Abraham Stoker (1847-1912), better known as Bram, was born on this date, November 8. Of course, you’ve all heard of him. He wrote this little book about a vampire. No, not Varney. Dracula.
Anyway, even if he had never written anything else, (he did write other stuff, you know) he would be remembered for that one novel.
So happy birthday, Bram.
It being that time of year when night starts coming earlier and earlier, ghoulies and ghosties start showing up in the stores, and Texas finally starts to receive cooler temperatures, I thought it would be fun to look at some of Robert E. Howard’s favorite supernatural and horror tales that he was told or learned about. Not horror fiction, but the “real” ghost tales and weird stuff that folks tell around a campfire. The old “a friend of a friend heard this” stuff. Of course, during Howard’s life, Halloween had not yet begun to develop its modern traditions of kids dressing up and going door to door begging for treats, or adults having parties. He never really wrote or told something as a “Halloween” story as it was just a day of the week to him. However, as most Howard fans know, he did write of “things that go bump in the night” in his correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft, trading tales and legends with each other in an unofficial “can-you-top-this” way. Most of us know that Howard’s “Pigeons From Hell” and “Black Canaan” yarns came from spooky stories he had been told as a child from relatives and family friends, but there are several other tales he talks about with Lovecraft that you may not know of, and which fit in perfectly in getting you ready for Halloween. Continue reading
I’ve been swamped with work. Plus I’m trying to get some actual fiction writing done. So I’ve not been reading much other than short fiction, much of that related to writing. I hope to post a Christmas ghost story or two this year and have been reading some to get in the right frame of mind.
Things should settle down a bit soon.
Science Fiction author Lou Antonelli passed away on October 6 of pneumonia. He is survived by his wife Patricia, his mother, and a brother and sister. Born in Massachusetts, Lou loved Texas and considered himself to be a Texan.
Lou was mainly a short fiction writer, although he also published on novel (Another Girl, Another Planet) and a memoir/short fiction collection/writing advice (Letters From Gardner: A Writer’s Odyssey). Lou’s short fiction has been collected in Fantastic Texas, Texas and Other Planets, The Clock Struck None, and In the Shadow of the Cross.
Lou was a journalist all his life. In recent years his fiction output slowed when he and his wife bought The Clarksville Times, the local newspaper in Clarksville, Texas. The paper had been declining before the Antonellis bought it. They successfully turned it around. (Some sources are saying Lou was from Clarksville, Arkansas, but that’s not correct.)
I’ve known Lou for about 15 years. I met him through his wife, Patricia, who was a student in one of my classes when I was at a university in the northeast part of the state. Lou and I had attended the same science fiction convention a few months prior to my meeting Patricia, but our paths hadn’t crossed.
Over the years, Lou and I shared cars to and from, and rooms at, conventions. He was a good traveling companion and roommate. More importantly he was a good friend. After I moved to West Texas, we didn’t see each other much, just at a convention once in a while. From time to time, we’d talk on the phone. I was unaware he’d been ill until I saw a notice of his death online. He’d been on my mind the last few days, and I’d been thinking of giving him a call. It had been a while since I’d spoken to him.
Now I can’t.
My prayers are with Patricia and the rest of Lou’s family.
Rest well, my friend.
Pete Miller shivered as he crossed the parking lot to the north entrance of Hub City High School. Clouds scudded across the first quarter moon, throwing shadows over the tarmac and making the bell tower appear as though it were pulsing with a spectral light.He could see how rumors of the building being haunted could get started.
He reached the door, inserted his key in the lock, and turned it. The door opened without a sound.
“Who’s there?” Continue reading
It’s been one of those weeks, so I missed this when it was posted on Tuesday over at Black Gate, but James McGlothlin will be reading through The Year’s Best Horror Stories, the series of annual anthologies published by DAW books from 1972-1994. They were successively edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner. The series ended with Wagner’s death.
I met James McGlothlin at Howard Days a few years ago. He’s very knowledgeable about the fields of the fantastic and always has something interesting to say.
James recently finished up a series at Black Gate looking at Del Rey’s Best of series, one of my personal favorites. He did an outstanding job with those posts, even if he didn’t much like Eric Frank Russell, another one of my personal favorites. *sticks tongue out at James*.
