Category Archives: Robert E. Howard

The Adventures Fantastic Interview: Mark Finn, Part 1

Mark Finn should be no stranger to hard-core Robert E. Howard fans. He is the author of the Howard biography Blood and Thunder as well as numerous articles and essays about the man from Cross Plains. In addition to his writings about Robert E. Howard, Mark is also a fiction author with a number of short stories to his credit. He took time out of his schedule recently to sit down with Adventures Fantastic to answer a few questions. Here, in the first of two parts to this interview, Mark discusses why he writes, why he felt the need to write a biography of Robert E. Howard, his admiration of jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden, and what other projects he has in the works.

AF: Why do you write?

MF: Why do I write? That’s a good question. When I was a lot younger, I wanted to be an entertainer of some sort. I went through a period where I remember in the 70s television would always have these variety shows, so I got to see ventriloquists and magicians, and guys who could do impressions, Rich Little. I used to watch the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts with Foster Brooks. I didn’t understand why it was so funny, but my parents just thought it was the best thing ever.

AF: I remember those.

MF: Oh, they were so funny. And Foster was great. I mean really underappreciated kind of guy. So I went through phases where I studied ventriloquism, and I studied magic. I still play with magic on a strictly amateur basis right now. But as I got older I wanted to do special effects makeup for the movies and found kind of accidentally that I was good at writing. And I kept wanting to do other things. I wanted to draw. I’ve always wanted to tell stories. I’ve always wanted to entertain people and tell stories. However that needed to happen. I found that of all the things I wanted to do, the thing that came easiest to me was writing. If I spent a lot of time and went to school and learned art and got a degree in commercial art or graphic art and sat down and made an effort at getting into comics, I probably would be pretty good. But I was always naturally better at writing than I was anything else, so by the time I was fifteen, I met somebody, incidentally, who was gifted in art the way I was in writing, so that’s what made me go, “Oh, I get it. All right.” And he and I have been friends, and he, John Lucas, has pursued the art career, and I’ve pursued the writing career. For me it boils down to entertaining people, storytelling. I think that’s our primary means of communicating with one another, whether it’s a joke or “Honey, you won’t believe the day I’ve had.” It’s all stories. I like that form.

AF: What got you interested in Robert E. Howard?

MF: I was a nerd. (laughs) Yeah, in the 70s I liked all the monster movies, the Saturday afternoon stuff, Jason and the Argonauts. It was the time of Star Wars and later fantasy movies and Dungeons and Dragons and all that stuff. Dungeons and Dragons, when it came out, the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, had a list in the back of recommended reading. That was interesting to me because I had been reading science fiction up until then. I was just transitioning over into Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I got into D&D about the same time the Conan movie came out. I was too young to go see it in the theater, but with a little finagling, when it came to HBO, I was able to watch it. And so when I recognized that the Conan created by Robert E. Howard, according to the movie, was the same guy they were recommending the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons book, I said, “Well, I’ve clearly got to read this guy.” And so it was through other influences that led me to check out Howard. That’s been where my heart has been ever since. Well, it just spoke to me in a way that very few other authors have before or since. So, the short handed answer is through the movie, and the long handed answer is through Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and the movie.

AF: This could be a two part question, depending on how you want to interpret it. What led you to write a biography about Robert E. Howard, and why did you see a need for a revised edition?

MF: My initial intention with writing Blood and Thunder was two-fold. One, I knew that Rusty and Patrice [Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet] were busy doing the Del Rey texts and preparing those and would have no time to finish these biographical projects and what they were doing in time for the Centennial [the centennial of Robert E. Howard’s birth] in 2006. That just sort of happenstance coincided with Chris Roberson from Monkey Brain saying, “Isn’t the Howard Centennial coming up?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Do you want to do a book for us?” And I said, “Sure, I’ll edit an anthology, and I’ll put everybody together, and we’ll do essays, and it’ll be great.” And he said, “No, no, no, I’m thinking just you.” That was when the idea first came to me. I knew right away that I couldn’t do a kitchen sink, warts and all kind of book. Those types of things take a while. You’ve got to go three years in and really do a bunch of stuff. I had a small window. I had one year. So I chose to write the biography I would have wanted to read, that I’ve always wanted to read as a fan, and couldn’t. I wanted a biography that was easy to read. Not simple, but an engaging story. I wanted something that dealt with the literature that he wrote, and I wanted something to put it all into context. There were things I emphatically did not get in reading Dark Valley Destiny. In fact I decided to make that the critical yardstick, if you will, for Blood and Thunder. I looked at everything I didn’t like about Dark Valley Destiny, and I either didn’t do what he [L. Sprague de Camp] did, or I wrote an answer for what he posited. And so as a biography, it’s not a complete book in so much as it is a reaction to de Camp’s various theses. And so when it came out, I had to turn it in at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006.

