Robert E. Howard

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Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a variety of genres.

He is well-known for his role as Conan the Barbarian, and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. Howard was born and raised in Texas.

He spent the majority of his life in Cross Plains, as well as some time in nearby Brownwood.

He was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually going back to amateur boxing.

He aspired to be a writer of adventure fiction from the age of nine, but he didn't have much success until he was 23 years old.

Howard's writings continued to be published in a large variety of magazines, journals, and newspapers after his death by suicide at the age of 30, and he became proficient in several subgenres.

He made his greatest triumph after his death. Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime, even though a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934.

Howard's Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian, was the main source for his stories.

Howard helped create Conan and his other heroes, sparking many imitators and giving him a large following in the fantasy world.

Howard is still a popular writer, with his best books reprinted. Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have fuelled rumors regarding his mental health.

His mother had been sick with tuberculosis his entire life, and after finding she had slipped into a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he stepped out to his car and shot himself in the head.

Early years

Howard was born in Peaster, Texas, the sole son of a traveling country physician, Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, and his wife, Hester Jane Ervin Howard, were born on January 22, 1906. Edward Burkett (1917), Seminole (1906), and Caneet (1909).

Howard's parents' relationship began to break down when he was a child. The Howard family had money problems that could have been exacerbated by Isaac Howard's investment in get-rich-quick schemes. In comparison, Hester Howard came to the conclusion that she had married below herself. The two men were soon combating together. Isaac did not want him to have anything to do with their son, according to Hester. She had a major influence on her son's intellectual development. She had spent her youth supporting a variety of sick relatives, contracting tuberculosis as a result. She instilled in her son a deep love of poetry and literature, recited verse a daily and encouraged him to write steadily.

Other experiences would later inform his prose. Although he loved reading and learning, he found school to be confining and began to fear having someone in charge of him. Experiences of tracking and confronting bullies revealed the omnipresence of evil and rivalry in the world, as well as the importance of physical fitness and violence. Howard, the son of the local doctor, had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence as a result of explosions on farms and oil fields, as well as the dramatic rise in crime that came with the oil boom. His firsthand accounts of gunfights, lynchings, feuds, and Indian raids influenced his distinctly Texas, hardboiled outlook on the world. Boxing, in particular, has piqued interest. Boxing was the country's most popular sport at the time, with a cultural presence far beyond what it is today. During those years, James J. Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Bob Fitzsimmons, and later Jack Dempsey were all inspirations, and he grew up to be a lover of all contests of violent, masculine warfare.

Voracious reading, as well as a natural flair for prose writing and teacher encouragement, sparked in Howard a desire to become a teacher. He began writing stories in the age of nine, mainly tales of historical fiction focusing on Vikings, Arabs, battles, and bloodshed. One by one discovers the authors whose work would influence his later life: Jack London and his tales of reincarnation and past lives, most notably The Star Rover (1915); Rudyard Kipling's tales of subterrane; Thomas Bulfinch's classic mythological tales. After one or two readings, Howard was considered by friends to be eidetic, and they were amazed with his ability to recall lengthy reams of poetry with ease.

Dr. Howard moved his family to Cross Plains, Texas, in 1919, when Howard was thirteen, and the family would remain there for the remainder of Howard's life. Howard's father bought a house in the town with a cash down payment and underwent extensive renovations. Howard found a book in New Orleans that was concerned about the scant truth and a slew of myths surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts that were sitting in a library while his father took medical classes at a nearby college.

The Vestal Well Well Within the boundaries of Cross Plains in 1920 sparked oil and Cross Plains became a oil boomtown. Thousands of residents poured into the town looking for oil resources. New companies sprang up from scratch, and the crime rate spewed up to match. The population of Cross Plains increased from 1,500 to 10,000, and overcrowding, the unpaved roads and vice crime spiked, but the organization also invested in civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels. Howard feared the revival and despised those who came with it. He was already sick of oil booms as they were the source of the consistent commuter in his early years, but the impact of oil booms in towns was exacerbating.

Howard and its companion writers, Talbot Mundy and Harold Lamb, were among Howard's first samples of pulp magazines, especially Adventure and its celebrity writers. He continued creating a number of series characters over the next few years. He began submitting stories to magazines like Adventure and Argosy soon. Howard became a writing autodidact, methodically investigating the markets and tailoring his story and style to each, as rejections piled up, and there were no mentors or instructions of any kind to help him.