The post linked to above is an introduction, so if you want to read along with him, there’s still plenty of time. Provided, of course, you either already have the first volume or can find a copy of it (that you can afford).
Here’s the picture James posted to <s>make your mouth water</s> encourage you to read along. (No, these aren’t my copies. I wish. I don’t this many although I’ve got over half of them.)
So lately I’ve been catching up on some of my TBR pile, or in many cases by TBRR (to be reread) pile. There’s not a huge amount of new fantasy and science fiction being published these days that appeals to me. There’s some, just not a lot. I went to B&N last night and left without buying anything.
I’ve been spending a good deal of this year trying to get caught up on books that fall into two broad (and occasionally overlapping) categories, classics of the field and series I’ve either started but not finished/series I’ve bought but not started at all. Many of the latter haven’t been finished because I started them when they were only one book and never worked later books in. Then there are the stand-alones I got distracted while reading and haven’t finished yet. So I guess there are three categories.
The focus of this post is what would be considered classics in both the science fiction and fantasy fields. Much of my catch-up reading has been science fiction the last half year or so. Not all of it has been titles I’d not read. Some of it has been rereading things I read so long ago but have little to no memory of now. I’ll list a few things I’ve been reading and then solicit suggestions. Continue reading
Today’s post is by Will Oliver.
“Bran eyed her somberly; he reached forth and gripped her arm in his iron fingers. An involuntary shudder shook him at the feel of her sleek skin. He nodded slowly and drawing her close to him, forced his head down to meet her lifted lips.”
– Robert E. Howard
“Worms of the Earth”
As a fan of pulp magazines, I generally have in my reading pile or to-read bookshelf either reprints of pulp magazines or paperbacks of stories from the pulp era. A couple of years ago, I discovered the magazine dedicated to the old pulps, Blood ‘N’ Thunder, and wouldn’t you know it, just as I discovered it, it was no longer publishing on a regular basis. Ed Hulse, both editor and publisher, decided to step away from the quarterly publication to dedicate himself to other pulp magazine projects. No more deadline pressures for him—something we can all understand. Still, he has since published some additional issues and I was able to get several articles into the latest one.
One issue of Blood ‘N’ Thunder I recently read was the summer 2015 issue, featuring an article by Rick Lai titled, “The Secret Son of Bran Mak Morn” (pp. 36-41). The article explained that Jack Mann was a fan of Robert E. Howard and was so taken with his character Bran Mak Morn that he wrote a veiled sequel titled Maker of Shadows, published in 1938. Curious, I ordered a copy from Amazon that was published by Ramble House publishers in 2011 and, after reading it, I thought I would write a review for this blog. Continue reading
Today we have a guest post by John Bullard.
Texas, all in all, has had a history of almost unbelievable bloodshed . – Robert E. Howard.
The city of Waco has recently become more known for being the center of home renovators and decorators than violence, unless you happen to be a member of a motorcycle street gang that meets up with a rival gang at a restaurant. But it used to be one of Texas’ wildest cities. Robert E. Howard wrote of many incidents that occurred there in his letters to his fellow authors, H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. In one of his earliest letters to Lovecraft, Howard relates the story of a dramatic gunfight that occurred in broad daylight on the city’s streets involving two types of folks not normally associated with violence, let alone gun duels in the streets. The incident Howard relates happened between the County Judge, George B. Gerald, and a Newspaper Editor and his fellow pressman-brother, James Harris and William Harris, on the busy streets of Waco, in 1897.
Howard gets the name of Judge Gerald wrong, but writes up a mostly true account of the event:
“But for cold steel nerve no man ever surpassed that showed by old Judge Jarrell in his street-fight with the Harris boys in Waco. The Judge was an intellectual old man, but very radical in his views, a Civil War veteran and a gentleman of the old school. The Harris boys were newspapermen and they caught him in a cross-fire. J.W. Harris was standing in the door of his newspaper building firing, while across the street diagonally his brother J.F. Harris had his stand. Judge Jarrell walked swiftly yet deliberately across the street toward J.W. Harris, holding his fire. Something about that steady advance shook J.W.’s nerve and his shots went wild. J.F.[sic], after missing repeatedly, came running across the street, firing as he came. At less than twenty feet a bullet shattered Jarrell’s arm and the Judge fired for the first time, killing J.W. Harris. Then the Judge turned to meet the remaining brother who rushed in and attempted to grapple. Another man somehow ran between them and all three went down in a heap; and there the Judge, as cool as steel, reached his pistol-arm over the man between them and blew out J.F.[sic] Harris’ brains. Two shots and two killings! He lost his arm but his foes lost their lives.
