California was a wonderland of bookstores and comic shops, and I continued to read and amass. Reading Howard had introduced me to the magazine Weird Tales, and I began picking up all sorts of pulpish writers: H. P. Lovecraft, Talbot Mundy, Robert Bloch, Walter Gibson, Lester Dent, Manly Wade Wellman. I was also exposed to the more socially acceptable fantastists, like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke and their kin, as well as the Tolkiens and Eddisons and Smiths and Dunsanys who made up the world of high fantasy.

But my tastes were decidedly pulpy in those days, and I leaned more and more toward horror. After all, Howard had written a few Lovecraftian horror tales, and horror elements filled most of his work. So while I dabbled with the others, s&s and horror remained my staples.

It was during college that I worked, briefly, at a comic book shop. I also made the acquaintance of Richard A. Lupoff, who had written extensively about comics and Edgar Rice Burroughs and, it seemed, almost everything else. I went to my first comic book convention, where I met artist Frank Brunner, of whose Dr. Strange work I was a big fan, and commissioned a Conan sketch.

Within a few years of college, I was working at a bookstore, and that's where my adult, professional life really began. I met and became friends with many authors, including most of the ones cited above who were still living. I had written stories as a child, mostly bad mysteries inspired by the Hardy Boys and then, in high school and college, s&s stories inspired by Howard and co., but after a few years in a bookstore I actually got one published, a science fiction story called "The Last Rainmaking Song" in the first volume of a prestigious anthology called Full Spectrum.

It was a few years before I made money writing again, and when I did it was writing trading card backs, and then comic books. But that eventually turned into novels, and my first, Gen13: Netherwar, co-written with Christopher Golden, was published by Ace in 1999.

Now, something like thirty books later, I'm back at Ace. And accompanied by Conan. This short synopsis of my life leaves out many details, but looking at it I'm impressed by all the ground we've covered together, he and I. Two or three of my strides to every one of his, of course, but together all the way. All those Lancer paperbacks, and many from Ace, and beautiful hardcovers from Wandering Star and Arkham House and others still reside on my shelves, as do collected editions of Conan comics. A signed Frazetta print looks down on my desk from the wall. Conan action figures do battle on top of the bookcase beside the desk. The swords are nearby too. We've come a long distance, but in some ways, I guess, not that far at all.

My office wall

Did Howard imagine, seventy years ago, that he would bear so much responsibility for the lives of people he had never met, people born years after his death? Could he have guessed that Conan would outlive him?

I'm glad he has, and glad that new voices are being brought into the firelit circle to tell more stories of the Hyborian Age. I'm not Robert E. Howard; none of us are, or try to be. Each of the writers working on the Age of Conan books are bringing our own interests and experiences and skills to them, and in so doing we are accomplishing something that Howard's thirty year span didn't leave him time to do. We can tell tales he would never have dreamed of, just as he spun the ones that set us dreaming.

It's a small way to pay a huge debt.

But hey, it's a start.

And the big Cimmerian's going to be around for a good long time to come.

A portion of my Howard collection

Jeff

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