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Rogue Blades Author: An Unexpected Gift

Rogue Blades Author: An Unexpected Gift

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Howard changed my lifeThe following is an excerpt from Barbara Ingram Baum’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

May 25, 1995, marked a profound change in my life. Alla Ray Morris, or ‘Pat’ as we called her, passed away unexpectedly. When my husband, Jack, met with her attorneys after her funeral, he was shocked to learn she had bequeathed her rights in Robert E. Howard’s works to him, to his sister Terry, and to their mother, Zora Mae Baum Bryant, whom she had named as executrix of her estate. I could never have imagined the impact this gift would have on my life.

Jack’s father had passed away in 1971, and several years later his mother married Elliott Bryant, a kind, loving widower who embraced his new family as Zora Mae had two adult children, a daughter-in-law, and three young grandchildren. Elliott’s parents and younger brother were deceased, but he maintained a close relationship with his aunt, Alla Ray Kuykendall (‘Auntie K’) and her daughter, Alla Ray Morris (‘Pat’), who lived in the nearby town of Ranger, Texas. Whenever we gathered at the house in Cross Plains for holidays, Auntie K and Pat were always included, and over the years they became family to all of us as well. So even after Elliott died suddenly in 1982, the relationship continued, and every week Jack’s mother drove to Ranger to play bridge with the Kuykendalls and their friends. I believe she and Pat became even closer after Auntie K passed away. Nevertheless, we were stunned when Pat suddenly died and we learned she had included us in her will — it was totally unexpected.

We knew nothing about Robert E. Howard or his works. However, we recalled Zora Mae, Elliott, Auntie K, and Pat had attended the showing of the film Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the Paramount Theatre in Abilene, but Jack and I had never seen the film or read any of Howard’s works or talked about Howard or discussed the Kuykendalls’ ownership at family gatherings. I faintly remembered comments about Howard Days, but we had never discussed those events, nor had we attended. Interestingly, though, Jack’s mother kept a Conan calendar on her kitchen wall — which I know now was a Ken Kelly scene from “People of the Black Circle.” (You would have to know Jack’s mother to appreciate how completely out of character it was for her to have a heroic fantasy calendar on her wall. Zora Mae was very much a traditionalist and was very particular about her home and its accessories.)

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Rogue Blades Presents: Sometimes a Good Hero is Hard to Find

Rogue Blades Presents: Sometimes a Good Hero is Hard to Find

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Beyond the Black RiverRecently I’ve been reading Beyond the Black River, a collection of Robert E. Howard tales published by Wildside Press. Within those pages one can find a couple of horror tales but also a handful of Conan the Cimmerian yarns, including the short story which gives this book its title.

When reading Beyond the Black River, the book or the story, it is obvious not only who the protagonist happens to be, but also the hero. The two figures are not always the same individual within a tale. For instance, Conan features large in most of the stories here, and he is the hero in at least four of the tales, but he is not always the protagonist. Sometimes Howard would pen a Conan tale told from another point of view. But whatever the point of view, Howard was mainly a writer of action and adventure, thus he wanted there to be little question about his hero in any given story.

Also of late, like millions stuck at home, I’ve been watching my fair share of television, which is actually unusual for me. One show I’ve watched, again like millions, is The Mandalorian. Here, too, it is obvious who wears the title of hero and protagonist with the ever-helmeted “Mando” performing both roles. I also caught up on the show Justified, a modern Western of sorts featuring Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens in my home state of Kentucky (it was kind of fun to watch all the things the show got wrong about the Bluegrass State); once more it was not difficult to pick out the hero and protagonist, here the same individual in Raylan Givens.

However, earlier in the year I read novels and stories and watched shows in which it was not so easy to pick out a hero.

For instance, watching the super hero show The Boys on Amazon Prime, there are a whole lot of bad people but not a lot of real heroes. Even a regular protagonist is difficult to pinpoint as this show has more of an ensemble cast with the focus on characters shifting. Early on in the series, Hughie Campbell (portrayed by Jack Quaid) is the protagonist, but by the end of the first season Hughie has been taken in as part of the broader cast. Also, while Hughie occasionally does something that is heroic, he generally is too reticent to be a regular hero. Still, he usually tries to do what’s right, at least for the moment, and maybe that’s all we can ask for a modern television hero. And I don’t want to leave out other characters, for Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is usually the most heroic of the “supes” and she also tries to do what is right, but she’s not exactly the hero of the show. Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher character plays large on the screen whenever he appears, and he does sometimes do the right thing, even the heroic thing, but I don’t think anyone who has watched the show would consider Butcher a hero, especially as his motives usually come from pain, rage and sometimes even selfishness.