Howard and his mother accompanied him to a boarding house in Brownwood, which was 1922, when he was sixteen years old. It was in Brownwood that he first met people from his own age who expressed his passion not only for sports and history but also in writing and poetry. Tevis Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson, the two most influential of these, discussed his Bohemian and literary outlook on life, exchanged long letters full of poetry and existential reflections on life and philosophy, and encouraged each other's writing endeavors. Howard was introduced to The Tattler, the Brownwood High School newspaper, in Vinson. Howard's stories were first published in this magazine. "Golden Hope Christmas" and "West is West," two stories in the December 1922 issue, respectively, received gold and silver awards.

Howard graduated from high school in May 1923 and then returned to Cross Plains. On his return to his hometown, he began exercising by cutting down oak trees and chopping them into firewood every day, lifting weights, punching a bag, and springing exercises; eventually, he transformed himself from a skinny boy to a more muscular, burly style.

Howard spent his late teens in Cross Plains doing odd jobs, none of whom he loared. Howard returned to Brownwood in 1924 to enroll in a stenography course at Howard Payne College, this time boarding with his companion Lindsey Tyson rather than his mother. Howard would have liked a literary course but was not permitted to take one for any reason. Mark Finn, a biographer, claims that his father refused to pay for such a non-vocational education. He finally sold a short caveman story titled "Spear and Fang," bringing him the sum of $16 and introducing him to the readers of a struggling pulp called Weird Tales in the week of Thanksgiving this year, despite years of rejection slips and near acceptances.

Now that his career in fiction had begun, Howard dropped out of Howard Payne College at the end of the semester and returned to Cross Plains. Weird Tales received a note shortly after that another story, "The Hyena," had been accepted by the publisher. Howard's first attempt to write a book set based on Jack London's Martin Eden and titled Post Oaks & Sand Roughs during the same period. The book was otherwise of middling quality and was not released in the author's lifetime, but Howard scholars are intrigued with the personal information it contains. Steve Costigan, Howard's alter ego in this story, is a word he'll use more than once in the future. The book was published in 1928 but not long after his death.

Howard Howard did not have no money at the time, because weird Tales paid for the publication. He took up writing oil news for the local newspaper Cross Plains Review at $5 per column to remedy this. Howard's first printed story was not published until July 1925. Howard left his newspaper job in the same year and spent one month in a post office before deciding on the low pay. His new position, at the Cross Plains Natural Gas Company, did not last long because of his refusal to be subordinated to his manager. He did manual labour for a while before starting a career as a stenographer for an oil company.

He dabbled heavily in verse, writing hundreds of poems and getting dozens published in Weird Tales and other poetry journals, associating with his friend Tevis Clyde Smith. Howard eventually considered poetry writing a luxury he could not afford, with poor sales and many publishers banning the subject, and after 1930, he devoted his time to short stories and higher-paying markets. Nevertheless, as a result of this apprenticeship, his stories gradually developed the aura of "prose-poems" bursting with hypnotic, dreamy images, and a power that was unmatched in other pulp efforts of the time.

Howard was already a regular in the journal when he heard that new story sales to Weird Tales were sporadic but encouraging, and soon he was a regular contributor to the publication. He was first published on "Wolfshead," a werewolf tale that was released when he was only twenty years old. Howard was dissatisfied with his writing after reading "Wolfshead" in Weird Tales. He moved from his stenographer's job to Robertson's Drug Store, where he rose to become a head soda jerk on $80 per week. However, he resentted the job itself and worked long hours every day of the week, making him sick. He relaxed by visiting Neeb Ice House, to which an oil-field worker was welcomed at the pharmacy, to drink and participate in boxing matches. These matches became a regular part of his life; the combination of boxing and writing gave him an outlet for his frustrations and rage.

Howard left his drained job at the grocery store in August 1926 and returned to Brownwood in September to complete his bookkeeping course. He began working on "The Shadow Kingdom" in August, one of his career's most important works. Howard wrote for their newspaper, The Yellow Jacket, while attending college. "Cupid vs. s" was one of the short stories in this magazine that was published. "Pollu" is a word that refers to the narcotics. This is Howard's first living boxing tale known to exist; it is told in the first person and is a fictionalized account of Howard (as "Steve") and his companion Lindsey Tyson (as "Spike") training for a war. Howard's literary future will also be influenced by this tale and the elements it uses.

