(In honor of the commemoration each June of Texas writer Robert E. Howard, today’s guest blogger is Mark Finn, author of Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard, available at www.amazon.com/. The biography of Howard was a finalist for the 2007 Locus Awards for Best Non-Fiction. For Mark’s interview at a previous REH gathering, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfT3CNHhoU/. He blogs at http://marktheaginghipster.blogspot.com/.)
There are fan gatherings and then there are fan gatherings. Conventions come in all shapes and sizes, and the best conventions will give fans a chance to rub shoulders with their favorite actors or authors or illustrators and maybe come away with a personalized keepsake.
But no matter how great or comprehensive a convention may be, one cannot just show up at, say, Skywalker Ranch, and demand a tour. In fact, it’s very rare when a fan gathering takes place in the space of the creator whose work we all enjoy. Imagine what it would be like to stand outside the room where your favorite author created all of his most famous stories and characters....and then say hello to Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas.
Held during the second week of June every year (this year, next Friday and Saturday, June 8-9) the Annual REH Days gathering coincides with the Barbarian Festival, a local carnival and fair in the small town of Cross Plains, Texas. Friends and neighbors from all over enjoy the parade and the music and of course, the food; everything from funnel cakes to chicken on a stick and all of that great fair-food is available to sample as you stroll through the booths filled with local artisans and their wares.
However, the star of the show is the erstwhile Robert E. Howard himself, the creator of Conan the Cimmerian and so many other memorable characters and stories. His house has been preserved and restored and is now on the national registry of historic places. Inside, fans can see original artifacts from the Howard house, along with rare photos, collectibles, and more. During Howard Days, docents man each room to greet visitors and point out the significant features and history of the room.
You can even stand in the doorway of Robert’s room, and see a replica of the typewriter he used, and contemplate which of your favorite stories he wrote just a few feet away from where you’re standing. It’s awesome in that you can’t get any closer to Howard than you are right then.
Not surprisingly, this annual gathering draws the cream of the crop in Howard studies, as well as uber-fans who travel from around the world, and across the country, to hang out, hobnob with fellow fans, and revel in the family reunion-like atmosphere. A pilgrimage to the Howard house is something every REH fan must do in their lifetime.
For more information about this year’s Howard Days, visit
www.rehupa.com and click on the Howard Days 2012 link. Hope to see you there!
Showing posts with label Cross Plains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cross Plains. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wordcraft -- Writing advice from a barbarian
In her memoir of Robert E. Howard, Novalyne Price Ellis details an amazing amount of writing advice from the creator of Conan. In honor of June’s annual Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas, the closest place to a home town for him, I’ve combed the memoir and selections of his letters and stories for continuing advice from the master. Answers to the interview questions are taken verbatim from Howard’s writings or conversations, as reported by Ms. Ellis, but not always in the context that was intended.
I understand you’re a writer, Mr. Howard.
Yeah, that’s right. I write for the pulps.
How did you get started?
At the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.
Given your unfamiliarity of the business, how did you choose writing as a profession?
I tried a lot of other jobs and I didn’t like ‘em. I worked on a farm and that was no good at all, but clerking in a store is about the worst job you can have. So I decided the only way I could get out of working for a living was to start writing.
Isn’t writing work?
Well, not by the sweat of your brow at any rate. You can stay at home. All you have to contend with is a typewriter and it just puts down what you want it to.
Was there something in your environment that encouraged you to be a writer?
It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments. I became a writer in spite of my environments. Understand, I am not criticizing those environments. They were good, solid and worthy. The fact that they were not conducive to literature and art is nothing in their disfavor. Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among whom one’s lot is cast.
I understand your first story appeared in a school publication. Did you enjoy school?
I hated school.
Why was that? You seem like someone who would have been a good student.
It wasn’t the work I minded. . . .What I hated was the confinement -- the clock- like regularity of everything; the regulation of my speech and actions; most of all the idea that someone considered himself or herself in authority over me, with the right to questions my actions and interfere with my thoughts.
What advice do you have for other writers?
I don’t usually give advice.
Perhaps you could at least tell us something about the way you write. For instance, when you start to write a story, do you start with a character or an idea for a plot?
(Appearing to relent) Mostly with a character, I suppose. I’ve got a character going now. . . That Conan’s the damnedest bastard I ever saw. He gets himself into all kinds of scrapes.
So, do you carry on a conversation with him, getting to know him?
I sure don’t try to give advice when he tells me all that junk. I just sit back and listen.
Speaking of listening, I’ve heard that some of your neighbors aren’t always happy about the noise when you read your stories aloud as you write. Has anyone ever complained to you?
I was out working on my car (and) while I was working, like a fool, I was talking, trying to figure out something about a yarn I was stuck on. I wasn’t talking too loud, but I got to a place where ol’ Conan was fighting, and I said, “Fool. Dog of hell. Die!” About that time, a timid little voice said, “Robert, is your mother home?”
What do you say when people ask how you come up with characters such as Conan?
(I) always say, “He’s a combination of a lot of people I have known.”. . . (But) to tell the truth, I don’t know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. . . I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.
At this point Howard looked pointedly at his watch and rose, impatient to return to his typewriter. But I hope to secure a promise of another interview for next Wednesday.
I understand you’re a writer, Mr. Howard.
Yeah, that’s right. I write for the pulps.
How did you get started?
At the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.
Given your unfamiliarity of the business, how did you choose writing as a profession?
I tried a lot of other jobs and I didn’t like ‘em. I worked on a farm and that was no good at all, but clerking in a store is about the worst job you can have. So I decided the only way I could get out of working for a living was to start writing.
Isn’t writing work?
