The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard studies, vol. 12.1

I took a (small, calculated, $8) risk on the latest volume of The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, purchasing it based on the table of contents and the fact that editors Jason Ray Carney and Nicole Emmelhainz-Carney are talented and invested in this venture.

I was not disappointed.

Some may not be happy with the direction taken by this semi-venerable journal, which has published 27 issues since its debut in 1990. Jason and Nicole have decided to branch out to the broader field of pulp studies, rather than a laser focus on Robert E. Howard. I think it was a great move. We need a journal that fosters discussion on other Howard-inspired or Howard-adjacent writers, such as Karl Edward Wagner. And we get that with the latest edition.

Vol. 12.1 includes seven pieces, ranging from editorial to interview, to scholarship to book review, and runs 113 pages.

First the news: I was thrilled to hear that Gary Hoppenstand, editor of the short-lived but highly regarded fanzine/semi-pro zine Midnight Sun, is under contract with McFarland to write a book analyzing Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane studies. McFarland is an independent publisher of academic nonfiction with a bent towards pop culture. I’ve got a couple of their books on my shelf, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and the Birth of Modern Fantasy (which I reviewed for Skelos #1) and Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy, and the World’s Pain, by Mark Scroggins. The latter was an invaluable help to me in the writing of Flame and Crimson. I am very much looking forward to this new book on Kane, for which the scholarship is lacking. The preface will be written by the great David Drake.

This news was revealed in an interview conducted with Hoppenstand by Luke Dodd, one of the co-hosts of the Cromcast podcast. Dodd for the same issue contributed a publication history of Midnight Sun, about as thorough a treatment of that long defunct ‘zine that we can hope to get. Dodd used available resources form the likes of the ISFDB with additional information from Hoppenstand to fill in some of the blanks. Hoppenstand launched Midnight Sun as a teenager to help place some of Wagner’s Kane stories. Hoppenstand had written to KEW enthusiastically after reading Death Angel’s Shadow, starting a correspondence that led to Hoppenstand placing the likes of “Lynortis Reprise,” “In the Lair of Yslsl,” and “The Dark Muse,” among other stories, poems, and artwork. Wagner had experienced difficulty placing some of his Kane stories and Hoppenstand and Midnight Sun filled the void, later branching out and publishing other genre authors including David Drake and H.H. Hollis. Midnight Sun published its fifth and final issue in 1979, a victim of Hoppenstand's lack of funding.

Given the scarcity of material published on Karl Edward Wagner I was particularly happy to read Dodd’s pieces, but there are some other entries in TDM vol. 12.1 worth talking about.

I approached “REH N-grams: A Study of Cultural Trends Related to Robert E. Howard” by Williard M. Oliver with some trepidation; even for an REH and S&S nerd this one seemed rather esoteric and data-geeky. I have read the related “Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry” in Conan Meets the Academy and that one, while having some points of merit, left me a bit cold, mainly because it dwells too long on explaining what stylometry is and too little on its application to REH; Oliver’s piece however was on point. The author used a tool called the Google Books N-gram Viewer to analyze the recurrence of terms related to Howard and his creations and popular phrases. While the Viewer only includes books published up through the year 2000, the tool helped Oliver demonstrate a Howard presence in the 1930s, a slight but minor rise in the 1940s and 50s, then a significant increase from the late 60s through the 1980s. Which tracks rather nicely with the Arkham/Gnome, Lancer/Ace, publications, and the oft-told stories of how these latter books brought many readers into the fold. In short, it adds statistical rigor to conjecture.

Quinn Forskitt’s “Building a Universe: An Analysis of the Works, Lives, and Influences of the Lovecraft Circle” is an invited essay, a boiled down version of Forskitt’s master’s thesis. While this information is likely well-known to the die-hards, it’s great to see new scholars and scholarship in the field. Very readable and engaging work. I found “Adapting Lovecraft to Video Games: What is Lost, What is Gained,” to be less interesting, only because I’m not a video gamer, but I have to say this is highly original, and probably a must-read for players of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Bloodborne. The author also has a strong grasp of what makes Lovecraft’s stories unique, and hard to adapt in a visual medium.

Rusty Burke has a review of the new REH biography by Todd Vick, Renegades and Rogues. While Burke invites the work, defends the need for further REH biography, and so welcomes it on his shelf, he does declare it only half successful in its stated purpose: It answers the question of who Robert E. Howard was, but not why he was important, Burke concludes. In full disclosure I have not read Renegades and Rogues.

All in all, I enjoyed the heck out of this issue of TDM. And I’m greatly looking forward to Hoppenstand’s book.

Technopoly, Neil Postman

Finished Neil Postman’s Technopoly the other day, and loved it, and was enlightened by it, challenged by it. It was very interesting to read a book published in 1992, pre commercial internet, with the premise that technology had (even by then) been so mindlessly and carelessly adopted wholesale, and given such primacy, that it quickly wiped away our norms and culture and destroyed its sanctity and symbols. It's hard to argue with this when we spend all our time with our heads down in our phones these days (self included). One wonders what Postman would have had to say about Tik-Tok.

There is great stuff in here about the insidiousness of "invisible technology," for example standardized testing and our harmful desire to assign IQ scores when intelligence cannot be measured with a single score. Basing our decisions on polling data when this data can change dramatically based on the subtle wording of a question and a given poll taker’s mood, and thus forfeiting our sovereignty or outsourcing it to the crowd. How ruthless efficiency and skill building has risen to prominence over liberal arts education in the drive to create skilled workers who can add to the GDP, warping the true purpose of education. The inevitable advance, today led by neuroscience, to reduce humans to 0s and 1s.

