Check out this article about the Cross Plains Public Library in the Abilene Reporter News today (hat tip: Don Herron). Apparently our favorite library (and Cimmerian archive location) has made the final cut into a new book on the best small libraries in the country.

Small wonder — REH Days attendees have marveled for years at the Library’s sizable collection of Howard materials, including original typescripts, pulps, fanzines, and assorted rare hardcovers and paperbacks. At times the Library that Howard hero Billie Ruth Loving (1920-2004) willed into existence has played host to a gallery of Gary Gianni paintings of Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn, to talks about Howard and the publishing industry by the head honchos at Paradox Entertainment, and to numerous “Meet the Author” events from writers around the state.

In fact, their latest shindig features none other than The Cimmerian Blog’s own Mark Finn, author of the new REH biography Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. Mark will be in Cross Plains on February 13 to talk at the Community Center about Howard. Wish I could be there — I’m hoping that local Howard fans will show up to take photographs and record the event so the transcript can be printed here or in TC proper.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Conan the Cimmerian–make that, Conan the Barbarian. Yeah, you had better get used to it right now, because hardcore fans of Robert E. Howard may find their collective knickers in a twist when the press gets ahold of the information. Expect to see clips from the movies, and maybe even a clip from the television show. You’ll of course see flashes of the Frazetta paintings, but you’ll also see stacks of comics and magazines. We may even get a taste of the highly-anticipated mmorpg, Age of Conan, too. But will we get a glimpse of the Conan that Robert E. Howard wrote in whatever media coverage is afforded this event? My guess is, unless someone from the Inner Circle is involved, the answer will be “No.”

This is bigger than Howard fandom. Conan is a pop-cultural touchstone, both evocative and iconic, and there are certainly more Conan fans than Robert E. Howard fans in the world. And by that, I mean, there are people who read the Conan comics and have collected every issue of Savage Sword of Conan (and they may even have the Ace/Lancer set of Conan paperbacks), but they have otherwise never read another word by Robert E. Howard in their life. Conan trumps all, to these folks, and I really can’t say anything detrimental to that, being intimately familiar with the collector mindset myself.

Robert E. Howard fans, by contrast, recognize the inherent power of Conan (since most of us came to REH through those stories), but also figured out early on that the inherent power was found in REH’s writing, and not just in the character. Oh, there’s a “lightning in a bottle” quality to Howard’s Conan that was talked about, even during REH’s lifetime, by the readers of Weird Tales. Specifically, there is a uniqueness to Conan and the way that Howard wrote him that belies Howard’s commerical aspirations.

So it’s a little ironic that the commercial Conan “product” would likewise tend to overshadow the literary version of the character. The Dark Horse comics are doing well and continue to generate interest in REH. But when Age of Conan premieres, there will be millions of people exposed to the Hyborian Age for the first time–and in doing so, will bring their own pre-conceived notions (mostly fantasy gaming notions) of how everything is supposed to fit together.

The gestalt of Conan fandom is such that we can’t even decide how our favorite barbarian is best portrayed. For some folks, it’s still Arnold in the furry diaper. For others, if you’re not talking about John Buscema, then you have missed the point entirely. There are even a few people out there (who need to be thumped) who think that Boris Vallejo’s Conan is as good as it got. Thankfully, none of MY friends think that.

And what’s worse, fans tend to personalize Robert E. Howard and his writings in a way that I’ve not seen with any other aspect of genre writing. We take it to heart and in it we see exactly what we’re looking for, and it answers our unaksed questions like the voice of a higher power. And so I find it amusing that, on the various message boards for such things, two fans will disagree with how a given issue of, say, the Conan comic, played fast and loose with the Conan character, and take the writer to task for not staying true to the character. As proof of how Conan “should have acted,” they will cite another pastiche to justify their ranting. It just makes me laugh to see “Conan would never…” at the front of a post. Since when did YOU, mister Internet message board person, become the voice of intention behind Conan? All of these discussions usually involve pastiche, so who can say (and really, who bloody cares) what Pastiche Conan would or would not do?

