shot of d’Onofrio shouting as he typed. Alas, it was not to be.

Everyone is voting early and often for the 2007 Cimmerian Awards, right? In honor of the ongoing event, I’m here to hand out the Lemurian Awards for the 12 all-time best essays about Howard’s work. Why “Lemurian”? Well, TC‘s annual Awards for the 3 best essays are called the Hyrkanians, and as we know from “The Hyborian Age,” the Lemurians were the ancestors of the Hyrkanians (“Now the Lemurians enter history again, as the Hyrkanians…”) In honor of that prominent Lemurian and patron of the black arts Rotath, the actual awards will be skulls, like those we’ve come to know and lust after these past 3 years, only golden this time. (Our thanks to Auric Enterprises for the generous donation of the gold that went into the sculptings, and if you can’t place Auric Enterprises it’s time to reread Goldfinger). Given their model, I can’t guarantee that these Rotath-derived golden skulls will be curse-free, but faint heart ne’er toted trophy homeward.

Is there something fishy about the Lemurians? Damn straight, and why not; after all, there was something fishy about the (pseudo)historical Lemurians. “Men of the Shadows” describes them as “the half-human Men of the Sea. Perhaps from some strange sea-monster had those sprang, for they were scaly like unto a shark, and they could swim for hours under the water.” (There’s another hint in “The Cat and the Skull’ when Howard assures us that Kull is as at home in the water as any Lemurian). Wherein lies the fishiness? These choices are litcrit-intensive. I may be in the minority in Howard fandom in that I had some decent experiences as well as some appalling ones in English classes, but to me all litcrit really means is, articles that engage with Howard’s work. Yes, I find Howard the man fascinating, but I find him fascinating because he wrote the stories and the poems. Articles dealing with his life come a distant second, and articles dealing with his impact on the lives of fans come an even more distant third. My 12 Lemurian picks are ludicrously subjective and self-indulgent, and I’m sure Leo would be willing to extend his hospitality to guest-bloggers bristling with counter-lists. Lastly, the numerical sequence implies no hierarchy or qualitative ranking whatsoever; #1 is not necessarily superior to #12. It was hard enough selecting what I deem the dozen best without also trying to arrange them in order of merit. Save for the lone whippersnapper, these essays have not only stood the test of time but been granted tenured teaching positions by time.

(Continue reading this post)

Well, I can scarcely believe I’m saying it: Volume 3 is over.

In terms of sheer work, 2006 was the longest year of my life. A full-time job, lots of overtime, and TC acting as a second full-time gig. And scattered in between there were three trips to Texas, one of them lasting two weeks, plus separate trips to Frisco, Denver, and Phoenix. It’s not often in life that one brushes up against the actual physical and mental limits of one’s endurance. I worked through to the dawn more times than I can count, and there were several points last year where my body ceased to obey orders and basically shut down until I caught up on rest. That’s a frightening specter to look in the eye, but at the same time it’s somewhat exhilarating to learn your limits. It’s as if you catch a quick glimpse of your True Self.

Nevertheless, Volume 3 will forever haunt my memories, all twelve issues of it. I’m working on the Index and the Slipcase now during my spare time, but the majority of my energy is now focused on the next challenge: Volume 4.

The color this year is Midnight Blue, and I felt the website and blog could use an updated look to mark the occasion. The V4n1 issues (February 2007) are all finished, printed, and packed. I’ll be taking them to the post office this weekend, and they should start hitting subscribers’ mailboxes early next week. Pop on over to the V4n1 page to read some excerpts and see what’s in store for you. New writers, new artist, new discoveries — Volume 4 has picked up right where Volume 3 left off.

I’m looking forward to having time to get out some more Cimmerian Library volumes this year as well. A half-dozen interesting ideas for booklets are already on the back burner. And there are a host of other Howard projects I’d like to work on as well, stuff that’s percolated in my mind for a long while. One of the downsides of editing a journal is that you spend so many hours working on other people’s prose that you end up having little time left for your own. With luck, going back to a comfortable bi-monthly schedule will allow me to get back to writing.

Keep an eye on the blog for announcements on some of these things, and until then enjoy the first volume of the post-Centennial era.