Conan the Accountant

Some time not too long after I moved to Calgary, I had an idea for a book I called Conan the Accountant. That must have been in 1980 or 1981. My memory had faded about what I did, because I didn’t think I had done anything but think about it. I found eleven typewritten pages from the story, so I did more than think about it.

The idea of the story was that a Conan type character is transferred from the sword and sorcery era he lives in, to the modern world. I think I must have intended it to be a parody.

The first thing I realized was that I hadn’t used the name Conan. I called the hero Howard (or Howie) the Barbarian. Also, he gets a job in an advertizing company.

The stuff I found was from two parts of the story. The first part was after he reached the modern world. In it he is hunting for a job, and learning that he can’t use the same skills he’d use to hunt a lion. I have one line where he mentioned that he’d already left two interviewers lying in pools of their own blood when they didn’t offer him a job. The second part is set before he moves to the modern world. In it he meets a wizard and a new companion to help him in his quest.

It looks as if I typed the story without any notes or real outline. There were hardly any corrections, which surprises me. Lots of typos though. Some of the writing would be embarrassing to me, but it does sound a lot like the kind of story I was trying to emulate.

I started to convert the story to computer files with optical character recognition. I have three pages to go. I don’t think I can make any use of it, but I wanted it available.

When I was in high school, I started to write a Doc Savage story. Like my Conan story, I gave up on it after a short while. I would like to find it again. My basement is piled high with boxes full of my old paper, so it won’t be easy to find it. That is, if I even kept it.

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