Wordgrinder

Angeline will be signing books at Eerie Books in Wylie, TX this Saturday, July 4. The bookstore has ordered copies of her collection Symphony for the Forgotten, and the Stoker award-nominated Beneath the Surface anthology, containing her story "The Relic: Father Santiago's Bones." Seems like they also had some copies of Frontier Cthulhu on the shelf, too. And we might bring some extra books out of the treasure box along just for kicks.

Please come out and join us in the historic strip in downtown Wylie this Saturday. The signing starts at 12 noon, and ends at 6 p.m. There's donuts next door, and a great coffee shop just down the street.

I also recently updated Angeline's website, so please stop in and check it out if you haven't been there in a while. The deluxe and limited/signed editions of her new collection from Dark Regions Press Shades of Blood and Shadow is up for pre-order at Horror Mall.

Hope to see some of you local folks up there on Saturday!

There’s four weeks left in the semester. Halleliejiah and amen.

The end of this semester is a special milestone because I will officially be done with all math classes needed for my degree. I’ve done better than I expected and managed to maintain an “A” in all of them, but not without considerable studying and developing some mad calculator skills. From here on out, I will only go to the college for classes on Saturdays -- my weeknight classes will be taken online. This means less time away from the family, eating dinner at home again, and the boy and I won’t have to miss nightly viewings of Buck Rogers because they see neither hide nor hair of me from 7 am to 9 pm on school nights. I’m ready for the summer. Oh boy, am I ready.

I do have some writing news, but before that, I’d like to say thanks to all the folks who have been so supportive of our adoption efforts. I assume most of you reading this blog also read Angeline’s blog, angelinehawkes, and know the latest, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say that your support is appreciated. Thank you.

On the writing block, my werewolf novel OF WOLF AND MAN, will be coming back into print via the good folks at Lachesis Publishing. The book had a long and unhappy road before I submitted it to Carole and Louise last year, but now after reviewing the final galleys and cover art, I’m excited about its new life. It has been completely rewritten and revised from the first edition, and is now, I’m convinced, the best that it can be. I’ll be sure to post another update as soon as ordering information comes available.

Angeline and I, along with a number of cohorts from the HWA, will be appearing as guests at Texas Frightmare Weekend in two weeks. If you’re in the area for the con, please come visit our table. We’ll be on rotating signing schedules throughout the three-day event. I hope to see some friendly faces there!

Angeline and I will be at ConDFW this weekend, for most of the day on Saturday, and for a few hours on Sunday. I have to take an exam Saturday morning, so we’ll be going to the hotel directly from the college. I hoped to catch Jim Butcher for his 11 a.m. signing, but since my exam starts at 10 a.m., I’m thinking that won’t be possible. I hope he sticks around for his late signing on Sunday.

Anyway, our loads are light for this convention, but after the past few weeks we've had, I’m certainly not complaining. It never fails that every time a convention rolls around, we're as busy as electrons in a particle accelerator. Our schedules are:

SATURDAY

Both of us:
3 pm DFW HWA Afternoon Lunch-Dinner Thing

Christopher Fulbright:
Panel Room 2 (Manchester)
5 pm Fools! I will destroy you all! - Creating Believable Villains

Angeline Hawkes:
Panel Room 4 (Churchill)
5 pm WWDD - What Would Dracula Do? - Horror in Modern Times

Reading Room (Winston)
6 pm Reading

SUNDAY

Angeline Hawkes:
1 pm Autographs

I'm looking forward to visiting with Bill in the dealers' room, meeting a new member of our local HWA chapter and seeing Dean and Nina and all of our other friends again. The con is down by the Galleria this year, so there's plenty of stuff close by to choose from for our late lunch. I'm thinking TexMex. Anyway, here’s a link for more information: http://www.condfw.org. Hope to see some of you there.

Heh...

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

So, a quick rewind to last summer finds Angie and I on the couch one balmy afternoon watching a box full of VHS movies, one of which turns out to be the 1982 camp fest B-film, The Sword and the Sorcerer. You remember this film. I know you do. Riding on the scaly backs of Conan the Barbarian and Dungeons & Dragons, it hits on just about every fantasy cliché out there, from evil wizards to gals in skins and skin, but adds something new and exciting to the mix -- a sword that shoots its blades like hurtling skewers of death! Awesome, I know.