Postman asks some deeply penetrating questions on how we can fight back against Technopoly, which include establishing an academic curriculum rooted in history, across all subjects, that offers a narrative of the ascent of man and why decisions were made and from where our current beliefs/practices/scientific advances/theories have derived. In short, an education that makes us think, not conform, and embrace humanity and the human ideal, not machines. Education is not a means to an end; rather being educated, broadly and richly, is the end goal.

These issues and solutions may sound a bit like cranky conservatism or “old man shouting at cloud” but I happen to agree with many of them. There is something in these narratives that speaks to me, I think anyone who can take a step back and observe will realize that progress is not always for the good, but for the good and bad, simultaneous. More to the point, technology changes the landscape, forever, and while we make gains we inevitably lose something in the translation, including our individual sovereignty. J.R.R Tolkien was acutely aware of this, as was Robert E. Howard (see his letters to H.P. Lovecraft).

I am aware of my own hypocrisy, writing these words on a blog on the internet, with immediate distribution. I am a beneficiary of technology. But I also shake my head at our mindless adoption of the latest shiny that comes along. 

In summary I like this damned blog just fine, I don't need a Twitter following.

Sepultura, The Hunt

I was a huge Sepultura fan back in the day, when Max Cavalera was fronting the band. They put out 3-4 stone cold classic albums in that period, with my favorite probably going to Chaos A.D. I was lucky enough to catch them in concert a couple times.

Here is "The Hunt" from that album. The lyrics are a straight up apology for vigilantism, which some days and for some types of offenders I can get behind:

We went into town on the Tuesday night
Searching all the places that you hang about
We're looking for you

 

In the back street cellar, in the drinking clubs
In the discotheques and the gaming pubs
We're looking for you

 

You will pay the price for my own sweet brother
And what he has become
And a hundred other boys and girls
And all that you have done

 

The problem with reviews

I get asked for book reviews, with some amount of frequency.

I don’t blame anyone for asking me, or asking others, to review their book. Now that I’m an author I empathize with that sentiment, quite deeply. All authors want and need readers, and reviewers. More than money, or at least on equal footing, writers crave readers who enjoy their work. They seek validation that their work is good, and connects with a reader on some emotional level. And most want others to write about their book.

But please know that when I get your email, it makes me wince, and hurt a little inside, as reviews present many problems to the reviewer. Here are a few:

They’re a huge time commitment. Reviewing a book requires you to read the book (you better read it; “reviewing” a book because you know the author is unethical), and read it closer than you might if you were reading for pure enjoyment. Then comes the writing. To write a review of any substance requires some degree of planning, and thought, and care. You can certainly go the route of a four-five sentence capsule of what you liked about a book, and there is a place for those, particularly on Amazon. But I think careful reviewing is an art form. An honest review should do more than breezily sketch the plot and end with “I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Robert E. Howard.” A good, earnest review should teach you something new about the book, or the genre, and place the author in a community of like authors. There should be some indication of the style and manner in which the story is told. In short, a good review is itself an art form, and takes time to craft properly.

Related to the above, reading something new must always close other doors, possibly to something better. Years ago I wrote a post for Black Gate on the problem of the glut of fantasy in the market. An intractable problem facing new writers is the weight of history, and the hundreds of thousands of authors that have gone before them. In my middle age is it apparent that I will NEVER be able to read all the books I want to. Right now I’m barely managing a book a week, which puts me at 52 books a year. At age 48, I might have another 40 years of life in me, if I’m lucky… that’s a little over 2,000 books, at best. A sobering thought. My time is finite and I want to spend it well. Should I read a new book by an unknown author, or should I read the Poul Anderson and Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock titles I haven’t gotten to yet? Or re-read a beloved old classic?

The moral quandary of reviewing bad books, or books you don’t enjoy. What if you don’t like a book, either one you’ve sought out, or one you’ve been asked to review? Do you write the review, or say nothing? Do you write a (semi) dishonest review, focusing perhaps on a few things you found OK, while leaving out your valid critiques? I still think of this brilliant review of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, a highly regarded book which I detested. Like a surgeon Adam Roberts dissects his problems with that book, comparing it unfavorably with The Children of Hurin, released at the same time by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. Roberts’ review is perhaps a little arch in places but it’s not mean-spirited. I find it illuminating, with much to teach us about the potent spell good fantasy can place on the reader, and the importance of being taken out of the modern world. Some might object to this line of criticism. If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all. I do believe there is a time and place for that sentiment, but I also believe that good critique serves a valuable function. The problem is that I don’t think most authors want to hear it. And I’m not sure I want to write it, as I don’t like hurting anyone’s feelings.

...

Now that I’ve spent some considerable digital ink expressing my deep reservations of the book review enterprise, believe it or not I do want to do more reviews of new works—as I am able. I want to support the sword-and-sorcery community, and there are many worthy publications and authors and titles that deserve the exposure and the commentary. I’ll mix them in as I can.

Sword-and-sorcery news and happenings

Some news, happenings and noteworthy occurrences heard on the sword-and-sorcery trail.

DMR Books to publish Viking Adventures in August. Just take my money. Although I've read a fair bit of Viking historicals and Viking flavored fantasy, I'm not familiar with these tales which makes it all the better. In particular I'm looking forward to reading "The Trader and the Vikings." With works like The Broken Sword and Hrolf Kraki's Saga, Poul Anderson does the Northern Thing as well as any author past or present. And damn, that cover (see right). Speaking of DMR you can now pick up Flame and Crimson at that fine publisher.

