Nominated for a Robert E. Howard Foundation Award

The Robert E. Howard Foundation has announced the nominees for its annual awards honoring the best Howard scholarship of the previous year. I was surprised--and very, very pleased, proud, and honored--to find my essay "Not Your Ordinary Gun-Dummy: The Western Heroes of Robert E. Howard" among them. It's nominated in the Hyrkanian category, for Outstanding Achievement - Essay (Print). This essay was published in REH: Two-Gun Raconteur #18. The awards will be presented in Cross Plains on June 10, during the annual Howard Days festivities.

This is incredibly gratifying to me. I've been a Howard fan for almost 50 years, ever since I picked up a copy of the Lancer edition of CONAN THE USURPER in Barber's Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth. (I could show you the building and probably come pretty close to pointing out the spot where the rack stood that held that copy.) I've been involved with Howard fandom for more than 20 years, having attended my first Howard Days in 1995 and joining the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, better known as REHupa, shortly thereafter. I've written several introductions to collections of Howard's stories and contributed the occasional article to various publications. However, I've always considered myself more of a reader and fan than a scholar and have approached most of my writing about Howard that way. Mostly I've had fun (the way I try to approach most things) and it makes me feel great to know that my fellow Howard fans think this essay is worthwhile.

Now, it's up against some stiff competition, mind you. The other nominees are Dierk Guenther's “A Farewell to the Old West – The End of the “Old Frontier”—Robert E. Howard’s ‘Old Garfield’s Heart’”, which also appeared in REH: Two-Gun Raconteur #18, and Jeffrey Shanks' “Evolutionary Otherness: Anthropological Anxiety in Robert E. Howard’s ‘Worms of the Earth’”, which appeared in THE UNIQUE LEGACY OF WEIRD TALES. I fully expect one of those guys to walk off with the award, and well-deserved it will be. But there really is a lot of truth to that old saying about it being an honor just to be nominated. My sincere thanks to the Robert E. Howard Foundation and everyone who participates in these awards.

Forgotten Books: The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan - Robert E. Howard

First of all, that's a great Jeff Jones cover on the Zebra edition of this book from 1975. I was already a Robert E. Howard fan, of course, but the cover certainly caught my attention when I saw it on the paperback rack at Thrifty Drug Store, one of my regular stops for paperbacks in those days. This collection was also my introduction to Howard's boxing fiction, and I recall having a great time reading it. Of course I know now what I didn't know then, that the Dorgan stories were actually unsold Steve Costigan stories with the main character's name changed. Howard sold one Dorgan story to Farnsworth Wright for the pulp MAGIC CARPET, but that was the only story in the series to see print in Howard's lifetime. When this collection came out, I believe it and THE IRON MAN, also from Zebra, were the only REH boxing fiction in print. Soon all of it will be available in deluxe editions from the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, but I'll continue to have a soft spot for THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF DENNIS DORGAN. (Despite what the cover copy says, there's no real fantasy element to these stories...but plenty of adventure!)

Forgotten Books: Rhymes of Texas and the Old West - Robert E. Howard

Here's one that not many of you have, I'll bet. This chapbook was published in a very limited edition in 2007 by the Robert E. Howard Foundation. I think it may have been the first thing the REHF published, but don't hold me to that. It contains 22 poems by Robert E. Howard, all with Western settings and subjects. I wrote the introduction and Jim and Ruth Keegan provided the cover art. It's a really nice little volume. Here are the poems included, courtesy of the Howardworks website:

OLD MEMORIES

"But the Hills Were Ancient Then" (poem)

"Cimmeria" (poem)

"The Lost San Saba Mine" (poem)

"The Dweller in Dark Valley" (poem)

FIRST AMERICANS

"Ghost Dancers" (poem)

"The Kiowa's Tale" (poem)

THE GRIM LAND

"The Grim Land" (poem)

"Sonora to Del Rio" (poem)

THE PEOPLE

"Cowboy" (poem)

"Over the Old Rio Grandey" (poem)

"The Bandit" (poem)

"Roundelay of the Roughneck" (poem)

"John Ringold" (poem)

"The Ballad of Buckshot Roberts" (poem)

Untitled "Old Faro Bill . . ." (poem)

"Modest Bill" (poem)

THE FIGHTS

"The Alamo" (poem)

"San Jacinto (I)" (poem)

"San Jacinto (II)" (poem)

"The Feud" (poem)

"End of the Glory Trail" (poem)

"The Sand-Hill's Crest" (poem)

Available for Pre-Order: Robert E. Howard's Western Tales

The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press has announced that pre-orders are being accepted for ROBERT E. HOWARD'S WESTERN TALES, the largest collection of Howard's traditional and weird Western fiction ever published. All the details are here, including the fact that I wrote the introduction to this one, with much valuable assistance from editor Rob Roehm. I love Howard's Westerns and think their significance in the genre has been overlooked for the most part. If you haven't read them and want to check them out, or if you've read them and want to revisit them, this book is the best place to do so, if I do say so myself. Plus there's that fine cover by Tom Gianni and the usual high quality production that the REHF Press always provides. This one, not surprisingly, gets a high recommendation from me.