Say you're a world-famous novelist with a few hours in Dallas to kill before you speak to a packed auditorium of eager fans. How do you fill your day — do you take in a museum? Grab some barbecue? Hole up in your hotel room and work?

How about — drive yourself 2 ½ hours to a podunk Texas town, then turn around and drive back just in time for your event?

That's what Michael Chabon did Monday. The appeal? Conan the Barbarian. Or, more precisely, the Robert E. Howard House and Museum in Cross Plains.

"I've wanted to go for a really long time," the author said Monday night after delighting a full house at the Dallas Museum of Art, where he spoke as part of the Arts & Letters Live series. "And I've never had the opportunity. And then this morning, I suddenly realized — I have this whole afternoon until I had to come here. So I thought, 'If I'm ever going to do this — how far is it?'"

Howard, who created Conan and many other legendary characters, was a prolific writer who churned out 800 short stories — at a rate of up to 12,000 words a day — from his small bedroom in his parents' home in Cross Plains. He died in 1936 at age 30, taking his own life as his mother lay dying.

A picture of Robert E. Howard sits on the shelf of the library along with some foreign editions of his books in Cross Plains. (Carol T. Powers / (DMN file) )

He's known as the father of the Swords and Sorcery genre. Chabon knows his work well.

"I'm huge fan," he said, who goes back to reading his work every couple of years.

Was the five-hour round trip worth it? Definitely, Chabon said. In addition to enjoying his first glimpse of Texas that involved a city smaller than Austin, Chabon received a personal tour from a lifelong resident of Cross Plains who had known some of Howard's neighbors.

"I'm so glad that I went," Chabon said. "I saw the room where he wrote all his work, and it was really moving."

Chabon, whose imaginative works include the adventure novel Gentlemen of the Road and the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, found it poignant to think of how Howard's work — which carried readers "across time to all kinds of imaginary places " — sprang from "this tiny little screened porch, like a sleeping porch, that they turned into his bedroom in this tiny little town."

"I mean, if you're at all interested," he said, "it's totally worth it."

Dallas Theater Center artistic director Kevin Moriarty (left) interviews author Michael Chabon on Monday at the Dallas Museum of Art. (Michael Merschel)

For the record, Chabon's talk was worth it as well. He had a relaxed onstage chat with the Dallas Theater Center's Kevin Moriarty. Chabon drew laughs from the crowd as he shared details about everything from his musical collaboration with producer Mark Ronson to the book's conception and growth and later described the way he and author Ayelet Waldman, his wife, share work. (Quick summary: They tend to defend their writing ferociously — "You only think that because you're an idiot" — then eventually acknowledge that the other person was absolutely right.)

Author Michael Chabon meets with fans after his talk Monday at the Dallas Museum of Art. (Michael Merschel)

He had memorable thoughts on writer's block: "I don't believe in writer's block. There's no such thing as writer's block. If you work at the same time every day — it's part of your schedule to sit down at 9 a.m. or 2 p.m. or in my case 10 p.m. to write — and you make it a habit then ... if by writer's block you mean no words will come, that just never happens. Because you've trained your body. It's very much like training your bowels: You sit down and, you know, you go."

He also was enlightening as he described how the title Moonglow came about. It happened early in the writing process, when he knew only that his book would be set in 1950s New York.

"It was very much the Kavalier & Clay world that I was back in. And I thought, 'Maybe I should do what I did when I was doing Kavalier & Clay, which is — I listened to big band swing. I would put on Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw, and just hearing that music — I always have a strong connection to the music from that period ... it was a shortcut always, to quote Glenn Miller, to get me in the mood."

He continued: "I was listening to the Benny Goodman Quartet, and they have a version of the song 'Moonglow.' A beautiful version that I have always loved. And listening to that version — it's sweet, but it's also melancholy. It's lyrical, and it's tight and rhythmic." And he thought to himself, "'I want to try to write this book ... to make the reader feel the way listening to this song makes me feel. So in order to ensure that happens, I'm going to call this book Moonglow.' And at that point I didn't have von Braun or rockets or the moon or any of that stuff. I was still writing about the grandfather trying to choke his boss to death."