Howard passed his exams in May 1927 after being forced to return home due to contracting measles and then being forced to retake the course. He returned to writing, this time as a result of his official graduation in August. In August, he rewrote it again and submitted it to Weird Tales in September. This was an experiment with the whole concept of "weird tale" horror fiction as defined by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft, combining elements of fantasy, horror, and mythology with historical romance, action, and swordplay, a new style of story that would later be described as "sword and sorcery." Kull, a barbarian precursor to Conan Howard's Conan, appeared in Weird Tales in August 1929 and attracted fanfare from readers. Farnsworth Wright, a Weird Tales editor, paid for the novel for $100, the most Howard had earned for a story at this point, and several other Kull tales followed. However, all but two of Howard's attempts were turned down, persuading Howard not to continue the story.

Howard salvaged and resubmitted to Weird Tales in March 1928, the first of many stories starring the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane. The character appeared in the Weird Tales issue in August 1928, and it was the first of Howard's stories to have a series in print beyond two stories (seven Kane stories were published in the 1928–32 period). This is the first published example of sword and sorcery in the magazine, which can be regarded as the first published example of sword and sorcery.

Howard was a teenager in 1929, not only Weird Tales but also other pulp markets. "The Apparition in the Prize Ring," a boxing-related ghost story told in the magazine Ghost Stories, was the first story he sold to another magazine. Argosy eventually published "Crowd-Horror," one of Howard's stories, in July, which was also a boxing story. However, neither of them developed into a continuing story.

With a recent series based on one of his favorite hobbies: boxing, he hit gold again after several minor successes and failed starts. In the pages of Fight Stories, Sailor Steve Costigan's debut appeared in July 1929. Costigan, a tough-as-nails mariner with a head of rocks and occasionally a heart of gold, began boxing his way through a number of exotic seaports and adventure destinations, becoming so popular in Fight Stories that the same editors began using additional Costigan episodes in their sister publication Action Stories. With the combination of a traditional tall tale and slapstick comedy, Howard's use of humor and (unreliable) first-person narration made the series a success. Howard Howard Howard was sold to Fight Stories, which were sold in a market that was just as robust as Weird Tales.

Howard was contacted by Street & Smith in February 1931 with a request to move the Steve Costigan stories to their own pulp magazine, owing to his success in Fight Stories. The writer's Story is a newspaper distributed in the United States. Howard refused to make a new, identical series based on a boxer called Kid Allison. Howard wrote ten stories for this collection, but Sport Story only published three of them.

Howard has stopped attending college classes regularly, and it will never again be a regular employee. He was a full-time writer and his father was boasting about his employment, not to mention buying multiple copies of his pulps.

Howard's "Celtic period" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish roots. Howard's letters to both Preece and Clyde Smith in Austin in 1927 ignited a great deal of Irish-related information and discussion. Howard investigated the Irish roots of his family's history and began writing about Irish characters. At this time, Turlogh O'Brien and Cormac Mac Art were created, but they were unable to sell the latter's stories.

Howard was overjoyed when Farnsworth Wright began a new pulp in 1930 called Oriental Stories, because it was a platform for him to riot through favorite topics of history and war, as well as exotic mysticism. During the magazine's four years, he produced some of his finest stories, gloomy vignettes of war and rapine in the Middle and Far East during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with tales that rival even his best Conan stories for their historical major and splendor. Howard published a number of stories ranging from the fall of Rome to the fifteenth century, in addition to series characters such as Turlogh Dubh O'Brien and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey. Due to the Great Depression, the magazine eventually ceased publication in 1934, but many of Howard's stories were targeted at this audience.

Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" reprint and discussing some of the obscure Gaelic terms used within in August 1930. Farnsworth Wright, editor, wrote a letter to Lovecraft, who responded warmly to Howard, and the two Weird Tales veterans were engaged in a spirited exchange that would last for the remainder of Howard's life. Howard soon became a member of the "Lovecraft Circle," a group of writers and friends united by the enormous correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft (who wrote over 100,000 letters in his lifetime), who made it a point to introduce stories, use each others' invented fictional trappings, and support each other in the pulp field. In time, this group of correspondents has established a legendary patina for it rivaling similar literary conclaves such as The Inklings, the Bloomsbury Group, and the Beats.