But is that a valid argument? Should Kurt Busiek have been villified by fans for having a sixteen or seventeen year old Conan slap a kid? Of course not. The comic book Conan has no relationship to what Robert E. Howard wrote, save in name only. No writer actually *has* to read Howard’s Conan to write a pastiche, though of course, everyone does, if only to know how far they have to reach to hit the mark. My point is, the pop cultural figure that is Conan the Barbarian is now really the bastard half-brother to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian.

The Howard Guerrilla in me wants desperately to start right now in pushing my fan-glasses up on my nose and saying, “Actually, it’s Conan the Cimmerian, and not Conan the Barbarian,” every time the topic of the anniversary comes up, but I think I’d just end up making a dent in the bridge of my nose that way. In the end, it’s the price of literary immortality. I suspect that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle isn’t sweating the movie, Young Sherlock Holmes, overmuch, since all of his Holmes stories are collected and routinely read in a number of different editions. On the other hand, there isn’t a mmorpg coming out called “Age of Sherlock” either. This fame, this enduring and constantly morphing pop culture conception, is part of what keeps REH’s name out there, and in the end, it will bring people over to Howard’s prose work.

Rob Roehm’s recent post offering a breakdown of the recipients of all those Collected Letters sent me back to Dennis McHaney’s Howard in the Eyrie — The Conan Years: Part Four, Conclusion, a chapbook from December 2002 (The contents of which were amalgamated into Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster, which I’ve been lamentably late in getting around to ordering) On page 14 of the chapbook (page 99 of Pulpster), which deals with the Eyrie section of the February 1937 Weird Tales, Dennis quotes a letter from one Robert Locke, of Kansas City:

It is seldom that one writer will become enthralled by a fellow scribe’s creation. Yet Conan, the character created by Robert E. Howard, so captured my imagination that shortly before his untimely death, I wrote a letter to him expressing my admiration. The letter which Mr. Howard wrote me is one of my most prized possessions. In it he stated his appreciation for my interest and promised that he would write many more stories, carrying Conan through the mythical countries of Khitai, Khosala, Brythunia, Corinthia, etc. . .

This intrigues me for several reasons. That first generation of Howard fans was the only one that enjoyed what none of us ever have, a window of opportunity for give-and-take with Robert E. Howard while he was alive and writing. I can but echo Rob’s earlier thoughts on this issue–if even a dozen or two dozen handcrafted REH responses to fanmail moldered away in attics and cellars or were mulched in the Forties, Fifties, and subsequent decades, that’s an intolerable loss. Locke describes the one he received as a prized possession; could his heirs, and their heirs, be located by researching Kansas City public records? At this late date, any such effort would be staring down a barrel of diminishing returns, but still…

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Well, it was bound to happen. After about nine months on the market, the fifty slipcases each made for Volume 1 and Volume 2 are just about gone forever. I only have a single slipcase left for each year. $40 per, grab ‘em while you can. There’s been a bit of a run on them over the past few weeks, I’m not sure why. Perhaps a few people finally realized that it was now or never, and that they might as well splurge a bit for a nice home for their Cimmerians.

As for the Volume 3 slipcases, they might go real fast after they appear. Subscribers who specified they wanted slipcases each year don’t have to worry — they’ll get their slipcase. Non-subscribers who want one should pre-order to reserve their case. Pre-order information will be posted sometime over the next few weeks. I anticipate the V3 slipcases being slightly more expensive that the older ones owing to their bigger size, but we’ll see.

Those who missed out on both the Deluxe issues and the Slipcases — and want to catch up — there’s still one option for you. Go to the Slipcases page and scroll down to the bottom, and you will see some Deluxe “Complete Sets” advertised. These are complete sets of Deluxe issues for those years, including the out-of-print ones, along with a slipcase for that year. The price tag on these is rising as more issues go out of print and as the slipcases sell out. So if you are toying with the thought of such a purchase, best do it sooner than later.