As the movie winds up, we watch the credits, commenting on the "genius" of the film (it actually wasn't that bad at all, and Angie will swear that it's still head and shoulders above my personal favorite Fulci S&S offering Conquest), when we see at the end a notice that we should watch for the sequel, Tales of the Ancient Empire "coming soon." Well, twenty-five years came and went with neither hide nor hair of the sequel, so I hope nobody was holding their breath. Curious, I did some research online and read in a (now revised) Wikipedia entry, that when it was released, The Sword and the Sorcerer was the most successful independent film of 1982, grossing $40 million. I guess the producers decided not to gamble on a second film, and made off into the brazen sunset with their pack mules loaded with money.

So, the point of this blathering is maybe old news to some, but I just read this the other day -- Tales of the Ancient Empire is in production now. Lee Horsley returns presumably to reprise the role of Prince Talon, and is joined by Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Kull), Christopher Lambert (Highlander), and TV star Melissa Ordway in what the producers have dubbed a "sequel in spirit" to the cult classic from which it spawns. You can check out some stills here. In one of the stills I even spotted Ralf Moeller, who played Conan on the mid-90's TV series Conan the Adventurer. This should be cool. I'm hoping the new one will not only prove to be a film as fun and swashbuckling as the original, but prompt a DVD reissue of the original movie in a remastered widescreen format.

Time will tell if it was worth the wait, but I'll be one of the first in line to see Tales of the Ancient Empire. The release date listed on IMDB.com is June 1, 2009.

You can see, first off, that I've taken to naming my blog posts like 80s death metal songs. I think it adds drama and makes things more interesting. The process has also spawned the word "spectavaganzular," which I'm rather fond of.

So. It's the holiday season. I thought for some reason I should come make a blog post, but now that I'm here, I'm sure it's not necessary.

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you're all doing well out there in LJ land, getting ready to enjoy vacations and libations. I won't give much thought to how insanely fast 2008 passed by. Though it seems a blur, in retrospect, I accomplished a lot, and things in general have definitely changed for the better. Busy, but better. I think in my advancing years, I'm finally becoming domesticated.

Over a year ago, when I was still webmaster for HWA, I traded a few e-mails with young director Roger Scheck who was looking for avenues to promote his new horror film, Nobody Loves Alice. He was hoping to get a promo spot in an HWA publication, but I had to turn him away since HWA publications are only for members. At the time, I looked over the website and thought it looked intriguing, not to mention damn creepy. So I told him I'd be interested in checking it out when it's released on DVD, and wished him luck spreading the word.

Fast forward about 18 months or so -- I get an e-mail from Roger letting me know the DVD was out and asking if I'd like to check it out. I replied that I would, not sure if he meant like, "would you please buy it" or "hey I'll send you a copy." Three days later, I'm walking in the house, just home from work, when Angie, folding laundry, looking very beautiful says:

"Your torture porn movie came today."

She said it like she was telling me the kids just got done watching Mary Poppins.

"What?" I blinked, quickly rifling through recent memory to recall if I'd ordered any such thing. I felt like I was a kid again, Mom wagging the nudy magazine she found between the mattresses.

"Nobody Loves Alice," she said, reading my mind.

"Oh!" As relief washed over me I explained the deal and told her that I hoped it wasn't torture porn, because really, that's not my thing. She agreed to watch it with me, and a few nights later we found ourselves in front of the TV like we do with most independent movies -- hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

I'm pleased to say that Nobody Loves Alice is one smart, engaging, and genuinely suspenseful film that both of us really enjoyed. The synopsis:

Alice came into the world unloved. Bouncing from foster home to foster home she never experienced love in even the most basic of ways. As Alice changed from child into a woman she still failed to receive that fairytale romance she so desperately needed. Try as she may to find that love it seems to be just out of reach. Those poor mis-fortunate souls that fail to requite her love pay for it with a world of pain and torture.

Alice's story collides with one of her co-workers, Abigail. Abigail and her boyfriend, Alex, have that fairytale romance that Alice is so desperately trying to find. As Abigail catches onto her boyfriend's plan to propose, she comes up with a scheme to test her soon-to-be fiancée's fidelity. And who better to play the bait in the scenario... Alice.

