I believe this was the first time the luggage on my return trip from Howard Days weighed as much as when I arrived in Cross Plains. Usually a dozen or more REHupa Mailings accompany me on my trips to Texas, to get distributed to attending REHupans, along with some spec copies for prospective new members. At 150 pages each, those bad boys can add up to some additional poundage, so I’m relieved to lighten the load and get them out and gone to the guys (and gal, Hi Amy!) Also, my benevolence and arm strength makes for a postage savings, which can be appreciated in times like these when it ain’t so cheap to mail stuff anymore!

But this year, I won a Cimmerian Award. And after the spotlight shuts off, I still gotta get that real bad boy home. Real heavy bad boy, that is. But I’m ahead of myself.

Robert E. Howard Days takes place in Cross Plains, Texas, every year on the second weekend of June. For those of you who have never attended, it’s a gathering of Howard fans, scholars, authors and artists, Conantics, and even folks just peripherally interested in REH. It is a great place and time to show up to celebrate the life and work of Bob Howard, on the exact spot where he did all of his writing. Y’all come…

This year, over 200 people had registered at the Howard House by Saturday afternoon. For sure, this is some measure of success in what I thought might be an “off” year for attendance, after the mega-Centennial gathering in 2006. The usual suspects were there, but I was greatly heartened with a number of new folk who showed up because they had read about REH Days on this site or over at The Cimmerian. I was also glad to learn that Project Pride, the civic organization in Cross Plains which hosts Howard Days, has had a shot in the arm by younger locals signing on to help out. And a generous check from F.A.C.T. (the Fandom Association of Central Texas) from the proceeds from Cross Plains Universe, the Howard tribute book from the World Fantasy Con last November, was great monetary help for an organization that always needs it! The future of Howard Days is bright!

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of my travels through West Texas this year…I’ll save that for my long-suffering REHupa mates. But the positives far outweighed the negatives, both making for interesting times and interesting discussions. Obvious high points for me included standing in Howard’s footprints at Fort McKavett, attending the first-ever REH Foundation Legacy Member Luncheon, nabbing copies of Vol. 1 of The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard and REH: Two Gun Raconteur #11, yakking art with GOH Greg Manchess (a gracious and accomodating nice guy!), seeing the carved REH plaque I made for the Silent Auction go for $100 — thanks, Leo — and the highest point of all: winning the First Place Hyrkanian Cimmerian Award for my essay “How Robert E. Howard Saved my Life” in Vol. 3 No.6 of The Cimmerian.

When Finnski announced my name, you could have knocked me over with, well, a Cimmerian Award! Those things are heavy, brother! I had to just stand there like a drooling fool and just look at it…I was literally stunned, and speechless, and those are two things that don’t happen to me very often! But I recovered enough to thank the necessary people (Leo & Rusty, and Vern Clark, wherever you are!) And thanks to all of you who voted for me…I am truly humbled and appreciative. Let me tell you, that skull-headed statue looks so damned good next to my rubbing of Howard’s long-gone footstone.

As always, Howard Days is about the people who show up for two or three days of celebrating the life and work of Ol’ Two Gun, and the interesting mix of their personalities when we all get together. We missed a few of our regular attendees, but we got to meet some new, enthusiastic Howard fans, and it made for a great weekend.

Howard Days always comes and then goes so quickly; before you know it you’re lugging newly acquired Howard Swag home with you, while wishing maybe you had bid up that item at the Silent Auction that you had your eye on. (In my case, I always am too busy gabbing or checking out Kim Hall’s new tattoo…hee hee!)

So, even while basking in the glow of a great Howard Days, I can look forward to next year hanging out with the usual suspects, and meeting and greeting new folks who travel some distance to a dusty West Texas town to celebrate The One and Only Robert E. Howard! If you’ve waffled on attending Howard Days in the past, make plans to come on down next year; I guarantee you won’t regret it!

May Crom continue to ignore you, because REH Days won’t!

I was checking Bill Thom’s Coming Attractions last Friday night and was excited to see some news about upcoming Howard paperbacks Wildside Press has made a deal with Leisure Books. Leisure Books is an imprint of Dorchester Publishing. Leisure is an unabashed publisher of genre fiction. No pretense of mainstream literature here as Leisure brings out monthly doses of western, romance, horror, and thriller. I always liked Leisure Books for their reprints of my favorite western writers — Gordon D. Shirreffs and T. V. Olson. Leisure has been a friend to fans of the pulp western with reprints of Les Savage Jr. and Max Brand. Leisure is the last real paperback imprint in not being a part of some multi-national corporation.

Now a science fiction & fantasy line is about to start up and Robert E. Howard is part of it. July will bring us a mass-market paperback of Shadow Kingdoms, the first volume in the Weird Works series. My big gripe is trotting out Ken Kelly art for the covers again. While at the Dorchester Publishing site, I noticed that when you search the various fiction categories, Robert E. Howard is listed not only in science fiction but also in horror and westerns. That is interesting. Is Leisure planning to publish Howard’s westerns? Leisure’s distribution can be odd. I generally don’t find their books in Barnes & Noble or Borders but I do see their books at grocery stores and truck stops. This has the potential of attracting some new fans to Robert E. Howard who may not frequent chain bookstores. I am happy to see REH returning to the mass-market paperback. The Del Rey books are great for the corrected texts, alternate versions, fragments etc. But — they are trade paperbacks. I hate trade paperbacks. They don’t travel well, the corners get bent easily, the spines crack. Give me a mass-market paperback for travel and a hardback for home reading. Plus, the trade paperback has its origins in the 1950s as a literary creation in reaction to the mass market genre fiction. Having “classic” pulp authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and now Robert E. Howard in trade paperback almost seems sacrilegious. Coming to a truck stop and grocery store near you — Robert E. Howard.