It seems that life has caught up to the Cimmerian Bloggers, myself included, as there have been no updates for the past two weeks. Centennial burnout? On the contrary.

While the Centennial Year did not bring the wave of previously unpublished Howard material I was hoping for — only “Over the Rockies in a Ford” in Paul Herman’s The Neverending Hunt and “Tallyho!” in The Dark Man Vol.3 No. 1 — it did set the stage for what promises to be a veritable flood of “new” Howard in 2007.

The Robert E. Howard Foundation is kicking off with the — sort of — previously unpublished poetry collection Rhymes of Salem Town. Originally published in an edition of less than 10 copies purely to hold on to copyrights, this revamped collection is available for pre-order at the foundation’s website.

While you’re there, folks interested in taking 10% off their Foundation purchases this year should have a look at the membership section. Supporting members receive a discount; Friends of REH receive the discount as well as “journals and/or newsletters”; Legacy Circle members receive all of the above and more. Current plans are for a quarterly newsletter which may include photocopies of various Howard odds and ends: collectors take heed.

Next up from the Foundation is a three-volume collection of all of Howard’s known surviving letters. Most of the important information regarding this can be found somewhere on this blog, with the following additional information: one postcard to Harold Preece and one drawing have been added to the contents.

After that, the remaining unpublished stories and fragments, those items we’ve all been drooling about since we first read about them in Glenn Lord’s The Last Celt, will finally see the light of day. Now that’s what I’ve been waiting for.

Finally, one of my own side projects (with an assist by Mark Finn) will be available on lulu.com starting on January 22. The first edition of Howard’s Haunts: A Photographic Journey Through Robert E. Howard’s Texas and the Events of the Howard Centennial will be available to order from 12:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Texas Central Time on the 22nd. Everything ordered after that will be labeled as second edition. This is a collection of photographs and commentary about the three big Howard events of 2006: the birthday bash in Fort Worth, Howard Days in Cross Plains, and the World Fantasy Convention in Austin. Also included are sections on other Howardian locations like Peaster, Cross Cut, Fort McKavett, etc., Howard publishing in 2006, and a plethora of high quality images of Howard himself. It’s like a Centennial yearbook.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. The Collected Letters should be out of my hair this weekend, and, hopefully, that’ll relieve my Blog bog.

LEO ADDS: Meanwhile, The November, December, and Awards issues for 2006 are all printed and ready to ship — just need to handle the accounting and get everything packed and off to the post office. I’m gunning to get them off to subscribers by next Wednesday or so, then it will be time to address other 2006 items such as the Index, the slipcases, and the awards ballot. And of course there’s all the planning for the next volume to be done — the art, covers of a different color, lots of editing of material. For those thinking about buying Rob’s “Howard Haunts” book, what I’ve seen of it looked like great fun and very interesting, with a lot of never-before-seen pics of out-of-the-way Howard places and lots more commentary on the Big Events of 2006. Some of the pics have been seen in TC, many more are previously unpublished. I’ve also heard solid-sounding rumors of other, currently completely unannounced titles that the REH Foundation is planning to put out in 2007 and beyond, so there should be no shortage of things to talk about and collect in the coming years. The Blog Bog has bothered me, too — here’s hoping we’ll all be back in the saddle before long. I can’t recall a busier time in my seven years of Howard studies: it seems that just about everyone has some book or project they are furiously slaving over. Methinks the Boom has only begun.