Join us for the last ride with Robert E. Howard

When NUELOW Games came back to full life in 2011, one of the long-term projects we formulated involved a series of anthologies throwing the spotlight on the under-appreciated and widely ignored non-fantasy writings of Robert E. Howard. Initially, it was just going to be his historical fiction and the best of his horror stories. However, as we dug deeper into his body of work, we decided to add collections of the Sailor Steve Costigan and Breckinridge Elkins stories to line-up.

The final entry in our series of anthologies was always planned to be The Last Ride, a collection of two novellas that saw print in the months after Howard's suicide in June of 1936. They, together with the El Borak stories we collected in Oriental Stories Vol 3: A Texan in Afghanistan, and the horror stories in Shadows over Texas, show readers the direction in which he was headed creatively. All signs point to Howard moving in a direction of more mainstream literature, a direction that would have seen him leave the pulps behind. If he had lived, maybe we'd be discussing Howard as one of the great Regional or Southern Gothic writers instead of "the creator of Conan." Heck, maybe we'd be talking about the Southwestern Gothic literary subgenre?

Art by Rocco Mastroserio 

Regardless of what could have been, The Last Ride represents the end for Howard, and the end of our anthology series. It brings our project to an end on a high note, with stories that Howard probably would have far preferred to be remembered for than the Conan and Solomon Kane tales. We hope that some of you reading this found some new favorite Howard stories over the past few years... and we hope you'll come with us as we reach the end of the trail.

Click here to see previews of The Last Ride, or to get your own copy.

By the way, while this may be the end of the Robert E. Howard Collection Project, it doesn't mean that NUELOW Games is completely done with Howard's writings and characters; we love them too much for that. There are numerous smaller projects (similar to, for example, The Sheik, The Conquests of Wild Bill Clanton, and the Talk Like a Pirate Day Special) that we are planning to do. Our hope to call attention to the fact that Robert E. Howard's body of work is so much greater than Conan doesn't end just because the project has.