This afternoon a small but dedicated and enthusiastic group of Robert E. Howard fans gathered at The Torch, a Fort Worth neighborhood bar, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. (Tomorrow is actually Howard's birthday.) The crowd included fans from as far away as Washington, D.C. and California. For more than three hours, they visited with each other and took to the open microphone to read Howard poems, letters, and excerpts from his stories. It was a great afternoon, and everyone who made it possible is to be congratulated. I'd start naming names, but I'm sure I would forget someone who deserves the recognition, so I'll leave it at that. I have no idea how much money was raised for the Cross Plains Fire Relief Fund, but I hope the event was a success in that regard. I thought about taking a camera with me so that I'd have some photos to post, but of course I forgot.In other news, according to Blogger this is my 500th post. I don't know if that's true or not, but I suppose I'll take their word for it.
The location for tomorrow's Robert E. Howard birthday celebration in Fort Worth has been changed due to the proverbial circumstances beyond anybody's control. It's now scheduled from 2 until 5 in the afternoon at The Torch, 711 Barden Street, which is very near the big intersection where University Drive, Camp Bowie, and 7th Street all come together. I'm supposed to read the poems "The Ballad of Buckshot Roberts" and "The Grim Land" -- although public poetry reading is not my strong suit. In fact, I've never done it before. But if any of you are in the area and think you can stand it, drop on by. A full report should be posted tomorrow night.
Books, that is. For many years, I've been a one-book-at-a-time reader, always finishing one novel (or giving up on it) before starting another one. This wasn't always the case. When I was a kid, I would often be reading three or four books at the same time and had no trouble at all remembering what was going on as I bounced from book to book, reading whichever I was in the mood for at that moment. Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped doing that.Now, with my limited time and attention span problems that were making it difficult for me to read novels, I decided to give the old method a try again, and to my surprise, it seems to be working. I currently have three different books going. I tend to concentrate most of my reading on one of them, but I don't hesitate to pick up one of the others if the mood strikes me. In fact, one of them I'm reading as a sort of serial, a chapter a day. This isn't the way I plan to read books from now on -- I'm sure I'll go back to the one-at-a-time method sooner or later -- but for now it's been a welcome diversion.
In this case, the question "What lurks below?" refers to below my house, and the answer is: a foundation in serious need of repair. So I spent most of the day crawling in and out from under the house, working on things I really have no idea how to fix. Somehow, though, I improved the situation. I think. At least I gave the rest of the family a good laugh when they saw me in my kneepads and elbow pads and the light attached to my head. This is the first time I've been under the house since the plumbing fiasco of last spring. I haven't missed it a bit.In other news . . . there ain't none. I spent nearly all of last week sitting in my studio and writing. I'm reading a little, but I'll save my comments on that for a later post.
I finished reading this pulp tonight and thought that it was a very good issue. The lead story is a long novelette by Merle Constiner about private detective Wardlaw Rock, also known as the Dean. I've read several stories from this series and liked them all. Constiner takes several wildly different plot elements, obscure historical trivia, bizarre scientific facts, and mixes them all into coherent, highly entertaining mystery yarns. If I had to compare the Dean stories to something current, it would be the TV series MONK, although personality-wise the Dean and Adrian Monk are completely different. The small press publisher Battered Silicon Dispatch Box has done a pricey volume reprinting all the Dean stories. I haven't sprung for it yet, but I may one of these days.This issue of DIME DETECTIVE also features novelettes by Norbert Davis (a Bail-Bond Dodd story) and Day Keene. Davis's stories are always well-written and funny, and Keene is a long-time favorite of mine. And it has a striking cover to boot. Good stuff.
