The Wrap Up

2025, like all the years before it, was a mixture of good and bad around here. Health issues became a little more challenging this year and took up more time, but I feel like I’m still in pretty good shape for an old-timer. My writing production isn’t what it once was, but I managed to turn out more than half a million words, which amounted to almost six novels. No short stories this year. Most importantly, I feel like the work is still pretty good quality. My schedule is fairly full again for 2026, but changes are looming. But when aren’t they?

Of course, reading is still very important to me, as it has been ever since I first visited the bookmobile when I was six years old. I read 149 books this year, a nice number but down some from last year. Here are my ten favorite books (not best, necessarily, but favorite) that I read this year, alphabetical by author:

SHARPE’S TIGER, Bernard Cornwell

GANGLAND’S DOOM: THE SHADOW OF THE PULPS, Frank Eisgruber Jr.

RANCHO BRAVO #1: CALHOON, Thorne Douglas (Ben Haas)

THE CHRONICLES OF HANUVAR, VOLUME 2: THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD, Howard Andrew Jones

LONGHORN STAMPEDE, Philip Ketchum 

SARA AND THE MAD DOG, Stephen Mertz

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS WRITER, Willard M. Oliver

SOMETIME LOFTY TOWERS, David C. Smith

STORYTELLER: HELPFUL HINTS AND TALL TALES FROM THE WRITING LIFE, Carlton Stowers

’NADA, Daniel Boyd (Dan Stumpf)

At least a dozen more books could have made this list and some of them probably would have on a different day. I read a lot of good books. I believe all of those listed above are still in print and easily available except for the Western novel by Philip Ketchum.

So what does 2026 hold in store? Who knows? I plan to keep writing and reading for the foreseeable future, and I figure most of the other stuff will take care of itself. My thanks to all of you reading this, some of whom have been here for more than twenty years. We’ll see how long we can keep it going.

UPDATE: In response to a request in the comments, here are the other books I considered for my top ten list, in the order in which I read them: THE RULE OF THREES, Jeffrey Deaver; THE ART OF RON LESSER, VOLUME 2, Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, eds.; ONCE A FIGHTER, Les Savage Jr.; SWITCHEROO, Emmett McDowell; GUN LAW AT VERMILION, Matt Stuart (L.P. Holmes); HAMILTON'S HAREM, William Kane (Ben Haas); THE JOY WHEEL, Paul W. Fairman; KNIGHT OF DARKNESS: THE LEGEND OF THE SHADOW, Will Murray; THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, VOLUME 5, Will Murray; OVERBOARD, George F. Worts; THE BULLET GARDEN, Stephen Hunter; THE RED TASSEL, David Dodge; DREAM TOWN, David Baldacci; MARIHUANA, William Irish (Cornell Woolrich); and EYE WITNESS, George Harmon Coxe. Any of these books are well worth your time.

Review: Sometime Lofty Towers - David C. Smith

I’ve known David C. Smith for about thirty years. We met in Cross Plains at the first Robert E. Howard Days get-together I ever attended. He’s been a top author of sword-and-sorcery fiction for decades, having co-authored the Red Sonja novels and pastiches featuring Bran Mak Morn and Black Terence Vulmea, as well as numerous novels set in his own created world of Attluma. The original edition of his novel SOMETIME LOFTY TOWERS came out a few years ago, and the book has just been reissued in a beautiful new edition by Brackenbury Books. This is one of Smith’s novels I hadn’t read, so I was glad to be able to back the Kickstarter for the new edition and read it.

The protagonist of SOMETIME LOFTY TOWERS is a retired mercenary soldier named Hanlin, who, years earlier, was part of a force that made war against the kirangee, people native to the western part of Attluma. Now, an ambitious aristocrat named Lady Sil is mounting an expedition to try once again to conquer the kirangee, and she wants Hanlin to be part of her army, along with one of his old friends Thorem. Hanlin wants nothing to do with this and refuses to sign on with Sil. Instead he starts back toward his homeland in the far northwestern reaches of the continent, wanting only to live out his life in peace, but of course, he winds up being drawn into Sil’s war anyway, only this time around, he’s fighting on the other side.