Then in 2006, a bunch of things happened. Most notably, The Cimmerian magazine that Leo Grin was doing went monthly, and with the monthly schedule came all these finds, all this new stuff. That’s always the case, it’s never gonna be finished because if I wanted to stop right now and add new stuff, I could. But I had to have a cut off point because of the process they were using to do the book. There was a lot of stuff found in 2006, interesting speculations and some cool finds, subsequently, in 2007 and 2008, that weren’t in the first edition. I made a deal with Monkey Brain for the mass market in trade. So everybody was asking if there was going to be a hardcover. I shopped it around to a few people, including Del Rey. They liked the book, but it wasn’t in their cards to do it. They were just really wanting to concern themselves with the fiction. So I went to the Foundation [The Robert E. Howard Foundation] because, again, Rusty and Patrice are still working on their own stuff. Patrice is still preparing texts. They’ve got the boxing and the funny western stuff left to do. So that’s somewhere between six and eight more books if they do it right. Rusty, too, same thing. So I knew that those biographies they’re gonna have are eventually going to come out. But the Foundation could use a biography right now that they could market and sell, so I thought, I’ll just ask them. But I wanted to put in the new information, I wanted to rewrite the last chapter, which is very problematic in the first edition. I wanted to add a bunch of things people asked me about. One of the few negative comments I got on the book was “I really liked learning about all the other stuff, but I kinda wish there were more Conan stuff in there. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on Conan, aannndd I understand why, but it still would have been pretty nice.” With that kind of luxury, with another year to go back through the manuscript, I can clean up a bunch of stuff. Now it’s got 30,000 extra words in it. And all those things have been addressed. All the technical errors and lapses in concentration on my part have been fixed. I’m very happy with it. It’s a little weightier of a book. The last chapter got completely reorganized and feels a whole lot more focused and less chaotic. I would say probably four of the chapters at least have gotten a substantial revision or were completely revised. Another four of the chapters had extra bits and pieces and things inserted into them, so if you’ve read the first edition once or twice, you’ll quickly start hitting stuff where you go, “I don’t remember that from the first time I read the book.” Then you’ll go and get to the sections and go, “Wow, I don’t remember any of this.” That’s the new stuff.

Illustration by Mark Schultz

AF: Any possibility that you can foresee a third edition somewhere down the road, or is this your final word on Robert E. Howard’s life as far as a formal biography?

MF: I would say, for everything that I wanted the book to accomplish, it largely did. Now we have a talking point opposite de Camp’s book. The thesis I wanted to work into the first edition regarding Breckenridge Elkins is now in there. Unless some big evidence shows up that changes something fundamental, I don’t know that a third edition would need to come out. I wouldn’t want to do it unless I could put another thirty thousand words into it, and if I put another thirty thousand words into it, now we start getting into an awful lot of lit crit. Which is great if you’ve read it. If I’m talking about Solomon Kane, if you’ve read all those stories, then a little literary criticism discussion, breaking stuff down isn’t going to hurt anybody. You might agree or disagree, You would at least be able to go, “Oh, yeah, ‘Wings of the Night,’ I’ve read that.” If I put it in there, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re going to be more likely to skip chapters, which is exactly what I do when I read a literary biography and come across something I haven’t read yet because I don’t want to be pre-informed when I read the story. So I don’t think a third edition is in the works anytime soon. I would be more inclined to just do more articles and essays and fill in gaps that way.

AF: Any other biographies you plan to write?

MF: Weirdly enough, yes. (laughs) I want to do a biography of Jack Teagarden, who was a jazz trombonist during the Big Band era. He’s from the town I currently live in, Vernon, Texas. He’s the Jimi Hendrix of the jazz trombone. That kind of sounds like a trite way to say it, but he played the trombone in a way that it was not played before or since. His style was so singular and signature that jazz trombone died when he did. And so he’s largely forgotten by modern jazz aficionados. In the Big Band era, he was kinda on the second tier. People have heard of him, go “Oh,yeah, I know that, trombone, right?” He’s got a pretty big international following still. I recommend him. If anybody is reading this, do a google search for him on Utube and check out how he plays. The guy was a virtuoso. The kind of which, you won’t believe what you’re hearing is a trombone. He’s that good. I want to do a biography of him. I think he’s a fascinating guy. He’s another one of those Texas creators who took two disparate things and combined them to make a unique sound. I use him in the introduction to Blood and Thunder alongside of Howard Hughes and Bob Wills as inventive Texans who were able to take the best of two separate elements and combine them to make something new. He’s one of those kind of guys, and I’m fascinated by those type of guys. Historically, I’m attracted to subjects who displayed that kind of brilliance, maybe even to the cost of their own lives. Orson Wells. Benjamin Franklin. Howard Hughes. Harry Houdini.

Robert E. Howard. These guys, Jack Teagarden, all had this sort of intensity about them, this sort of effortless means of creation that was responsible for why they were the way the were but also made them so flawed and so tragic. I don’t have a timeline on the biography. I’m waiting for a bunch of stuff to come together. I’m probably through writing biographies for a few years. I really want some time to study Teagarden more before I get into it. But, yeah, I definitely want to tackle him. Now I have to be mindful of something. I do not remember who said this, but there’s a very famous quote from a critic. I should now who said this. The quote is writing about music is a lot like dancing about architecture. I’ve got to find a way to write about his stuff, maybe not in a way that you understand it, but in a way that makes you want to listen to it. That’s really the goal. If you’re a jazz fan and you pick up the book, I’ve got to be able to write about what he’s doing in a way that the jazz fan will say “Yeah, he totally nailed it.” And you, who have never heard him at all, will go, “I don’t what he’s talking about but, man, I got to check that out.” And that’s a balancing act. Who knows how long that’s going to take?

AF: I enjoyed your novel excerpt that you read earlier this morning. What fiction do you have in the pipeline, and where can someone go to get copies of what you’ve already head published?

MF: I’ve got two…I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the pipeline, actually. I’ve got a lot of neat stuff coming out this year. I just wrapped up a script for Dark Horse for their Howard theme anthology entitled Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword. It’s an original story about El Borak, Francis Xavier Gordon. I’m really excited about it because it’s the first comic book appearance of El Borak. As such it’s also a kind of an introduction to the character for people who don’t know who he is. This will get picked up by a lot of people who’ve maybe read Conan, Solomon Kane, even Kull. and might be curious to try this. I’ve only got eight pages in it, so I basically have got to provide you with a sort of …I think of it as a fictional essay, really, on what makes him so cool. Eight pages isn’t enough adapt an original story. It isn’t enough to get into a richly detailed plot, so I came up with an incident. So we basically decided as long as we have eight pages of El Borak doing the things that we know he can do best, it’ll be pretty cool. That comes out in May. The novels I’m working on, I’ve got two in progress.