If you like Conan the Barbarian (1982), this 2 1/2 hour+ video by The Critical Drinker (how fun is that name?) and guest Andre Einherjar is worth the watch. This is an incredibly in-depth, informed, interesting, and just plain fun and compelling listen, with lots of interesting asides on Milius, Dino DeLaurentiis, the riddle of steel, the train wreck that was Conan the Destroyer, and more. I realize a lot of Howard fans don't like CtB, mainly because Schwarzenegger's Conan is not REH's Conan, but these guys make a compelling case that it's a work of surprising depth, and exceptional artistry and quality. I happen to agree.

As for me, I've got an essay on C.L. Moore that will definitely see the light of day as Swords & Shadows has met its funding goals, ensuring that this special sword-and-sorcery themed issue of Sexy Fantastic magazine will be published. I'm also working on a review of Fred Blosser's The Annotated Guide to Robert E. Howard's Weird Fantasy for The Dark Man journal (spoiler alert: It's good).

Heavy metal summer

It’s going to be a metal summer and fall, and man am I excited for what's to come.

The great Iron Maiden (my favorite heavy metal band ever, sometimes Judas Priest ekes out the no. 1 spot) has released a new single, The Writing on the Wall. I was on vacation when this hit and experiencing it first over shitty iPhone speakers was a mistake. I made myself wait until we got home and had proper sound/headsets before the next attempt. I haven’t given it enough listens to make up my mind, but with each spin it gets better. Love the opening hook and the Celtic feel. No, Bruce is not the same singer, but damn, he’s 60. Who is at that age? Regardless of what the album holds, new Iron Maiden is always a cause for celebration, as is the prospect of seeing the boys from Britain live on their inevitable support tour. The fun I’ve had at these shows over the years is off the charts. I suspect “The Writing on the Wall” will kick ass in concert. I CAN’T WAIT.

Concerts galore. I’ve got three shows lined up for the summer and fall:

1. KISS, Mansfield MA, August 18. Save for the fact that this falls on a Wednesday (blech) and getting out of Mansfield after a concert is like trying to escape from the Hanoi Hilton, I’m always glad to see KISS. My buddy Wayne is an even bigger KISS fan than I.
2. Alice Cooper, with opening act Ace Frehley, Gilford NH, Sept. 18. The best thing about this show is its on a Saturday night. Tied for second is the great double-bill of Alice and Ace. Another show with Wayne. Afterwards we plan to crash at my family’s lake house, a short drive from Gilford, to avoid a long trek back to MA. I’ve seen Ace several times and he’s always good. Alice of course is wonderful (trivia: My first ever concert was Alice on his Trash tour, March 1990).
3. Judas Priest, Lowell MA, Oct. 31. Are you kidding me? The Gods of Metal on Halloween night, at a venue about 30 minutes from my home? Like Maiden, Priest is no mere nostalgia act. I was blown away with their last album Firepower, in particular “No Surrender” and “Traitor’s Gate.” You get new material, but of course with a catalog stretching back 50 years (!) most of what Priest plays are the classics.

Let’s hope this new Delta variant of COVID-19 cooperates and I can get all these in.

Also wanted to mention the passing of Mike Howe, lead singer of Metal Church, dead at 56. A reminder of our mortality. This is why going to shows and enjoying life today is so important because damn, once it’s over it’s over. Apparently he was a family man and in great shape and no cause of death has yet been released. I was not the biggest Metal Church fan but loved a few of their songs, in particular “Badlands,” “Fake Healer,” and “Date with Poverty,” among others. I’m pretty sure I still own the cassette of The Dark. Time to crank some Badlands and remember Mike. RIP.

What sword-and-sorcery needs

I've been seeing some promising signs of a modern day sword-and-sorcery revival, with a growing number of small publishers putting out new works or collections of reprinted works from the old masters. Digital and print magazines are springing up (Tales from the Magician's Skull, etc.), and there's some good scholarship going on in certain corners (DMR, The Dark Man, etc.). All encouraging, and maybe there's a kernel here that will grow.

But sword-and-sorcery is still a niche within a niche. If it's ever going to reach its former heights it needs a lot of help.

Here's what I think sword-and-sorcery needs in order to flourish once again.

1. More readers. We are now seeing many small outlets for S&S fiction crop up, but nothing resembling real commercial markets. It needs to get mainstream, with a larger audience, and more paying consumers to create a viable market for writers and artists. Morgan Holmes once said something along the lines of, what is needed is the modern equivalent of the mass-market S&S paperback of the 1960s and 70s--cheap, eye-catching covers, with good, simple, page-turning stories to back up the packaging. With wide distribution, although times have changed. Printing costs are higher and the days of the drugstore wire-spinning racks have gone, replaced by the online juggernaut Amazon.

2. Good authors. From what I have read there are a few talented modern S&S authors working in the genre today, but who will be our next Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, or Jack Vance? There are a few modern bestselling fantasy authors that I dig--Joe Abercrombie and George R.R. Martin come to mind. Could we see them or their equivalent attempt an S&S splash?

