"PROFESSIONAL FAN-FICTION": CONAN: CULT OF THE OBSIDIAN MOON'S JAMES LOVEGROVE

James Lovegrove wrote the one prose story connected to Titan Comics Black Stone Sage featuring Conan with other Robert E, Howard creations. His Conan: Cult Of The Obsidian Moon gave the barbarian adventurer a tale in helping two warrior lovers, Hunwulf and Gudrun, also Howard creations, rescue their son from a cult led by priest with a dark agenda. In our Q.A., Mr. Lovegrove proved to be just as entertaining as his book.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: How did you come about doing Conan: Cult Of The Obsidian Moon?

JAMES LOVEGROVE: I have compromising material on several editors at Titan Books, and I threatened to go public with it if they didn’t agree to me writing a Conan novel. They caved, and here we are. Their sordid secrets remain secret. But if you don’t believe that, then I can only tell you that as soon as I learned Titan had the licence to publish Robert E Howard material by other authors, I made sure to throw my name into the hat. I’ve been a Howard fan since I was about ten years old, and writing a Conan novel of my own would definitely have been on my bucket list, if I had a bucket list. When I got the go-ahead to pitch story ideas, I did so, and Titan then put me in touch with Heroic Signatures and Jim Zub with a view to writing something that would tie in to the Black Stone saga in Titan’s Conan comics. I’ve greatly enjoyed those comics, so saying yes was a no-brainer. I worked up a plot which Jim and HS politely but firmly rejected, then worked up another which they politely but firmly approved of, and off I went!

S.M.: This is a part of shared comic book storylines. How much were you allowed to apply your own ideas?

J.L..: I originally wanted to do something that featured other REH characters alongside Conan. I really like Solomon Kane and El Borak in particular, so I slotted them and a couple more into a big, time-spanning, multifaceted epic. That, however, would have trodden all over what Jim was up to, so I stuck with just Conan instead. I was given parameters within which to work, one of them being that I wasn’t allowed to give away certain specific Black Stone events and twists. Aside from that, I had fairly free rein, and this allowed me to write a Conan adventure which can, first and foremost, be read independently from the comics but will also reward people who are reading them with some nice little references, Easter eggs, and thematic echoes to enjoy.

S.M.: You've also done an El Borak e-book. What do you love about Robert E Howard's writing?

J.L..: REH’s stories are brazenly, shamelessly pulpy high-adventure tales that don’t stint on the action and scarcely pause for breath. Anything and everything is possible in his writing, and as a reader you’re immediately swept along by the narrative, right from the very first sentence, like you’re caught in the current of a rushing river. El Borak himself is an interesting character, another of REH’s man-out-of-time figures who’s trying to make sense of the intrigues and complex politics of Central Asia during the so-called Great Game. The location and period fascinate me, and I love how Howard conjures up the vastness and remoteness of the mountainous regions El Borak wanders through. Supernatural elements are largely avoided in these tales, but there’s still a sense that anything and everything is possible among those snowy, desolate mountain passes and endless hidden valleys.

S.M.: Hunwulf and Gudrun are different kinds of characters for Conan to be allied with on a quest. How did you come up with this?

J.L.: I thought it would be fun to introduce a family dynamic into a Conan story. Hunwulf and Gudrun appear in a single Howard story, “The Garden of Fear”, which although not explicitly a Hyborian Age adventure seems to be set in that era nonetheless. It therefore felt plausible to me that their paths and the Cimmerian’s might cross, and if I gave them a young son, that would add yet another unusual and hopefully interesting layer to the proceedings. Conan, certainly in his early years, which is when Cult of the Obsidian Moon is set, is not what you’d call a family man. He shows no sign of wanting to settle down and give up his carousing and wenching. Hunwulf, Gudrun and their son Bjørn, then, as a close-knit little family, offer a nice contrast. And of course Bjørn getting abducted by a winged man-monster is the main plot catalyst, with Conan, who has developed a deep affection for the boy, almost as keen as his parents are to get him back safe and sound.

S.M.: Khotan-Kha is a great Conan villain. How did you go about constructing him?

J.L.: Like many a Conan baddie, Khotan-Kha is a corrupt high priest. He’s also ruler of a lost tribe of reptilian hominids who wants to do what’s best for his endangered and decadent race, even if it means others must suffer and die. I tried to make him as sympathetic as possible while still being the kind of hissable villain you want to see Conan utterly destroy.

S.M.: You also did a great job of replicating Howard's world building. How did you approach Eruk and The Rotlands?

J.L..: Eruk seems to me one of those melting-pot desert cities that’s always in a ferment, full of travelling merchants, stray chancers, and people just passing through, hot and dusty and a little bit lawless. The perfect spot, in other words, for a brawling barbarian to fetch up when he’s still mourning his beloved pirate queen Bêlit: somewhere he can lose himself and not have to think too hard about her death. As for the Rotlands, I decided to conjure up a realm where the flora and fauna are deadly, and practically everything is trying to kill you. I was inspired by Harry Harrison’s Deathworld books and also a little bit by Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X. Above all, though, I used the Rotlands to bring some juicy Lovecraftian fun into the story, drawing on his short story “The Color Out of Space” most of all, with its notion of a mundane earthly landscape being gradually transformed into something otherworldly and hellish.

S.M.: Not only have you written books on Howard heroes, but several with Sherlock Holmes, the characters of Firefly, and touched on Cthulhu. Do you try to capture the style of the original creator as much as possible, do your own take, or work at a happy meeting between the two?

J.L..: I call my pastiche work “professional fan-fiction”. I approach these books first and foremost as a fan of the source material myself, and my goal is to give other fans an experience that’s as close to the originals as I can make it. Beyond that, I always try and inject something new and slightly different so that I’m not simply treading over old ground, and when I’m dealing with works that are, shall we say, of a certain vintage and a little dated in tone and theme, I make sure to keep the narrative pace rattling along and to avoid aspects that don’t sit well with modern sensibilities. I suppose what I’m shooting for is a mix of authenticity and freshness.