The plot of this novel bears some resemblance to both AVATAR and DANCES WITH WOLVES, but for my money, it’s considerably better written than either of those movies. All the characters are very well-developed, and Hanlin is an intriguing, compelling protagonist, very conflicted in his emotions but driven to do the right thing, if only he can figure out what that is. This is very much a shades-of-gray story with few outright heroes or villains. Also, unlike most sword-and-sorcery fiction, it’s told in a deliberate, richly detailed, literary style that delves as much into the mind as it does action.

But that doesn’t mean SOMETIMES LOFTY TOWERS skimps on the action. It definitely doesn’t, and there are some great battles and satisfying showdowns. There’s plenty of blood and thunder to be found here. Smith’s voice is a distinctive one, and I found myself swept along in my reading of this novel and thoroughly enjoying it.

Now, about that new edition . . . As a backer of the Kickstarter for this project, I received both print and e-book editions, and the digital copy arrived first. I intended to read it, but then the print book showed up in the mail. It’s the traditional mass market size (you know, the kind the regular publishers are in the process of doing away with; after all, what’s 85 years of history?), and it has purple page edges. I swear, it’s almost like holding a Lancer book from the Sixties, except this edition is sturdily made and probably won’t fall apart in five years, the way Lancers had a tendency of doing. Anyway, it’s a beautiful thing, and I had to read that edition instead of the e-book, and I give an enormous amount of credit to the folks at Brackenbury Books for doing such a great job with it.

If you want to read this—and if you’re a sword-and-sorcery fan, I give it a very high recommendation—you can order it directly from the publisher. SOMETIME LOFTY TOWERS is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and it reminds me there are other novels by David C. Smith I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. I really need to do that.

Neither Beg Nor Yield - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 3)

Today we’re moving on to my thoughts on the next four stories in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, the big new sword and sorcery anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. The previous posts in this series can be found here and here.

Author Phil Emery and his character Corlagh are both new to me, although in his afterword to this story, editor Jason M. Waltz mentions that the character first appeared in Emery’s stories all the way back in the Seventies. “Golden Devils of the Crypt” is a post-apocalyptic yarn, set on Earth after a nuclear war wiped out much of humanity and gave rise to many different types of mutations and monsters. In the void left by science, sorcery has arisen to rule much of the world. It’s an interesting setup and certainly works as a setting for sword and sorcery stories. Barbarian Corlagh and thief Norad team up with an “astromancer” to battle an even worse threat. It’s a story packed with color and action. However, I have to say it’s also the first one in this volume that wasn’t really to my taste. Emery’s style reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith and C.L. Moore, two writers whose work I enjoy but only in small doses. Your mileage, as they say, may vary, and I suspect it would for many of you. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike “Golden Devils of the Crypt”, I’m just not as enthusiastic about it as I have been the other stories so far.

Now, I have to pause and wallow in nostalgia for a few lines, so if you just want to read my comments on the next story, David C. Smith’s “The Undead of Sul-Atet”, feel free to skip on down and do so. As for me, I’m going back in my memory to the first time I attended the annual Robert E. Howard Days get-together in Cross Plains, almost thirty years ago. One of the other Howard fans there that day was David C. Smith. I immediately recognized his name as the co-author, with Richard C. Tierney, of several REH pastiche novels I’d read and enjoyed. We hit it off right away and had a long, enjoyable conversation that afternoon.

Jump ahead more than two decades to the year David C. Smith was the guest of honor at Howard Days, and when we started talking we picked up the conversation as if only a few weeks had passed rather than many years. He’s a great guy and a superb writer, and I was very glad to see that his character Engor (the protagonist of his novel ENGOR’S SWORD ARM) returns in “The Undead of Sul-Atet”. In this story, Engor unwillingly helps an old friend and comrade-in-arms make a deal with a demon, then leads his friend’s army into battle against a rival. The tale is told with a fine mixture of brooding intensity and bloody action, and Smith’s prose displays the sure-handed touch of a longtime master of the genre. This is just an absolutely terrific story, one of my favorites so far in this volume.

