The broken bridge

Yep, this morning I want to reflect on yesterday’s “high 5” earthquake (plus aftershocks:  shudders, nasty — or perhaps I mean, nasty shudders!)

Five years ago, we experienced eighteen months of unmitigated awful with the Christchurch earthquakes (from September 2010 to December 2011).

Since then, the earthquakes have never  completely died away, but yesterday, for the first time since (I understand) 25 May, 2012, Christchurch experienced a major earthquake. I believe it has now  officially been confirmed as 5.7 on the Richter scale — and was followed by a large number (over 40 at last count) of aftershocks, the highest registering at 4.2 (Richter scale.)

The event (or swarm of events) was definitely “interesting”. And a large number of people reported what I also felt, which was shock and frayed nerves — a sign, probably, that we are none of us as recovered from the events of 2010 – 2011 as we might have wanted to believe.

Still not fixed, 5 years on…

From a personal perspective, it was also “interesting” to be experiencing yet another large earthquake (& aftershock swarm) in a house that—five years on from the February 22nd, 2011,  earthquake that did most of the damage—still has not been restored. This is because we still have not been able to resolve our insurance claim with IAG NZ , despite not inconsiderable effort (and expense incurred in trying) to do so.

This is something that I have been thinking is material for this year’s February 22nd commemorative blog — but yesterday’s earthquakes certainly brought it all into focus. So, too, did the widened (existing from 2011) cracks in various places, aka ‘let’s open that up just a little — or even a lot — wider.’

Not what any of us needed, I’m sure — but then, as I also observed on Twitter: “Alas, my preferences were not consulted.” :-/

Didn’t think I’d be writing another actual earthquake report though, as opposed to a commemorative post.

We Still Really Need Your Help: Give A Little — & Help Us Save Christchurch’s Heritage and Notable Trees

And there’s just 5 days to go! 🙁

The Council may be back-peddling on some trees, but despite what media reports might suggest, the battle to get Christchurch’s most significant Heritage and Notable trees relisted — and protected — through the City Plan is far from over.

That’s because although the City may have originally proposed this and now reconsidered — although only on some trees — the Council’s not the body making the final decision. That will be up to the Independent Hearing Panel — and what the Panel listens to is expert evidence and legal argument.

Which is why it is so vital we can raise the money that will allow us to keep providing the expert evidence and making the legal case for Christchurch’s most significant trees.  Donations are being collected through the Civic Trust,  a properly constituted charitable agency — which also means that donations are tax deductible. (Just sayin’.)

And Now — Meet The Trees!

On the Give A Little site, the  team have started posting updates that introduce you to some of the most significant trees that still face losing their current protected status. I hope you enjoy meeting them  — and will consider if you can either give a little, or give a little more,  to keep fighting their corner.

Meet the Yaldhurst Gum:

“…a tree that used to be on Council’s website as an example of one of Christchurch’s most significant trees … and is of particular genetic interest …”

To find out more, click on:

Saving Christchurch’s Heritage and Notable Trees

Then go to “Updates”. There’s a great photo, too!

Next Tree Up: the Burnside cabbage trees — watch this space!

“If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say, don’t listen to writers talking about writing. “

~ Lillian Hellman, 1905 – 1984

—

I smiled when I read this, because I think “mostly” it hits the nail on the head.

USA

A week ago, I proposed a 4-step plan for anyone who likes a book to support it in the world — if she/he chooses to, of course!

So far, so good. But I also featured a very interesting quote from friend and fellow author Courtney Schafer, talking about the importance of honest reviews:

“If you wish to leave an honest review on Amazon, that would be wonderful. If you’re wondering why reviews there are such a big deal to authors, it’s because new reviews push the book up in the ranking and recommendation algorithms, thereby helping new readers to more easily discover the series.” ~ Courtney Schafer

UK/AU/NZ

So that means it’s not just enough to get good reviews—any author also needs lots of reviews, to benefit from the algorithms and increase a book’s visibility for potential new readers.

The auguries seem plain — so if you are one of those wonderful readers who have written to tell me how much you have enjoyed  Daughter of Blood then I would love it if you could share your view, including through doing a review on Amazon and your preferred review site.

Thank you (in advance .) 🙂

Just a quick headsup for 58 Eridani followers that we may have a hiatus on tomorrow’s episode, since our game log author, Andrew, has been away — but fear not, you shall have something else to enjoy in its stead. And Andrew will be back next Saturday with another exciting episode for you, I feel quite sure of that.

—

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of a round up from around t’interwebs, to wrap up the week:

USA

1. On Monday, I had a guest post featured on Write and Take Flight blog:

“Not so very long ago, and in several cities both near and farther away (because her family moved around a lot) lived a little girl who loved stories …”

To read the full post, see:

The Road To Story: Helen Lowe & the Wall Of Night series
.