Well, not by the sweat of your brow at any rate. You can stay at home. All you have to contend with is a typewriter and it just puts down what you want it to.
Was there something in your environment that encouraged you to be a writer?
It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments. I became a writer in spite of my environments. Understand, I am not criticizing those environments. They were good, solid and worthy. The fact that they were not conducive to literature and art is nothing in their disfavor. Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among whom one’s lot is cast.
I understand your first story appeared in a school publication. Did you enjoy school?
I hated school.
Why was that? You seem like someone who would have been a good student.
It wasn’t the work I minded. . . .What I hated was the confinement -- the clock- like regularity of everything; the regulation of my speech and actions; most of all the idea that someone considered himself or herself in authority over me, with the right to questions my actions and interfere with my thoughts.
What advice do you have for other writers?
I don’t usually give advice.
Perhaps you could at least tell us something about the way you write. For instance, when you start to write a story, do you start with a character or an idea for a plot?
(Appearing to relent) Mostly with a character, I suppose. I’ve got a character going now. . . That Conan’s the damnedest bastard I ever saw. He gets himself into all kinds of scrapes.
So, do you carry on a conversation with him, getting to know him?
I sure don’t try to give advice when he tells me all that junk. I just sit back and listen.
Speaking of listening, I’ve heard that some of your neighbors aren’t always happy about the noise when you read your stories aloud as you write. Has anyone ever complained to you?
I was out working on my car (and) while I was working, like a fool, I was talking, trying to figure out something about a yarn I was stuck on. I wasn’t talking too loud, but I got to a place where ol’ Conan was fighting, and I said, “Fool. Dog of hell. Die!” About that time, a timid little voice said, “Robert, is your mother home?”
What do you say when people ask how you come up with characters such as Conan?
(I) always say, “He’s a combination of a lot of people I have known.”. . . (But) to tell the truth, I don’t know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. . . I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.
At this point Howard looked pointedly at his watch and rose, impatient to return to his typewriter. But I hope to secure a promise of another interview for next Wednesday.
#
(Quotations from One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis and Howard’s letters quoted in The Best of Robert E. Howard, vol. 1, published by DelRey Books.Monday, May 30, 2011
Totally Texas -- Barbarian pride in the heart of Texas
Robert E. Howard Days
Cross Plains
Next week, June 10-11, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Robert E. Howard Days, the annual festival in the small West Texas town of Cross Plains, where the creator of Conan and other adventure characters lived most of his adult life. Although the date is the anniversary of Howard’s suicide, the event gives visitors a chance to see how Howard lived, in the little white house on the western edge of town with his parents from 1919 until his death in 1936, as well as the collection of his writings and publications during extended hours at the Cross Plains Library, 149 N. Main. The Howard house at 625 SW 15th St. has been lovingly restored in ways recognizable to fans of the movie, The Whole Wide World, based on the memoir by Howard’s friend Novalyne Price Ellis. During a visit a few years ago, I found the room -- actually, an enclosed porch -- where Howard slept and wrote, fascinating. In that tiny space he launched characters whose adventures carried him in imagination to places far away from the Texas hills and prairies. A covered area near the house hosts an annual swap meet for fans.
Another favorite site for visitors is Brownwood, about forty miles south of Cross Plains, where Howard and his parents are buried in Greenleaf Cemetery, 2615 Highway 377 South.
Two long-time publishers of the works of Howard (or REH, as fans call him) will be guests of honor at this year's REH Days -- Damon Sasser and Dennis McHaney. Sasser publishes the fanzine REH: Two-Gun Raconteur. McHaney has published REH's works for nearly forty years, including The Howard Review.
If you want to stay overnight, you'd better make your lodging reservations pronto. One fan on the REH Forum's travel advice page said he'd called Cross Plains's only lodging place, the 36 West Motel, this past January, only to be told they were already out of rooms for the event. A couple of hotel sites I checked couldn't even find Cross Plains, but if you're willing to look thirty to forty miles further away, rooms appeared available in neighboring towns as of this writing. Cross Plains is located on Texas Highway 36, south of I-20, between Fort Worth and Abilene.
(Next Monday -- Longhorns and horses and cowboys, oh my! Pioneer Plaza in Dallas.)
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The last barbarian
This coming Saturday, January 22, marks the one-hundred and fifth anniversary of the birth of my fellow Texan Robert E. Howard. Howard, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age thirty, invented sword and sorcery fantasy almost single-handedly with characters such as Conan the Barbarian (more properly, the Cimmerian). Even J.R.R. Tolkien, who had little sympathy for most of his contemporary writers, is rumored to have admitted that he “rather liked the Conan stories.”
During Howard’s lifetime, his neighbors in the West Texas town of Cross
Perhaps you don’t want to channel your inner barbarian by attacking your friends with edged weapons. But have you considered using Howard’s other methods to get inside your characters’ heads? I find the book Inner Drives by Pamela Jaye Smith (yet another Texan) useful for providing styles of speech, physical actions, clothing, foibles and even appropriate foods for many character archetypes. Smith’s clients are often filmmakers, but anyone striving to portray character and motivation will find it helpful. Robert E. Howard, I’m sure, would have loved it.
If this gives you any ideas for characters and stories to display them in, join my writing prompt contest. Just list items in the comments section that you would like to include in a short story of any genre. I’ll pick three – adding some of my own if needed – and post them on the January 26 blog, adding rules for a story contest using the prompts. Winning prompts will be credited to their creators. They’re your choice, but keep the sex and violence to about what you’d see in a PG-13 movie.
(For more information about Smith and her character theories, see her website, www.mythworks.net/ )
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