The Domino Chronicles has been shopped to a couple of people. I’m not sure if I’m gonna get any bites any time soon.

The other thing I’ve been working on, I’ve been researching this guy for years, and I’ve finally got the means to put it into a novel form. It’s about Sailor Tom Sharkey, who was an actual golden age boxer from the turn of the century. The story involves him and his adventures. He was a very larger than life character, and the model for Robert E. Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan, at least in terms of physicality and fighting ability. So for me, what I like about that story is I’ve loved the funny boxing stories for forever. That’s no secret to anybody who’s met me for more than five minutes. And as much as I want to go play in that sandbox, I really have a problem with pastiche authors, particularly the ones who don’t get it. Or “I want to do my thing with Conan.” Well, if you do your thing with Conan, why don’t you go do something else? So I decided that what I wanted to do was something in the funny boxer genre, but not necessarily a Robert E. Howard turn. Because Howard’s sense of humor is not my sense of humor. My sense of humor is different. And it would be bad for me to try and imitate Howard’s sense of humor. This gave me an opportunity to do something really funny in stories with this unreliable narrator, kind of a la Steve Costigan, but not a direct rip off. We’re dealing with somebody who’s at the end of his life or he’s in the twilight of his career and he’s looking back and regretting some decisions he’s made. He decides to go on this vaudeville circuit, which actually happened. What he doesn’t realize is that the vaudeville circuit train he gets on turns out to be a quest for a golden belt he left back in New York City. Things get pretty weird after that. By doing a kind of fantastical historical, that’s something that Howard never did either. His funny boxing stories are pretty straight up. Definitely it owes a great debt to that work, but ultimately I’ve moved to where I feel far enough away from it that, again, only people who’ve read the boxing stories will go, “You know, that was a Costigan flourish.” I think everybody else is gonna read it and go, “Where the hell did you come up with this guy?” And I’m gonna have to tell them, he’s straight out of history. That’s a work in progress. I hope to have that done this year and shopped around.

If you want a taste of it, we’ve got a short story collection coming out here that will be ready before Howard Days. It’s called Dreams in the Fire: Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Robert E. Howard. It’s actually a REHUPA project. Current and former REHUPAns have donated stories to this anthology. And we got a couple of ringers in there. Bob Weinberg did a story for us; Don Herron has a good poem in there. The whole thing is a fiction anthology in the vein of Robert E. Howard. Everybody had different characters and different concepts. We’ve got some pirate stuff. We’ve got some American frontier stuff. We’ve a Sailor Tom Sharkey story. All kinds of things. The entire book will be sold online, through the usual outlets, also through the gift shop [at the Robert E. Howard House]. And all the money goes to Project Pride. So it’s going to be our fundraiser book from REHUPA. And we’ll keep that active for a year, and all the profits we’re going to give over to the Howard House to let them continue the good work and keep the place up. So hopefully I’ll have that out by mid-May, if not sooner. That’s in the final stages. Really, right now between the novels and some more comic work that’s coming down the pipe, I’ll have quite a few things out this year. I’m looking forward to having all this out and published.

Next Week: In part 2 of this interview, Mark discusses adaptations of Howard to film, the state of Robert E. Howard scholarship today, and what one question he would ask Howard if he could.

Henry Kuttner’s Prince Raynor: Cursed be the City

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Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories
trade paperback, 221, $12.99

In addition to the four Elak stories collected in this book, the only two stories Kuttner wrote about Prince Raynor are also included. These stories were published in Strange Stories, a rival of Weird Tales published by Better Publications. Started in 1939, this pulp was often seen at the time as a dumping ground for stories rejected by Weird Tales. It only lasted until 1941.

In a way I prefer the Prince Raynor tales to those of Elak. They are set in a more recent prehistory, one in which the ancient kingdoms we know existed are beginning to take shape, rather than some mythical past. As a result, any anachronisms are less glaring. Also, the prose is leaner and more polished than in some of the early Elak tales, especially the first one, “Thunder in the Dawn”.

Both “Cursed be the City” and its sequel, “The Citadel of Darkness”, open with quotes from something called “The Tale of Sakhmet the Damned”. What this is exactly, we’re never told, nor does anyone named Sakhmet ever appear. It’s a nice touch, though.

The story opens with the fall of Sardopolis, capital city of the kingdom of Gobi. The king is killed by the conqueror Cyaxeres, and the king’s son Prince Raynor is taken to the dungeon to be tortured. Cyaxares has a companion and adviser, Necho, who may not be human. Raynor is rescued by his Nubian friend and servant Eblik. Together they make their way to the temple of Ahmet. There a dying priest tells them that when Sardopolis was founded, a great forest god was displaced, but it was prophesied that he would one day return to set up his altar again in the ruins of Sardopolis. That day is at hand. Raynor and Eblik are given the task of going to a group of bandits led by the Reaver of the Rock and informing them of the fall of Sardopolis. They’ve been waiting for generations for the old god to return.

Cyaxares’ men follow them. The Reaver and his men stay to fight. Raynor and Eblik, guided by the Reaver’s daughter Delphia, a formidable fighter in her own right, take a talisman to free the forest god. Most readers will recognize the name of the forest god.

The story moves well and has a satisfying, if not exactly upbeat, resolution. In fact, the story ends on a pretty dark note.