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Rogue Blades Author: A Love Letter to Bear Creek

Rogue Blades Author: A Love Letter to Bear Creek

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The following is an excerpt from Mark Finn’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

Howard changed my lifeI’ve spent roughly seventy-five percent of my life thinking about Robert E. Howard, one of his many literary creations, or some combination of the two. It’s common when, in the bloom of one’s youth, a reader decides who their favorite author is and then reads everything they can get their hands on, indiscriminately. I was certainly no exception, and while I was quick to devour all the Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane I could find, I don’t think I learned about Howard’s humor stories until I was a senior in high school.

It was in the problematic pages of Dark Valley Destiny (1983) where L. Sprague de Camp wrote favorably (well, as favorably as he was able, which in this case, was fairly glowing) about Howard’s humor fiction; the fighting sailor of the Asiatics, Steve Costigan, and the lumbering mountain man from Bear Creek, Nevada, Breckinridge Elkins. Given that de Camp’s biography was so full of scant praise for the author’s literary output, these plaudits stood out in sharp relief against the backhanded compliments. As the single biggest fan of Robert E. Howard that I knew, I could not let this omission in my reading stand.

As it turned out, it would have to, at least for a couple of years, until I could get to a better class of used bookstore. I bought both The Iron Man (1976) and A Gent From Bear Creek (1975) at the same time at Austin Books, in (where else?) Austin, Texas. They were the Zebra editions with wonderfully evocative covers by Jeff Jones. I was stunned and a little disheartened to find out that Howard’s humor writing was, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, about 95% unpublished. Sure, A Gent From Bear Creek was available, but it was, at the time, at odds with the rest of Howard’s work in print. Specifically, it was hard to reconcile this picaresque romp of a humor novel, full of hyperbole and exaggerations, with the same author that wrote “The Black Stone” and “Red Nails.” If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t quite get it.

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Rogue Blades presents: “Deep in the Land of Ice and Snow”

Rogue Blades presents: “Deep in the Land of Ice and Snow”

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Return of the Sword-smallMy short story “Deep in the Land of Ice and Snow” originally appeared in the collection The Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure by Rogue Blades Entertainment. Enjoy.

The wolves were too many. Belgad knew that as he soon as he spotted the beasts. There were nearly a score of them, and if that were not bad enough, the creatures were huge, each nearly the size of a riding pony. What was worse, the wolves were quiet and had managed to surround him without his spying them sooner.

No, this was no ordinary pack. They had appeared from nowhere, and they had no qualms about scaling the side of a mountain for their human prey.

Belgad forced himself to climb higher, the bitter cold winds whipping at his long yellow hair. His fingers, the tips protruding from rags he had used to swaddle them, gripped the edge of another boulder and lifted him with the help of solid placement from his fur-lined boots.

On top of the boulder, Belgad found a flat spot and sat there, letting the cold air fill his tired lungs. His body needed rest after days of hiking dense forests and climbing steep hills, but he would not close his eyes; the wolves were drawing nearer, below and above. It would only be a matter of time before they would pounce.

After what felt like hours to the big man wrapped in furs, one of the wolves, the largest, began to creep its way along a narrow path toward him.

Belgad watched the animal with anticipation, knowing soon he would be in battle.

Eventually the wolf was below Belgad, just out of reach of the man’s legs hanging off the side of his stone seat.

“Will you eat me today, wolf?” the large man said to the animal.

The wolf’s only reply was uplifted ears and a tilted head.

“I think not,” Belgad said, drawing in his legs and pushing off them so he was standing on the boulder.

The wolf blinked, and that was when Belgad took notice of its eyes. The animal had eyes the shade of morning blue ice.