UK/AU/NZ

2. Interviews via iHeart Radio

I recorded three interviews with iHeart radio this week that I understand will feature throughout their radio network over the next week or so, so keep your radar scanning and ears open. 🙂
.

USA

3. Forthcoming — A Podcast Interview with Functional Nerds

I’ll be recording this Northern Hemisphere Saturday, but my Sunday — however, it won’t play until Tuesday, which  of course is Wednesday already for NZ and Aus folk… So you may have to ‘watch this space’ for when it will actually play — the same with the “play” date for my podcast panel discussion with Kate Elliott and Courtenay Schafer, hosted by Paul Weimer on Skiffy & Fanty.

But you’ll know as soon as I do!

Heroines ‘r’ us…

4. Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World — Resuming Normal Service This Week:

Yup–hope to get back into that this week so keep your eyes on SF Signal.

I wonder, though, how many of you will be familiar with my featured heroine? The author is not completely unknown, but you don’t hear a lot about her anymore…

And now having (I hope!) tantalised you, I shall leave you to get on with your weekend. 🙂

UK/AU/NZ

Last week I shared the first of my deleted scenes, which rejoined Malian and Raven in Stoneford, directly after the culmination of events in The Gathering Of The Lost.

As noted then, in the end I decided the story didn’t need to immediately follow on from The Gathering Of The Lost events, and that the overall story worked better picking up the Malian and Raven thread “post Aralorn” — hence this material all becoming a “deleted Act.”

You may recognise parts of the scene that got recycled elsewhere (as much as I can remember them!) but that’s all part of the fun. 😉

Last week’s warning also applies: “All deleted scenes are at “first draft” level only—so very much raw material. Consider yourself duly warned.”

—

Deleted Scene 2 — Malian & Raven Depart Aralorn

“…

His gaze, across the pan of frying eggs, was measuring. “Are you recovered enough to attempt it? Opening a gate for both of us, plus three horses, will take considerable strength. From what I understand, distance will affect it as well.” He flipped the eggs onto their plates, breaking off a piece of bread for each of them.

She regarded him curiously. “I thought you would know.”

USA

His eyes held Raven’s familiar sardonic glint. “The ability was always less common than you might think from the stories told, among either the Sworn or the Derai. We tended to have squadrons dedicated to the task and recruits with any ability didn’t get a choice about where they served. But those who could open a gate by themselves, let alone carry others through it with them—they are rare.”

Malian  concentrated on eating the eggs while they were hot. “Well, I can do it,” she said finally. “And I know where I’m going this time, since I can use the shrines I visited on my way south as destination points.” She did not add that she had hoped not to be in a position to use them, because if the Derai Lost had accompanied her she could not have opened a gate that would accommodate their numbers. “The surrounding groves mean they’re always secluded and there are enough of them that I can shorten or lengthen my distance at need.” She shrugged, eating the last of the egg with regret. “I think it’s worth the risk, because I assume it will take you time to muster the Patrol.”

“Yes.” He sounded reserved, and she glanced up from her plate, realizing she might have missed a potential problem.

“I hadn’t thought— How does your immunity work with gates? Can you still use them?”

“Gates are more like the runes, a tool, and those who are called immune can use tools, even those constructed from magic.” He still sounded as though his mind was on something else. “Perhaps, until you’re sure of your strength, it might be best to attempt shorter distances. I recall our gate squadrons were always concerned with that and distances between points were carefully calculated.”

Malian frowned, thoughtful rather than disagreeing. “It’s more intuitive for me. In some ways the distance doesn’t matter, because opening the gate is like bringing the two disparate places, the entry and exit points, together as one—but the further they are apart physically, the harder it is to do.”

UK/AU/NZ

“Short distances then,” Raven said, and she nodded, repressing a shiver at some of the stories of what happened to those who made mistakes with gates.

He finished eating first and went to clean the cooking equipment and packed it away again with the rest of his gear. Malian ate the last of her own food more slowly and when she stood up again and went to clean her own utensils, she noted that Raven had been busy over the past few days, which she had largely spent sleeping. The charcoal bin had been refilled and the worn leather tie on the door latch had been replaced. She could see the pile of debris where the shrine gutters, overflowing in the storm that followed her arrival, had been cleared out as well, and her gray cob—picketed amongst the olive trees with Raven’s Aralorn hill horses—had been groomed.

They were the same horses he had been riding when they first met in the Long Pass of Emer, and just as much part of his guise as the shabby hedge knight, she realized now, as the fetishes of bone and feather tied into his helmet. Just as she had abandoned the persona of Carick, the youthful scholar, Raven must have left the knight of Normarch and Caer Argent behind when he followed her south. She could see why: the hedge knight and his hill horses would draw far less attention in Aralorn—but she still felt a pang of regret for that first meeting, when Raven had rescued Carick from the outlaws known as the wolfpack and everything had been a great deal simpler between them.

