January 22nd is Howard's Birthday!

Hope you all will enjoy January 22nd, the 109th anniversary of Bob's birthday and honor his legacy by reading a favorite Howard story. It will be your choice of libation when you raise your glass to his memory.

And for a lot of us right now, thinking of the warm days in June at Robert E. Howard Days will go a long ways towards erasing the doldrums of winter.

We'll be firing up the REH DAYS machine real soon - plans are underway and this will definitely be a good one. Hope y'all can make it!

Nice Banner, Jeff!

While we're in the process of getting Howard Days panels, programming and activities shaped up, thanks go to Jeff Shanks for whipping up a fabulous new header!

Feel free to share it all around and check back here, on Facebook and at the rehupa.com and rehfoundation.org sites for all the additional Howard Days information.

Mark Schultz is Howard Days 2015 Guest of Honor

The Robert E. Howard Foundation is pleased to announce that artist Mark Schultz will be the Guest of Honor at Howard Days, June 12-13, 2015. Sponsored by the REH Foundation and Project Pride and held annually at the REH Museum in Cross Plains, Texas, Howard Days is a two-day celebration of the life and works of author Robert E. Howard.

Mark is well-known as the illustrator for the first Wandering Star pure REH text Conan edition, The Coming of Conan. His paintings, full-page drawings, chapter headings and spot illustrations fill this volume with a clean, energetic and stylistic imagery. Other Howard work that Mark has done include the covers to Worms of the Earth (Cross Plains Comics), The Colossal Conan (Dark Horse Comics) and the Adventures in Science Fantasy volume for the REHF Press. One of Mark’s designs is used on the REH Museum t-shirt. And, as it turns out, his very first professional comics work was inking the pencils of Val Semeik’s Kull story in the Savage Sword of Conan #132. Mark will also be doing the artwork for the special souvenir postal cancellation stamp for Howard Days this year.

The annual Robert E. Howard Days celebration will take place at the REH Museum in Cross Plains, Texas, on June 12th & 13^th, 2015. Sponsored by Project Pride of Cross Plains and the Robert E. Howard Foundation, the two-day event promises once again to be THE place to be for fans of REH.

All of the activities associated with Howard Days are in place: tours of the REH Museum & Grounds, the Celebration Banquet and Silent Auction, the Bus Tour of Cross Plains, the REHF Awards presentation, panel s of REH interest and the many extemporaneous discussions and poetry readings among Howard fans and scholars, the Caddo Ranch Barbeque, the Swap Meet at the Pavilion, the special Postal Cancellation souvenir – all this and more await you at Howard Days. We’re also in discussion about some new events: an organized tour to Howard’s gravesite in Brownwood, a REH trivia contest (with prizes!), plus a more “formal” program booklet to have for another nice souvenir.

For those of you interested in getting on the Howard Days/Project Pride mailing list, please write to Project Pride, POB 534, Cross Plains, TX 76443, e-mail: Projpride@aol.com, or check the internet: www.rehfoundation.org, www.rehupa.com or the Robert E. Howard Days Facebook page for additional information.

Howard Days 2014 was Howard-tastic!

Robert E. Howard Days 2014 was so great I barely know where to begin in telling you about it! As I've finally recovered from two days driving home and another of unpacking loot, let's give it a try. More than one post will be needed, especially going through hundreds of photos!

Both Friday and Saturday featured some of the best weather ever seen for Howard Days. The upper 80's in mid-June in west Texas is about as good as it gets. Blue skies and lots of wind really kept us comfortable.

Project Pride, Cross Plains' wonderful civic organization, had everything ready for Howard fans. Fine hospitality is a watchword from these great folks and they welcomed Howard Fans from all over the world with open arms. This year featured guests from all over the U.S. plus fans from France, Germany, Scotland and Japan. REH is truly world-wide! Attendance seemed to be up a little from previous years. (I'll let you know some figures when I get them.)

The Robert E. Howard Museum was certainly all slicked up to receive guests! Thanks to the generosity of Howard fans earlier this year, some window and plumbing issues were repaired and a coat of gleaming white paint had been applied. The Museum looked fantastic!

