Howard Days looming larger...

That red dot? I'll be there.

Just over one week until Robert E. Howard Days. Next Thursday, April 27 I’ll be flying out of Logan International and touching down in Dallas Fort Worth.

I can almost taste the Shiner Bock.

The CEO of my company lives in Austin and when I told him where I was headed he answered, “Cross Plains? Never heard of it.” 

He will after I come back. I'm sure I'll have some stories to tell.

At this point I’m buttoning up the final details.

I’ve gotta get some cash out of the bank and put together a list of the books I want to buy from the Robert E. Howard Foundation. I’ll be coming back 15-20 pounds heavier, from the books and the beer. 

I’m also putting together a list of books I plan to bring. These include a few author copies of Flame and Crimson and a couple contributor copies of Hither Came Conan, either as giveaways or to donate to the Silent Auction. Perhaps a few old S&S paperbacks of which I have duplicates. And any titles I want to get autographed from attending Howard-heads who have contributed to them--perhaps my copies of the Del Rey Conans and the like.

I suppose I oughtta pack some clothes as well.

Jason Waltz from Rogue Blades Foundation sent all of us contributors an electronic copy of Hither Came Conan. I plan to go through it over the next couple days to prime the pump and be prepared to talk about it in case I get any questions. I read the initial essays when they appeared on Black Gate a few years ago, but there is a lot more original material in the book.

I sent my paper for the Glenn Lord Symposium over to organizer Jason Ray Carney. This is a three-person session (we’ll each read a paper, one after the next) scheduled for Friday, April 28th, from 2:30 to 3:30 pm. The details:

• Brian Murphy will present "Far Countries of the Mind: The Frontier Fantasy of Robert E. Howard.”

• Will Oliver will present "Robert E. Howard and the Oil Boom Towns: Crime, Disorder, and Reality."

• Dierk Guenther, topic TBD

Oliver (professor, Sam Houston State University) and Guenther (Tokushima University) are both academics and I am not, but hey, I have a blog and once attended college. I’m excited to do this, I hope what I prepared is worthy of the occasion.

I learned that Jeff Shanks, former co-contributor at The Cimmerian website and an essayist whose work I admire, will be at Howard Days. Awesome! I had hoped that Paul Sammon, author of The Conan Phenomenon and Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, might be attending as well, but it seems I missed him by a year. That’s a bummer, I’m a big fan of Paul’s work.

Deuce Richardson is planning an informal sword-and-sorcery panel of which I’m going to be a panelist, but no other details on that as of yet. More to come there.