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What I’ve Been Reading: June 2025

What I’ve Been Reading: June 2025

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Last week, I talked about the most recent audiobooks I’ve been listening to. After enjoying the Egil & Nix short story, two more Thieves World books, and finishing The Black Company again, I wanted more S&S. I have a Kothar book, but it’s an AI voice. Meh. So, I am listening to volume one of the Elric saga. Which I have read many times. Man – those stories are still terrific.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies and shows lately, so that’s probably gonna be a post soon. And I’ve been working on Fortnite levels. But I have also been sitting down with some books when I can. So away we go.

SEA OF GREED– Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

I used to stay up into the wee hours, devouring Clive Cussler and Robert Ludlum books. THOSE were page turners. Cussler ‘handed off’ his various series’ and seemed to be a franchise manager, rather than a writer. But they were still good (with one exception). Then he passed, so the lines are definitely just the work of the current authors.

I never did the Tom Clancy technical stuff, but I really like The Oregon Files. And I’m okay with Isaac Bell, though after the first one, I liked the concept more than the actual books. I’ve barely tried the Fargo series – meh. And I quit reading Dirk Pitt because Cussler gave it to his son (named Dirk) and he’s a bad writer. I read the first two and quit. Life’s too short to read bad books written through nepotism (Anne Hillerman is the poster child for this).

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What I’ve Been Listening To: June, 2025

What I’ve Been Listening To: June, 2025

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I continue to listen to audiobooks daily. I frequently drift off to sleep with a fifteen minute timer on. The BBC radio plays of the two Dirk Gently novels are regular late night listens. So is the terrific Marx Brothers homage, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel. It was originally done by the Marxes themselves. BBC radio made a new version in 1990 and I frigging LOVE it.

Since I often have an audiobook on while I’m doing other things, I re-listen to things; or listen to books I’ve already read. It works great for me. I get some through my library app, but I mostly use Audible.

Here are some recent listens.

LEE GOLDBERG’S EVE RONIN

In the most recent What I’ve Been Listening To, I talked about Goldberg’s ‘buddy cop’ series featuring Sharpe & Walker. They are arson investigators in LA, and book one was pretty good. I just got the audiobook for number two, and I’m thrilled it crosses over with Lee’s Eve Ronin series. Even more thrilled that Nicol Zanzarella is doing Eve again – she’s terrific!!

The books are part of Kindle Unlimited, and number six is coming out later this year. I re-listened to all five in less than a week. Eve and her partner Duncan are a terrific buddy cop pair. Eve rose to fame when she was off duty and subdued a drunken action movie star who was smacking around his girlfriend in a parking lot. The video went viral on the Net and she parlayed it into a big promotion.

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By Crom: It’s Conan…I Mean, Starr the Slayer!

By Crom: It’s Conan…I Mean, Starr the Slayer!

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Having finished the first 100 issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, I did a post last week on Roy Thomas’s memoirs and that series. Which OF COURSE you read, here.

I started reading the first Savage Sword of Conan Omnibus from Marvel, but I’m still in a CtB mood. So, I decided to write another post about it. Sort of…

The first issue of Conan the Barbarian actually followed the sandalled feet of Starr the Slayer.

Just for fun, Roy Thomas had written a sword and sorcery story, and he had Barry (not yet ‘Windsor’) Smith draw it. Starr the Slayer was a very Conan-esque barbarian. In the story, he was the creation of Len Carson (named after Conan pastiche writer, Lin Carter), who dreamed his plots. But mentally exhausted from this, Carson wanted to kill off his meal ticket. Starr somehow travels to Carson’s time and kills the writer for attempting to dispose of him. Uh, okay, sure.

Starr appeared in the fourth issue of the Marvel anthology, Chamber of Darkness, hitting newsstands in April of 1970 (CtB debuted in October of the same year). Smith both penciled and inked the entire installment for Starr, from Thomas’ story.

Thomas did not intend for it to be an ongoing character, though it seems entirely conceivable that if Marvel had followed form and developed their own in-house character (giving them all the rights), instead of licensing one, Starr could well have been Marvel’s sword-swinger.