After three years, certain parts of the backlog are becoming scarce. What will the next generation think of all this when they come barreling on the scene someday? There hasn’t been any selling of Deluxe issues on eBay to speak of, so no one seems to be getting rid of the ones they have, even those folks who stopped reading TC long ago for whatever reason and have issues to dump. Once some of the Limiteds go out of print, making it impossible to read those issues in any format, it should drive the new fans nuts. I know if I were just entering REH fandom and wanted to read all of that material, it would be a real tough pill to swallow.

Here’s a few things that have come up so far this year:

1. Please breakdown how you figured out how many votes you have. Something like “12 issues + 1 Awards ish + 1 Index + 4 for two Lion’s Den letters + 3 for one essay + 2 for Cross Plains coverage = 23 votes total.”

2. Use the template provided in this post to make sure you voted for everything. Several people have missed categories by accident already.

3. For essays, you vote THREE times. Once for First Place, once for Second Place, and once for Third Place.

4. By request, I’ve added a “No Award This Year” option to the top of the ballot page. This is for when you decide that none of the candidates are qualified, and you’d prefer that no one receive the Award in question. I find it hard to believe that any category will even be so barren of talent as to require this, but what the heck.

Not since the days of H. Ross Perot have I had this much trouble deciding how to cast a vote (and I’m only half kidding). This year’s Cimmerian Award candidates cover the spectrum of Howardian achievement: from literary criticism to biographical discovery, bibliographic data to personal essay, and many combinations of all of the above. With 80 essays in contention for a Hyrkanian Award, this is clearly the category to watch; it’s also the one that’s giving me fits — there’s too many to choose from. I like to pick the essays that I feel will have the biggest impact on Howard Studies, but there’s also several essays that I just plain liked, that probably won’t have much of an impact in the field. I am also biased toward items aimed at collectors, being one myself, which makes the Atlantean Award a tough call for me. What to do, what to do.

In the past, Leo has mentioned that not everyone entitled to vote has exercised that right. Come on! Every contributor and reader of The Cimmerian needs to use their votes. Given my above-mentioned biases, do you really want me swinging the vote in any direction? And, as a recipient of two skulls myself, I can’t tell you how much it means to read the voters’ comments in the pages of the Awards Issue. Whoever wrote that “For stark, living zealotry” comment really made my day. Don’t deny the people who made the Centennial Year the spectacular success that it was — vote! Even if you don’t have any comments to make, show the fine fellows of Howard fandom your support.

This has been a public service announcement.

By now most of you know that the Motel 36 in Cross Plains is full. If you didn’t snag one of the rooms there and you still need to find a good place to stay for REH Days, give The Oak Motel in Cisco a try. Cisco is north of Cross Plains, and The Oak is right off of Interstate 20, the highway that leads west from Dallas, so it’s convenient.

I’ve stayed at The Oak several times and have always enjoyed it. It’s probably a bit better kept than the Motel 36, and I really like the fact that it’s out in the open air with a decent breeze always wafting through the courtyard, meaning you can sit out there all night and never worry about mosquitoes, which can sometimes be a problem outside the Motel 36 and the Howard House. It takes about twenty minutes to drive from Cisco to Cross Plains, which isn’t bad at all — Brownwood to Cross Plains takes a bit longer. And the Cisco motel prices are significantly cheaper than Brownwood.

There’s also a Best Western in Cisco that’s pretty good, so use that as a fallback option. Here are the numbers:

The Oak Motel (Cisco): (254)442-2100

Best Western (Cisco): (254)442-3735

If you can’t get a room in Cisco, then Brownwood’s probably your next best bet. The bad news is that Brownwood is more expensive by $20-$60 a night, depending on where you stay. The good news is that Brownwood is a pretty big town, so you have much better hotels, complete with swimming pools and other amenities. You also have a wide selection of restaurants and stores, compared to the small selection in Cross Plains and Cisco. Finally, Brownwood has Greenleaf Cemetery (where REH is buried) and nearby is Clear Creek Cemetery (where Novalyne is buried). Brownwood also is in Brown County, not Callahan County (which is dry), so you have beer and liquor stores.