Now, Alice finds herself face-to-face with the one thing she's always wanted -- true love.

As Alice becomes more disillusioned in her make-believe world of true love she'll stop at nothing to ensure nobody takes Alex from her.

And Abigail finds herself on the brink of losing the man she loves. Or at least some of him...

This film grabbed me from the very beginning. Leery of the possibility of some pointless carnage to justify naked, blood-smeared women, I was met instead with some witty dialog, a couple dealing with some slightly juvenile but entirely beliveable pre-marital anxiety, and a very disturbed woman with a "boyfriend" that she keeps in a dirty room of her apartment tied up on a blood splattered mattress.

The story structure was perfect, planting just enough of what we need to know to build suspense. Characterization is strong enough that I liked one of the main characters, Alex (Phillip Ward) who's getting ready to propose to his live-in girlfriend Abigail (Amanda Taylor). When Abigail finds out that he's going to propose, she talks to her shallow friend Megan who manages to convince her that most men are cheaters at heart and what she really needs to do before she agrees to marry Alex is test his loyalty. Megan makes a call to Alex's work, saying she saw him in the restaurant (which he manages) earlier that day and would love to meet him for drinks. Megan thinks she's sly, but Alex recognizes her voice and decides to play along, thinking (accurately) it's something cooked up by Abigail.

Well, Abigail's dumb friend Megan thinks she's got him fooled, but only one problem -- she can't show up herself so they need to send someone he won't recognize. Enter Alice (Nitzan Mager), the quiet and demure girl who just started working with them -- who also happens to be a dangerous psychopath with a propensity for doing dastardly things to her "boyfriends" in the privacy of her own home. Alice agrees to meet Alex, as she's seceretly jealous of Abigail's relationship and sees this as an opportunity to steal this hunk of man away from her, crazy-chick-style.

What sold both of us on this movie was Nitzan Mager's performance as Alice. She was amazing. When we were watching scenes with Alice in her apartment interacting with Ward, her new "fiancee", they were just chilling and really set us on edge. Most of the time we didn't even really think about the fact that we were watching a low budget independent film. The only moments that broke the spell for us were the interactions between Abigail and her friend Megan. The place where they worked never seemed real, and some of the scenes between them were stiffly acted, which we probably wouldn't have noticed had the scenes with Alice and Alex not been so stellar. There was only one over-the-top bone-head moment in the film when the P.I. hired to find Alex shows up at Alice's place and pretty much does everything stupid thing you could think of, and well...I won't ruin it. Suffice to say we were yelling at the TV.

Despite a few small hitches, we were entranced and emotionally engaged by this movie and very satisfied by how savvy it turned out to be. Once again in the face of more mindless Saw films and the endless march of bad remakes from Hollywood, this quality horror fare from Scheck and crew shows that the real contenders of the horror film genre exist in the underground -- Nobody Loves Alice is highly recommended.

Rent the film on Netflix, Blockbuster.com, or buy it at the lowest possible price directly from the film's official website at http://www.nobodylovesalice.com/.

Just a quick mention that Angeline will be signing books from 2-4 p.m. at Eerie Books for their grand opening this Saturday. Eerie Books -- in addition to horror novels -- also carries DVDs, games, comics, collectables, and art. I hope everyone in the area will come out not only to support Angeline, but also to support this store, which I hope has a long and healthy existence. They'll be giving away free books and horror movies to the first 100 people in the door, so you don't have anything to lose by coming out. Free stuff!

Here's the address and details:


Eerie Books
205 N. Ballard Street
Wylie, TX
Saturday, October 18
Angie's Signing: 2-4 p.m.
Store Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.
Phone number: 972-442-9393
Web site: http://www.eeriebooks.com/


Hope to see some familiar faces up there tomorrow.

FenCon has arrived! I will be participating on and off in the convention this weekend, as my schedule allows. Unfortunately, it couldn't happen at a worse time for me; I have three big projects on my plate -- one at work, one at school, and one personal writing project -- two of which have deadlines that will not give and require more work than it currently looks like I have time to do. Such is the chaos of my life these days. Never a dull nor idle moment.