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By Crom: Marvel, Roy Thomas, and The Barbarian Life

By Crom: Marvel, Roy Thomas, and The Barbarian Life

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So, back in January of 2022, I did a post on Roy Thomas and the Marvel Conan comic he created in the seventies. I never read that comic. But for some reason in 2019, I decided to buy the first of what turned out to be his three memoirs about the series (mostly about the first 115 issues, which constituted his first run with Conan), and also one of the Marvel Omnibuses that had been put out recently. I ended up getting four of the high-quality Omnibuses, which are those 115 issues he covered in his books.

And I just finished, a couple years later, the first 100, which culminated with the death of Belit, from “Queen of the Black Coast.”

I also recently started the Savage Sword of  Conan Omnibus, which ran around the same time, and was black and white. It’s a more ‘literary Howard’ comic, and definitely different than the color Conan one (also less popular). 

Below is the original post I did. Then, an additional section, having read through the first hundred. I think this comic is definitely a must for Conan fans.  I prefer some of these stories to the Tor pastiches. They’re not all good, of course, but I have enjoyed my read through. And I cannot recommend enough, getting Thomas’ three books. Read one comic issue, then the accompanying short chapter from his book. It’s a terrific experience. Read on, MacDuff (a little literary malapropism for you).

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Weird Tales Rings in Conan

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Weird Tales Rings in Conan

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Hither_PhoenixDHSword“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Back in 2018, I started A (Black) Gat in the Hand because I wanted to share my love of hardboiled Pulp. I’ve had some friends join in, and they’ve added some non-hardboiled Pulp, while I’ve expanded my coverage. I’m currently working on my third Kirby O’Donnell essay, and my first on Harold Lamb, which takes us to the Adventure Pulps. And I’m starting another Robert E. Howard Weird Menace post, looking at his occult investigators, Conrad and Kirowan.

One of those stories has a direct link to Conan! A key part of that one is The Ring of Thoth Amon. And if you like the mighty-thewed Cimmerian, you know that ring is integral to the very first Conan tale, “The Phoenix on the Sword.”

Two years before I kicked off my Pulp series under the first title of With A (Black) Gat, I wrote one of the very first essays for Hither Came Conan. Six years ago now, I ruminated on “The Phoenix on the Sword.” I like that story quite a bit. So, we’re bringing that post back for the Summer Pulp series, while I work on the second life of The Ring of Thoth Amon.

I’m pretty sure “Phoenix” was the first Conan story I read. Now, it might have been “The Thing in the Crypt,” in the first Lancer/Ace collection, which I had bought and then stuck on a shelf for at least a decade or two. But I didn’t remember that story when I started going through the Ace books, AFTER exploring Conan via the Del Rey trilogy. So, I think it was “Phoenix.”

 

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A Challenge Worth Smiling About: Tim Waggoner on Writing Conan

A Challenge Worth Smiling About: Tim Waggoner on Writing Conan

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Tim Waggoner, and his upcoming novel Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God (Titan Books, October 28, 2025)

On a non-descript day I am intercepted on entering a coffee shop. It turns out to be a happy accident, an old colleague, eager to join me as I wait for my next interview to begin. The distraction is welcome but doesn’t help much. My interviewee isn’t late but they aren’t early either and I’m beginning to get nervous.

“You’re waiting for him, aren’t you?” the friend asks.

Neither of us mentioned his name because we didn’t have to. Some things, in certain contexts, go together like cheese and tortillas. With four Stoker Awards and many great novels to his name, Tim Waggoner has developed that kind of reputation in this part of Ohio. If Massachusetts is Lovecraft Country then downtown Dayton is Waggonerstan.

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What I’ve Been Reading: April 2025

What I’ve Been Reading: April 2025

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I continue to listen to audiobooks daily. They fit my lifestyle and let me get to a lot more stuff than I would if I just read. I mean, driving with a paperback in hand is quite the challenge!