Howard was given the affectionate nickname "Two-Gun Bob" after his long discussions of his family's roots, including "The Cairn on the Headland," "The Children of the Night" and "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos of horror stories, beginning with "The Black Stone." Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and E. Hoffmann Price all corresponded with other "Weird Tale" writers, including Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth and E. Hoffmann Price.

Howard and Lovecraft's correspondence included lengthy discussions on a common theme in Howard's story, barbarism versus civilization. Howard believed that civilization was inherently flawed and fragile. "Barbarism is the natural state of man," he says on his famous line "Beyond the Black River." Civilization is unnatural. It's a whim of chance. Barbarism must always triumph." Lovecraft took the opposite view: civilisation was the pinnacle of human achievement and the only way forward. Howard responded by naming several recent abuses of the citizenry by so-called 'civilized' leaders. Howard was initially reluctant to Lovecraft but gradually affirmed his own convictions, even going out of his way to denigrate Lovecraft's opinions.

Howard used his new sword-and-sorcery and horror encounter in 1930, with his interest in Solomon Kane dwindling and Kull stories not catching on. In his book "Kings of the Night," King Kull was brought to pre-Christian Britain to support the Picts in their fight against the invaded Romans, who introduced readers to Bran Mak Morn, Howard's king of the Picts. Howard continued this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare "Worms of the Earth" and several other stories, triggering traumatic adventures that were tinged with Cthulhu-esque gloss and a love for metaphor and symbolism.

Many pulp markets cut their hours or went entirely out of business altogether as a result of the Great Depression. Following market stalling and disappearance, Howard saw a good deal in the market. Weird Tales, Inc., has been published bimonthly, and pulps such as Fight Stories, Action Stories, and Strange Tales have also been discontinued. Howard was further affected when his funds were wiped out in 1931 when the Farmer's National Bank collapsed, and then moved to another bank, where the previous one failed as well.

Howard was on one of his many trips around Texas in 1932. He travelled through the southern area of the state with his main occupation being "the wholesale consumption of tortillas, enchiladas, and inexpensive Spanish wine." He envisioned the fantasy land of Cimmeria, a traumatic northern area home to terrified barbarians in Fredericksburg, despite misty rain. He wrote the poem Cimmeria in February when he was in Mission.

Howard first thought of Conan's character during this journey. Howard said in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith that Conan "simply grew up in my mind a few years ago while I was stopping in a tiny border town on the lower Rio Grande" in 1935. However, the character took nine months to develop.

In a past-life-themed story that was first published in the magazine Strange Tales in June 1932, Howard used the word "Conan" for a Gael reaver. Although the character swears by the word "Crom," it is his only link to the more popular successor character.

He went back home and formulated the idea of fleshing out a new invented world—his Hyborian Age—and populating it with all sorts of nations, populations, monsters, and magic. Howard adored history and enjoyed writing historical stories. However, the literature for a strictly historical setting was too time-consuming for him to engage in on a regular basis and still earn a living. The Hyborian Age, with its varied settings reminiscent of real places and times of history, has inspired him to write pseudo-historical fiction without having to worry about such challenges. He may have been inspired by Thomas Bulfinch's 1913 edition of his Bulfinch's Mythology, which included tales from history and myth, many of which were direct influences on Howard's work. "It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while keeping the spirit," G. K. Chesterton's book The Ballad of the White Horse and Chesterton's assertion that "it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while still preserving the spirit."

Howard had reprinted an unpublished Kull story "By This Axe I Rule" by March. This is Conan's first Conan story. The central plot of a barbarian's rise to the throne of a democratic world and a plot to assassinate him remains unchanged. However, he deleted an entire subplot involving a couple's love and introduced a new one with a supernatural twist; the book was re-titled "The Phoenix on the Sword," an element of this new subplot. Howard began to write two more Conan stories straight away. The first of these was "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," an inversion of the Greek myth surrounding Apollo and Daphne, which occurred much earlier in Conan's life. "The God in the Bowl," the last of the initial trio, went through three drafts and has a slower pace than most Conan stories. This one is a murder mystery involving corrupt politicians and serves as Conan's initiation into civilisation, while still demonstrating that he is a more compassionate person than the civilized characters. He delivered the first two stories to Weird Tales in the same box before the month, with the third following a few days later.

