Rattle of Bones (first draft)

First published in Weird Tales, June 1929. In Germany, Kane meets a traveler named Gaston L’Armon, who seems familiar to Kane, and together they take rooms in the Cleft Skull Tavern. At this time in his career, Howard was an inexperienced professional writer. Several times when he sent his drafts story to Weird Tales, he was careful to prepare carbons.

When the first draft of Rattle of Bones was written, Howard decided that it needed another ending. The draft consisted of seven pages of which he rewrote the last two and changed the ending. This was what he sent to Weird Tales and what was published. The REH Foundation printed the first version of the 1928 story in their very first issue of ‘The Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter’ in the spring of 2007.

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