At Howard Days this year, Dennis McHaney brought along a copy of Skull-Face and Others and the Howard-signed Christmas card posted above, both of which had once belonged to Lenore Preece. There aren’t any markings on the reverse of the card, no postmark or address, so it was probably included with a letter or submission to the Junto, circa December 1929. Perhaps later. These items were on loan to McHaney thanks to a former neighbor of Lenore’s, Brian Clifford. He wrote the following:

STATEMENT FROM BRIAN CLIFFORD, FRIEND OF LENORE PREECE—JUNE 12, 2014

I met Honey Lenore Preece in the spring of 1994, when she was living on Avenue F in Hyde Park in Austin.

I’m a native Texan, but I’ve spent a lot of my life traveling in other states and countries, and during one return home, I was staying with a neighbor of Lenore’s. She caught my attention one afternoon as she was puttering around her porch. Something about her intrigued me. Not the least of which was that some of her neighbors called her The Cat Lady, and I have a soft spot for animal lovers, eccentrics, and elderly people who live on their own and who seem to be just fine with that.  I walked over, and we struck up a conversation. That conversation quickly evolved into a very close friendship that would continue over the next four years, until she died on December 7, 1998.

Lenore and I had a great rapport, that’s the only way I can describe it. During my visits back to Austin, where I had spent important chunks of my youth, we would pass the afternoons together talking about old Austin, old Texas, and the way society had changed since she was a girl. She was particularly pleased to show me her books and ephemera collections, and I often went to the grocery store or ran errands for her; I also brought her back small tokens from my vagabonding. The entire time I knew Lenore, she rarely mentioned family, and to my knowledge, she never had family members check on her. This always worried me and it saddened me greatly.

One particularly special encounter with Lenore was in 1996, after I had finished fixing up my fire-engine-red  ’67 GTO. When I rumbled into her driveway, she came to her front door, admiring the car. I asked if she’d like to take a drive out to Lake Travis. Surprisingly, she agreed. This was only one of a handful of times I saw Lenore leave her house. She piled in, and we took off to Travis. When I asked her when she’d last been to the lake, she thought for a moment and said, “Oh, sometime right after World War II …”  50 years! On the way back to town, she asked that we try to find the old Preece Family Cemetery off 2222, but we never could. (I found it after she died—it’s on Vaught Ranch Road.) On another occasion, I convinced Lenore to venture out to the Omelettry off Burnet Road. We had a great time.

During the years I knew Lenore, I fretted over her health; I thought of her frequently while I was on my travels. I sent her post cards, and she occasionally wrote me in care of my mother in Houston.  Whenever I hit Austin, she was always the first person I would go see.

The last few times I saw my friend, I’d become increasingly concerned about her physical health, her mobility. On one of those occasions when I returned to visit, I found her house empty. I learned from the police that she’d fallen and broken her hip and had been taken to a nursing facility in Northwest Austin. I managed to locate her. I went to see her several times before she died, which sadly happened when I was in Europe in late 1998. She was buried at a pauper’s cemetery in Austin, instead of at the family cemetery. This fact has always perplexed me, because I assumed that someone in her family would have been notified.  More than that, it haunted me, and it still does. I’d like to see her laid to rest in her proper place, somehow.

Over these past 16 years, I’ve held the memory of this exceptional Texas poet very close to my heart.  I still think of her often, and I have lugged from city to city and country to country many of the items Lenore gave me during our four-year friendship—cards, books, little mementos from her house, her life. Over the time we were friends, she frequently gave me items that she treasured and didn’t want to see tossed when she passed away. I still have some beautiful antique lace handkerchiefs, some hand-embroidered linens and table throws, some vintage crockery and china serving platters, several antique and collectible books, and her scrapbook, which I retrieved from the abandoned house after she died. What remained in her home on Avenue F was put out on the curb or thrown away.

So, whatever Howard letters or issues of The Junto which might have remained with Lenore, if any, are in a land-fill in Travis County. We are lucky, however, that Mr. Clifford was able to retrieve Lenore’s scrapbook: It is there that the Christmas card was found. Also this photo of Lenore’s brother, Harold Preece:

This is no doubt the same photo that Harold sent to Robert E. Howard, who, in a letter postmarked March 24, 1930, said “Thanks for the picture.” Also, in an early April letter, this: “I don’t know if I thanked you for the picture in my last letter. If I didn’t you can take it that I do now. It’s a good likeness of you.”