I just re-listened to the entire SPQR mystery series by John Maddox Roberts (who I have written about several times, including here). No way I could have sat down and re-read all thirteen.

And I plodded through listening to all 44 hours of Toll of the Hounds, the eighth book of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen. It was the first book in the series I didn’t really care for – possibly because I don’t like the narrator. But I’ve had a paperback copy on the shelves for ten years, I think. At least I worked in listening to it. I have the audiobook for Dust of Dreams, which is just as long. But the same guy read the whole series, and I don’t want another 40+ hours of him.

But, I do like to still read a physical copy. So, let’s get to what I’ve been checking out on the printed page.

FLYING FREEBOOTERS – Frederick Nebel

Nebel’s is the second face on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore (Hammett on one side, Norbert Davis on the other). I’m not into the Aviation Pulps, but I am a fan of Nebel’s Gales & McGill action stories.

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Windy City Pulp & Paper 2025 – ‘If Bob Were Here…’

Windy City Pulp & Paper 2025 – ‘If Bob Were Here…’

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

It’s an early A (Black) Gat in the Hand, as I got my Pulp on week before last, at Windy City, in Chicago.

I managed to resist the impulse to grab the microphone in the Dealers Room and proclaim, “Finally….The Bob…has come back…to Windy City.” A little classic Rock for you there. And in not doing so, I wasn’t evicted and had a great time.

Doug Ellis puts on the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention annually at the Lombard Westin, in the suburb an hour west of Chicago. I last attended in 2019. Of course, COVID hit in 2020, along with some other life changes. I made it to my first Howard Days in 2022, and headed over to Pittsburgh the last two years for Pulp Fest. Windy City just didn’t quite happen. But I made sure it did in 2025.

There’s an auction, some panels, an art show, and a massive Dealer Room. I’ll share my purchases here in a minute. But hands down, the best part of Windy City for me, is hanging and chatting with people. I see lots of online friends and some folks I’ve met before. I even make new friends. Sort of.

Walking around the Dealer Room and getting into conversations on pulp or paperback favorites is a blast. I find somebody to chat Nero Wolfe, or Jo Gar, or Solar Pons, or Solomon Kane, or Bail Bond Dodd, or…you get the idea. I found myself showing my Civil War shelfie to someone, as they talked about Shelby Foote.

There are always folks sitting around the lobby. I’ve met new friends just sitting down and working into the conversation. Saturday night, Ryan Harvey, Chris Hocking, James Enge, and I, spent over two hours just riffing through movies and writers. Ryan’s knowledge of multiple movie genres is staggering. And what those three knew about movie soundtracks left me soaking it in.

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’24? in 42′ with…Bob Byrne????

’24? in 42′ with…Bob Byrne????

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Jason Waltz kicked off season two of his 24? in 42 podcast interviews with your very own Monday morning columnist. The prior installment was with Malazan’s Ian C. Esslemont, so I’m in pretty good company here.

It should not surprise you that I was all over the place, covering Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Columbo, books on writing and screenwriting, Encyclopedia Brown, the Civil War, Tolkien, The Constitutional Convention of 1787, Lawrence Block, Steven Hockensmith, Norbert Davis, and much more.

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New Adventures for the World’s Favorite Barbarian

New Adventures for the World’s Favorite Barbarian

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Conan the Barbarian: Battle of The Black Stone (Titan Comics collected edition, April 1, 2025). Cover by Jonas Scharf

Few things are more ubiquitous than Conan and fantasy. Decades of sword-swinging high adventure has earned the barbarian a following most can only dream of. It’s taken the heavily thewed warrior to the big screen, Marvel Comics, and more. But it’s his latest adventure at Titan Comics that may prove to be the icing on the proverbial Shadizarian cake.

“This isn’t my first time writing Conan, but it’s definitely the most expansive opportunity I’ve ever had to chart the direction of such an amazing iconic character. I could not be happier in terms of our team and the collaboration we have in terms of story, art, and worldbuilding,” Jim Zub, writer of Conan the Barbarian at Titan Comics, shared by email.

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