My schedule for the convention:

Christopher Fulbright

Friday 8:00 p.m. -- What Would Cthulhu Do?
(S. Cupp, L. Donahue, C. Fulbright, T.M. Wagner, D.Duggins*)

Friday 9:00 p.m. -- Why Is This Crap Lodged in My Brain - and What Can I Do to Get it Out?
(J.K. Cheney, L. Donahue, M. White, C. Fulbright*)

Saturday 11:00 a.m. -- Reading
(C. Fulbright, K. Hutson Price)

Saturday 7:00 p.m. -- DFW HWA Dinner
Meeting at McArthur's in the Hotel

Sunday 1:00 p.m. -- Monster Mash: Who Is Really King of the Movie Monsters?
(A. Balthrop, D. Duggins, C. Fulbright, A. Martinez, S. Cupp*)

To see Angeline's schedule, please visit her blog here: angelinehawkes.

Hope to see some of you there.

Hurricane Ike has been something else. We watched CNN and FOX News till about midnight last night, as Geraldo Rivera clung like a fool to a palm tree, standing knee deep in water on the Galveston coast, debris flying by at 110 mph. What an idiot.

The center of the storm is 106 miles east of us as I write this, but we've had rain all day. Right now, it's raining sideways and the wind is blowing at about 50-60 mph. Not too bad, it's just a tropical storm now, no tornados or anything, but it was an interesting drive home from class this afternoon, especially across the seven miles or so of bridge spanning Lake Ray Hubbard into Rockwall. The traffic mist and spray and driving rain off the lake made it impossible to see. We're not going anywhere else today. As we watch the news reports from Houston and environs south, we're hoping for the best for our fellow Texans who were caught by the brunt of the storm.

I wanted to make a quick post today. I've been itching to make several posts, but time for blog posting is elusive, so hopefully this place doesn't gather too much dust.



On that note, I was excited to find this new book by Robert E. Howard in Barnes and Noble last Tuesday. Not one of the trade paperbacks being released by Del Rey, but a trade hardcover from Blackbart Books that is just plain beautiful.

The book, "...and their memory was a bitter tree..." is subtitled Queen of the Black Coast and Others by Robert E. Howard. It really has to be one of the highest quality hardcovers I've ever seen for the price: Smyth sewn binding with black and gold fabric backing, thick glossy pages with full cover Frazetta art, some full color art plus sketches from Brom, end papers including full color Hyborean Age maps by George Barr, and thick text pages with decent sized type and thoughtful layout -- all of this makes this book the crown jewel of Conan books for the person who doesn't have hundreds of dollars to spend on the now out-of-print Wandering Star editions. Really, it's the Robert E. Howard book I've been waiting for. A full size hardcover with easy to read type, full color glossy Frazettas, a durable library binding and dust jacket ... all for just $25.00 (and only $16.50 at Amazon as of this posting)!

I know that some folks in REH fandom have written some scathing letters to the publisher due to the introduction by Arnie Fenner. I've only had time to skim it, so I can't render any detailed analysis, but at a glance it's speckled with some full color graphics of Weird Tales covers and photos of Howard, and my initial impression is that the intro does seem to have a bit of a Dark Valley Destiny sort of bent to it (and we all know how most REH folks feel about L. Sprague deCamp's biographical effort). It's not very complimentary to Howard on a personal level, overall -- not that it needs to be -- but some have taken offense at the content of the forward, which isn't the slightest bit flattering in its albeit brief shadetree psycho-analysis of the author.



That said, the majority of the content is very good, of course, because the tales are all Conan stories by Howard himself, including "Queen of the Black Coast," "Shadows in the Moonlight," "A Witch Shall be Born," "The Devil in Iron," "The People of the Black Circle," "Shadows in Zamboula," "Red Nails," and "Jewels of Gwahlur." It includes an afterword by none other than H.P. Lovecraft, a memorial to his friend and correspondant that Lovecraft wrote after Howard's suicide in 1936. Rounding out this fine package are three poems by Howard, "The Singer in the Mist," "Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die," and "Recompense."

All in all, this is a book that a collector can proudly display next to the collector's edition Lord of the Rings that came out in the mid-90s in cloth and leather bound editions, with similar quality production and full color glossy art leafs. I'm happy to finally have an affordable book that showcases Howard's work on my shelf as it should be -- thoughtfully designed, heavy, durable, and darkly beautiful. Kudos to Blackbart Books.

