Post vacation, back in the saddle again

A couple shots of Bar Harbor

There are the shores of Faëry

with their moonlit pebbled strand

whose foam is silver music

on the opalescent floor

beyond the great sea-shadows

on the marches of the sand

that stretches on for ever

to the dragonheaded door,

the gateway of the Moon,

beyond Taniquetil

in Valinor.

--from “The Shores of Faëry,” J.R.R. Tolkien

Last week I took a vacation with family and friends to scenic Bar Harbor on the beautiful coastline of Maine. Highly recommended. Sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the 47,000 acres of Acadia National Park, it’s a bit of paradise on earth. Worth going to at least once in your lifetime, regardless of your proximity to New England.

This was my first time off in 2022, save for a hectic few days in between a job change, and was sorely needed time to disconnect and just be. We followed that up with a 4th of July weekend up to the family lake house in NH, culminating with a friend touching off a wicked black powder cannon to celebrate Independence Day. That’s what you call ending things with a bang, one that I’m still feeling in my sternum.

It’s over now, but I’m finding myself glad to be back home in and familiar surroundings and the old comfortable routine.

A few swordly-and-sorcerous updates.

Man, there are some good new S&S podcast episodes I’ve gotten caught up on.

The Cromcast published nine episodes of panel sessions, academic paper readings, and casual conversations from the recent Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, TX. Again I’m reminded of how much I missed by not attending, and how I’m publicly vowing to attend in 2023 (I’m writing this here again to make sure I hold my own feet to the fire—the more I write this the harder it becomes to back out without completely losing face and looking like an asshole). I enjoyed them all but in particular the sessions on Robert E. Howard in 1932, the 40-year remembrance of Conan the Barbarian by Paul Sammon, and the Glenn Lord Symposium papers. I was tickled to hear my name mentioned in two of the sessions, in particular the citation of Flame and Crimson by an academic presenting a paper in the Glenn Lord Symposium, on Charles Hoffman's "Conan the Existential." It’s still hard to believe I won a Venarium award, as I don’t consider myself a particularly deep or notable scholar of Robert E. Howard. Just a hardcore fan who happens to write a lot about his works and their obvious overlap with sword-and-sorcery.

So I’m Writing a Novel has a great episode out, part 1 of a 2-part interview with second age sword-and-sorcery author David C. Smith of Oron and Red Sonja fame. Some great nuggets in here about Smith’s origin story as an author, the importance of fanzines in cultivating and encouraging writers in the 1970s, and the general S&S publishing scene of the mid-late 70s. Plus some info on the rumored but unpublished (and apparently never written, or at least never finished) Karl Edward Wagner Bran Mak Morn novel Queen of the Night.

While I was away I managed to read the second Death Dealer novel by James Silke, Lords of Destruction. This was… not very good. Some chapters/pieces were fun, even laugh out loud, so it delivered some entertainment value, but it reads like an unintentional parody of S&S. It’s representative of the late stage, bloated barbarian S&S that played a role in the genre’s downfall in the early 1980s. I’ll get a review up soon.