Kuttner continues to break from pulp conventions here. Eblik is more than just a black sidekick, and Delphia takes an active role in the events. The tone and feel of this story, as well as that of “The Citadel of Darkness”, is much more Howard-esque than the Elak stories. In those, Kuttner tended to play the sidekick Lycon for comic relief. None of Howard’s fantasy heroes had true sidekicks, although at times they had companions, who were treated as equals. In the Prince Raynor stories, while Eblik may be a servant, and upon occasion is reminded that he is, he’s still portrayed as a companion, not a stereotype to be played for laughs. This was an uncommon portrayal of someone of African descent in the pulps of this era.

By this time C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry had made her appearance, so a strong active woman wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. Still, to cast Delphia as a competent fighter and one of the leaders of the bandits was a departure from the typical standards of the day.

So to sum up, if, as some have stated, Kuttner was trying to fill the void in sword and sorcery stories left by Robert E. Howard’s death, I think he succeeded more with Prince Raynor than with Elak. It’s unfortunate that he only wrote two stories featuring the character. We’ll look at the other tale in a future post.

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What is Best in Life?

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There’s been a lot of discussion about the upcoming Conan movie, and the trailer in particular has fanned the flames with one quote. Jack Mackenzie summarizes the controversy this morning at Home of Heroics. If you’re a Robert E. Howard fan, you’ll want to check it out.

Odds and Ends

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Between allergies, taxes, and trying to finish my upcoming column for Home of Heroics, I’m a little behind in getting some things up that I’ve been working on. It might be next week before anything substantial is posted since I’ll be traveling over the weekend starting tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the new material at Home of Heroics if you aren’t already doing so. Yesterday’s guest column was by John O’Neill, publisher of Black Gate, in which he talked about how Scholastic Books got him hooked on science fiction and fantasy. It brought back memories for me, because I used to read those books as well. My son is now starting to read them, and I’m looking forward to what he’s going to be bringing home.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s visited Adventures Fantastic, especially in the last couple of weeks. Traffic seems to be picking up, and I appreciate your interest, support, and comments. I’ve got some cool things planned for the next couple of months, including a two-part interview with Robert E. Howard scholar Mark Finn, some Long Looks at Short Fiction, a review of Jasper Kent’s Thirteen Years Later, a look at Henry Kuttner’s Prince Raynor stories, and some more Kull. So stick around. It’s only gonna get better.

E-Book Prices: A Not-So-Brief Rant

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Ok, the main point of this post is to vent my spleen. I’m not sure what good it will do other than perhaps get some frustration out of my system. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably among the people who would most understand.

I was browsing in the local Barnes and Noble over the weekend. There were a number of books there in multiple genres that looked intriguing (no big surprise). One in particular seemed to be a really good fit for this blog. It was a new release in mass market paperback, and no, I’m not going to tell you the title. I’ll refrain out of respect to the author. You’ll see why in a minute. It appeared to be something that would move quickly to the top of the TBR pile, both because it looked like something I would really enjoy as well as something the people who read this blog would be interested in.

Now, before I go any further, you need to understand something to get some context.

After moving to the house where we currently live, we had to make a decision about what to put in storage since this house is considerably smaller than the previous one. Over half my library is currently in boxes. Much of what isn’t probably should be for the simple reason that I don’t have much space. As in literally none. I don’t have room in the house to bring more books in. The shelves are spilling over, and my wife is starting to complain about tripping over the stacks on the floor. Which is why I got an ereader, specifically a Nook, because B&N is just down the road. When I buy a paper book, I need to clear space by either taking one (or some) to storage, selling them, or giving them to friends. I will still buy paper books from a few writers, either because those writers are ones I want to read in physical copies or because I want them signed. Also, there are some books that don’t have electronic editions, especially if they’re from small presses. But with those exceptions, all of my book buying for the foreseeable future needs to be in electronic format.

I’ve got my Nook with me at B&N, so I check to see if there’s an electronic edition of this particular book. Yep, sure enough, there is.

It costs the same as the paper edition.

Which means it will cost me more than the paper edition, because with a B&N card, I get a discount on the paper copy. While annoying, it’s not so surprising. I don’t have a problem with a business model in which electronic copies are similar or even identical in price to the paper copies initially, with the electronic copies dropping in price over the course of the next few months. I probably won’t buy the electronic copies until they’ve dropped in price. Not just because I’m cheap, but I’m so far behind on my reading that usually it takes a couple of months before most new books rise to the top of the TBR pile. So why not wait and pay the lower price? If I want the book so badly that I buy it when it’s first published, it’s probably one I would want in paper.

But that model not what I see happening. Most of the major houses that I’ve checked aren’t lowering the price of the ebooks after a few months, at least not by very much. Now, I admit I haven’t done anything even approximating a scientific survey. But looking at the things I read and the types of books I buy, I don’t see a lot publishers pricing their electronic copies much differently than their paper copies. (Angry Robot seems to be an exception.) For example, I would love to have the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections in electronic format. That way I could read whichever story I wanted to wherever I am as long as I have the Nook with me. All of them as of this writing are either $12.99 or $13.99. The exception is the newest collection, Sword Woman, which is only $9.99. I have no idea why that one is priced so low now, because I bought it electronically when it was published a few months ago and paid $12.99. And, yes, I hear what you’re saying: I can get other electronic editions of Howard’s work. But I want the Del Rey editions because those are the ones that have the corrected texts, the alternate drafts, and the fragments, as well as other material. My point is I think these books are priced a little high.

