Once a reader...

Once a reader, always a reader. Or, at least, a book collector. My reading time has been scarce of late, but I continue to acquire books. I spent a little coin, lately.


An anthology of stories inspired by the writing of Robert E. Howard. Proceeds go to Project Pride - helping preserve the Howard house and museum in Cross Plains, Texas. Win-win! Click on the book cover image above to order your own copy.

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As posted before, I was curious to read a different Moorcock hero (other than Elric). TOR reprinted the Hawkmoon saga (or, The History of the Runestaff.) As nice as the covers and interior illustrations are, the books are a bit thin for their price.

I opted against buying used copies, though.

For the price of a single TOR, I was able to get a new copy of the British Fantasy Masterworks edition, which is an omnibus of all four novels. I did that through ABE Books from a book seller in Indiana, which was cheaper than ordering from Amazon UK, too.

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Also through the same seller, I ordered the Fantasy Masterworks edition of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Not a complete omnibus, this features the first two of the four novels that are the story cycle. Fantasy Masterworks did publish the final two novels in a second omnibus.

If I like the first set, I will probably get the second set. I've never read any Wolfe that I'm aware of, so this will be new territory for me - when I get to it.

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For an encore, I used some Amazon points to get these;

Facebook vacation

I decided spur-of-the-moment yesterday to take a week off from Facebook (and Twitter.) No reason in particular - just too much noise. I need to focus both at work and at home (writing.) It all just seemed frivolously distracting - which it is, I understand. Just need a break.

Still reading The Hour of the Dragon.

I'll still be on blog rounds and checking email for anything time-sensitive. And modding over at the Conan forums (which, btw, underwent a server upgrade this weekend.) It's just the chitter-chatter sites I want to avoid for a week.

New blog - no, not mine

I don't know if any of you checkout my blog links, but a new one has started up that looks very promising.

Frontier Partisans

Jim used to write for The Cimmerian and contributes at the Conan forums.

I am going to enjoy these stories of derring-do!

The Hour of the Dragon

This might be a dirty secret, considering I am a moderator on the Conan forums and all;

This is my first time reading Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon.

I've read many of the REH original Conan tales, but I never got to this one. I know it's an important one - REH's only novel. Part of me, I think, wanted to savor that so I'd have something new to read of Howard's.

Well, I'm there now.

Someone asked me how it is to read, I said it feels like coming home.

Aside from that, not much to blog about. Busy at work, busy at home.

I do have a list of writing tasks I need to attend to, both stories and some articles. Now that summer's here, for some reason, I seem to have more stamina for later nights. If I can keep the synapses firing, some late summer night writing will be fun!