With these three characters complete, he wrote "The Hyborian Age" in order to flesh out his setting more elaborate. There were four drafts of this essay, beginning with a two-page outline and ending with an 8,000-word essay. Howard added two sketched maps and an additional short piece titled "Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age."

Farnsworth Wright dismissed "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" in a letter dated March 10, 1932, but noted that "The Phoenix on the Sword" had "points of true excellence" and needed to be changed. At the synopsis stage, "The God in the Bowl" would be also disapproved, and a new Conan story about Conan as a thief was also cancelled. Howard rewrote "The Phoenix on the Sword" based on Wright's feedback and including excerpts from his book rather than abandoning the whole Conan story as had occurred with previous failed characters. Both this revision and the new Conan tale "The Tower of the Elephant" had no problems. Before the first saw print, Howard had written nine Conan stories.

In December 1932, Conan first appeared in Weird Tales, and Howard was so popular that he was able to insert seventeen Conan stories in the magazine from 1933 to 1936. After his first burst of stories, Howard took a short break from Conan, returning to his character in mid-1933. These stories, which is his "middle period," are traditional and considered the smallest of the series. Many of the stories on "Iron Shadows on the Moon" were simply Conan saving a damsel from a monster in some ruins. Although earlier Conan stories had three or four drafts, some of them had only two, including the final version. The only Conan story to be completed in a single draft is "Rogues in the House." These stories were extremely popular, and they included the first and second Conan stories on the front page of Weird Tales, "Black Colossus," and "Xuthal of the Dusk." Howard's drive for fast and simple sales at this time was influenced by the demise of other businesses, such as Fight Stories in the Depression.

Howard wrote "Marchers of Valhalla" in this period. Allison is a disabled Texan who starts to recall his experiences, the first of which is in Howard's new Hyborian age. He wrote in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith in October 1933 that "The Garden of Fear" was "dealing with one of my many interpretations of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world."

Denis Archer, a British publisher, contacted Howard about releasing a book in the United Kingdom in May 1933. On June 15, Howard told "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Scarlet Citadel" a collection of his best available stories. The publisher had rejected the collection in January 1934 but had instead suggested a novel. Despite the fact that the publisher was "excitedly interested" in the stories, the rejection letter revealed that there was a "prejudice that is particularly prominent against collections of short stories." However, Pawling and Ness Ltd's first edition of 5,000 copies for lending libraries could have the book published.

Howard returned to Conan in late 1933, this time with "The Devil in Iron" which brought him right back to Conan. However, this was followed by the start of the second group of Conan stories, which "carry the most intellectual punch," starting with "The People of the Black Circle."

Howard began writing Almuric (a non-Conan, sword, and planet science fiction book) in February 1934 but stopped half way. This was followed by another failed attempt at a novel, this time a Conan novel that later became Drums of Tombalku. Howard's only Conan book The Hour of the Dragon was more popular, resulting in Howard's only Conan book The Hour of the Dragon, which was likely published on or about March 17, 1934. This book incorporates elements of two previous Conan stories, "Black Colossus" and "The Scarlet Citadel," with Arthurian myths as the focus. On May 20, 1934, Howard Howard delivered his final draft to Denis Archer. He had been writing about 5,000 words per day for two months, seven days a week. Despite the fact that he told acquaintances that he had no enthusiasm for this book, he had put in a lot of effort into it. However, the publisher went into receivership in late 1934, before it could print the book. Until being returned to Howard, the tale was briefly held as part of the company's finances. It was later published in Weird Tales as a serial over five months, beginning with the December 1935 issue.