I realize supply and demand, author popularity in other words, comes into play. I’m okay with that. A publisher expecting someone to pay more for a popular author than for an unknown is not unreasonable. That’s the way the free market works. It’s not just someone like Howard, an author has been around for a while and has a solid fan base that isn’t going to go away, whose books are being overpriced. I’ve looked at a number of titles from a variety of publishers, and most of them are priced the same as the paper editions or maybe a dollar less. (I’m talking mass market paperbacks here; electronic versions of books only available in hardcover are usually about half the hardcover price. But hardcovers are luxury items.) And not all of these titles are recent. And not all of the authors are well known. There are several first novels that look appealing by people I’ve never heard of before that have the same price in electronic and paper formats.

Before you conclude I’m one of these people who think ebooks should be priced at one or two dollars, I’m not. I don’t have a problem paying between $5 and $10 for an electronic version of a book, although I naturally prefer the lower end of that range, provided the paper copy is considerably more expensive. I see no reason to pay the same price for an electronic book as I do a paper copy, no matter what the price is on the paper copy. There’s no reason I should. There’s still editing, copy-editing, layout, cover art, and similar costs no matter what the format. These all need to be taken into account when pricing the book, which is why I don’t think one or two bucks is a reasonable price for many ebooks, especially those coming from major publishers. But there’s no printing costs, no shipping costs, no warehousing costs for electronic books. I find it hard to believe a dollar difference between electronic books and paper books covers all the cost of printing, shipping, warehousing, etc. The publishers shouldn’t expect me to pay for the rent on their Manhattan offices by gouging me on the price of the ebook.

If most of the difference in production costs between electronic and paper books went to the author, I would have a different opinion. But it doesn’t, and so neither do I. See J. A Konrath’s analysis for some numbers to get an idea of how much money most authors see on your average ebook compared to how much the publishers get.

So I find book I want to read, one that has an electronic version priced at or near the price of the paper version. I have some choices. I buy the paper copy, but with the spatial and spousal limitations I have, that’s not an option I can use very often. Let’s assume it’s not in this case, which is a safe assumption. I can buy the ebook, and sell out my principles, letting the publisher manipulate me to pay a price I think is too high. I have a really difficult time doing that. Or I can take what’s behind door number three, as they used to say on the game show Let’s Make a Deal. I can pass on buying the book and wait for a copy to show up in a used book store.

That last would be my default option except for one thing. There’s a writer who won’t get paid for the book. As an aspiring writer myself, I have as big a problem with that as with the first two options. I realize not everyone does. If the average book buyer thinks the cost of an ebook is too high, they won’t buy it. There’s more than enough to read out there that’s priced lower. More good and interesting stuff than any one person can ever read in an entire lifetime. With the internet connecting second hand book dealers with customers miles away, a reader can find the book he or she wants at a lower price by exercising a little patience.

And that’s where I think big publishing is going to hurt itself. By pricing itself out of the market. Publishing is very much a free market right now in the sense that customers have power and the publishers don’t. We have power, like I stated, to wait, read something else, or get it used. That power is only going to increase as more authors begin to self-publish, both backlist titles and new books, and price their books significantly below what publishers are charging. Readers are going to expect a certain price range on books, and books outside that range aren’t going to sell. With the cost of fuel rising and driving everything else up along with it, book buying is going to become more of a luxury. I know it is for me. That means that higher priced ebooks are going to be less attractive to readers. And the trend will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

We need more variety in fantasy and science fiction, in detective fiction and historical adventure. Not less. There’s too much lowest common denominator crap on the shelves as it is. That means more writers need a way to get their books to readers and still make enough to keep writing. That won’t happen if their books, print or electronic, don’t sell. The publishers will drop them like hot rocks. And more voices will be silenced. More careers will end far too early. And everyone, readers and authors and publishers, will all be the poorer for it.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what I decided about that book I really want to read and review for you here? I’m still thinking about it.

Cool Stuff at Rogue Blades’ Home of Heroics

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There have been a couple of posts up at Home of Heroics, the new feature on the Rogue Blades Entertainment site, the last few days. Friday Bruce Durham reviewed Howard Andrew Jones‘ Desert of Souls. This morning, Luke Forney surveyed the graphic adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s work, including Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, and Red Sonja. Interesting stuff, so check it out if you haven’t already.

Charles Saunders Guest Blogs at Home of Heroics

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Wednesdays at Home of Heroics is the day for guest blogs. For the inaugural guest blog, Charles Saunders, author of Imaro, has written a thought provoking piece on the role of fear in the heart of a hero. He looks at three examples: Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, and his own Imaro. Check it out.

The Noseless Horror

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Tales of Weird Menace
Robert E. Howard
The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press
473 p., $45 REHF members, $50 nonmembers

Tales of Weird Menace collects the, what else, weird menace stories of Robert E. Howard. The centerpiece of the volume is Skull-Face. Since I’ve written at length about that tale,we’ll go on to the second.

This is “The Noseless Horror”. It’s a brief tale, and in the interest of fair warning, I should tell you I’m going to include spoilers in this discussion. The plot is pretty simple. The narrator, called only Slade, and John Gordon are spending the night at the isolated country manor of Sir Thomas Cameron, noted Egyptotologist. Whether this is the same John Gordon who has such a prominent role in Skull-Face isn’t clear, but it’s highly unlikely. This Gordon is described as a wealthy sportsman, whereas the Gordon of Skull-Face is a government agent. The only other person at the house is the Sikh servant Ganra Singh, who lost his nose to an Afghan sword. There’s also a Ganra Singh in Skull-Face, but he’s not the one here. The descriptions and backgrounds are too different, plus the Ganra Singh in Skull-Face still has his nose intact.

Much of the conversation revolves around Sir Thomas tricking a rival, Gustavve von Honmann, with a phony map. As a result of following the map, Von Honmann was killed by a tribe in central Africa. According to the one porter who managed to escape, he vowed he would have revenge on Sir Thomas, from this side of the grave or the other. Sir Thomas isn’t frightened, and moves the conversation to the real reason he had asked the men to his home.