House tours were conducted, the Gift Shop was soon depleted (almost), the Bus was filled and the Postal Cancellation was as popular as ever! The panels went off without a hitch and were extremely well attended (my un-official average was 45 per!) Plus, the panelists were all top-notch and their presentations were wonderfully interesting. The Friday night Banquet was again filled to capacity and the Silent Auction raised over $1,500 for Project Pride's maintenance of the REH Museum!

Patrice Louinet was a wonderful and witty Guest of Honor and amused the Banquet crowd with anecdotes of his Howard career and stories of a Frenchman in America. Tom Gianni as our Special Guest was honored to receive the Rankin Award for artistic achievement and gave a nice presentation of his working methods. The rest of the Featured Attendees were on their best behavior and hardly any gun or knife fights broke out at this Howard Days! (Y'all know I'm joking about that, right?)

The Saturday night Barbeque out the Caddo Peak Ranch was as delicious as ever, but also bittersweet, seeing as how it signals the end to Howard Days.

But the fellowship and friendship of the entire weekend was what shone like the sun in the Texas sky. New friends were made, old friendships continued and everyone came away with that warm feeling you get from seeing everyone at a family reunion. A year will go by quickly and we'll be in Cross Plains again. For now however, the glowing memories of Howard Days 2014 will carry us through. Happy trails, y'all!

REH Days Overview Part 10 - Checklist

We're saddling up and getting the wagons ready for the trek to Cross Plains, so here's a checklist for us to go over once we get to Howard Days. Everything on here is easy enough to do...well, with the exception of that last one.

Hope y'all have safe travels! We might be off the grid for a day or two but we'll try to get back on the air soon. Hopefully we can do some updates from Howard Days, but we are going to be a little busy!

Hope to see you there!

REH Days Overview Part 9 - Guests Galore!

One of the metaphorical phrases I like to use when celebrating something connected with Robert E. Howard is "Blaze your pistolas and brandish your Bowies!" It would serve very well if you would all do so (metaphorically speaking, of course) regarding the Featured Guests and Attendees that you see here!

Patrice Louinet is our 2014 Guest of Honor and we are honored that he could come in from France this year. (We've been trying to get him for awhile now). In addition to being one of the biggest Robert E. Howard scholars in the world, he is one of the nicest guys you'll want to meet - we're glad that you'll be able to do so this year! I just have to figure out a way to get some Chicago-style pizza to him in Cross Plains!

Tom Gianni is our Special Guest - his cover paintings for Western Tales. Pirate Adventures and the four volume Fists of Iron Boxing stories (all from the REHF Press) capture the spirit of Howard's words so perfectly! Tom has been nominated for the REHF Rankin Award for Artistic Achievement, so fingers crossed for him! (Hmmm...Tom is from Chicago, so maybe he can bring that pizza...)

The 16 other folks shown on this poster (thanks, Jeff Shanks!) add up to several hundred years worth of involvement with Howard Fandom, but the older I get the less I feel like adding that up! Suffice to say this is one of the most erudite, eclectic groups that you'll ever meet in any walk of life. I'm proud to call them all my friends and it just goes to show you the far-reaching impact that Robert E. Howard has had on all of us here!

They'll each be wearing a special name badge at Howard Days and are ready, willing and able to engage in the wonderful Howard Fellowship we all will embrace in Cross Plains this week on June 13th & 14th.

Hope to see you there! In the words of the late Billie Ruth Loving, one of the founders of Howard Days,"Y'all come!"

Featured Attendee - BEN FRIBERG

Videographer Ben Friberg first discovered Howard's amazing work not long after college when he found the Baen edition of Solomon Kane at an Abilene bookstore and the rest was downhill from there. He attended his first Howard Days in 2005 and has been an attendee at every Howard Days since. After trying his hand at gathering material for a Howard Days documentary, he decided he could best serve Howard Fandom by recording all the panels presented over the two day event and posting them for free on Youtube. For the past few years he's been honored to be the unofficial Howard Days videographer, doing his best to make sure that each Howard Days is saved for future generations of Howard Fandom. In recognition of this work he has been nominated for the 2014 Black River award for outstanding achievement by the Robert E. howard Foundation

Just this year he also became a member of REHupa and is looking forward to exploring the brave new world of fanzines. If you see him at Howard days, you will probably have to say hello to him first, as he's kinda shy -- he's the big guy with the huge sombrero he wears to keep off the brutal Texas summer sun.