So, tonight is supposed to be writing night, but the kids across the road are running around in the street like insane monkeys in an episode of Wild Kingdom. That and I placed two phone calls to Verizon FIOS to get a digital converter for our bedroom TV and let's just say it was a customer service nightmare of particular note, including the cherry-on-top-Loop-of-Stupidity I encountered on their Web site. If I get that damn converter thing, it'll be a miracle. A note to the kids across the street: if you're reading this, I've been drinking and might go outside and shoot some guns later.

While I'm here doing this instead of real work (it's okay, I've been good for several months, I can take a night off, with the first draft of a new novel finished and ready for revision), I thought I'd post a note about something that's irritated me about a recent purchase.

Roadrunner Records, God bless them, has been re-releasing a bunch of "classics" from their vault for several years now. One of them is a two-album deal from the band Pestilence, including Consuming Impulse and Testimony of the Ancients. I never listened to them back in the day, since they came around in the very late 80s and early 90s, a few years after I got into that brand of music. Not that I'm here to brag, but one of my meager claims to fame is that I was there in the golden age of thrash metal, when Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax, Megadeth, Possessed, and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost were new kids on the block, and Testament, Death Angel, Sepultura, Dark Angel, Bathory, and Death were close on their heels. About the time Malevolent Creation and Bolt Thrower came along, death/black/speed metal was old news, and I didn't feel a pressing need at the time to listen to the 3rd and 4th waves of metal onslaught. In recent years, I've decided to catch up on some of the stuff I missed. Pestilence was on the list.

That's the long way to my point, but like I said I've had a drink or two, so indulge me.

So I'm listening to Pestilence and reading the liner notes and an article written in the new edition of these two gems when I come across a line that raises my hackles.

"With the coming of the second album (Testimony) the vocals took on a more Chuck from Death sound" and "the band used a large amount of keyboards...to give the listener some of the earliest earshots of what would go on to be modern day black metal."

So, okay, here's my problem. Not that Pestilence doesn't deserve some serious props for their very good death metal albums released in the Roadrunner "from the vault" series, but that once again, another writer has failed to mention the true fathers of death metal and the sounds that even Chuck Schuldiner of Death subscribed to: Possessed.

It seems that because Death was named, well, Death, that everyone accepts the term death metal derived from them. Not true: the term death metal derived from a song called (surprise!) "Death Metal" off Possessed's 1985 album Seven Churches, much like the term black metal derived from the 1982 Venom album, Black Metal. Additionally, Possessed's 1986 album Beyond the Gates used keyboards in some of its songs, truly some of the first music of its type to do so, undoubtedly leading Pestilence to experiment with those sounds in their 1991 offering Testimony of the Ancients, followed in 1994 by Norwegian black metal kings, Emperor, in their full length debut In the Nightside Eclipse.

Possessed was truly one of the most influential bands of its time, even though they released only two albums and The Eyes of Horror EP to finish things off and call it a day in 1987. To put a final nail in the "Which came first: Death or death metal?" argument, 1987 is the same year that Death released their debut album, the seminal death metal masterpiece Scream Bloody Gore, which had a lyrical sound so similar to early Possessed the songs could have been sung by Jeff Becerra himself. You might have thought it was a new Possessed album except that Death's music was so much more melodic and better orchestrated. Death had certainly upped the ante for the genre, but they weren't doing anything radically new.

Look, I don't harbor any ill will toward any of these other bands. I love them all and appreciate their contributions to my audial enjoyment over the years. I'd just like to see Possessed get the credit they deserve for pioneering the death metal sound. Come on folks, do me a favor and throw an aging metal head a bone.

And if you can do anything about Verizon customer service, or the kids across the street while you're at it....

I've listed a bunch of books on eBay to offset some of my comic book purchases this weekend.

On the auction block: eleven books from the Robert E. Howard CONAN Lancer series, lots of Lovecraft books including FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH and nine other books, a smattering of VHS horror movies, and some As New SF/F paperbacks.

Check out my auctions here: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZchfulbright

Thanks for looking!

BTW - I'll try to post a Conestoga report some time this week. Since The Man has blocked my access to all "social networking sites," I find myself with little time to post to LiveJournal. When I'm home and in front of the computer I am usually writing, and too tired when finished to do anything else. That's good for making progress on the new novel, but not so good for ... well, social networking.