3. A cohesive community, perhaps organized around a fanzine. Guys like Jason Ray Carney are building this right now, with the likes of Whetstone, an amateur magazine that also has a Discord group. I belong to several good Facebook groups, and there are some reasonably well-trafficked Reddit groups and the like. You've got the Swords of REH Proboards and a few other hangouts for the diehards. But it all feels very disparate. Sword-and-sorcery lacks a common gathering space and watering hole, like Amra used to serve. Leo Grin's now defunct Cimmerian journal is the type of publication I'm thinking of.

4. Some type of award, a recognition of excellence for authors and publishers and the like. The closest we had were the Gemmell Awards, which recently died off. I'd love to see a "sword-and-sorcery" category at the Hugos or the Locus Awards but I'm not holding my breath. 

5. A crossover hit, probably a film (or a video game). There's a lot of debate over whether these types of media foster readers, but an actual good sword-and-sorcery film (if such a thing were possible) that garnered a lot of good press, and led some mainstream journalists and bloggers to take the time to point the way to the fiction, could spur new interest and new blood. A wildly popular video game may have the same effect. I don't think comics are popular enough these days to spur the level of interest we saw with Conan the Barbarian in 1970.

We will never see the likes of 1968 again but I do think we could experience a third S&S renaissance, if we could make a few of these happen.

Swords & Shadows kickstarter underway

In July (starting today, in fact), Dream Tower Media is running a 30-day fundraising campaign to finance issue 4 of Sexy Fantastic magazine: Swords & Shadows! This is a quarterly SF and fantasy digital magazine of art, literature, and culture, produced and managed by Robert Szeles (aka, Robert Zoltan) of the Literary Wonder and Adventure Show podcast.

This issue is all about sword-and-sorcery. Supporting patrons can unlock a few gifts, one of which includes a signed copy of my own Flame and Crimson, as well as Ryan Harvey's science fantasy novel Turn Over the Moon, Szeles' sword-and-sorcery novel Rogues of Merth: The Adventures of Dareon and Blue, and other goodies, including art, podcast interviews, and more.

I've written a piece on C.L. Moore for Swords & Shadows and her unique contributions to the sacred genre. This issue will also feature four heroic fantasy/sword-and-sorcery tales, including one by the outstanding Adrian Cole.

Consider becoming a patron here.

The Dying Earth: A Case for Sword-and-Sorcery

Check out my latest post up on the blog of Goodman Games... The Dying Earth: A Case for Sword-and-Sorcery.

As I told blog editor Bill Ward after sending this one in I'm not sure I'm entirely thrilled with this piece. I don't like drawing hard lines around what is/is not S&S, like some purity test. The Dying Earth stories are bad-ass, no matter how you classify them. Vance was a master stylist and I love stories like "Liane the Wayfarer" no matter whether you consider them fantasy, science-fiction, heroic fantasy, or some other sub-genre (dying earth?)

I happen to welcome them into the S&S fold for reasons described in the linked piece. Your mileage may vary. Enjoy!

Racism, Robert E. Howard, and historical context

I don't particularly enjoy discussions about racism and so tend to steer clear of them. As a white dude, I feel like I can shed very little light on the topic, and am at far greater risk of saying something incorrect, out of touch, and/or offensive, than add meaningfully to the conversation. Race and racism also gets more than enough play in mainstream news, social media, etc., and I'd rather focus on other things here on the blog.

But, I've decided to risk a post on it, mainly because I believe it might shed some new light on the subject as concerns pulp fiction and sword-and-sorcery.

So I'm currently reading H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to C.L. Moore and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2017) and my eyes widened when I read this bit:

What you say of English as the dominant tongue is interesting, and full of speculative possibilities. How would the language be affected, I wonder, if the Russians for instance, or the Orientals, overthrew our civilization and we lost our proud supremacy as a free and conquering people. I was wondering the other day, too, whether if the Negroes should take their place in the sun as a conquering race, they would continue to sing their plaintive ballads of oppression. Rulers singing the songs of slaves. Probably not, though since I understand their songs are very largely composed on the spot, begin highly topical. My father tells of experiences in bossing gangs of n*****s loading river boats in his youth, and the way they would make chants as they worked about the most trivial incidents. And then it's highly unlikely that the Negro race will dominate from some time to come. Though interesting to observe the effect of two or three generations of highly intensified culture imposed upon the raw savage out of African jungles. Who knows to what further heights they may rise in a few more generations?

These are not the words of the incorrigible racist Lovecraft, but are from the pen of C.L. Moore herself (I have redacted use of the n-word).

I offer this here not to engage in "whataboutism," or to excuse anything Howard wrote, or prop him up by knocking other authors down. Howard wrote some ugly stuff that can and should be critiqued.

But, what this quote does demonstrate is that racism was incredibly pervasive in the 1930s. Moore was a college-educated, 22-year-old banking secretary from nowhere Indianapolis when she wrote the above passage. It's further evidence that while Howard was a racist by our own, enlightened, 21st century standards, it seems increasingly clear he was probably not any more racist than your run-of-the-mill citizen of his era. 

Racism was an unfortunate reality of the 1930s. You can clearly see that Moore inherited her beliefs from her father. And so it goes.

I didn't broach the subject of race and racism in Flame and Crimson, save superficially, because I believe that to do so thoughtfully, in the manner in which it should be treated, would require a book-length work of its own. If you want to call that a cop-out, or a dodge, that's fine. I happen to think it's an incredibly important, interesting topic, and I welcome the discussion. But it's one that needs to be handled with care, and precision, and thoughtfulness, and research, which many people unfortunately can't be bothered to take the time to perform. It's far easier to engage in drive-by attacks on the likes of Facebook and Twitter than to stop and think about the cultural and socio-political landscape of the 1920s and 30s, and approach the subject of Howard's racism with what it absolutely demands: Historical context. It's just not productive or remotely interesting to call Howard a racist. By our standards today, of course he was. Shouting "Howard was a racist!" is no more enlightening than saying "Howard lived in Cross Plains Texas!"