Sir Thomas tells Gordon and Slade that he is about to announce a major find and wants their input on some details first. The find concerns a mummy found in the hinterlands of Upper Egypt that was embalmed in an unusual way. None of the internal organs were removed. As Slade and Gordon are preparing for bed, they hear a scream from Sir Thomas’ study.

They arrive in time to hear Sir Thomas’ final words, “Noseless–the noseless one”, before he falls over dead with a dagger in his heart. Ganra Singh joins them minutes later. Of course, Gordon immediately accuses Ganra Singh of the murder despite the fact that Ganra Singh’s clothes are not disheveled nor is there any blood on them. Slade is not so sure of Ganra Singh’s guilt, and Gordon, after locking Ganra Singh in another room, agrees to consider other possibilities.

Slade searches the house while Gordon stays in the study to look for clues. He actually says that. Up until this point, the story reads like a combination gothic/English country house mystery. It’s not until Slade is returning to the study after finding an empty mummy case in Sir Thomas’ private museum that he spies the shadow of Ganra Singh on the wall. Slade is terrified and understands something of what could have driven Sir Thomas mad just before he died. At this point, we’re back in familiar Howard territory, more of a horror story than a weird menace in my opinion.

While Slade was searching the building, both men heard a crash and assumed it was caused by the other. They investigate to find that Ganra Singh has escaped. After searching the building, they see a light coming from under Ganra Singh’s room. How they know this to be his room is not explained. The light is caused by roaring fire in the fireplace. Inside Gordon and Slade discover not Ganra Singh but the missing mummy, which, like Ganra Singh, has no nose. The mummy attacks, shattering Slade’s shoulder, and is in the process of breaking Gordon’s back across a heave table when Ganra Singh shows up. By his own brute force Ganra Singh is able to shove the mummy into the fire, destroying. Gordon responds by fainting.

While Ganra Singh is binding Slade’s wounds, we learn that Ganra Singh escaped in order to prove his innocence and find the true killer. Gordon apologizes for doubting him and gives him one of the highest compliments possible in Howard’s fiction, calling him “a real man.” Gordon tells the other two men that the mummy wasn’t found in the hinterlands of Egypt, but instead Sir Thomas brought it back from much closer to the center of the continent, on the edge of the territory where Von Honmann was killed. As the mummy burned in the flames, Gordon saw its face change to Von Homann’s.

This story works, although it’s not one of Howard’s best, and it works primarily because of Howard’s ability to tell a tale. It begins as an apparent attempt to be either a detective story or a traditional country house mystery. The “mystery” is entirely too predictable. About halfway through the tone changes and becomes one of creeping horror and then action, things Howard excelled at. It’s at the end, when Gordon is explaining things, that Howard returns to the form of a traditional mystery, in which the detective explains to the remaining suspects how he deduced who dunnit. Howard attempted some detective and mystery stories, but he never really felt comfortable with them. Often he would introduce elements of the genre he was trying to write into a genre story he was comfortable with. As an example, one of the early Conan stories, “The God in the Bowl” is a police procedural in a fantasy setting. This looks like an attempt on his part to mix horror with mystery/detection.

A popular pastime, usually among the uninformed but occasionally among people who should know better, is to criticize Howard for his approach to race. This story is a perfect example that such individuals don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. The narrator refuses to accept that the nonwhite character is automatically the killer, instead wanting to see proof, and tries to find evidence to clear him. Furthermore, Howard makes him the real hero of the story, saving the lives of the white guys. What’s racist about that? Nothing; in fact it’s remarkably progressive for its time. Gordon displays the typical racial attitudes for a man of his day. He not only gets shown up for it, he’s also the only one who faints, and then later apologizes for his attitudes.

One thing bears considering here, and that’s the similarities between “The Noseless Horror” and Skull-Face. Both have strong heroic characters named John Gordon. Both involved evil beings with grotesque appearances found in mummy cases. Both have Sikh characters named Ganra Singh, although the two Sikhs are clearly not the same person. I don’t know when “The Noseless Horror” was written nor have I had any luck in finding a probable composition date, but my guess, and this is only a guess, is that it precedes Skull-Face in composition. It wasn’t unusual for Howard to play around with variations on different characters names. He may have tried out the names in “The Noseless Horror” before going on to write Skull-Face. Certainly the latter is a more polished and ambitious work. And it would make no sense to give characters in a later story the same names as characters in a published story when those characters aren’t the same individuals.

I don’t know if Howard submitted “The Noseless Horror” anywhere or not. In a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith written sometime in February 1929, Howard provides a list of most of the stories he had submitted up to that time [Collected Letters, vol.1, 1923-1929, REH Foundation Press, pp. 306-312]. “The Noseless Horror” isn’t listed, although Skull-Face is. In the letter Howard mentions that he left out “four or five stories” plus a number he didn’t finish or submit. I suspect “The Noseless Horror” was among these. That would certainly be consistent with the suggestion Howard wrote “The Noseless Horror” for prior to Skull-Face and never submitted it anywhere. It wasn’t published until 1970 in the February issue of the Magazine of Horror. If anyone does know when this story was written, I’d appreciate your letting me know.

“The Noseless Horror”, like I said, isn’t one of Howard’s best and may very well have been an unsuccessful experiment in writing in the vein of an English mystery. Unsuccessful in terms of its being that type of mystery. Still, it’s worth a read and no matter what it attempts to be, it succeeds as an entertaining yarn.