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Rogue Blades Author: For the Honor of the Ship

Rogue Blades Author: For the Honor of the Ship

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Howard changed my lifeThe following is an excerpt from Christopher Gruber’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

I don’t say this out loud often enough — particularly now that I am able to look back on the more significant moments of my life with some measure of honesty and clarity and pinpoint with extreme confidence each occasion I was forever transformed by someone or something — but perhaps that’s why I am writing this. To remember precisely the moment I decided to become the man I am and not merely the man I wanted to be. I’m talking of course about the kind of moments in one’s youth that are often overlooked when contemplating what we erroneously perceive to be the inescapably uninspiring story of our lives. The kind of moments that at first glance seem insignificant, accidental, or perhaps even incidental to the more nightmarish effluvium of our remembered personal failures which I suspect we all attach far more importance to than we should.

Since accepting this assignment I’ve rolled the slogan along my tongue often enough, testing and probing for any signs of illegitimacy, and found nothing but the bittersweet tang of personal truth. There’s an earnestness in what I am about to share with you that surprised me. Truth be told I very much enjoy saying it now in much the same way I genuinely enjoy saying I love my family and friends. There’s a natural sincerity to the declaration that is genuine and unpretentious. I might as well dive into the deep end of the pool of candor and just get on with it: Sailor Steve Costigan and Mike the Bulldog changed my life. There, that’s a load off and I don’t mean maybe. Lemme explain …

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Rogue Blades Author: An Empire of Ghosts and Smoke

Rogue Blades Author: An Empire of Ghosts and Smoke

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Howard changed my lifeThe following is an excerpt from Scott Oden’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, there was a kid from the Deep South, a fairly bog-standard middle-class white boy who was small for his age and a bit asthmatic. He wore glasses, had the profusion of freckles endemic to gingers, and possessed far more hair than he (or his mother) knew what to do with. On the surface, he seemed the normal sort.

This kid, though, he saw things. Things that weren’t there. He saw gnarled trolls lurking under fallen trees, dragons soaring among the clouds, and goblins hiding in fields of waving grass. The rusted-out shell of a boat drawn up on the bank of the pond behind his house was, in this kid’s reality, the Argo of legend. It was not a knotty pine branch he carried, stripped of its bark and dark from weathering. No, it was a sword: a great blade like Excalibur or the sword of Perseus. The old galvanized trash can lid on his arm was a shield wrought of silver; the tablecloth tied around his neck was a magic cloak, spun of silk and moonlight.

This kid’s domain was an eighteen-acre fiefdom with fields and woods and boggy creeks; at its heart: a two-acre fishpond thick with cattails and catfish, frogs and snakes, and surely haunted by merfolk and the ghosts of lost sailors. When the goblins swarmed down from the North, the kid met them blade-to-blade in the tall grass of a fallow field. When the trolls encroached from the East, he hunted them through the woods with spear and shield. And when the dragons threatened, the kid wisely retreated to his fort made from hay bales and old canvas, its walls impervious to dragon-fire. There, he plotted their demise.

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Rogue Blades Presents: Who Was Your First Hero?

Rogue Blades Presents: Who Was Your First Hero?

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Kirk-Spock-McCoyDo you remember your first hero? Any kind of hero. It could have been a hero from a movie or a book or a television show, even a hero from real life.

As a child of the 1970s, one might think Luke Skywalker was my first hero, but I would turn eight years old a month after the original Star Wars was released in theaters, and by then I already had plenty of heroes.

Re-runs of the original Star Trek TV show from the 1960s were still airing, and I watched every one of them. Of the crew of the Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk seemed the most heroic of the figures presented to us viewers, or at least he stood in the most traditional of the heroic modes.

Then there was the Six Million Dollar Man, starring actor Lee Majors from 1973 to 1978 on television. For those not familiar with the series, Majors played U.S. astronaut Steve Austin who was seriously injured in an accident. Not only did Steve survive his accident, but the government decided, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.” And they did. Steve got some bionic legs and an arm and an eye. He fought crime. And Bigfoot. It was awesome.

Some might not consider Godzilla a hero, but by the time of my childhood in the ’70s, Godzilla was mainly a good guy, so he was a hero of sorts to many of us. For better or worse, my first Godzilla movie was Godzilla vs. Megalon, a film sometimes not remembered fondly by Godzilla fans. Either way, I was maybe five years old when my dad drug me into an old downtown theater to witness the spectacle of this movie, and again, I have to say it was awesome.

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