“The Judge was a close friend of Brann, the Iconoclast, who was keeping Texas in an uproar, and this shooting occurred not long before Brann and Davis shot each other to death on the streets of Waco.”(Lovecraft, ca. October 1930)
Origins of the Duel
Judge George B. Gerald had been a Colonel in the Confederate army where he had lost the use of his left arm from wounds. He became the County Judge for McLennan County, Texas, where Waco is situated, and later the postmaster for Waco. He owned a newspaper, The Daily Advance, in Waco, which may have put him at odds with James Harris, the Editor of the Waco Times-Herald. Gerald sold the paper in 1888.1
Judge Gerald became good friends with William Cowper Brann, mentioned by Howard at the end of his account as having died in another gunfight on the streets of Waco after the Gerald-Harris fight. Brann was the editor of a periodical, The Iconoclast, that was very liberal and loved to tweak the noses of the prevailing opinions in Waco and Texas, if you couldn’t tell by its name. In 1897, Brann wrote a piece criticizing Baylor University as “that great storm center of misinformation” and accused Baylor of only turning out “ministers and Magdalenes”. The Baylor students were not amused. Several of the more enthusiastic students tracked Brann down, kidnapped him, severely beat him, and nearly killed him.2
Judge Gerald, age 62, who also appears to have enjoyed thumbing his nose at the Establishment as much as Brann, wrote a piece defending Brann that he sent in to James Harris, age 34, to run in the Times-Herald. Harris refused to run it, and refused to return the writing to the Judge when he came and asked for it back. The two men got into a heated argument, and soon, three fists started flying (remember, Gerald had lost the use of his left arm in the Civil War). Due to Harris not being a follower of the Marquess of Queensbury school, and insisting on using both of his fists to the Judge’s one, Gerald lost the fight but kept his grudge against Harris. Judge Gerald then created a handbill accusing James Harris of being “a liar, coward and cur” and demanding the satisfaction of a duel with James Harris, which Gerald freely distributed throughout Waco. Harris, surprisingly having some small sense of honor, accepted the challenge, and the date was set.3
The Big Gundown
Historical Marker Commemorating the Gerald-Harris Shooting. Photo by Gregory Walker.
On November 19, 1897, at the intersection of Austin and 4th Street in downtown Waco, Judge Gerald and editor James Harris were to show up with revolvers. James Harris, again showing his noted sense of honesty and fair-play, had also brought his brother and fellow newsman, William Harris with him, and had William stand across from where the duel would take place to catch the Judge in a cross-fire with William’s own revolver. Judge Gerald arrived on the scene, and he and James took their positions facing each other in the street. James fired first, missing Gerald several times. When the Judge finally returned fire, he hit James, dropping him dead. William had started firing at Judge Gerald, again showing the Harris brother’s praiseworthy sense of honor, and holding true to their tremendous good fortune, he struck Gerald in his crippled left arm, which, unfortunately for William, wasn’t the one holding the Judge’s gun. A policeman, apparently enjoying the show, then decided it was time to end the fight, and tackled William and tried to disarm him. According to witnesses, and picture this if you will, while William and the policeman were wrestling for control of William’s .45 revolver, Judge Gerald, staggered and bleeding from a severe wound to his unlucky (or lucky for the Judge as it apparently had been a magnet for bullets aimed at the Judge’s person several times now) left arm, slowly walks over to the two men, where he calmly shoots William in the head. The Judge is then taken to his home where his left arm is finally removed, it having finished serving its purpose of attracting and catching bullets.4 According to the online site, Waco History Project, Judge Gerald wanted some information when he awakened from the operation:
Emerging from the chloroform, the Judge’s first words were “I know I killed Bill, what about Jim?” A witness assured him that J. W. was also deceased.
“Where did I hit him?”