Blogging Kull: Delcardes’ Cat/The Cat and the Skull

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Spoiler Alert: This is not one of Howard’s best stories. The plot is fairly straightforward, if unbelievable. Kull goes with Tu, his chancellor, to see the talking cat of Delcardes. The cat is reputed to be thousands of years old. During the conversation, Delcardes asks Kull for permission to marry a nobleman from a neighboring kingdom. This sends Tu into paroxysms of fury because Delcardes is of the nobility, and it is against custom for nobility to marry foreigners. Howard seems to have developed a fondness for this plot device since he used it in the unfinished draft that precedes this tale in the Del Rey edition.

The cat, whose name is Saremes, tells Kull where he left a left (in his scabbard) and that a courtier is coming to tell Kull that a surplus has been found in the royal treasury. Tu insists that this is trickery. Kull is a little more gullible, and in the end Saremes accompanies Kull back to his palace. Attending Saremes at all times is the slave Kuthulos, who wears a veil covering his face and neck at all times. Saremes and Kull often sit up all night talking philosophy, but Saremes refuses to tell Kull much about the future. Personally I found her reasoning a little thin and had trouble believing someone like Kull could have been taken in by them. Howard even says that Kull has his doubts, yet he goes along with everything the cat says. Except the continued proddings of Saremes to try to convince Kull to let Delcardes’ marry a foreigner.

Then one day, Saremes tells Kull that his Pictish friend Brule has been captured by a monster while swimming in the Forbidden Lake. Kull immediately takes off to rescue Brule. After battling several monsters, in what are better than average action scenes, Kull is captured by a giant snake and taken deep under the lake into a cave in which the surviving members of the lake men are living. They don’t exactly buy Kull’s explanation for why he’s there. The situation is about to degenerate into a bloodbath when Kull learns that Brule was never in the lake at all. After pledging to leave the lake men in peace, Kull returns to the surface.

When he gets back to the palace, he finds the place in an uproar. Seems the king has wandered off somewhere without telling anyone where he was going. In the ensuing chaos, Kull hears a beating sound and discovers that Kuthulos has been tied up in a secret passage. The man masquerading as Kuthulos is none other than the evil sorcerer Thulsa Doom who swears to destroy Kull before he escapes. It seems Thulsa Doom is a servant of the serpent people. Yeah, those serpent people. Anyway, it turns out that Saremes can’t speak at all, but Kuthulos can literally throw his voice. He was the one telling Kull to allow Delcardes to marry her foreign lover and all the signs given in the opening scene were tricks. Only after Thulsa Doom took Kuthulos’ place was Kull told to go to the Forbidden Lake. Kull graciously pardons Delcardes for her scheming and allows her to marry whomever she wishes.

When published in the Lancer edition, this story was entitled “Delcardes’ Cat”, which is the name of the draft. There aren’t many differences between the draft and the finished story. The chancellor Tu is called Ku for the first page or so in the draft, then his name changes. The only other significant change is the late addition of Thulsa Doom. Howard added him as an afterthought in the first draft.

Several things struck me about this story. First, that the physical description of Thulsa Doom was a whole lot like that given for Skull-Face in the story of the same name. In fact even the name of the slave is similar. Skull-Face was called Kathulos. Patrice Louinet reports in “Atlatnean Genesis” (Kull, Del Rey, p. 298, 2006) that this was the original name in the first draft and was later modified for the final story. It is useful to keep in mind that this story was written at about the same time that Howard was working on “Skull-Face”.

Another thing that struck me was that this is the second story in which a woman has deceived Kull and he’s blown it off and pardoned her. The first was “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune.” That’s not something Conan would have stood for. Not even once. While he might not have killed the girl, you can be sure Conan wouldn’t have been so forgiving.

In spite of its flaws, this story definitely shows Howard at his most poetic. Consider the following quotes (page nubmers are from the Del Rey edition):

“Twilight was stealing down from the mountains of Zalgara when Kull halted his horse on the shores of the lake that lay amid a great lonely forest. There was nothing forbidding in its appearance, for its waters spread blue and placid from beach to wide white beach and the tiny islands rising above its bosom seemed like gems of emerald and jade. A faint shimmering mist rose from it, enhancing the air of lazy unreality which lay about the regions of the lake.” p. 97

“At first the king thought it to be a huge octopus for the body was that of an octopus, with long waving tentacles, but as it charged upon him he saw it had legs like a man and a hideous semi-human face leered at him from among the writhing snaky arms of the monster.” p. 98

“” ‘You come like the herald of all your race,’ said this lake-man suddenly, ‘bloody and bearing a red sword.’ ” p. 104

While not a major work, and certainly not the best plotting Howard ever did, this one is still worth reading, if only for the passages like those quoted above. “The Cat and the Skull” shows Howard beginning to master his form and hints at greater writing to come.

Blogging Kull: Untitled Draft

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Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey, $15.95

After completing “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, Howard’s next attempt at a Kull tale was an abortive effort simply called “Untitled Draft” in the Del Rey edition. A good title would have been something along the lines of “Who Rides into the Sunrise” since that phrase is repeated in several forms at one part of the story and would have been a central theme if Howard had chosen to finish it.

The story opens with one of the Valusian nobles telling Kull about a scandal in which the Countess of Fanara, Lala-ah (surely one of the silliest names in all of Howard’s canon and certainly more fitting for a tavern girl than a countess) has jilted her fiance at the altar to elope with Felgar, an adventurer from the neighboring kingdom of Farsunia. There’s definitely some alliteration here. Normally, so many proper names so closely associated would be off-putting and confusing to the reader. A more experienced author would probably not have made this mistake. Howard was still learning his craft, although by this time he was becoming quite an accomplished wordsmith. Howard perhaps was aware on some level of the potential for confusion, because this is the only time all three names (Fanara, Felgar, and Farsunia) are used in close succession.