The sooner you book a room, the better, as they tend to fill up quick after the first of the year. As for the dates, the rule to remember is that Howard Days always falls on the second weekend in June. This year, that will be June 8-9, 2007. We’re also making plans to assemble a caravan on Thursday June 7 and drive down to Fort McKavett and Enchanted Rock State Park, both fun Howard-related places which a lot of attendees have never seen before. So if that sounds interesting, you’ll want to book your hotel for Wednesday and Thursday nights, too. (The caravan will leave Cross Plains early Thursday morning, around 8 a.m. or so).

Cimmerian contributor Dave Hardy has been updating his blog regularly with book and film reviews, several of which focus on Robert E. Howard. Go here to check out the REH entries, and browse around the sidebar links for lots more content, and some interesting links to other websites.

Dave’s essay “Indomitable Wildness, Unquenchable Vitality” is up for a Cimmerian Award this year, and he’s got a short piece on REH and The Arabian Nights coming up in TC soon.

There are many wonderful benefits to editing The Cimmerian. Meeting new fans, discovering new things about Howard, establishing a community of individuals who share a vision about how an REH journal should look and read and feel. These are all good, and they’ve brought me no small amount of joy over the last three years.

One thing I dislike about the experience, though, is brushing up against guys I call Opportunistic Collectors. These (inevitably well-heeled) fans e-mail me once a year, usually in a few terse sentences devoid of grammar, with the goal of feeling me out about adding TC to their collections on the cheap. They usually start out by damning with faint praise — “gee young whippersnapper, looks like u been busy!” — before trying to loosen me up with a few choice insults — “even tho your print run is too small to be taken seriously, and u overcharge for what in the end are just crappy Xeroxed fanzines” — before finally making a pitch to scam a set on the cheap — “but hey, even though they wouldn’t normally be worth my time or money, if u give me a big bulk discount, I’ll do you a favor and take a pile off your hands. Let’s deal, hey?”

Perhaps this is just how self-absorbed collectors operate, I don’t know. I’m not a collector, never have been. My entire Howard “collection” consists of a cache of books taking up about three feet of bookshelf. No mylar bags, no ultraviolet glass, no dust-proof cabinets, no temperature-controlled vaults in the basement. When I created The Cimmerian, I got some input from collectors I respect, and strove to make the journal collector-friendly in various ways: numbered issues, different states, finite print runs, good materials, extra features like the Index issue and Slipcases. But all that is for them, it doesn’t thrill me at all. My interest is in good content, making a journal to be read, not just tagged and bagged and stored.

I marvel at the stories of hardcore collectors snatching up everything Howard because they feel the need to keep their inventory complete, even though they read very little of what they buy. I know people whose collections take up every available square inch of their houses, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall and in every closet — and who still need to stick hundreds of additional boxes into storage facilities. That’s tens of thousands of items that they will likely never see again before they die, much less read. Blows my mind. I guess in my most crazed, greedy, obsessive-compulsive moments I can understand the mentality on some remote level, but for the most part it’s utterly foreign to me, like trying to imagine how a chair would look if your knees bent the other way. I tend to give stuff away with abandon, just to get it out of the room so I can breathe better.

Which brings me back to the Vultures. Whenever they rear their ugly little heads in my In-box, I always marvel a bit at what I’m hearing. The way I see it, if you don’t like REH enough to pay what really is a pretty reasonable price these days, then why bother trying to buy TC at all? Aren’t these the same guys who regularly fork out $100 for pissant little chapbooks or barely-legible mimeoed fanzines? And now these same guys think $15 is too much for foil-stamped covers, parchment paper, and scrupulously edited content? What do they think, that the price on this stuff is actually going to go down as the years drift by? How dumb is that?