Many thanks to Mr. Clifford for sharing these items with us, and for being a friend to Ms. Preece at the end.

He had thought of the South as a sunny, lazy land washed by soft breezes laden with spice and warm blossoms, where life ran tranquilly to the rhythm of black folk singing in sun-bathed cottonfields. But now he had discovered another, unsuspected side – a dark, brooding, fear-haunted side…

— “Pigeons from Hell,” The Horror Stories of Robert E Howard, p. 430

In his writing, Robert E. Howard made frequent use of subjects from history and folklore, especially — in keeping with his Southern heritage and Texas upbringing — that of both the American Southwest, and the Deep South. This includes elements from the African-American folk magic practices popularly known as conjure (or hoodoo) and voodoo, which turn up to create fear and atmosphere in various tales of horror and “weird mystery,” most famously in “Black Canaan” and “Pigeons from Hell.”

Where “voodoo,” a ceremonial religion involving a group of people with a defined hierarchy, has a place in the popular imagination, many people tend to be less familiar with “hoodoo.” Even the name isn’t agreed upon: the most famous collection of folklore on the subject is called Hoodoo – Conjuration – Rootwork – Magic, and those are all equivalent synonyms. Someone who practices “hoodoo” can be called a root doctor, a root worker, a trick doctor, a spiritual worker, a two-headed doctor, or a conjure-man or -woman. We’ll primarily be using “conjure,” in honor of Howard’s atmospheric essay “Kelly the Conjure-Man.”

Unlike voodoo, traditional conjure is not organized in any way, but is a loose collection of magico-spiritual practices used by individuals as they see fit. Familiar props include candles, herbs, graveyard dirt, and the “mojo bag,” which is usually made of red flannel, and contains various objects, from coins to literal roots. Conjure can be practiced as part of everyday life, but often workers are professionals, who charge for their services, and who sometimes – like Howard’s conjure men — generate actual supernatural awe.

While voodoo and conjure have many differences, there have always been practitioners who mix up elements from both types of magical practice. New Orleans, in particular, is known for a spiritual heritage that partakes of both, with practical conjure techniques (such as spells including red pepper, red brick dust, salt, and honey, which are all conjure-derived) that are dressed up with voodoo theatricality. Even in groups that perform communal drumming, and/or veneration of snakes (traditions associated with formal voodoo), a lot of their actual magic activities, especially if done privately, without a direct ritual element, can still be more accurately described as conjure.

Some contemporary practitioners display frustration with the common confusion of terminology, viewing the different practices as substantially different, but the labels have always been used loosely by people in the community. When African-American writer Rudolph Fisher wrote The Conjure-Man Dies, frequently cited as the first black detective novel, in 1932, the “Conjure-Man” was an African who performed spiritualist séances for mostly white clients. So in a story like “Black Canaan” (1933), where Howard depicts voodoo-like ceremonies led by a character referred to as a “conjer man,” his usage of the term seems entirely in line with his contemporaries.

Historically, most conjure folk were either knowledgeable about traditional herbal medicines, or were perpetuating folk traditions based on remembered African spiritual lore, or both, and much of what they practiced was benign. There is evidence, though, from slave narratives and other historical sources, that some conjure men and women, reputed or real, did indeed use their magical reputations to gain power and intimidate others — both fellow slaves and white authority figures. For example, in his authoritative book Conjure in African-American Society, scholar Jeffrey Anderson states that “The power of hoodoo translated into enormous influence within black society for successful conjurers … fear of conjure had a profound effect on individual blacks,” and “the fear of hoodoo was present in a significant portion of white southerners.” (p. 79, 86, 78)

To some extent, therefore, the “sinister figure” of folklore described in Howard’s brief “Kelly the Conjure-Man” essay doesn’t seem particularly exaggerated, although Conan fans will note that he’s is  both “a fine figure of barbaric manhood” and “supple like a great black panther,” (p. 377)  physical descriptions which echo those of his more famous specimen of barbaric manhood.