Kull is bored by the whole thing, and comments that in Atlantis, the “women mate with whom they will and whom they choose.” Having grown up in small Texas towns, I think I can safely say that this idea was ahead of its time in 1920s Cross Plains. It’s only when a messenger informs Kull that Felgar has said: “Tell the barbarian swine who defiles an ancient throne that I name him scoundrel. Tell him that some day I shall return and clothe his cowardly carcase {sic}in the clothing of women, to attend my chariot horses.” Why Felgar would do this is never explained.

Strong words from a man who is also a foreigner, although from one of the civilized kingdoms. This, of course, sends Kull into a rage. He summons Brule and the royal cavalry, the Red Slayers. They take off in pursuit of Lala-ah and Felgar, crossing the border of the neighboring kingdom of Zarfhaana.

Howard seemed to be setting up some conflict besides that between Kull and Felgar. There are two other men in the party besides Kull and Brule who are named. Ka-yana, who led the original pursuit and is overtaken by Kull and the Red Slayers, is the first. There is definite dislilke between him and Brule.

The second man is named Kelkor. He is second in command of the Red Slayer. Instead of being Valusian, he’s Lemurian. He worked his way up through the ranks, attaining the highest rank he could as a foreigner. This prevents him from becoming the lord commander of the entire army. Kull silently laments this fact. The passage (p. 71) implies, to me at least, that this will become a plot point later. Kelkor is a warrior’s warrior. In fact Kull has something of a man-crush on Kelkor. I don’t recall any other passage in Howard’s writings in which the central hero wonders if he can ever have the self control and martial prowess another man has. There may be such a passage, but if there is, I’m not aware of it.

This is the least brooding of the Kull stories Howard had written up until this time. The emphasis here is more on pursuit. The party, all 300 strong, track the lovers to a city on the eastern border of Zarfhaana, but the pair manage to elude Kull, although just barely. It’s while Kull and Brule are secretly searching for them in the city that the comments of riding into the sunrise begin.

The pursuit continues, across the border into Grondar, a kingdom of fierce horsemen who often raid Zarfhaana and other kingdoms along their border. Kull has enough men that the Grondarians don’t molest them but do follow along behind them, watching. Felgar and Lala-ah manage to stay about a day’s ride ahead. I don’t know much about horses, but I found it a little hard to swallow that the horses Kull’s party as well as the lovers are riding don’t start dropping dead from the relentless pursuit. I realize that Howard says Felgar and Lala-ah have spare horses, but still, give me a break.

Eventually, they come to a river, the Stagus. On the western side is grassland; on the eastern, desert. At the river they meet a man, Karon the Ferryman, as he calls himself. It’s been established that many of the names Howard was using in his fiction during this period were taken from Bullfinch. Here’s a perfect example of his doing so, and I think it’s brilliant. Howard makes Karon seem a natural fit to the story, not forced. Howard even states that Karon will eventually be known as boatman to Hades. While the land on the eastern side of the Stagus isn’t called Hades, it is called World’s End and is a hot and hellish place inhabited by monsters. No one who has crossed the Stagus has ever returned.

Karon informs the group that he is a member of the Elder Race. He also knows Kull’s name, even though Kull does not give it. I’m not sure if this was an oversight on Howard’s part or not. I suspect not. It certainly works to make Karon more mysterious and a little threatening even though nothing he does or says is overtly hostile.

Felgar and Lala-ah took the ferry across the Stagus at dawn the previous day. Kull says he intends to follow to avenge the insult Felgar has given him but that the men are free to return without it being held against them. They all follow Kull. So impressed by this is Kull that he gives them the highest compliment he can: “Ye are men.” Karon ferries them across, and the party prepares to continue it’s pursuit.

And that’s where the story ends. Just as it was starting to get interesting.

It’s unfortunate that Howard chose not to finish this tale. It was probably shaping up to be the lengthiest Kull story Howard had written up to this time. Yes, the impetus to get Kull to take to the road is weak. Pursuing lovers that he would ordinarily sympathize with in order to avenge an insult is a bit thin for motivation to leave the kingdom in the hands of the nobles, who we know from “The Shadow Kingdom” are not to be trusted. Especially if you take most of your personal guard with you. It’s easier for me to see Conan in his pre-Aquilonia days doing something like this than it is for me to see Kull acting this way. But once Kull and his men are on the road, who cares why he left. This installment shows us some of the geography of Kull’s world, something we don’t get to see much of in the other stories. Once Kull and Brule are in the city looking for their quarry, Howard drops hints that they’re heading into trouble. This is confirmed when Karon tells Kull no one who has crossed the Stagus has ever returned.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s on the other side of that river. I want to know what monsters are lurking there. More critters from Bullfinch? It would be fascinating to see what Howard does with them. Maybe no one has ever returned because a gorgon is hiding over there. It would certainly fit with the Greek mythology motif Howard establishes with Karon. And what about the animosity between Brule and Ka-yana? Where was Howard going to take that? Yes, I know it would almost certainly have ended in Ka-yana’s blood being spilled, but half the fun is getting to that point. Let’s not forget Kelkor. Will Kull eventually go against custom and promote Kelkor to command of all the army and not just the Red Slayers?

Sadly, unless the highly unlikely happens and the rest of the story turns up somewhere, the world will never know. Even with it’s flaws and unfinished state, this draft showcases Howard’s growth and improvement as a writer. He has more characters than in any of the previous Kull tales, and their motivations appear to be more complex than any to this point. Their interactions certainly are. This could have been a major novella, especially if Howard had tweaked the story a bit to make the motivation for pursuit a little more believable. It’s our loss that he didn’t.