My standard answer to such requests is “Sorry, but I don’t give discounts — it would be unfair to those loyal readers who have paid full price and supported the journal for the last three years.” This never fails to rouse righteous indignation, and they fire back with a version of “U just made a bad business decision, bucko. I was all ready to give u a charity buy, but forget it now.” It’s hard to express just how ridiculous I find this attitude to be. What the hell — I’m supposed to cave in to some rude stranger insulting me, giving him a much better price than my most loyal readers just to make a few extra pazoors? Screw that noise. The Cimmerian ALREADY makes all the money it needs to, as-is. I’m not a millionaire, true — but unlike most fan publications I’m able to pay all of my bills, pay all of my contributors, and have some left over to finance next year’s art or next year’s slipcases. The point is, I’m in no rush to get rid of the issues I haven’t sold. I’d like more readers, sure — who wouldn’t? But in a financial sense, I don’t need them. If the Vultures think, for example, that those fifty copies of V1n1 still sitting in my archives are burning holes in my pockets, they’re mistaken.

I fully expect to sell out all my issues sooner or later, but just to make it clear for the Vultures who simply cannot fathom such a thing, let me tell you what’s going to happen to any issues I don’t sell. They’re not going to be remaindered to a bookstore or online seller, and they’re not going to be marked down on my website until the Vultures pick them off. Eventually, if I get sick of having them around and offering them as back issues, I’m just going to burn them. Every last one of ‘em. Then I’ll simply figure out how many issues are left out there in the Real World, and I’ll post those numbers for the edification of all involved. Loyal Readers will be the only ones left with copies. After that, whenever a Johnnie-come-lately wants to trick out his Howard collection with a pile of “Xeroxed zines” (they aren’t Xeroxed, of course, but we’ll humor them), they’ll have to come to YOU. And as fellow collectors (and far savvier ones, judging by your decision to subscribe to TC from the beginning) they won’t be getting them on the cheap.

The bottom line is this: you readers who have stuck with me from the beginning, subscribing every month at a premium, will always be the ones who got the best deal. That’s my promise. As for the Vultures, circling around the battlefield waiting for some Cimmerian carrion, they’re going to end up looking like turkeys. Gobble-gobble.

Greg Manchess, who came across so personably as both a panelist and an informal conversationalist during the recent World Fantasy Convention in Austin, will do his part and then some to ensure the success of the 2007 Howard Days as Guest of Honor. And yet his selection, through no fault of his, makes me want to recite Ossianic verses or intravenously inject peat whiskey or do something else expressive of Gaelic melancholia. Can’t help recalling the testimonials in Exorcisms and Ecstasies and reflecting what a Guest of Honor to End All Guests of Honor Karl Edward Wagner would have made, especially in advance of his Long Goodbye phase. Gary Romeo might have felt duty-bound to boycott the festivities and establish a rival or schismatic Howard Days, the equivalent of an Avignon papacy, outside a certain former residence in Plano, but most celebrants would have come away with anecdotes to be prized like amulets.

KEW is in no position to serve as Guest of Honor, unless we figure out how to work the Orastes/Valerius/Tarascus/Amalric trick. But with all due respect for the carnosaur-sized footprints the two current frontrunners have left all over Howard studies, he does belong on the Black Circle ballot as much as anyone save Novalyne Price Ellis herself (Leo asked for suggestions, and I can’t believe I spaced; guess I’m an imperfect Wagnerite). I went on and on in the Lion’s Den this past year about Wagner’s credentials as an REH editor and exponent, and will refrain from flogging that dead destrier here. Perhaps the thing to do is to add his name next year; for de Camp to beat KEW into the Black Circle would be a justice-miscarriage of Shub-Niggurathian proportions.

Sorry, Karl. Won’t happen again.

LEO ADDS: I put him on the list. No big deal, anyone who has voted and wants to change their vote before March 1 is welcome to. There’s probably a lot of others we could add to that list, but I figure we might as well wait until someone raises a stink about them.