Last fall, when a reader told me that the review of By this Axe I Rule! had been reposted on a Robert E. Howard site, I was surprised that there was such a site, though I should not have been.

Recently, when Deuce informed me that I had been nominated by the Robert E. Howard Foundation I was likewise surprised. I have really continued to spend my time as I had in my youth, reading books and wondering. The ownership of Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder—an accidental find picked up at a venue where I was working security—and of some Howard collections with introductory essays in them, are all that I have been exposed to “about” Robert E. Howard, so I am necessarily ignorant about Howard the man in comparison to most of the readers that would be interested in my impressions of his work.

Deuce just sent me four links to Howard sites, this being the only way I get around the internet, being led by the hands like a blind man by my readers.

Counting on the possibility that I shall be able to remain one thought ahead of the savages who hunt me in Harm City, and that I reasonably hope to live three more years, I would like to, in each of these years, do another Robert E. Howard book, satisfying my ambition to gather an impression of his work in its totality. It has been my ambition for some years now to review all of his work.

However, based on the links Deuce sent, I have more stuff to read about Howard than what he wrote. So I have resolved to go about this in the following manner. In between writing my own fiction and history books—which is how I approach Howard’s work, as an immersed writer—I will continue to reread, read, and listen to audio books of as much Howards work as possible. My reviews, I shall limit to a writer’s perspective, trying not to rely on what little I have read and think I know about Howard, but simply on the one thing I share with him, a drive to write.

Then, as I edit the book, I will read up on Howard, incorporate comments sent to me by Howard enthusiasts and historians, and try my best to generate a “stern lamp perspective,” of each impressionistic review in the collection, attempting to put my own recent writer’s impression into focus through the lens of existing biographical literature on Howard.

I will refer to this page of the upcoming book for online sources. So, if Howard readers might be kind enough to add links below those given to me by Deuce, it would help focus my wondering eye:

Thank you, Deuce.

://www.rehupa.com/index.htm