The Cimmerian had lost many of its leading voices on the road to its final year. Rob Roehm & Mark Finn went on to pastures new, Steve Tompkins departed to the Worlds Beyond Death, and Leo Grin was fading ever quicker from the realm of Howardom. Deuce Richardson and the bloggers had a formidable legacy to live up to, and they were determined to carry on the tradition of those giants in Howard scholarship.

The Cimmerian blog’s final year boasted new faces and new ideas, but was ever conscious of its mission.

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Three blockbuster years, and The Cimmerian Blog was gaining its own momentum as a scholarly entity apart from the esteemed journal which spawned it: with the TC journal entering its final volume and two crises jeopardizing its continuing existence, the blog was going to either spreads its wings, or dwindle into some blood-hued, blogospheric sunset.

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Ouketi is the transliteration of the Greek word meaning “no longer” or “no more.” It suggests the end of the old ways and the beginning of something new. It means a change. When prior events have been painful, the change can be positive. However, a haunting lament echoes and goodbyes become painful when an enjoyable experience ends.

On June 11th, the death knell will sound for The Cimmerian Blog. Another blow to REH fandom that comes almost eighteen months after The Cimmerian published its last print issue.

While the word ouketi may apply to the future of The Cimmerian Blog, its past is rich with memories that will survive.  As his many fans well know, Robert E. Howard’s prose and poetry were filled with passion and depth. Many of the articles and essays that appeared on the TC Blog also reflected those qualities. They contributed to our knowledge of Bob Howard and explored questions about his life, his loves and who he was. They examined his words and looked at how and why he chose the ones he did. Some of the TC essays were thought provoking. Some of them were just plain provoking; so much so that at times I wished I could crawl through the electronic circuits and “strangle” the writer.

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With two World Fantasy Award nominations under the journal’s belt and some of its bloggers now displaying well-deserved awards, The Cimmerian Blog’s third year started off well.

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The Cimmerian blog’s first year was a good one, fueled by the buzz around Howard’s Centennial, the World Fantasy Convention, and the print journal’s nominations for the World Fantasy Award. Year Two would be just as eventful.

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The history of The Cimmerian journal is storied, and well worth the perusal at the dedicated section on this site. Some of the very best of Howard scholarship in the last decade — even the best Howard scholarship full stop — can be found locked in those now-rare pages. In August of 2005, over a year after the TC journal’s introduction, Leo saw fit to start an online web log for news, information and contact details for the journal. There started the journey of The Cimmerian blog.

This is the first in a five part series charting the history, growth, and expansion of The Cimmerian web log. Each part will look at the blog over the course of a year since its inception in August 2005, and will concentrate on the highlights that most illustrate the state of the blog at that time.

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Leon Nielsen’s survey A Collector’s Descriptive Bibliography of American and British Hardcover, Paperback, Magazine, Special and Amateur Editions, with a Biography will be republished by McFarland & Company. Damon C. Sasser of REH: Two-Gun-Raconteur fame provided the foreword.

From the blurb:

This guide is an invaluable resource about Howard, with information for every known published work. Initial chapters provide a biography, discuss Howard’s literary legacy, and give basic tips about collecting Howard’s writings. The main body of the work is a bibliography of Howard’s published works from 1925 through 2004. Each entry includes a description and known details including publisher, date, print run, and estimated value. A thorough index locates the publication of every Howard story or poem.

This volume should be available in Fall/Winter 2010.

The late Wisconsin writer and collector Leon Nielsen contributed to The Cimmerian print journal and to Two-Gun-Raconteur (you can read his TGR article “The Image of Conan” here). He also authored Arkham House: A Collector’s Guide (2004) .

