The Hour of the Dragon (Conan the Conquerer)

"Find the Heart of your kingdom." With these cryptic words, the sylvan witch Zelata sends Conan, the barbarian once-and-future King of Aquilonia, forth on a quest that will take him back along all the long, weary trails he once trod on his way to the kingship of the greatest of the Hyborian nations. Along the way, he'll battle traitorous noblemen, crafty bandits, scheming merchants, bloodthirsty pirates, mysterious assassins from the East, eldritch vampires from the tomb, and powerful Stygian wizard-priests - and, in the end, he'll face an enemy called up from the land's nightmare-haunted past, an evil ancient wizard who plans to bring back his 3,000-year-old empire of blood and sorcery .... The Pulp-Lit Press Annotated Storytellers' Editions are designed for readers who are interested in the art and craft of storytelling - which is to say, usually, fiction writers. Annotations are in-depth, and focus on identifying, appreciating and learning from the techniques and tools each author uses to weave his or her particular brand of narrative magic. All annotations appear in a separate section at the end of these editions, to prevent them from interrupting the experience of the story.
About the Author: Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was a prolific writer of vivid, imaginative short stories, novelettes and novels, mostly written for the pulp magazine market. A highly educated son of a medical doctor in the heart of Texas, he developed an unusual style characterized by a style that was usually smooth and cinematic, frequently darkly and hypnotically poetic, and occasionally split like flashes of lightning with scenes of terse, evocative action. He is best known for his Conan the Cimmerian character; other characters for which he is known include Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, sailor Steve Costigan, and El Borak. Finn J.D. John is the author of Wicked Portland: The Wild and Lusty Underworld of a Frontier Seaport Town (The History Press, 2012), and the editor/annotator of The John Carter Trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Pulp-Lit Press, 2014), and produces the weekly Pulp-Lit Storytellers Club podcast and the thrice-weekly Offbeat Oregon History podcast. He writes a locally syndicated weekly newspaper column titled "Offbeat Oregon History" (http: //offbeatoregon.com), which runs regularly in 16 community newspapers in his home state. Finn also teaches New Media Communications at Oregon State University, specializing in trans-media franchises as a venue for creative expression. He can be reached via Twitter at @offbeatoregon or by e-mail at finn@pulp-lit.com.