Angeline and I will be at Conestoga in Tulsa just about a week and a half from now. We're looking forward to seeing some friends and meeting some new folks. This is a con I've been to just a couple of times in the past six or seven years. It's small but friendly, will hopefully be productive, and I like Tulsa -- it has a great used bookstore, an excellent comic/toy store, a good Indian food restaurant, and is on average about 5 to 10 degrees cooler than here in the summer. These are good things.

All of our scheduled panels are on Saturday, so it's likely we'll scoot out on Sunday and experience some of what the city has to offer in the way of shopping, dining, culture, and what-not. It seems like every time I take vacation days from work we're doing a convention and I come back exhausted. I'd like for us to have some time together alone when we get out of town for a change. We'll see how it goes.

Details on the con:



July 25-27, 2008 - Conestoga 12, a fan-run speculative fiction convention, will be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Guests include Diana Gabaldon, Stephen Hickman, and toastmaster Gordon Van Gelder. HWA members appearing as guests include Rachel Caine, Deborah LeBlanc, Steven E. Wedel, Angeline Hawkes, and me.

For those who have an interest, here are our schedules:

Christopher Fulbright
Sat 10:00 AM - Salon F, "Oh, the horror" Moderator
Sat 11:00 AM - Room TBD, Reading (Dark Fantasy) Chairman
Sat 01:00 PM - Salon G, "Collaborating: The care and feeding of your partner"

Angeline Hawkes
Sat 11:00 AM - Salon F, "Religion in Fantasy & Horror"
Sat 01:00 PM - Salon G "Collaborating: The care and feeding of your partner"
Sat 03:00 PM - Signing Table

The DFW HWA will have a dinner gathering at Conestoga in Tulsa, OK on Saturday evening, July 26, tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. We will wait near the couches just outside the main entrance to the dealer's room until everyone is assembled, and then leave from there. HWA members, plus those with an interest in joining HWA are invited to attend.

NOTE: I wrote this review a few weeks ago and saved it for when I didn't have time to write any other blog entries. Then I noticed that a new trade paperback edition is coming out July 1, 2008, so here it is. I hope this might spur some folks who haven't read it to pick it up and experience the magic of a true great American novel. --Chris

There are a handful of books you’ll come across in your lifetime that are magic. They grab your hand and run with you behind them, dragging you down the dusty roads of your youth to worlds of adventure and imagination. They wrap themselves around you, they get inside of you and touch your heart. They make you laugh and they make you cry.

BOY’S LIFE by Robert McCammon is one of those books. One of my favorite novels of all time. Can I even call it a book or novel without feeling like it’s somehow a betrayal? It’s not just a book, it’s a good friend. The agent Donald Maass wrote that good books are some of the very best friends of all, because they will not age, move away, get divorced, or stab you in the back.

BOY’S LIFE is one of my very best friends.

It’d been several years since I last read this book. Recently, I picked it up again and started the love affair anew. It’s still magic. It doesn’t matter how much time passes between readings, I know that every time I read it, I’ll feel the same thrill, the same yearnings, the same hopes and disappointments, the same fear and same desires, the same raw energy of youth. This novel has everything I’ve ever wanted in a story. It has monsters -- human and inhuman -- it has friends and bullies and villains, it has gunfights and carnivals and ghosts and mystery. It attaches itself to the core values and inner conflict of America, to the dysfunction of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals, and looks back on its time with bittersweet longing for a simpler age in the face of inevitable change.

So, what’s this book about? Well…that isn’t enough? I guess you’d like for me to be more specific.

I’ve lamented the dangers of writing book reviews, since art is so subjective that someone will inevitably disagree with my assessment. Let me just call this an endorsement, for what it’s worth coming from a little ol’ nobody like me. BOY’S LIFE is one of the great American novels. If it isn’t required reading in schools in the next twenty years, or at the very least mentioned in the same breath with all the great American novels of the past two hundred years, I’ll be surprised. More than that, I’ll be disappointed, and will have lost my faith in the value of academia. If you want a summary, look up the book on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble and read it there. There’re some reviews that give a summary of the plot, too, if that’s what you really want. For me to summarize it at a nuts and bolts level somehow doesn’t do it justice.