The real question is: Was he any more racist than your run-of-the-mill citizen of 1930s America? The more I learn and read, the more I don't believe he was. What he was, was an eloquent, passionate writer who committed his thoughts and emotions and convictions to paper. Thus the record of his racism remains on the page for subsequent generations to see, when it was also in the hearts and minds of many, many others of his generation.

A look at the new (sword-and-sorcery) man-cave

One of the few positive by-products of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it finally forced my hand on a new home office. Since vacating the work office and being sent home by my employer on March 13, 2020, I had been working in an unfinished basement. I carved out a decent space but it was quite crude, with my meager furniture surrounded by cement walls and floor and exposed insulation. Worst of all, the basement lacked a heat source, and fell to the low-mid 50s in the winter here in New England. Many days I would slap on a winter hat and heavily insulated work shirt (a very liberal definition of office casual) before descending into the "office."

I needed to make a change. At first I was thinking a dedicated heat source and continuing with the previous setup, but ultimately decided it was time for an upgrade to a legit home office.

I contracted my friend Wayne, who recently started his own carpentry business (W.C. North, which I recommend unreservedly for any of my Massachusetts followers). Work commenced in April and wrapped up with finishes in May. I laid the carpet and did the painting myself.

I couldn't be happier with the final product. Unofficially I've taken to calling it the mullet room. It is business in the front, party in the back, divided between my computer and work desk, and bar and book collection.

Party in the back!

Work desk. Not a lot of excitement here.

Frazetta and beer, two tastes that go great together.

Original oil by Tom Barber.

Flame and Crimson has won the Atlantean award from the Robert E. Howard Foundation

When I started writing Flame and Crimson in 2014 I had no expectations. I did not think I was worthy of the attempt, nor did I know where it was headed, precisely, even with a detailed but tenuous outline to guide me. And for some time, at least two years, I suspected I would never finish. I kept waiting for my motivation to dry up and blow away, as it is wont to do, or I figured I'd hit some impasse in the story of sword-and-sorcery from which I would see no way forward, a sheer wall without hand or toe hold, and I'd be left stranded, with nowhere to go but back down. 

Many times I thought, well, at least I can take what I've got and spin it into a couple substantive essays, or blog series. Yeah, that's a better fit anyway. Who are you to write a book? Again and again, the voice of what Steven Pressfield calls Resistance (capital R) whispered in my ear, telling me to give it up.

I pressed on, through peaks and valleys, some small, others dramatic. Somewhere in 2018 I knew I was going to finish.

I'm going to bare my soul for just a moment and admit that I got a bit emotional when that realization struck me, like a thunderbolt. I knew, for better or worse, with or without a publisher, I was going to write a book, this book, and it would see the light of day, even if I stuck it in a .PDF without formatting and offered it up here.

From that point, my work intensified, and I finished the writing in 2019. 

I want to thank Bob McLain at Pulp Hero Press for publishing the book, and getting me in touch with Tom Barber for that striking, old-school cover.

I want to thank all my early readers, and reviewers, dudes like Deuce Richardson, Paul McNamee and Davide Mana and Scott Oden, and later the likes of Bill Ward and David C. Smith and Jason Ray Carney, and many others. As of today it's gotten over 100 ratings, between Amazon and Goodreads, averaging in the mid-high 4 stars out of 5. The reception has been better than I ever anticipated, or hoped. 

A couple months ago Flame and Crimson received a nomination from the Robert E. Howard Foundation, and now after receiving definitive word from Rusty Burke I am over the moon to announce that it won the Atlantean award, for Outstanding Achievement, Book (non-anthology/collection, substantively devoted to the life and/or work of REH).

Extraordinary. 

I thank everyone who has helped me along the way, with advice and critique, or contribution (they are listed in an author's note in the book). When you write (quasi academic) non-fiction you are standing on the shoulders of many others who have paved the way with research, including books, articles, essays, letters, and introductions. I drew upon hundreds of sources to write this book, cited them, then tried to give the story of sword-and-sorcery a coherent narrative, and my own spin. 

I hope you've enjoyed it.

As for what is next for me as a writer, I have no idea. I have a demanding, full-time job. Family, friends. Those things, and reading and blogging, fill my time. Writing Flame and Crimson was a substantial sacrifice. Can I muster that type of effort again? Perhaps. If I could make writing a full-time gig I would do it in a heartbeat, but alas, sword-and-sorcery does not pay the bills. I feel a bit like a sword-and-sorcery hero who has survived a great adventure, spent his meagre coin in the local tavern, and now has the prospect of the next hair-raising scrape.

We'll see.

To the memory of Robert E. Howard (Jan. 22, 1906-June 11, 1936)

Into the west, unknown of man,
Ships have sailed since the world began.
Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote,
With dead hands fumbling his silken coat;
And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack–
Follow the ships that come not back.

 -- Robert E. Howard, "The Pool of the Black One" 

Over the years my appreciation for Robert E. Howard has grown, not diminished. He was an extraordinary, unique, meteoric talent that blazed across the sky and was gone, far too soon. It's almost incomprehensible that he produced so much great work in about a dozen years of professional writing. I'm currently reading the letters of C.L. Moore and H.P. Lovecraft, and for months and months after his passing, until Lovecraft's own death the following year, REH's name and legacy was a fixture in their conversation.

