So today, January 6. is the one hundred and twentieth birthday of Robert E. Howard. The day is nearly over as write this. I’ve been occupied by work and winterizing before the temperatures drop into the single digits.
But I didn’t want the day to get away without some sort of post.
I doubt there’s much I could say that I either haven’t said before or that someone else has said better.
But when have I ever let that stop me? Continue reading
John Bullard has put together a birthday tribute video for Robert E. Howard. He kiindly invited me to participate. Thank you, John. It was a lot of fun.
Here’s the link: Happy 120th Birthday, Robert E. Howard!
The video will go live tonight (Wednesday, January 21) at 7:00 PM CST. Bob’s birthday, of courses, is tomorrow, the 22nd.
The tirbute consists of a number of Howard fans and scholars reading selections of his work. I chose the poem “A Song of the Naked Lands.”
I’ve not seen the video, but I’m looking forward to it. Check it out.
Today, January 20, is the birthday of Abraham Merritt (1884-1943). At one time, Merritt was arguably the priemere writer of fantastic fiction in the United States, if not the world. For a while there was a fantasy magazine named after him. Sadly, outside of a small number of aficianados of fantasy, he pretty much forgtotten today.
Not entirely, though. Centipede Press as reprinted some of his novels in nice hardcover editions. Paperback copies of his works are available on the secondary market. Continue reading
Note From Keith: John sent me this review a month ago. I apologize to him for taking so long to get it up. I was busy with school and family things. Since he wrote this review, there have been some other reviews that make the same or similar points. Know that John isn’t cribbing from other reviews.
I assume if you’re a Howard-fan, you know about this new biography that Dr. Willard Oliver has just produced. (Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author} I just finished my read of it and will give my thoughts on the book, if you’re interested. In full disclosure, I have become good friends with “Will” through our love of Robert E. Howard and Howard Days activities, and also gave some very minor help to Will in his researches for the book, and will do my best to not let any bias show up in my review. Continue reading
Today, March 9, is the birthday of Novalyne Price Ellis (1908-1999). Novalyne dated Robert E. Howard during the last two years of his life.
She kept a diary while they were dating, and it was published under the title One Who Walked Alone. It was filmed in the nineties as The Whole Wide World. The movie starred Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert E. Howard and Renee Zelwegger as Novalyne.
Without Novalyne’s diary/book, our understanding of Howard’s final years would be must less complete than it is now.
I think she was in some ways a stabilizing influence on his life, especially as Hester Howard’s health declined. Sadly, their relationship wasn’t stable enough for her to be there for him when his mother died.
I don’t mean that last sentence to be a form of blame for his suicide. I’m not sure that could have been avoided. And that sort of speculation isn’t a game I’m interested in playing tonight. So, raise a glass to Novalyne Price Ellis tonight if you’re so inclined.
Today, January 22, is the birthday of Robdert E. Howard (1906-1936).
There are a handful of writers who have their own dedicated shelves in my library. Leigh Brackett. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. Ray Bradbury.
But the one with two shelves, plus spillover for paperbacks and duplicate copies, I robert E. Howard.
I’vd been writing these posts for so long, I’m runnig out of things to say for them. But over the last year, I’ve begun enjoying Howard in a new way.
That’s through audio books. I”ve spent so much time behind the wheel of a car in the last dozen months or so that I’ve begun building up a small library.
All the Del Rey editions of Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Solomon Kane, and the Horror Stories are available. There are other productions of many of the individual storeis included in these volumes as well as stories Del Rey didn’t publish. I’ve not gotten any of those.
I’m slowly working my way through the Conoan stories right now, interspersing them with full-length books. I’m alternating between fiction and nonfiction, so I’ll be enjoying these yarns for quite some time.
The production is good, so if you listen to audio books, you might want to give them a try.
It is December 12 as I write this. I’m trying to get final exams graded, but I’m taking a break to observe the birthday of Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994). I think it’s that important ot acknowledge his achievements.
Karl Edward Wagner probably needs no introduction to anyone who reads this blog. He was one of the greatest writers of sword and sorcery and dark fantasy/horror of the Twentieth Century. We’ve not seen his like since, in my opinion.
Four fourteen years, he also edited The Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW books. He took over the reins with volume VIII in 1980. The series ended with volume XXII with Karl’s death. Wagner didn’t limit his selections to top genre publications. He read all sorts of obscure publication to find the best horror stories each year.
If you can find copies, which is getting harder and harder to do, grab them. Not onlyl are they an excellent survey of horror in the eighteis and early nineties, but reading them is a great informal course in how to write effective horror. You’ll recognize many of the authors Wagner included, many before they became famous. Others will be new to you. Continue reading
“And there was Bob Lee and the Peacocks”:
One of Robert E. Howard’s Favorite Texas Feuds
Robert E. Howard loved the history of Texas and the Southwest. He used it in writing many of
his stories. Famously, he wrote the last Conan tale, “Red Nails”, after his 1935 trip to New
Mexico, where he got the chance to see the sleepy town of Lincoln and walk its streets reveling
in the history of the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, an incident from history that he loved.
His story tells of the long-running feud between the inhabitants of the fabled city of Xuchotl,
where red and black nails were pounded into a post to keep score of which side’s followers had
been killed by the other. Howard was inspired by his knowledge of the Lincoln County War and
recent trip, as well as some other bloody feuds that had occurred in Texas to write this bloody
tale. Some of the Texas feuds Howard talks about in his letters are the Mason County Hoodoo
War between the German Unionist settlers and the Texan Confederate sympathizers, and the
Taylor-Sutton feud, which took place between two families over control of DeWitt county.
However, one of Howard’s favorite Texas feuds that may also have helped in his creating “Red
Nails”, is the Lee-Peacock feud, which was the bloodiest feud in Texas history, and perhaps the
second bloodiest in the United States. Continue reading
The Cowboy and the Contest:
Teel James Glenn’s Latest Bob Howard Adventure
I was looking for something to read, and checked to see if Teel James Glenn had written anything new in his “Adventures of (Robert E.) Bob Howard” series where an alternate universe Howard didn’t kill himself and went travelin’. He has written a third one, The Cowboy and the Contest, and it is a novella that is very different from the first two books in the series: A Cowboy in Carpathia , and The Cowboy and the Conqueror. Those two previous books were definitely set in the “new pulp” style of world-threatening adventures by first having Bob Howard fighting Dracula, and then taking on an evil cult trying to bring Lovecraftian horrors in to the world. They were action-fests from practically the first word on. This third story is shorter, quieter, and very enchanting. And, while it has its action scenes, they aren’t of a world-threatening nature, but more “down-to-earth” so-to-speak, (or actually write), within the story’s setting. Continue reading
Novalyeb Price Ellis (1908-1999) was born today, March 9. She was a school teacher in Cross Plains when she met Robert E. Howard. They dated off and on for the two years preceding his death in 1936.
She turned her diaries from that time into the memoir One Who Walked Alone in 1986. She supposedly wrote the book in response to L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of Howard, Dark Vally Destiny. My understanding is that she did not appreciate the way de Camp portrayed Howard. She was not alone in that.
But I digress. Continue reading