Lately I haven't had the time to read novels (or the attention span, to be honest). So thank goodness for short stories. I've been able to work in a story or two every day, and in recent weeks I've read the December 1948 issue of POPULAR WESTERN, a Wildside Press replica of the August 1935 SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, and part of the December 1943 issue of DIME DETECTIVE. Plus I've started working my way through THE O'HARA GENERATION, a collection of John O'Hara short stories (because Bill Crider posted the other day about O'Hara and got me interested in reading some more of his work). I consider myself lucky that I've got a decent collection of pulp magazines, fiction digests, and anthologies. No matter what sort of story I'm in the mood for, I can generally find several good examples of it.And I'm sure that I'll get back to reading novels sooner or later. I've been at it for over forty years, after all, and I'm too old to stop now.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - JANUARY 06, 2006 ROBERT E. HOWARD 100th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FORT WORTH, TX – Robert E. Howard was the first great fiction author born and bred in Texas. He is now considered an inspiration to a who’s-who of modern horror and fantasy fiction writers and
illustrators. On January 21 2006, from 2-5PM, the 100th anniversary of his birth will be celebrated in Fort Worth, Texas. An open mic will be available, and various people will be reading excerpts from the vast range of REH works, from Sword & Sorcery
(REH was the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and generally considered the godfather of the entire genre), to horror, fantasy, boxing, westerns, humorous, pirate, and historical adventures. Excerpts from letters will also be presented, as REH tells others about his love of Texas, the creation of his characters, and his views on the times he lived in. And various poems from his extensive portfolio of over 700 works will be presented. REH was a master poet, and skilled at all the various forms in which he worked. Guests are invited to participate, reading either their own favorite excerpts and verses, or serving as a reader of material that will be provided to them there. Or just come and listen. The event will be at The Black Dog Tavern, recently moved to 2933 Crockett, just a block east and south of the intersection of 7th and University in the city of Fort Worth. Admittance is only $5/head with all proceeds benefiting the town of Cross Plains, TX, a small ranch and farm community in West Texas (and REH’s hometown) that was recently consumed by wildfires, with over 100 homes destroyed. Books will be on sale, there will be door prizes and various scholars and editors will be on hand to sign books. Your envoy for the afternoon will be Paul Herman, a somewhat wizened and knowledgeable character familiar with the works of he who shall be honored, toasted and commemorated. Other REH editors and scholars will be on hand as well to sign books, answer questions and discuss topics of interest. If you are unfamiliar with Howard's work or would like to get
to know it better, this is the perfect opportunity to meet people and fans that will happily tell you everything they know about this true Texas legend. There’s a lot more to him than you think. The Robert E. Howard 100th Birthday Celebration:Saturday, January 21, 2006 2:00 - 5:00 PM The Black Dog Tavern 2933 Crockett (new location) Fort Worth, Texas $5.00 Per Person - All Proceeds will go the Cross Plains Fire Relief Fund, to benefit the city of Cross Plains, TX, home of the Robert E.
Howard Museum For More Information - Contact Paul Herman @ 972-418-3571, or paul.herman@halliburton.comI plan to attend this event, so if any of you are in the Fort Worth area on the afternoon of January 21, please think about dropping in and saying hello.The photo of REH above is one of my favorites. I like the way he seems to be staring off into the distance, as if he can see things that the rest of us can't. Which, of course, was true.
These are the shelves in our living room where we have copies of all the books we've written. Also included are Livia's American Mystery Award (top shelf on the left, in front of Shayna's picture) and Shamus Award (middle shelf on the right), both of which she won for her Lucas Hallam novel WILD NIGHT. There are also copies of the various anthologies in which we have stories. It's a pretty good assortment of stuff, and we intend to keep adding to it, of course. (Thanks to Livia for arranging all the books and for providing the photo. Technical stuff like that is pretty much beyond me.)
Among the numerous nice responses to my year-end wrap-up post was one from Sandra Scoppettone, which also posed an interesting question."I like and have read a number of books on your list. But, alas, once again here is another 10 best with no women on it. Couldn't you come up with one? Ray Banks says he doesn't read women. Is that true for you, too?"No, not really. I do read female authors, but my reading does tend to be mostly males. This is probably due to the fact that I read a lot of pulps, and female authors weren't very common among the Western, mystery, and adventure stuff that I read. I had to go back and check my list to see just how many books by women writers I read in '05. The total is rather shameful: five out of 156. One of them, though, would have made my Top Twenty if I had expanded the list: the romantic suspense novel AN ANGEL IN STONE by Peggy Nicholson, published as part of Silhouette's Bombshell line. The best book by a female author that I read in '05, though, I didn't count officially because it hasn't been published yet -- my wife Livia's A PEACH OF A MURDER. There are a lot of current female authors I've meant to read, just as there are a lot of current male authors I haven't gotten around to yet. One of my favorite authors is Ellen Recknor, who writes excellent and award-winning Western novels under her own name and various pseudonymns. I also particularly enjoy the work of a couple of romance writers, Marsha Canham and Theresa Medeiros. (Medeiros' novel BREATH OF MAGIC is one of the best-constructed, and also funniest, time-travel novels I've ever read.) An area I've neglected, probably unjustly, is current hardboiled/noir by female authors. But I plan to remedy that.
I've never been one to make a big deal about the New Year, and I don't make resolutions. However . . . this year really does seem like a fresh start for some reason, maybe because 2005 sucked canal water in so many ways, from natural disasters to the little personal catastrophes that plague most of us. I've always been a little distrustful of people who say, "I've had an epiphany!", but I have to admit that a couple of things have become much clearer to me in the past 24 hours. Because of that I've made two, or maybe three, resolutions, and I'm going to do my best to keep them. We'll see.Now that I've been sufficiently vague, I'll move on and say that I wrote 15 pages on the current project today. (Woo-hoo! First page count of the new year!) And I'm reading an issue of POPULAR WESTERN from December 1948. The world rolls on.