I’m a little confused about Frederick Tor. I think that’s a joint pseudonym under which several writers spin yarns about a thief and mercenary named Kaimer, who operates in a vast and sinister city known as Skovolis. In “The Shades of Nacross Hill”, Kaimer and two companions are in a huge cemetery bent on robbing some tombs when they discover that there are more things lurking there than the dead. As one of the characters puts it, the cemetery guards are there not to keep people out but to keep things in. I wasn’t sure about this one—it’s another tale that’s not exactly to my taste—but it won me over for the most part and I wound up thinking it was well-written and enjoyable.

Time for more nostalgia. Joe R. Lansdale is my oldest friend in the writing business, other than my wife. I started corresponding with him in the Seventies after seeing his address on a letter in a fanzine devoted to hardboiled fiction, THE NOT SO PRIVATE EYE. That was the same way I met Bill Crider and Tom Johnson, both sadly no longer with us. Joe and I have met in person many, many times, and there’s no more entertaining conversationalist in the world. So I’m biased about Joe’s work, and his story in this anthology, “The Organ Grinder’s Monkey”, is a wonderful tall tale about mechanic Greasy Bob, his weapon of choice, a wrench called Ajax, his sidekick Olo, and the car in which they can travel between dimensions/alternate universes/other realms/whatever you want to call them. It’s fast and funny, and if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, it’s almost sword and sorcery. But you’ll have a good time reading it, that’s for sure.

So out of this set of four stories, we have one that’s pure, classic sword and sorcery and three that are varying degrees of offbeat. But they’re all good, and NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD maintains its momentum as a top-notch anthology.

Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography - David C. Smith

I met David C. Smith at the very first Howard Days get-together I attended, back in 1996. Back then it was more like Howard Day, since all the activities—what few of them there were—took place on Saturday. The big appeal was just being able to visit the Howard House and talk to fellow fans. I had a great time and have been back many times since.

Dave and I met again face to face at the most recent REH Days last month, where he was the guest of honor, and once again it was great to be able to talk with him. For those of you not familiar with his work, he co-wrote the Red Sonja series of paperbacks published by Ace and wrote Black Vulmea and Bran Mak Morn novels for Zebra during the Howard Boom, as well as authoring numerous sword-and-sorcery novels featuring his own characters. He’s a really fine writer, a great guy, and very well qualified to write a book that I’ve had for a while and was prompted by our visit to go ahead and read—ROBERT E. HOWARD: A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY.

The wording of that title is important. While Smith includes plenty of biographical details, his focus is on Howard’s writing career and how it developed, both commercially and creatively. I’ve always been very interested in the way Howard conducted his writing career since I feel a certain kinship with him (small town Texas, not knowing any other actual professional writers, etc.). Howard’s success was an inspiration to me when I was trying to break in, and it’s always nice to read about how he accomplished that.

Smith also examines a number of Howard’s stories in depth to show how his writing became richer and more polished as he went along. Because of this, there are a number of spoilers, as well, so this is more of a volume for readers who are well acquainted with Howard’s fiction. However, if you’ve read the stories, Smith’s analysis of them is very rewarding. The first time I read the Conan stories was in the old Lancer editions, where they were arranged in the “chronology” imposed on them by L. Sprague de Camp. Reading them in the order in which Howard wrote them, which I did about ten years ago, is a much different and, to me, more interesting and enjoyable experience. ROBERT E. HOWARD: A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY applies this technique to Howard’s entire output and proves to be fascinating.

This might not be the best book for someone who’s new to Howard, but for long-time fans such as myself, it’s a real treat. Well-written and insightful, ROBERT E. HOWARD: A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY is one of the best books I’ve read this year and gets a very high recommendation for me.