Howard may have started losing interest in Conan in late 1934, spurred on by a growing desire to write westerns. He started to write, but "Wolves Beyond the Border" was never completed, a Conan tale. This was the first Conan story to have an explicit (Robert W. Chambers-inspired) American setting, though American themes had existed longer, and it was the only one in which Conan himself does not appear. His next story was based on his unfinished work and became "Beyond the Black River," which not only featured the different American-frontier setting, but also a "Conan yarn without sex interest," in Howard's own words. Conan and the other protagonists win, at best, in a pyrrhic triumph, which was unusual for pulp magazines. "The Black Stranger" was a second experimental Conan tale set in a similar setting. Weird Tales, however, had the tale told, which was unusual for later Conan stories. Howard's next piece, "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula," was more formulaic and was accepted by the magazine with no problems. Howard's only written one more Conan story, "Red Nails," which was inspired both by his personal experiences at the time and an extrapolation of his views on civilization.

The character of Conan developed a wide and enduring influence among other Weird Tales writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber, and over the following decades, the field of sword and sorcery grew in popularity around Howard's masterpiece, with hundreds of practitioners voking Howard's work to one degree or another.

Howard began to work with Otis Adelbert Kline, a former pulp writer, as his agent in spring 1933. In order to grow into new markets, Kline encouraged him to try writing in other genres. Howard's agency was successful in finding outlets for more of Howard's tales and even placed jobs that had been rejected when Howard was solely marketing himself. Howard continued to sell directly to Weird Tales, but not so much.

"The Horror from the Mound," Howard wrote one of the first "Weird Western" stories ever published, "The Horror from the Mound" was published in the Weird Tales issue in May 1932. This genre served as a bridge between his early "weird" stories (a modern term for horror and fantasy) and his later straight western stories.

He tried writing detective novels but found himself reading mystery novels and disliked writing them; he wasn't particularly successful in this niche. Howard began using El Borak, a character conceived in his youth, in mature, academic stories of World War II-era Middle Eastern adventure, which culminated in Top Notch, Complete Stories, and Thrilling Adventures. The 1920s version of Treasure Hunting in Afghanistan was a treasure hunter, but the 1930s version, first seen in "The Daughter of Erlik Khan," was a brutal gun-fighter retaining the peace after going native in Afghanistan. The stories are a lot alike with those of Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, and T. E. Lawrence, all with Western themes and Howard's hardboiled style of writing. Kirby O'Donnell, he created another character in the same vein as his other series, but this one didn't have the same fate and was not as popular as other series.

Howard became obsessed with Texas and the American Southwest in the years after Conan was born. Many of his letters to H.P. Lovecraft ran for a dozen pages or more, many of which were filled with tales he had gathered from elderly Civil War veterans, Texas Rangers, and pioneers. His Conan stories began with western elements, most notable in "Beyond the Black River," "The Black Stranger," and the unfinished "Wolves Beyond the Border." Some of the markets that were dead by the recession by 1934 had returned, and Weird Tales was over $1500 behind on Howard's payments. The author shifted his attention away from writing weird fiction and toward this slowly growing obsession.

In July 1933, Howard's first of Howard's most commercially lucrative series (within his lifetime) was born. "Mountain Man" was the first of the Breckinridge Elkins stories, humourous westerns in a similar vein to his earlier Sailor Steve Costigan stories, with a narratoristic, cartoonish version of Howard himself as the main character. The story was first published in the March-April 1934 issue of Action Stories as tall tales in the vein of Texas "Tall Lying" stories, and it was so popular that other magazines asked Howard for similar characters. For Cowboy Tales, Howard created Pike Bearfield for Argosy and Buckner J. Grimes. Every issue after Howard's death, Action Stories published a new Elkins story. He also created A Gent from Bear Creek, a Breckinridge Elkins book containing existing short stories and new information, at Kline's request.

Conan was the only one in Texas where Howard ever talked to his friends and was the only one in whom they seemed to be interested. Breckinridge Elkins' books may have been too close to home for Howard to be completely comfortable discussing them.

Howard added a line of "spicy" stories to Spicy-Adventure Stories in the spring of 1936. At the time, the "spicy" collection of pulp magazines were focused on stories that were deemed borderline softcore pornography, but they are now similar to romance novels. Wild Bill Clanton appeared in these stories, which Howard referred to as "bubby-twisters," and they were published under the pseudonym Sam Walser.