Buy this book. Give it to your children as soon as they’re old enough to read. Read it yourself in your spare moments between the rushing madness of your life, in the quiet light of a bedside lamp, and let it take you away on a great journey. If you can finish this book without a tear in your eye, then I submit that you have locked yourself away from others for far too long -- if not literally, then figuratively -- and the world has made you far colder than you have a right to be.

Thank you, Mr. McCammon, for one of my very best friends, for one of the greatest gifts that a writer can give. I’m sure we’ll be spending time together until we’re old and gray. It’s been quite a journey from the single bedroom, squalid apartment of a mixed-up 20-year-old kid, angry and messed-up and alone, to the bedside of a 37-year-old man with his dear wife beside him, a little less angry but still tired, learning to heal from all of life’s wounds. I’m sure there’s still adventure yet to be had, from now to however old I’ll end up being when it’s all said and done. No matter how old I am, BOY’S LIFE will always remind me of the thrill of growing up, remind me where I came from, and keep alive the child inside me, that I might never die to the magic of my own youth in the face of an onrushing age of technology and isolation and convenience, an age of superhighways and Wal-Marts, video games and cable TV.

For those of you in the know: summer’s here, it’s time to fly.

I've finally managed to post our photos from Howard Days 2008 on Flickr. Unfortunately, my account doesn't allow me to upload as many great pictures as we actually got, so this is a boiled-down version of our photo coverage of the event.

My Flickr sets page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8411139@N08/sets/

Some instructions to help you get the best results from your viewing experience:

1. View the sets in order.
2. After you click on the set, click the Slideshow link in the upper right corner of the page.
3. After the Slideshow page loads, in the lower right corner of the page, click Options, and then select the option to Display descriptions.
4. Click the Play button.

Enjoy!

On a personal note, I'd just like say hello again to everyone we talked to this year. REH Days is easily the most laid-back event we have the pleasure of attending, and this year in particular it was a nice leisurely pace, low-key, and gave us a good chance to relax and enjoy ourselves. I enjoyed all of our conversations, including (but not limited to) talks with Charles Gramlich, James Reasoner, Bill Cavalier, Chris Gruber, Mark Finn, Paul Sammon, Rob Roehm, Dave Hardy, Amy Kerr, Frank Coffman, Scott Hall (thanks for the beer!), Rusty Burke, assorted REHupans, and all the folks in Cross Plains who are always so kind and do such a fantastic job of organizing everything for us Howardians.

See y'all next year!

To folks in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area -- Charles Band of Full Moon Direct is hosting the Full Moon Horror Roadshow this Sunday starting at 7:00 p.m. at the Lakewood Theater in Dallas. Tickets are $20.00, but the folks at Texas Frightmare Weekend may still have some free passes left if you e-mail them soon at fullmoondallas@texasfrightmareweekend.com.



Here's the release from TFW:

Charles Band & Full Moon Features presents the third annual FULL MOON HORROR ROAD SHOW!

Cult horror film director Charles Band packs his shows with evil puppets, creatures and rare film clips. This event will feature unique interactive audience participations on stage, upcoming new release film trailers by Full Moon Features, surprise celebrity guest appearances, original puppet and doll auctions, hot chicks, unique merchandise and novelty items and live special effects demonstrations!

Take it from Texas Frightmare Weekend -- this show is like NOTHING you've ever attended! Want a free pass compliments of TFW and Full Moon? Email us at fullmoondallas@texasfrightmareweekend.com with your name and your guest's name (submit 2 names per email only please) and we'll hook you up. But don't wait....free tickets are extremely limited!

June 22nd, 2008
7:00 p.m. (arrive at 6:15 for those who have to pick up free passes)
THE LAKEWOOD THEATER
1825 Abrams Parkway
Dallas, Texas 75214

To buy tickets, click here.

Angeline and I returned from Robert E. Howard Days last night about 1:00 a.m. We would have been home sooner if not for a bit of a mis-turn (my fault), and construction in downtown Dallas which had I-30 shut down to one lane. In any event, we were happy to see our bed but it's always bittersweet leaving Cross Plains knowing it's over until next year.