Kelly, “son of a Congo ju-ju man” and “born a slave” (p. 376), develops a reputation as a healer, and gains power over others by frightening them with his reputed abilities, ultimately becoming more feared than respected. All of which sounds like a perfectly plausible career for a local conjure practitioner of his age. Howard steeps the tale in mysterious atmosphere and speculation, but much of the material in the essay —  such as how “the black folk came to him to have spells lifted from their souls where enemies had placed them by curses and incantations” (Horror Stories, p. 377) — would be right at home in any collection of folklore on African-American conjure.

That some people “obsessed by the horrible belief that their stomachs were full of living snakes” (p. 378) is also a well-known phenomenon in the history of conjure. In Yvonne Chireau’s overview Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition, referring to interviews with former slaves and other first-person accounts, she says that “African Americans described Conjure sickness as an intrusion of entities within the body…physical affliction is portrayed as a state in which the body becomes a living menagerie” (p. 104). She quotes a source as saying “My wife Hattie had a spell put on her for three long years with a nest of rattlesnakes inside her.” (p. 104)

Kelly, the non-fiction character, fairly obviously inspired the fictional Saul Stark of “Black Canaan,” another “giant,” intimidating magical practitioner. In this story, interconnected rural communities of former slaves and slave owners are threatened by the activities of a Conjure Man who performs voodoo-type ceremonies in the swamp. His goal is an uprising that would kill all the white people, although he’s equally willing to kill (or perform horrible magic on) any of the black members of the community who don’t bow down to his power. And his greatest weapon is the threat to “put (them) in de swamp,” (Horror Stories, p. 386) an act which transforms them into “mindless, soulless semi-human dweller(s) in the water” with elongated legs, webbed hands, and expressions “no more human than that of a great fish.” (p. 408)

More famous than “Black Canaan” is “Pigeons from Hell,” another of Howard’s stories that makes use of elements and ambience from African-American folk magic. After a bizarre murder, the investigators research the crumbling old Southern mansion where the crime took place, and end up at the hut of Jacob, a now-elderly one-time “voodoo man.”

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Howard Days 2014 was another great success. Temperatures were quite moderate, though there was a hailstorm around Abilene that seriously damaged Chris Gruber’s car. There were many new faces there this year, evidently because of increased promotion on social media sites spearheaded by Jeff Shanks.

The theme this year was Howard History: Texas and Beyond. During the first panel, “In the Guise of Fiction,” Shanks and Al Harron discussed REH’s use of early history. Shanks said that Howard’s stories utilized the anthropological theory favored at the time, involving racial templates now known to pseudoscientific. REH was also inspired by Haggard and Burroughs, who were popular then. Harron opined that the Picts were Howard’s greatest creation, appearing in more different types of stories, both fantastic and historical, than any other of his creations. Historical fiction, e.g. by Mundy and Lamb, was quite popular. REH loved it and wrote as much as would sell, but he put a gritty, bloody spin on it that was more colorful and realistic than that of other authors. Shanks mentioned that Howard employed Wells’s The Outline of History and as many other authoritative references as he had access to. His first goal was to get into the adventure pulps, but he often had to add a weird element to sell his stories; this practice peaked with his submissions to Oriental Tales and Weird Tales. Harron said Conan incorporated historical and fantastic elements. Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is Harron’s favorite Crusades character. Shanks said that REH pioneered a dark, cynical, violent interpretation of history, which has made the stories age well and resonate with today’s readers, unlike a lot of other writers such as Doyle. But historical fiction requires a lot of research, so he set Kull and Conan in an earlier, hypothetical Hyborian Age that freed up Howard to write his own kind of fiction. Harron stated that “Shadow of the Vulture” starring Red Sonya was another groundbreaking character, being a strong female protagonist and warrior, with no romantic links to other characters. It was also anchored in historical characters and settings. Harron’s favorite female character is Dark Agnes, especially in “Sword Woman.” She is unique in having an origin story, though REH only able to get Red Sonya published. He and C. L. Moore conceived of their strong heroines independently. Shanks said that Howard was influenced in his historical fiction by Arthur Macon’s dark stories about fairies portrayed as malevolent little people. He said that REH did a lot of anthropological world-building, incorporating migrations which turned out to be very important historically, as we know now. Howard was also doing westerns, historical and weird, near the end. An audience member added that REH admired Jack London and may have just been emulating London’s racial theories, though these were somewhat behind anthropological theory of the time, however popular they were then. Another person pointed out how the race Howard regarded as superior changed with time and publishing venue.

