Lord Samper's Library

  This was originally going to be a post about the REH short tale ‘The Black Stone’; well, that was the plan until I realised that I’d already posted about it, way back in 2022 . No worries, I thought to myself, ‘The Little People’ is an intriguing title, I’ll give that a go. And to be honest, it wasn’t a bad tale either; for an entry in a collection of horror stories it certainly didn’t end how I’d expected it to (and that’s not a bad thing). The only problem I had with the tale is that while it’s certainly not a ‘fragment’, a page was missing from REH’s typescript and so ‘The Little People’ has a gap in the middle where the only thing I could gather was that the narrators sister was still annoyed with him. Not a bad tale to read, maybe not one for a whole post here though. I wasn’t in the mood to be beaten though so I took a chance and decided to do something that I very rarely do, if ever. Yep, I thought I’d read me some poetry :o) It might be the poetry that I had to study at s...

Page Count: 32 Pages I never really got the hang of RSS readers, and all that, so the other day, I just did what I normally do, grabbed a whole load of posts from the blogroll of ‘We Learn By Writing’ (a favourite blog of mine) and read through them over breakfast. I really wish that I could remember which of those blogs featured a post on ‘The Horror from the Mound’ now… I’m trying to read more of Howard’s short stories, that aren’t Conan, and figured that I’d give ‘The Horror from the Mound’ a go. One Kindle purchase later...  I really enjoyed it but have no idea who to thank for the recommendation… Oh well, I’m here now so why don’t I tell you about it anyway ;o) Quick thoughts are once again the order of the day, ‘The Horror from the Mound’ is only thirty two pages long and as ever, I’ve got a stack of work to catch up with in the morning… ‘Steve Brill did not believe in ghosts or demons, Juan Lopez did. But neither the caution of of the one nor the sturdy skepticism of the ot...

I'll be honest with you... This wasn't meant to be today's post but then again, yesterday evening really wasn't meant to be the evening that I flooded my kitchen either (for clarity, there is never a day when I deliberately plan to do this...) and by the time I'd sorted that out, I wasn't really in the mood for reading or writing. What's that? Turns out I was in just the mood for a pizza and watching 'Strays'. A full stomach and a few chuckles later... It's all good ;o) Where does that leave me though? Well... While I was looking through older blogs the other day, to see if I'd ever written anything about 'Worms of the Earth', I came across a short review that I'd written about Robert E. Howard's 'Pigeons from Hell'. When the universe is clearly telling me to give that review some time on this blog, I don't ignore it (especially after yesterday evening). You can read the full review over Here but all the importan...

Page Count: 27 Pages I have a copy of this on my shelf and the plan was to pick it up for a read on the way into work this morning. Well, that was the plan but I was half asleep, leaving the house, and totally forgot… No matter though, that’s what the Kindle app is for (although if I’d been a little more awake, I’d have read it off Project Gutenberg instead, you can find ‘Worms of the Earth’ Here ). 99p later and my ‘commute reading’ was secured 😉 I always seem to fall into the trap of just reading ‘Conan’ stuff whenever I fancy reading a little Howard. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that there’s a lot of his other stories out there that are more than worth your time when you come across them. ‘Worms of the Earth’ is very much one of those tales but you knew that already, didn’t you? You didn’t? You should do something about that, take it from me… After witnessing one of his subjects die at the hands of Roman governor Titus Sulla, Bran Mak Morn vows vengeance on Sulla but at w...

It wasn't just the movies over the weekend, I actually managed to get some reading done too (yay me etc...) And of course a good chunk of it was Sword & Sorcery, of course it was ;o) You've all been around here long enough to know that I love Sword & Sorcery. It's the ideal way to disconnect from a shitty week and it's storytelling like the bards used to do when they kept the villagers going during the depths of winter, the ideal combination for me. Most importantly though, it's never anything less than fun. With that in mind then, here we are with a couple of stories from the first 'Renegade Swords' collection. 'The House of Arabu' was always going to be read and I'd never read anything by Manly Wade Wellman so I thought I'd give 'The Slaughter of the Gods' a go as well... You can find both stories in the first 'Renegade Swords' collection from DMR Books. 'The House of Arabu' – Robert E. Howard ' The ba...

I found ‘The Black Stone’ in the ‘Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos’ collection but it can also be found here and there online as well, Project Gutenberg is a good place to look. You’re welcome 😉 It was originally published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales. I’m in that place, once more, where I’ve got two or three books on the go but am nowhere near finishing any of them; one day I’ll learn to settle on just one book at a time but today (well, this week…) is not that time. I wanted to keep things ticking along though (feels like ages since I’ve made it through a whole week of posting) so I figured it was time for another short story to have its moment on the blog 😊  I always mean to read more of Robert E. Howard’s horror stories so when I saw ‘The Black Stone’ in ‘Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos’, my mind was made up for me… Not content with having one of the few remaining copies of Friedrich von Junzt ’s ‘Nameless Cults’, our narrator decides on a trip to Hungary, and the vil...

After a Christmas and New Year spent working my way through the 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Hobbit' movies, as well as various 'Conan' movies and 'Krull' of all things, I am very much in the mood for more of the same. Over the coming weeks (more than likely when I'm trying to finish a book off or have run out of time to post a review, I'm nothing if not honest...) you'll see a few more 'Sword and Sorcery' style movies pop up here, today it's the turn of 2009's 'Solomon Kane'... I'll be completely honest, I find it so easy to get into 'Conan' that I end up forgetting that Robert E. Howard was very much not just about the Cimmerian. Howard knew his market and was prolific as far as writing characters, that would hit all the things his readers looked for in a story. I personally would never have guessed that the readers of the late nineteen twenties, and early thirties, were after tales of a sixteenth century pu...