We bought a new digital camera this past Christmas, so I spent much of the time taking pictures of a higher quality than I've been able to get in the past. I spent some time sorting through 288 photos (!) trying to pick the best ones to post with a blog report later in the week. Angeline slept most of the day, and I managed to get up, make coffee, unpack the car, lie down on the couch and read, but that spelled the end, because I managed to read "Pigeons From Hell" before I fell asleep until 4:00 this afternoon. Ah well, it is good to have a day of recovery before heading back to the real world Monday morning.

A summary note as precursor to the final report: this weekend's Robert E. Howard Days was an awesome success. Few other fan events can boast such a close-knit and friendly group of folks, where everyone who comes even for the first time leaves feeling like a member of the REH family. If you are a Robert E. Howard fan, please try to attend and lend your support to Project Pride, a group of volunteers dedicated to preserving the Howardian legacy.

Reports from me and angelinehawkes coming later this week....

I posted this on the DFW HWA Web site this morning, and wanted to post it here as well, so I could add a more personal comment:

"Some of you may have heard about the failed FedConUSA convention this weekend, which cancelled its proceedings Saturday while the convention was in progress, much to the dismay of fans and guests alike. We would like to assure everyone that FedConUSA is NOT associated in any way with the very successful FenCon, run by the Dallas Future Society, which has held a great convention in the Dallas area for four straight years, with a promising line up for FenCon V October 3-5, 2008.

"FenCon has always been supportive of DFW HWA, and is consistently one of the best-run conventions in the area. We further hope that the FedConUSA debacle does not reflect on any of the other Dallas conventions which take place year after year successfully and without a hitch."

My personal comments, which I did not feel belonged on the DFW HWA Web site, consist of being shocked that they'd just pull the plug in the middle of the con. Okay, so a lot of guests cancelled. A lot of folks were unhappy. But a lot of people paid to travel a long way for the con and to stay in the hotel. Reading the accounts of what happened at the convention makes me ill. I sincerely hope they refund everyone's money, but it sounds like the organizer has a habit of making promises he doesn't keep. Too bad for the fans, too bad for the guests, too bad for the volunteers who had to take bullets for the screw-ups. It sounds to me as if the responsibility for the FedConUSA failure rests solely on the soulders of its "organizer," Tim Brazeal, who didn't even bother to attend the convention himself. Shockingly, or perhaps predictably, he called in sick. Wow.

We'll be at Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas this weekend. I'm leaving early Thursday and taking off Friday so we can drive down and be there in time for the silent auction. Here's the official blurbage:

June 13-14, 2008 - Robert E. Howard Days will be celebrated in Cross Plains, Texas, about 45 miles southeast of Abilene. Scheduled events include a swap meet and silent auction, tours of the area and the Howard house, viewings of Howard's manuscripts, panels, discussions, drinking, carousing, and a fantastic barbecue on Caddo Peak. Angeline and I plan to attend, along with fellow HWA'n Charles Gramlich, and guest of honor Mark Finn. We'd love to see some more of you down there. For more information on this event, please visit the REHUPA website at http://www.rehupa.com/?cat=13.

For those who'd like to live viarcariously through me (and who haven't already seen it), I have a pretty extensive pictorial and accompanying article from my first trip to Cross Plains in 2002 posted online at the following link: http://www.christopherfulbright.com/REHmain.htm

Please note: The "wife" referred to in the article is my ex-wife, not Angeline. I would revise the article, but it really has greater historical value for me as is. Also worthy of note, the pictures of Howard manuscripts at the library are actual manuscripts. Those have since been moved to a safer location and are no longer on display. Color facsimiles are, however, still avialable for perusal at the Cross Plains Library during the event.

My short story “Guts” appears in the latest issue of The Hacker’s Source. This micropress magazine holds a lot in store for fans of horror in film and on the printed page. In addition to my story, this issue also includes tales by Eric S. Brown and Mark Dickinson, music reviews, book reviews, and reviews of independent horror films. It features articles on “The Wizard of Odd,” FX artist and indie director Marcus Koch, tributes to Vampira and Hayden Milligan, and a behind the scenes look at the in-development slasher film Sweatshop. Seriously, this mag is so packed full of cool stuff, you should just go ahead and order it now.

I’ll also have a story in the Fall 2008 issue.