Howard is the only one known to have had one girlfriend in his lifetime, Novalyne Price. After their friendship ended, Tevis Clyde Smith, one of Howard's best friends, knew since high school and became close friends. Howard first met Howard in 1933 while driving his mother to a Brownwood clinic. Howard and Smith arrived at the Price farm, where Smith introduced his friends to each other. Price, a young writer who had heard of Howard from Smith in the past, was eager to meet him in person. However, he wasn't what she imagined. "This guy was a writer," she wrote in her diary about her first meeting.

Him?

It was amazing. He was not dressed as I imagined a writer should dress," he said. They split after a journey and won't see each other for more than a year.

Price began working as a schoolteacher in Cross Plains High School through her cousin, the Head of the English Department. Howard responded to her younger colleagues' remarks of him being a "freak" and "crazy," then dialed his house and left a note. This call was not returned, so she tried a few more times. After being told that her phone calls were blocked by a passive-aggressive Hester Howard, Price paid a visit to the Howard home in person. They met for the first time after a ride through town.

They dated on and off for much of the next two years, spending a lot of time discussing writing, philosophy, history, faith, reincarnation, and much more. Both women considered marriage but not at the same time. In mid-1935, Price became ill from overworking. Howard's mother's cousin told her to end the relationship and seek a different career. Despite admitting to this, she met Howard shortly after being dismissed. Howard, on the other hand, was too occupied with the wellbeing of his mother's body to give her the attention she needed. They were not happy for much longer than they were.

Price started dating Truett Vinson, one of Howard's closest friends, instead of considering herself in an intimate relationship. While Howard and Truett were on a week's trip together to New Mexico (the same trip that spawned a lot of Conan's "Red Nails"), he learned his friends' relationship. The couple's friendship was irrevocably strained, but they continued to travel as friends until May 1936, when Price moved from Cross Plains for Louisiana State University to obtain a graduate degree. The two people never talked or wrote to each other again.

Price began storing an intimate snapshot of her time with Howard in an attempt to enhance her memory and writing. This was also useful years later when she wrote about their friendship in a book called One Who Walked Alone, which was the basis for the 1996 film The Whole Wide World ascent as Howard and Renée Zellweger as Price.

The bulk of Howard's fiction writing by 1936 was being devoted to westerns. Herbert Jenkins' book A Gent from Bear Creek was supposed to be published in England, and by all accounts, it looked as if he was finally breaking out of the pulps and into the more lucrative book industry. Howard, on the other hand, was finding life increasingly difficult. All of his close friends had married and were involved in their careers, Novalyne Price had left Cross Plains for graduate school, and Weird Tales, his most dependable market, had fallen substantially behind on its payments. His home life was also falling apart. His mother was finally approaching death after suffering from tuberculosis for decades. Howard found it nearly impossible to write due to the constant disruptions at home and frequent trips to various sanatoriums for her care.

Howard's intentions were evident in hindsight. Several times in 1935–36, when his mother's health worsened, he made hints at his father's suicide plan, which he did not know at the time. When speaking to Novalyne Price about being in his "sere and yellow leaf," he had made mention of being in his "sere and yellow leaf." The words sounded familiar to her, but it was only in early June 1936 that she discovered the source in Macbeth:

Howard wrote his last will and testament letter to Kline, warning his agent what to do in the event of his death, weeks before his suicide, and he borrowed a.380 Colt Automatic from his friend Lindsey Tyson. He went to Brownwood and bought a burial plot for the entire family on June 10. On the night before his suicide, when his father announced that his mother was finally dead, he wondered where his father would go after. Isaac Howard said he would go where his son went, assuming he meant to leave Cross Plains. Howard may have hoped that his father would join him in ending their lives together as a family.

Her son kept a death vigil with his father and relatives, getting little sleep, drinking a lot of coffee, and becoming more despondent in June 1936. Howard asked one of his mother's nurses, a Mrs. Green, if his mother would ever recover consciousness on the morning of June 11, 1936. When she told him no, he walked out to his car, took the pistol from the glove box, and fired himself in the chest. His father and another doctor rushed out, but nothing could be done because the wound was too bad for anything. Howard lived for another eight hours before dying at 4 p.m.; his mother died the following day. The story appeared in the entirety of that week's Cross Plains Review, as well as Howard's "A Man-Eating Jeopardy." On June 14, 1936, a double funeral service was held at Cross Plains First Baptist Church, and both were buried in Brownwood, Texas.

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