In an interview by Rusty Burke, Guest of Honor Patrice Louinet said that he first got interested in REH through French translations of Marvel comics. He was the first to do pre-doctoral and doctoral theses based on Howard. He visited the U.S. to do the associated research, joined REHupa, and met legendary Howard scholar and collector Glenn Lord, who got him interested in examining REH’s typescripts of stories and letters. He found he could date transcripts from typewriter artifacts and REH’s idiosyncratic spellings. Burke also led him into looking at the Conan typescripts and recommended him to be editor of the Wandering Star Conan pure-text editions. The time-ordering of Howard’s stories is critical to understanding him as a writer, which is also why reading the Conan tales in the order they were written (as in the WS books) is so revelatory. Dating the transcripts was essential to determining which were the most authoritative versions to use in the pure-text books. Thus, there would be no de Campian Conan saga. REH used Conan as a catalyst to the plot and to tell the kind of story he wanted to tell. Louinet’s first professional publication was “The Birth of Conan” in The Dark Man. Reading Howard in English made him realize how bad the existing French translations were, so he started translating the stories himself. He thinks that Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright’s suggestions often improved REH’s stories. Louinet is now working on a documentary on REH and is a consultant on a Howard-related board game. He has done many interviews about REH, including ones on television. He won a Special Award from France’s Imaginales (Imaginary World) Convention for his Howard work. He has published 10 REH books in France and has another one coming out. In France, Howard was a cult figure in the ‘80s, was forgotten in the ‘90s, and is now popular and recognized as a pioneer fantasist. Lovecraft started becoming mainstream there in the ‘60s and has been helped by a Cthulhu video game. Clark Ashton Smith is unknown. The French do not like westerns. Working as a translator gave Louinet the most insight into REH’s maturation as a writer. Howard’s earlier work is bursting with ideas, but he later learned how to control that without losing anything. “The Dark Man” and “Kings of the Night” of 1930 are about when he became a mature writer. Louinet plans to do another doctoral dissertation on REH.

The Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards were given to: (1) Jeff Shanks for the Outstanding Print Essay “History, Horror, and Heroic Fantasy: Robert E. Howard and the Creation of the Sword and Sorcery Subgenre”; (2) Bill Cavalier, Rob Roehm, and Paul Herman for the Outstanding Periodical The REH Foundation Newsletter; (3) Brian Leno, Patrice Louinet, Rob Roehm, Damon Sasser, and Keith Taylor for the Outstanding Web Site REH: Two-Gun Raconteur; (4) Rob Roehm for the Outstanding Online Essay “The Business”; (5) Patrick Burger as Emerging Scholar; (6) Ben Friberg for the Outstanding Achievement of filming REH Days panels, as he was doing for this event and selling DVDs of last year’s; (7) Tom Gianni for Artistic Achievement; (8) Patrice Louinet for Lifetime Achievement; and (9) Paul Herman for Outstanding Service. Karl Edward Wagner is next year’s nominee for Lifetime Achievement.

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A third of the 200 copy print run of new issue of The Definitive Howard Journal sold in the five days since its publication this past Friday. Issue number 17, with its stellar line-up of rare Howard fiction, essays, articles, reviews and artwork is quickly being snapped up by hungry Robert E. Howard fans. So don’t procrastinate and be left on the field of battle with an empty scabbard, order your copy today!