No one wrote like Robert E. Howard, and no one has since. He put himself into every story, and there was only one Robert E. Howard. 

He's not coming back, but we follow in the wake of the passing ship that was his body of work, into the unknown west, and marvel at the trail he blazed.

Battle Beast, "Armageddon Clan"

I've shown some love to Battle Beast before, in what seems like a lifetime ago (10 years?). This morning while working out "Armageddon Clan" inspired me to get an extra rep on the overhead press, so I figured it was worth sharing here, and pumping you up on your Friday.

This song has got all the elements I love. The lead singer, Nitte Valo, screams like a banshee. What a voice. A great opening guitar riff. Driving bass and drums that get your blood pounding. Relentless energy. 

I also dig the apocalyptic imagery and fun lyrics. As a child of the 80s who grew up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud and the searing imagery of The Terminator, this song hits all the right notes for me. Pun. Fully. Intended.

Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, a few thoughts

I recently finished a re-read of Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (Del Rey, 2005), inspired by a reading of the Karl Edward Wagner pastiche Legion from the Shadows. Some thoughts, rattled off rather quickly as a formal post is not in the cards:

Bran Mak Morn is like an ancient, savage, King Arthur. He is a once and future king, who will unite all the original tribes of Britain, drive out the “civilized” Roman and post-Roman invaders, and restore existence to a primitive ideal. His Camelot/round table will be the Cromlech, an inscrutable symbol of the unknown. Poul Anderson did this sort of thing with Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, but Howard’s “Arthur” is even deeper in time, the late third century.

A lineage of Picts connects all of REH’s material, like a savage through line. They make appearances in the Kull, Bran Mak Morn, James Allison, and Conan stories. Brule the spear-slayer’s lineage goes back to the very beginning (the Thurian Age of Kull, the days of Atlantis and Lemuria). The Last King contains a nice essay on this topic by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet, “Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn, and the Picts.” Bran Mak Morn taps into and unites this ancient spirit, successfully uniting the tribes before eventually dying in battle. But his image persists, a literal effigy in stories like “The Dark Man” and “The Children of the Night.” Will he come again, a once and future king?

Picts are Howard’s image of the primal, original state of man, whether that state is good or ill. Howard’s Picts are a primitive race. They organize in tribes, live off the land as hunter-gatherers (notably they do not farm, which makes men soft), don’t build cities, and work with flint. Howard saw himself in these slanted forehead, dark complexioned, brutish, un-guiled race.  The Picts are a step below barbarians in Howard’s taxonomy, unchanging, and eternal. Barbarians would eventually organize, and civilize, and grow soft—not so the Picts. A description of the Pictish chieftain Gorm from Howard’s “The Hyborian Age”:

In the seventy-five years which had elapsed since he first heard the tale of empires from the lips of Arus—a long time in the life of a man, but a brief space in the tale of nations—he had welded an empire from straying savage clans, he had overthrown a civilization. He who had been born in a mud-walled, wattle-roofed hut, in his old age sat on golden thrones, and gnawed joints of beef presented to him on golden dishes by naked slave-girls who were the daughters of kings. Conquest and the acquiring of wealth altered not the Pict; out of the ruins of the crushed civilization no new culture arose phoenix-like. The dark hands which shattered the artistic glories of the conquered never tried to copy them. Though he sat among the glittering ruins of shattered palaces and clad his hard body in the silks of vanquished kings, the Pict remained the eternal barbarian, ferocious, elemental, interested only in the naked primal principles of life, unchanging, unerring in his instincts which were all for war and plunder, and in which arts and the cultured progress of humanity had no place. 

The Picts did contain a purer, nobler strain, as exemplified in Bran, from the Thurian Age. They morphed in conception in Howard’s mind as he wrote the stories, and was exposed to new theories.

Howard uses the term “heather” very frequently when describing the landscape of ancient Britain, and its wilds, again and again, like an incantation. I have no knowledge of plant-life, but a quick Google search reveals that heather is a dominant plant in the heathlands of moorlands of Europe, yet is hardy and has been successfully introduced to many other continents and climates, including North America. The way in which Howard uses the term invites comparisons with his nostalgia for the frontier; I wonder how much he had in mind old, pre-cultivated, pre-industrial Texas, before the cattle farms and barbwire taming, while writing these stories.

Teenage wasteland and examining the unexamined life

I did not look like these dudes,
but was, in spirit.

Reading Donna Gaines’ Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids (1991), an otherwise unremarkable sociological study about troubled teenagers living in suburban New Jersey, has made me think a bit more about my own life, my story, and trying to knit it into a consistent whole. Like many other boys and young men, I’ve always been interested in things--Music, D&D, weight lifting, the military, history, fantasy fiction—over people. Maybe more so than your average person. I’ve always sucked at small talk, and relationships, and spent very little time examining myself, instead enjoying music and books and the like. Most of my life has been existing, and living without examination. I’ve decided in my middle age (47) to do more of that, maybe here on the blog.

