Author’s Proof

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Copyright 2025 James LaFond

A Crackpot Book

Barbaric Conspirator/Editor: Montius

Lynn Lockhart Publisher

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A Novel inspired by A Song of the Naked Lands by Robert E. Howard, written in tribute to his rampant muse and long literary shadow. Suggested by Montius, host of a ragged tramp poet, over beer, at a board shared with knives, axes and an outstanding hound named Norman; a posthumous collaboration with Robert E. Howard begun in Wichita Kansas on a gray, storm-trodden day.

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Dedicated to Dunsanian Dreams youtube channel, whose dramatic reading of Howard’s excellent poem A Song of the Naked Lands, read by Jesus Celaya, which lit the fire of fiction in the mind of this visiting pulp fighter adrift on the swells of a world, a world that to Robert E. Howard could be nothing more than a waning place of many hells.

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The Novel To Wit

A Collaboration with Montius, over a buxom Twin Peaks mouse pad, as Norman, the Grand Hound slobbers and moans in this man cave that is Montius’ lair of a home.

23 chapters inspired by the 23 verses of hyper-heroic poetry by Robert E. Howard, titles extracted from the verse by Montius, wearing his Frazzetta shirt of Conan and his slave girl staring off into the desert haze in the first scene of Xuthal of the Dusk. Chapter length limited to 995 words.

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Of The Naked Lands

A Song of the Naked Lands by Robert E. Howard

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Notes on Rhythm Composition

Civilization balanced by Barbarism

Chapter title:

Odd will be Civilization

Even will be Barbarism

Each Chapter:

4 line verse quote, each line capitalized, punctuation rhythm expressed in scene structure.

2 scenes per chapter, untitled:

Scene 1: Civilization, begun with the feminine colon, 499 words or less

Scene 2—Barbarism, born with the masculine M-dash, up to 496 words

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‘The Blossom’s Shivering Shard’

Chapter 1

“You lolled in gardens where breezes fan

The blossom’s shivering shard;

But we were bred in a naked land

Where life was bitter and hard.”

-Verse 1

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Scene 1:

“Basically your palatial scene of people lounging around.”

Scene 2—

“The second scene would be these barbarians in the wastelands surviving—hardened barbarian.”

“At first you have two very separate scenes, but as the barbarians become more like the civilized people, the scenes will come closer together. Start with a prince and a chief and after the prince is slain you have the chief become a father, grandfather, great grandfather, watching his lineage become soft like the prince and then you have to introduce a new barbarian chief. So we have four characters: the prince, the chief—he’s old and dying and then the next scene, his grandson becomes the prince and after he dies it is the new chief and the decadent prince a postscript to the old chief’s civilizational woe. Four characters to fit the four line rhythm of the poem—the whole poem is the conqueror’s lament.”

-Montius

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The Dregs’

Chapter 2

“You raped the grapes of their purple soul

For your wine cups brimming high;

We stooped to dregs of the muddy hole

That was bitter with alkali.

-Verse 2

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‘Flabby and Round’

Chapter 3

“And you grew flabby and round of limb,

Short of nerve and breath;

But we grew rugged and lean and grim

In our naked grip with Death.

-Verse 3

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The Hunted

Chapter 4

“Silk was too harsh for your dainty skin,

Red wine too poor for your drought;

We hunted the holes that the rain stood in,

And stripped the wolf for our clout.”

-Verse 4

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Fat of The Earth

Chapter 5

“Round were your bellies soft, soft your hand,

Soft with the fat of the earth;

Yours was the wealth of a smiling land

Ours the deserts dearth.”

-Verse 5

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At Your Gate

Chapter 6

“You sang beneath the locust tree,

Forgetful of hunger and hate:

‘It has always been it will always be!—’

Even then we were at your gate.”

-Verse 6

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Corn

Chapter 7

“You lolled by fountain and golden hall

Until that frenzied morn;

When we burst the gates and breached the wall

And cut you down like corn.”

-Verse 7

Reaped the Yield

Chapter 8

“We reaped the yield and we plowed the field

With red and dripping shares,

And you could not fight and you could not run,

You could only die like hares.”

-Verse 8

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Bruised and Bleeding Loins

Chapter 9

“Grim was the barter, red the trade

With drippings words for coins,

And your women screamed in the trampled sand

With bruised and bleeding loins.”

-Verse 9

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Bloody Sand

Chapter 10

“Skilled was the brain and skilled the hand

That shaped the stubborn stone,

But the brain spilled on the bloody sand

When iron split the bone.”