USA

“You ride Maya,” Raven said, emerging from the shrine with his saddle over one shoulder and his travel roll over the other, and nodding to the second of his hill horses. “She’s more what an archer would ride and the cob will serve as our packhorse.” He carried his bridle in his right hand, but held up another fetish string of bone and small birds’ feathers, with two, longer crow’s feathers at one end. “If you bind these into your cap, we’ll look like we’re part of the same mercenary band. It’s a Lathayran custom,” he added, when she hesitated, and Malian nodded, knowing that Lathayra was where mercenary companies found most of their work these days.

Authenticity, she also knew, was key to any disguise—so she took the cap off and worked the fetish string into it her hair, while Raven saddled his mare, Peta, and then transferred Maya’s pack saddle onto the cob. Malian returned to the shrine and moved her own tack and travel gear out onto the porch, before emptying the brazier ashes and sweeping the space clean of any sign of their occupation. She also left a gift by the altar, as thanks for the shelter: two Emerian silver talents with the oak tree on one side and the Black Tower on the other, and a charm of Seruth she had made herself, in the style popular on the River. Even there, the charms were sought after by travelers and expensive to buy, but far more so in the south. Malian hoped the lay priest would feel it compensated for their occupation of his shrine—and she had bound in an invocation to Ornorith’s smiling face as well, an old Derai tradition in return for hospitality.

She secured the door again on leaving and saddled and bridled Maya while Raven loaded the remainder of their gear onto the cob. When they were done she led the way into the grove, where their only companion was the breeze, rustling the olive leaves and turning the edge of every leaf to silver. The shrine lay out of sight behind them and the road was just a bend of dusty ribbon, glimpsed between gnarled trunks. Raven was quiet, holding Peta and the cob’s reins.

UK/AU/NZ

Malian closed her eyes and opened her mind to the sun-warmed song of power that was Aralorn. She let her mind travel back along the road she had ridden to get here: the small villages, with outlying farmhouses among patchwork fields and grazing sheep; the shrine at Lowcliff that was just a cairn beside a crossroads, and the chapel in Hurdle that doubled as storage for wool bales and sacks of grain at need. Lowcliff was too near, she decided, and Crossgate with its fine mosaic of the god crossing a stream in flood—a relic from the Old Empire with its bright, unfaded colors and lifelike curl of water about the divine knees—too far for her first attempt. “Hurdle,” she said aloud—and felt Nhenir’s presence focus sharpen, and the thrum of the sword’s silent power, linked to that of the helm.

She had extended her arms once, in the Old Keep of Winds, invoking the gate while Hylcarian’s golden fire wreathed her  hands. Now she simply visualized the small chapel, with a straggle of olive trees on one side and an almond grove on the other, and brought the two places together in her mind. From there she extended her will, transmuting the mental image into reality: that placed joined to this, with the frame of her silver fire forming an opening between Hurdle’s almond grove and Stoneford’s olives.

The scent of Aralorn—warm, dry earth and sheep’s fleece, woodsmoke and olive oil—rose in her nostrils as the song of the southern earth murmured along her veins. An olive bough brushed against the silver shimmer in the air but did not burn, and although the gray cob snorted, throwing up its head, Raven spoke quietly and he steadied again. Peta pricked her ears forward, interested, but did not shy away as Raven led her into the gate.

USA

I keep forgetting he must have done this before, Malian thought: he may even have a House of Fire gate squadron with the Patrol. She waited until the cob’s tail had swished through before following herself. Maya ambled through beside her, imperturbable as Peta, and Malian closed the gate as soon as they both stood fully on the Hurdle side. The imprint of the Stoneford olive trees lingered briefly on the bright air, and then there was just their small company, standing beside the Hurdle shrine.

“All right?” Raven asked, with knight of Normarch’s searching look.

Malian nodded, her mind already reaching ahead to Crossgate. The portal opened to a view of the stone chapel’s door of weathered oak, and Malian hesitated as she joined Raven outside it. “I should like to see the mosaic,” she said, reaching her decision as she closed the second portal. “Because I may never come this way again,” she added, partly to Nhenir, but mostly to herself. She did not need to say that might be because she would fall in some distant pass of Night’s Wall, the same way that Yorindesarinen had done, on a long-ago world.