REH: Two Gun Raconteur No. 17 Contents:

Front Cover: “…a fierce exultation swept her as she felt the edge cleave solid flesh and mortal bone.” From “Red Nails” by Michael L. Peters

Inside Front and Back Covers: Scenes From “Spears of Clontarf” by Stephen Fabian

Back Cover: Skull-Face by Terry Pavlet

“The Stones of Destiny” by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Nathan Furman

“The Diabolical Blonde” by Rob Roehm, illustrated by Clayton Hinkle

“What the Thak?: Anthropological Oddities in Howard’s Works” by Jeffrey Shanks, illustrated by Clayton Hinkle

“Non Sequiturs Inside the Academy Gates” by Don Herron

“Robert E. Howard’s Heroes of the Desert: A Portfolio” by Bob Covington

“Robert E. Howard and Past Lives: Reincarnation, Dreams and Race Memories” by Barbara Barrett, illustrated by Richard Pace

“Apocalypse on the Liffey” by David Hardy, illustrated by Robert Sankner

“Ernest Hemingway, Robert E. Howard and Battling Siki: Typewriters and Fists” by Brian Leno, illustrated by Bill Cavalier

Price: $25.00, US postage paid.

Order and Pay Via PayPal:

Well, it’s mid-afternoon in Cross Plains and the REH Foundation Awards have already been presented to the winners.  Originally the awards were known as The Cimmerian Awards and the black skulls on marble bases were handed out at the Pavilion after the Friday night banquet. When the awards became the REH Foundation Awards, the wooden plaques were given out at the Community Center immediately after the banquet and it was a somewhat rushed affair, with Howard fans wanting to go to the Pavilion and the locals bolting for the door, not having much interest in the awards. So it was decided to make the awards a bigger deal by having a less rushed and more formal ceremony on Friday afternoon at 2:30.

So without further waiting, here are the winners:

The Hyrkanian—Outstanding Achievement Print Essay:

Jeffrey Shanks – “History, Horror, and Heroic Fantasy: Robert E. Howard and the Creation of the Sword and Sorcery Subgenre,” Critical Insights: Pulp Fiction of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Aquilonian—Outstanding Achievement, Periodical:

The REH Foundation Newsletter – Bill Cavalier, Rob Roehm, Paul Herman.

The Stygian—Outstanding Achievement, Website:

Brian Leno, Patrice Louinet, Rob Roehm, Damon Sasser, Keith Taylor– REH: Two-Gun Raconteur (Website and Blog).

The Cimmerian—Outstanding Achievement for Online Essay:

Rob Roehm – “The Business” REH: Two-Gun Raconteur (13 parts).

The Venarium Award—Emerging Scholar:

Patrick Burger

The Black River Award—Special Achievement (The following nominees have produced something special that doesn’t fit into any other category: scholarly presentations, biographical discoveries, etc.):

Ben Friberg for filming the panels at Howard Days, editing them, and making them available on YouTube.

The Rankin Award—Artistic achievement in the depiction of REH’s life and/or work (Art must have made its first public published appearance in the previous calendar year.):

Tom Gianni for cover art for Pirate Adventures (REHFP), cover art for Fists of Iron, Round 1 (REHFP), cover art for Robert E. Howard’s Western Tales.

The Black Circle Award—Lifetime Achievement:

Patrice Louinet

The Crom Award—Board of Directors Choice:

Paul Herman for scanning the Howard typescripts in the Glenn Lord collection and facillitating their transfer to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

Next Year’s Black Circle Award Nominee:

Karl Edward Wagner

Congratulations to the winners and remember, it is not too late for you to step up and find your name on the list next year!

While Robert E. Howard’s anorexic super villain, Skull-Face has mellowed a bit with age, he is still pretty ornery. So you don’t want to get crossways with him. Since his ghastly visage graces the back cover of the new issue (courtesy of artist Terry Plavet) and he is obnoxiously vain, he wants you to buy the issue or else.

In addition to the portrait of ol’ skin and bones, the issue kicks off with a fantastic color cover by Michael L. Peters, followed by a hard-to-find Howard story and essays and articles by Barbara Barrett, Dave Hardy, Don Herron, Brian Leno, Rob Roehm and Jeff Shanks.

Of course there is the usual great line-up of artwork in the new issue of The Definitive Robert E. Howard Journal by the likes of Bill Cavalier, Bob Covington, Stephen Fabian, Nathan Furman, Clayton Hinkle, Richard Pace, Terry Pavlet and Michael L. Peters.

So scrounge through those couch cushions and dig out those stray pazoors so you can buy TGR #17 and not wake up to find Skull-Face hiding behind your curtains.