-Verse 10

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The Written Page

Chapter 11

“The hand that traced the gilded frieze,

That scrolled the written page,

It could not turn the driven steel,

Backed by the primal rage.”

-Verse 11

“A library with scrolls with blood spattered on them.”

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The Dripping Axe

Chapter 12

“Of what avail the harp and lute,

Gemmed girdle and purple cloak,

When the dripping axe was smiting home

In the flame and the blinding smoke?”

-Verse 12

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Silk and Lace

Chapter 13

“Blood smeared your satin and silk and lace.

You heard your children moan,

And your elders howled in the market place

Where we stripped them skin from bone.”

-Verse 13

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A Naked Slayer

Chapter 14

“And where your bearded judges sat

And bade men live or die,

A naked slayer roared and waved

A bloody scalp on high.”

-Verse 14

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Slaves

Chapter 15

“Over the ruins arched and spired

The billowing smoke cloud waves;

And you who lived when the sword was tired,

You live but as our slaves.”

-Verse 15

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Wealth

Chapter 16

“Our hard hands clutch your golden cups,

Our rough feet crush your flowers;

We stable our horses in your halls,

And all your wealth is ours.”

-Verse 16

“As the old civilization is falling our titling should point out how the conquerors are adopting civilized ways.”

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Our Beards Unshorn

Chapter 17

“We doffed our wolfskin clouts for silks,

We wear then clumsily,

Our eyes are bleak, our beards unshorn,

Our matted locks streamed free.”

-Verse 17

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As Soft as You

Chapter 18

“But our sons will trim their beards and hair,

Don cloaks of crimson hue;

They will take your daughters to their beds’

Till they grow as soft as you.”

-Verse 18

“This is the Normans, they were bad-ass conquerors then they became royal faɡɡots and now those weird pedophiles are still in power over there.”

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Culture and Art

Chapter 19

“They will trade their freedom for harps and lutes,

Discard the bow and the dart;

They will build a prison of satin and gold,

And call it Culture and Art.”

-Verse 19

“They are becoming art fags, opening up museums and lisping, ‘Look at this!’ ”

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Rot

Chapter 20

“They will lie in the lap of a smiling land,

Till its rusts unman and rot them,

And they scorn their blood, and the calloused hand,

And the fathers who begot them.”

-Verse 20

“I like that corrosive force, that entropy that degradates them.”

Our Brothers

Chapter 21

“But our brothers still dwell in the sun-seared waste

And their sons are hard and lank;

They will hunt the wolf-pack that we chased,

And drink the water we drank.”

-Verse 21

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Hunger

Chapter 22

“The hungers we knew they too will know,

The scars of fangs and of briars;

In the rocks where they crouch when the sand storms blow

They will find the marks of our fires.”

-Verse 22

I will attempt to employ the hunger engendered by trapped elemental masses become demonic slaves to technological sorcery, inspired by the 1946 study of Friedrich Georg Junger into Perfection Without Purpose.

Our Slothful Sons

Chapter 23

“They will know the hungers that once we had,

While the stream of centuries runs,

Till they burst from the desert, hunger-mad,

To slaughter our slothful sons.”

-Verse 23

“Bursting the gate repeats, something similar, because at this point they are not recognizable as barbarians anymore.”

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To The Reader

After reviewing our collaboration, with our passed poetical hero, it is my intention to use this posthumous amplification of Robert E. Howard’s searing verse as a tool for improving this writer’s pulp prose. I am inspired by his yarn, The Scarlet Citadel, in which verses began each chapter to sublime stage-setting effect. I was simply stricken numb by the power of A Song of the Naked Lands and latched onto this previously unread poem by the young man who inspired me to write as an old man, in the wise of the civilian regarding the horizon with a budding dread that from thence, comes a barbarian.

-James LaFond, Los Angeles, California, Thursday, July 24 2025

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Across the River

The Boatman has been busy this past year, taking Kelly, Rosa and now Rick, all three snatched from the circle of hospitable souls this writer rests among between tramps of fortune. Two days ago I failed to handle the new computer sent by that sisterly muse, Lynn, to guest on a podcast to promote a history book published under the imprint of my grandchildren. Nothing feels more like failure, than failing to leave a shard shaped by your hand for the young people in your heart. Do the howling muses offer a reprieve…?

I have spent a week now between 7,000 and 11,000 feet in high desert lands during the worst drought in memory. Three weeks and change remain to write the remaining four and forty scenes. Alexander, I trust, shall forgive me, a man of the lack lands as he was, for putting off his history another month in hopes of being equal to the task.

-JL, Oakley, Utah, Wednesday, August 13, 2025