A line of cold fire ran around the armring, echoing the dead hero’s name, its flicker bright against the chapel’s shade as she stepped inside. Raven tied the horses to the ring in the chapel wall and followed her, his boots a muted echo on the stone floor. Malian paused a few paces from the mosaic, taking in the vivid colors again and the artist’s depiction of Seruth’s face, in the Haarth god’s aspect of the traveler. The face was ageless, unlined and fair, but the eyes were older, dark and far-seeing—the eyes of the sojourner who has observed everything there is to see of the world’s condition, both the sorrow and the joy. Malian gazed back into those eyes, depicted by some long dead artists, and her seer’s vision rose and showed her—not Seruth, Imulun’s bright son on one of his many journeys, but Raven, riding the length and breadth of Haarth along both high roads and back trails, and serving as hedge knight and household warrior from Emer to Ishnapur, through the course of a thousand years.

She turned, the seer’s light still in her eyes, and studied him: not just his hard-to-make out expression, but the hedge knight’s wellworn harness, and the bone and feathers woven into his helmet crest—and had the sense of standing on the edge of a precipice, above very deep water …”

© Helen Lowe

USA

I am deliberately not reading reviews of Daughter of Blood — I have decided to wait until the dust settles on initial publication before getting perspective on the ‘big picture’ of reviewer response.

However, some readers have got in touch directly, so I thought I’d share a few examples of what they’re saying:

“Just finished #DaughterOfBlood. Love it, love it, love it!” — via Twitter

“A quick note to say it’s been quite a while since I have enjoyed reading a series as this. I look forward to “The Chaos Gate” , hope it will be soon.” — via webmail

“it was a long time coming but the wait for Daughter of Blood was well worth it! Looking forward to The Chaos Gate!”  — via Twitter

UK/AU/NZ

“I was actually a little bit sad when I finished. So you have an idea of the UK publication date for the chaos gate?” — via Twitter

“I have been looking forward to this release for months. I have just finished reading the book for the first time and it was well worth the wait.” — via the blog

“well written @helenl0we “You don’t have to be like them,” Kalan said. “Kinship, for all its importance, is an accident of birth. Who we associate with and how we act in this life is always choice, however much we may pretend otherwise, even to ourselves.” “ –— via Twitter & Good Reads

I’d watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull’s mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing — “The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh,
O silly lover!”
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and did no longer wish to die;
Being glad of you, O pine-trees and the sky!

Rupert Brooke, 1887 – 1915

—

I am starting my year in poetry by featuring poems that focus on trees — but which also highlight the human emoional and psychological connection to trees. I thought this one was particularly interesting, in that respect.

To find out more about why I’m posting about trees, click on:

Speaking for the Trees

UK/AU/NZ

My fellow SFF author, Canadian Julie Czerneda, is proofing right now and yesterday I saw her tweet: “Names matter!”

Yes, I thought, they do…

Asantir, one of the leading secondary characters in The Wall of Night series, is a great example of why.

Although she’s now the Commander of Night, readers may recall when Asantir was  the Honour Captain in The Heir of Night. Originally, the Honour Captain wasn’t intended to be a major character. Yet in trying to give Derai names a commonality for (within the story) “cultural”  purposes, I ended up with too many names that just looked and sounded the same.

“That’s OK,” I thought, “I’ll just change a few of them and resolve the problem.” I started with the (then) Honour Captain character, eventually deciding on “Asantir” as the new name. But as soon as I started using it, the “Honour Captain” transformed into a completely “other” character.

USA

Asantir not only looked different, she also had a completely different personality and she certainly wasn’t going to be a bit player anymore. On the contrary, she took a metaphorical step forward, put her hands on her hips and said: “I’m here, I’m important to this story, and you’d better pay attention.”

Needless to say, I’ve been paying attention ever since. 😉

Che’Ryl-g-Raham, the Tuckerization character in Daughter Of Blood is very similar in that as soon as I came up with the name (a fantasization of “Cheryl Graham”) the character took on a life of her own — an awesome life I may add, imho.

So you see, Julie Czerneda is quite right: names do matter.

Cordyline australis – a NZ cabbage tree

Last Sunday I posted about “speaking for the trees” and the Give A Little that I’m currently supporting:

Saving Christchurch Heritage and Notable Trees

This morning, another Christchurch person, forester Mark Belton, appeared on National (public) radio where he spoke eloquently to the situation that Christchurch is currently facing with the potential delisting of 80% of its Heritage and Notable trees. To listen, click on:

Mark Belton — Saving Christchurch’s Trees

There is a full range of listening and download options available, here.

Avenue of rare (in NZ) Bartram’s oak

For more information, please check out last week’s post:

It’s Book Release Week and That’s Important — But So Is Speaking For The Trees

Or watch the video on the Give A Little page — and if you feel able, give as generously as you can afford:

Give A Little: Help Us Save Christchurch’s Heritage and Notable Trees

Also, just this: thank you.