David Barbour - Shadows Bend

According to L. Sprague de Camp, the biographer of both men, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard kept up a lively and voluminous correspondence for many years. They almost met in June of 1932, when Lovecraft traveled to New Orleans, but Howard, who lived in Texas, had no money and was unable to secure bus fare to visit his friend.

As de Camp wrote in Dark Valley Destiny, his biography of Robert E. Howard, “Ever since, admirers of Howard and Lovecraft have thought it a pity that these two exceptional men failed to shake each other’s hands.” Indeed, it was these very words which formed the impetus for me to begin the long, tumultuous route to Shadows Bend.

And just as Lovecraft could not have made the journey without Howard, I likewise would not even have attempted so massive an undertaking as this novel without my great friend and collaborator, Richard Raleigh. If not for his unflinching belief and enthusiasm in this story and his brilliant, lyrical prose skills… one shudders to think!

I would like to extend special thanks to Kelley Jones for passing along his fascination for all things Lovecraftian, to S.T. Joshi for his recent biographical scholarship and annotations of Lovecraftian texts, and lastly (pun intended) to Larry McMurtry for writing The Last Picture Show.

I confess that despite my many careers, my first true ambition was to become a pulp writer. My earliest meaningful readings were the works of c.S. Lewis and J.RR Tolkien, but it was not long before I discovered Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, whose stories struck chords in me on diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. Their visions were-respectively-viscerally and metaphysically primal for my adolescent self, and though my opinion of their writing changed many times over the years, their works have an enduring place on the bookshelf of my imagination.

I had only heard hearsay about the friendship of Howard and Lovecraft until David Barbour introduced me to the de Camp biographies and the premise that eventually became this book. Though it required much coaxing and encouragement on my part, I am glad I managed to convince him that it was possible to tell this story as a novel. It is his formidable storytelling skill and his insistence on accuracy that form the infrastructure for my fancy footwork.

To Tori Amos I extend special thanks for lending a layer of meaning that would otherwise be missing from this book. It was by synchronicity that I heard her talk about her miscarriage and her visions of her Pueblo boy; though we had already written a red-haired Glory with a troubled family history and the loss of a half-blood child, it was ruminating on the meaning of the coincidence that made me determined to add certain layers of resonance that would mediate an otherwise male centered story line. A portion of our royalties will go to RA.I.N.N., the organization that Amos cofounded for survivors of rape and incest.

And to Leslie Marmon Silko, sincere and belated thanks for the sage advice you offered an aspiring pulp writer when you were Vassar’s first Writer-in-Residence. I have taken that advice to heart.

The authors would jointly like to extend their gratitude to the following people: James Merk for providing valuable commentary on the early chapters. Peter Quinones for sharing his knowledge of the life of Clark Ashton Smith. Boyd Pearson for his wonderful Clark Ashton Smith web site all the way in New Zealand. George Haas for invaluable details about the Smith cabin. Ted Naifeh for his early drawing. for the Shadows Bend proposal. Rick Klaw, for his continuing interest in the project and the veiled threats regarding misrepresentations of Texas, Texians, and Texicans. Joyce Carol Oates for adding literary cachet to the H.P. Lovecraft revival. Arkham House for keeping HPL’s memory and works alive. Frank Frazetta, Barry Windsor Smith, and Arnold Schwarzenegger for their representations of Conan the Barbarian. Tracie and Anne for their tolerance and patience (which we know grew thin many times). Susan Allison for the patience that made the quality of this final product possible. Regula Noetzli, for placing the manuscript, though she hardly knew what she was unleashing for the millennium. Meade, for her beautiful Tori Amos web site and for answering the odd late-night queries about Tori’s eyes. The Hopi Nation, whose tolerance we beg for the poetic license we’ve taken with the myth of the four worlds. The illustrious John Dee, whose fragmentary transcriptions of the Necronomicon have come to mean so much to those of us who don’t read Arabic or Greek. And finally, all you Cthulhuvians out there who keep the mythos alive—lA’ CTHULHU!

The title of this book was discovered one night during a dreamquest.