“You got him right in the Adam’s apple.”
“I was aiming at the son of a b—-’s collar button!”
Well done, Judge, well done.
Aftermath
Historical Marker Commemorating the Brann-Davis Shooting. Photo by Gregory Walker.
Judge Gerald recovered from his operation, beat the murder raps for the Harris boys, and resumed his life. William Brann, however, continued to offend the people of Waco, who also continually tried to remove him from their midst. Brann, having received more death threats, borrowed Judge Gerald’s lucky revolver from the fight for protection. On the ironic day of April 1, 1898, Brann was out on the streets of Waco, a half-block away from the scene of the Gerald-Harris fight5, when another aggrieved Baylorite, Capt. Tom Davis, shot Brann in the back. Brann, mortally wounded, pulled the lucky revolver and shot and also mortally wounded his murderer, giving as good as he got. Judge Gerald lived on, eventually becoming editor of Brann’s The Iconoclast, and passed away in 1914, when he died from uremia.6
Special Note Of Credit Where Credit is Due
I was going through my edition of Collected Letters Vol. 2, looking specifically for another topic Howard had written about to write an article on, when I came across this section in the Lovecraft letter, and thought it would be a great little story to write about. I completed my article and sent it in to Keith for publishing. As I continued looking through the book for my original topic, I remembered that there is an on-going thread on the “Swords of REH” website (“An Unborn Empire” – Robert E. Howard’s Texas | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) ) created and run by REH Scholar Will Oliver that looks at various items of Texana that Howard wrote about to his pen-pals that I had just learned about a couple of months ago. I figured I better go and see if Will had written anything about the Gerald-Harris gunfight. Sure enough, he had mentioned it in a brief post back on Mar. 5, 2020, in relation to the Brann-Davis shooting, and had provided the URL for Damon Sasser’s old archived site, “REH: Two-Gun Raconteur”, where Damon had written up a great article of the Brann shooting and the Gerald-Harris fight back in 2011. I’ve decided to go ahead and publish my version of the shootings to get the information back out on a more easily accessed site, and also point interested parties to go to the archived site for Damon’s version. And, if you haven’t checked out the Swords of REH site, please do so. Especially look at Will’s great thread for more information on the items of Texas history Howard told his non-Texas friends in his letters.
NOTES
SOURCES
Letter
To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. October 1930
Texts
Roehm, R. (Ed.) (2007), The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume Two: 1930-1932, REHFP
Websites
A Tale of Two Iconoclasts: When Whiskey and Ink and Blood Flowed | Hometown by Handlebar . Accessed June 20, 2021.
Brann-David Shooting – Texas Historical Markers (weebly.com) . “Brann-David [sic] Shooting (April 1, 1898)”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
Gerald-Harris Shooting – Texas Historical Markers (weebly.com) . “Gerald-Harris Shooting (November 19, 1897)”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
Oliver, Will. “An Unborn Empire”, Mar. 5, 2020, “An Unborn Empire” – Robert E. Howard’s Texas | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) . Accessed June 20, 2021.
Sasser, Damon. “Murdered by Baptists”, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, Aug. 1, 2011, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur » Blog Archive » “Murdered by Baptists” — Death of an Iconoclast . Accessed June 21, 2021.
Waco History Project: Moments in Time . “Geralds’ Theatrics – Florence Gerald and Judge G.B. Gerald”. Accessed June 20, 2021.
John Bullard is a retired attorney who lives in Texas, and has updated The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard for The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, which will soon be available for purchase. He became a life-long Howard fan upon reading his first Howard story in an anthology of horror stories in 1974. While working on the Letters, he started seeing the subject matter of this post and has written it up for the education and edification of other Howard-ophiles. John is currently working on several projects for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.
I’m up to my armpits in dayjobbery, so this post almost didn’t get done. But I wanted to point out two birthdays that fall on this date, September 1.
First is Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). Do I really have to tell you what all he wrote? Tarzan. John Carter. Pellucidar.
Then there’s Harold Lamb (1892-1962). Lamb was a master of historical adventure, arguably the greatest author of that genre ever. He was a major influence on Robert E. Howard.
I doubt we shall see their equals any time soon.
So what are your favorite works by Burroughs and Lamb. Let us know in the comments.