Its Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments vii
Foreword by Damon C. Sasser      1
Introduction 5

1. Robert E. Howard: A Brief Biography      11
2. The Robert E. Howard Legacy      36
3. A Robert E. Howard Cast of Characters      80
4. Collecting Robert E. Howard      105
5. A Robert E. Howard Bibliography 134
6. Most Collectible Titles      247
7. A Representative Robert E. Howard Collection      253
8. Reference Bibliography      260

Indexes      263

ISBN 978-0-7864-6109-7
98 photos, notes, bibliography, index
288pp. softcover 2010 [2007]

While the majority of this volume is dedicated to collecting, identifying and evaluating the prices of Howard’s writings, book also contains a biography, several photos of REH and his parents Hester Jane and Dr Isaac Mordecai Howard, as well as a discussion on the rights to Howards works.

REH-fan and collector Joseph Linzalone, who contributed several times to The Cimmerian Print Journal with articles such as “The Thrill Of It All” and “Bundling Inscribed” has a new book entitled Electrum and the Invention of Coinage scheduled to come out next Spring from Dennis McMillan Publications.

Joe Linzalone named his shop –where coins, archaeological objects and first edition books are sold since thirty–two years– after Robert E. Howard’s story Wolfshead, a choice that Ryan Harvey would certainly approve.

The publisher’s limited edition will be available by subscription, signed and lettered, bound in quarter morocco leather with marbled handmade paper boards, slipcased and will cost $300. For the Trade edition of 500 copies, the price will be of $85 per book. The dust jacket design will be by Michael Kellner.

Its contents:

Descriptive text, maps and 30 plates.

A comprehensive handbook on the origins of coinage, featuring:
–A detailed catalog of Archaic Electrum, the dominant coinage until the reign of Croesus of Lydia (561-545 BC), whose issuance of a gold and silver coinage marked the end of a century of Electrum.

–An analysis of the region of Ionia and Lydia and its history, focusing on the catalysts for the development of Archaic Electrum, the very first coins.

–The transformative impact of coinage on commerce and trade throughout Ancient society.

Contact the author or Dennis McMillan Publications for further details and trade terms:

Joseph Linzalone, Wolfshead Gallery
PO Box 506
Ridgewood, NJ 07451 USA
201-727-1441
joe@wolfsheadgallery.com

Dennis McMillan
4460 N. Hacienda del Sol
Tucson, AZ 85718
(520)-529-6636
dennismcmillan@aol.com

Over at the Official Robert E. Howard Forum, Paradox rep Jay Zetterberg proffered REH fandom the lowdown regarding the final contents of El Borak and Other Desert Adventures. This volume, due out February 2, 2010 from Del Rey/Ballantine, looks like another keeper. For those not willing or able to click over to conan.com, I reproduce the table of contents (and submit some random thoughts of my own) below.

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I just know I’m going to get some outraged emails at 12:01am on September 1 from people irate that they had no adequate warning of my decision to stop selling back issues after August 31, and upset that I’m being such a hardass about my deadline (I’ve already had people vainly ask me to extend the deadline just for them, or let them keep things on layaway for days, weeks, or months, despite my very clear blog post last time about those things). So to be perfectly clear as we come down the home stretch:

August 31, 2009 is the date after which all excess unsold copies of The Cimmerian will be destroyed. If you want any after that, you’ll have to wait for already-sold copies to appear on eBay, or scavenge at the REH Museum in Cross Plains for what copies they might still have.

No, I’m not going to change my mind. No, there will be no extensions or copies held on layaway.

August 31 is the date. Get ‘em while you can.

And to be assured of getting your order, your don’t just need to send me an email requesting the issues by the deadline, your money needs to be sitting in my PayPal account by midnight of the night of Aug. 31–Sept. 1, Pacific Time. Any monies sent after that time will be refunded and the orders will go unfilled. And any email conversations that we might have had before the deadline that were ultimately not sealed by a payment will be considered void.

I’ve been overwhelmed with orders the past few weeks and am slowly working through them whenever I get free time, so if you’ve sent in money and I’ve confirmed receipt, don’t worry, you’ll be getting your package soon. Any questions, feel free to ask. If you have been sitting on the fence for the last five years, you have until Monday evening to get in on the action.

I can’t make it any more clear than that.