The Venarium Award — Emerging Scholar(Nominees have never won a Foundation Award before, and in the last year displayed the beginnings of what could be a movement into the upper echelon of Howard movers and shakers. You can only be nominated for this award once, in the year you make your first big push into the wider world of Howard publishing and scholarship.)
BARRETT, BARBARA: Compiling The Wordbook is just one of Barbara’s recent accomplishments. She is a frequent poster on the Cimmerian blog and had an article, “Six Degrees to Cross Plains,” published in the final volume of The Cimmerian.
HARRON, AL: In 2009 Al Harron became one of the stand-out voices on the Cimmerian blog. His witty and insightful posts bode well for his future in the Howardian arena.
Barbara I can understand: she has published articles and a book out. She's a real REH scholar. But I never thought I'd be up for a Venarium at this point in my Howard studies. Past Venarium winners include Rob Roehm and Mark f'n Finn (who beat out Steve f'n Tompkins and Dale f'n Rippke that year!), who all had published articles and many other accolades. I've basically just blogged a lot on The Cimmerian, in addition to lots of posts on the Robert E. Howard forum.
Wow. And the funny thing is, this morning I had started work on my book, with the full intent of not procrastinating and getting it finished. This just adds even more incentive.
Wow.
Don't sell yourself short Al; you've done some great work both in promoting Howard's work, explaining its continued relevance, and defending it against detractors, cynics, and egotistic movie-makers.
ReplyDeleteAny more details on the book?
Congratulations. As Brian says, don't sell yourself short; this is a well deserved nomination.
ReplyDeleteCheers for the support, guys! I guess I just feel rather weird at being in the same award category as those giants in previous years, since I thought I still had more work to do. Then again, my friends said I write enough at TC to fill a small book!
ReplyDeleteBrian: I'm afraid it's top secret at the moment. I will say it's not original fiction, and it's related to Robert E. Howard (but not a pastiche). That's about all, for now...
*stalks mysteriously into the shadows*
Congrats. And yes, it's well deserved.
ReplyDelete