I grew up in the time period and was a teenager in the same timeline of Teenage Wasteland, the late 1980s. My own experiences were different from the kids in the book—I would say that my hometown of Reading, MA was more affluent than Bergenfield, New Jersey, with more promise in my particular geographic area, more jobs due to the presence of a good economy in nearby Boston and its suburbs. My family was not affluent—my dad held a blue collar job building and developing centrifuges at a production plant in Brighton, while my mom took care of her three kids and did odd jobs (office cleaning, baby sitting) to help make ends meet, before eventually taking a job as a legal secretary as we got older. We were not anything close to wealthy, we didn’t always get what we wanted for birthdays or Christmas, and we wore hand me downs and a mixture of new and used clothing, and lived in a modest cape on a dead-end, blue-collar street. My town had its burnouts like those described in Gaines’ book: Reading High had a back parking lot where (incredibly, looking back from today) you could smoke. We had the metal kids, long-haired and denim jacketed, opposite the jocks. Some went to the nearby vocational school and became mechanics.

I had brushes with the burnout culture, but had a foot in each camp, which in hindsight may have made me somewhat unique. I played football, and track, and kept my hair short, and my grades were unremarkable, C’s and B’s, save for English, where I could pull As with little difficulty. But I also wore metal T shirts and hung out with a semi-fringe, though not burnout crowd. We loved metal, we drank when we could get our hands on beer or cheap vodka. A few of my friends smoked—cigarettes, and again when we could get our hands on it/post high school, weed. But, we didn’t do hard drugs, and we mostly stayed out of trouble with the police, a few scrapes here and there aside.

Like the kids in Teenage Wasteland I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. Not even a clue. I went to state college because I was a decent student, but mainly because it was the thing most kids did—not all kids, not for example my friend Wayne who went from retail to house siding to carpentry, and now today has his own small business. Not a couple other acquaintances and occasional drinking buddies who drifted into substance abuse. But most. Although thankfully I didn’t drift down that latter path, I was nonetheless a drifter, sliding into college, going along for the ride, partying and going to class. At college I had two major, life-altering occurrences—I met my future wife (we started dating as sophomores, and got married a year after graduation, in August of 1996) and I discovered a love of reading and writing after a false start in sociology and criminal justice. Eventually I chose English as a major and worked on my college newspaper. I excelled in all my English and writing classes because I loved the material.

I guess I was lucky, and met the right girl, which led to buying our first town house, setting me on the path of home ownership (two houses later, I’m living in the dream in a large colonial), and starting a family with two girls of my own. My love of reading and writing turned into a job on a small local newspaper, at the tail end of viability of local journalism. That later turned into a job at a medical b-to-b publishing company and my current, well-paying job and stable career.

Given my modest upbringing, the opportunities I had to take my life in a different, darker, direction, how did I end up where I am today and not in some dead-end, like that described in Teenage Wasteland?

The 80s had their issues. It was the decade of excess (again, for some), and probably the beginning of the have/have not wealth divide that is plaguing the country today. Manufacturing, blue-collar jobs like my dad held were being steadily eroded (my dad retired at the right time, in the late 90s, just as his company was bought and moved overseas. His old plant is now a condo). I stayed out front of ruin by cashing out on our first home (though taking a hit on our second), and getting out of print journalism just as the internet killed newspapering. I was competent—I’m being unnecessarily humble, I was an editorial star at my current job—which allowed me to survive the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and a deep round of layoffs. Due to severe mismanagement at the same company we endured an even worse series of layoffs and eventual purchase in 2012/2013, and I again survived those.

Kids were troubled back in the 80s. I saw some of that first-hand, and some of the consequences. But, kids were also troubled in the 60s, and 70s, and the 90s. And now today, with everyone wondering about the effects of staring at cell phones all day. “Kids these days” has probably been muttered by every single adult since ancient Greece, and in fact it has. Socrates himself wrote, “the children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” Sound familiar?

1994? Sue and I, just getting started.

I was fortunate enough to go to college and fall in love twice—once with my wife, and again with the likes of Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot and John Keats. I thank my parents for putting me through college, and scraping to do so, so that I did not graduate with a mound of debt. My wife had some, but together we managed it, and paid it off. We lived on nothing for the first year of marriage, living in an apartment in Burlington, VT on scraps. She was a grad student and I worked selling insurance, and later as a security guard, making almost nothing. That continued until we moved back to MA, and I started stringing for a local newspaper, where I got hired full time. My wife became a speech-pathologist and has since moved into school administration.

I guess you could say (to use modern vernacular) that I was “privileged.” Some of that is true, in that I grew up in a stable if unremarkable U.S. suburbia of the late 20th century, not war-torn Bosnia. But I reject that as the sole story. I worked consistently, my entire life. I have had jobs since I was 11-12, and worked at every school break, doing every odd job you can possibly imagine. Shagging carriages, digging fence post holes, sweeping floors, delivering newspapers. As a professional I didn’t take work home with me, I didn’t kiss ass, but I always (and still) believed in obligation, and keeping promises. Maybe it’s the old Northern European/Danish blood in me, and my reverence for the oath and/or Protestant work ethic, but when I’m being paid to do a job from 8:30-5, I work, and I do it to the best of my ability. I don’t believe in half-assing anything I commit to. I don’t always commit, but when I do I’m in, and my work, if not always brilliant, ranges from well-done competence, to exceeding expectations. When you do this, over and over again, you will eventually be noticed, and promoted. I have seen others in very similar circumstances and with similar abilities fail.

The world is a troubled place, and always has been, and despite our best efforts to socially engineer it, probably always will be. Some people will get shit breaks. But I think hard work and dogged persistence can still lift you up from teenage wasteland.

Sword-and-sorcery news and goings-on

Some recent news and items of interest that readers might find interesting.

