Elkins Again or At Last

As I was logging on to the interwebs this morning I received four notifications of new posts on the ‘ol web site. Traffic here hasn’t been as heavy lately — probably because I haven’t been on the site as often — so I was pleased. Except that all the posts were from trendily mis-spelled names, replies to old posts, and each was a single line of word salad encouragement rife with typos.

In short, it was spam, all from an IP in St. Petersburg. I still am awaiting some kind of explanation about how that nonsense helps anyone. Do these people get PAID to create spam? They must. And what does anyone get out of it? The mind boggles.

Right. So here’s what I MEANT to say today. Two interesting things are happening that have nothing to do with any of the problems and dilemmas we’re currently riding out in our republic.

First, Victory Point Games has little more than a day left in its 10%  sale (and you’ll get an additional 10 % off if you buy more than $100.00 worth of games). I happen to like a lot of the VPG games, and have written about them through the years. I was particularly inspired to point out the sale today because they may soon cease publication of their print-on-demand style games. Like, say Astra Titanus, which is one of my favorites. Anyway, go check it out.

Second, Breckinridge Elkins is finally in print again. And this time it looks like ALL of his tales are going to be collected properly. There will be two volumes, and not only will readers be able to see the novel and the separate short stories that make it up (there are additions and subtractions in detail in content) but the two-book set will include all the rest of Howard’s tall tales.

Wait, you say, what is it I’m talking about? Well, late in his young life Robert E. Howard had a long-running character of mythic proportions who told amazing whoppers about himself and his family of country folk.

Much as I love Robert E. Howard’s work, I was pretty late coming to Elkins. I mean, first, it’s a western. Second, it’s not fantasy. Third, it’s humorous. A lot of writing that’s allegedly humorous isn’t, really, it’s just painful. You probably know what I mean. Well, the Elkins stories are pretty funny. Even to me, who’s hard to please when it comes to comic writing. Not that I’m knee slapping all the way through every one of them, but I’m definitely at least grinning wryly. If you take them on their own terms, they’re a blast, and I’m going to be signing up for both books now in the next couple of days. Go take a look yourself!