My Q&A with Bard author Keith Taylor has been posted in two parts on the DMR website. If you're at all interested in his life, early writing career, collaboration with Andy Offutt, health, and current plans and writings, and much more besides, I recommend checking them out. Keith was super generous with his time composing these wonderful answers. Part one is here, and part two here.

The dudes over at the Cromcast released their final episode of season 13, covering Karl Edward Wagner's Bloodstone, and gave some good coverage to my DMR essay on the (possible) influence of The Lord of the Rings on that book. This is why I write these essays--not for the fortune and fame, but in the hopes that people will read them, interact with them, maybe leave thinking a little differently about their favorite works and authors.

I sent an essay over to Bill Ward at Tales from the Magician's Skull asking and attempting to answer the question, "Is Jack Vance's The Dying Earth Sword-and-Sorcery?", in 1,000 words. Not easy. That I believe will be published in June.

My buddy Wayne hung up my beloved Miller Lite sign in my new basement office/bar/man cave last night. And with that final flourish, it's done, man, and I'm pretty darned happy with the finished project. I'll post some pictures here soon. I describe it as a mullet--business in front (work station and desk) party in the back (bar and bookshelves featuring much S&S and other books).

Queensryche, "Take Hold of the Flame," Live in Tokyo 1984

Time to gush for a moment.

Geoff Tate circa 1983-88 was a vocal god on earth. Extraordinary range, power, expression. Soaring octaves that leave you speechless, wondering how a human voice can produce this sound. I have yet to see his peer in this window of time.

Here is arguably his greatest live performance, Queensryche ripping the roof off some dome in Tokyo in 1984. Move over Godzilla. If you haven't yet seen "Take Hold of the Flame," I envy your first experience. It's nuts.

Queensryche fell from its lofty perch, hard, after the smashing commercial success of Empire. But I choose to remember them here, when they were at their best, circa The Warning, Rage for Order, and Operation Mindcrime.

Bran Mak Morn: Your favorite cover?

I'm currently on a Bran Mak Morn kick, having read Karl Edward Wagner's Legion from the Shadows (good, not great) and now am going back to the original REH stories themselves.

What is your favorite cover? I'm partial to the Dell Bran Mak Morn--a dark, brooding Frazetta painting, with savage Picts looking very much like a prehistoric race bridging the Hyborian Age and our own ancient world. I prefer it over the Gianni and Jeff Jones covers, but your mileage may vary.

Awesome art by uncredited Doug Beekman

Flame and Crimson nominated by the Robert E. Howard Foundation

This was a heck of a surprise.

Flame and Crimson has been placed on the final ballot for the 2021 Robert E. Howard Foundation awards. You can find a complete list of the 2020 and 2021 nominees at the link above, which I can't resist sharing because it's probably the one time I'll ever get mentioned on Locus. Here is the initial announcement on the REH Foundation website.

I have been twice nominated for awards by the foundation, both times for print essays. These included "The Unnatural City" (from The Cimmerian, Vol. 5 No. 2), in 2009, and for "Unmasking 'The Shadow Kingdom': Kull and Howard as Outsiders" (from REH: Two-Gun Raconteur #14) in 2011. This time I've been nominated for The Atlantean — Outstanding Achievement, Book (non-anthology/collection). Per foundation rules, books nominated for the Atlantean may be print or digital, must be a minimum of 50,000 words, and must be substantively devoted to the life and/or work of REH. Reprinted works without significant revisions are not eligible.

I'm up against some stiff competition as Charles Hoffman & Marc Cerasini are legends in Howard studies, as is Fred Blosser, and their books are more purely aimed at Howard scholarship, as opposed to the broader S&S genre. But anyone who has read Flame and Crimson will note the substantial amount of attention rendered to Howard and the case the book makes for his place in S&S, fantasy in general, and as a writer of consequence.

Let's hope the third time is a charm.

The deadline for ballots is Sunday, May 16, at 11:59 pm CDT. I am a member of the REH Foundation (supporting member) and I haven't quite figured out how voting works. If you are a member, let me know how this is done, as there are several other worthy nominees on the ballot for whom I'd love to cast my vote. And I see the late Steve Tompkins has made his way into the nominees for the Black Circle Award for lifetime achievement. That's a pretty darned good group he's a part of, and Steve absolutely deserves to join that elite inner circle someday.

Some more S&S thoughts on the way; Keith Taylor news

Recently I've completed a couple of essays that will be published, both as early as tomorrow, by Dave Ritzlin over at DMR Books and Bill Ward at Tales from the Magician's Skull. "Myth manifesting in the present: Robert E. Howard’s “Marchers of Valhalla”* was a semi-spontaneous eruption of sheer joy to see Howard making myth, very much in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien, with this wonderful, lesser-known story that Dave recently reprinted in Renegade Swords 2. Anything with Vikings in it gets my attention, and when you combine REH at his wild, poetic best with mythic Aesir I'm all in.

The piece for Tales from the Magician's Skull, "Under the spell of Keith Taylor's Bard Songs"* was likewise inspired by two new-to-me stories from Keith Taylor from Renegades Swords 2 (these stories were first printed in the revival of Weird Tales back in 1988). Since then, I was able to obtain Keith's email address and wrote to him, and he's generously and at length been answering a series of 10 questions I posed to him about his early influences, writing career, and current health and upcoming plans. Great stuff from Keith which I hope to publish in some form or fashion.

(*Bonus points to those who spot the Blind Guardian references in both essays; they're pretty obvious).