Having finished the edit of Daughter Of Blood last week, I was tempted to play hookey today. But then I remembered that I still had the glossary to finalise…

Or as I like to call it, the “Gross-ary”—because it is both large and full of monsters! 😉

Fun stuff: so now, onward.

I hope the rest of you are winding down into the holiday season.  Drop a comment to let me know your holiday plans, “if you like”. 🙂
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I took this photo in South Westland, near the Gates of Haast: it’s very reminiscent of the Gondor beaconfire terrain from The Lord of the Rings films, but I believe they were shot a little (but not much) further north.

Speaking of The Lord of the Rings films, has anyone seen The Hobbit 3, Battle of the Five Armies? And if so, thoughts?

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

~ Stephen King

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I love this quote: so true, too.  😉

credit: PJ Fitzpatrick

As advised last Friday, I’m kicking off a new post series to replace A Geography Of Haarth.

In it, I shall take a word that means either a “bad guy”, eg ruffian or rogue, or a “rough diamond”, eg a roughneck, and match it with a character from my books, either Thornspell, or The Heir Of Night or The Gathering Of The Lost.

The definitions will be taken from Merriam Webster Online, the dictionary I most often use when writing.

Since the series is “Ruffians and Roughnecks” I thought I’d kick-off with “Ruffian” today.

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Ruffian: “a strong and violent person (especially a man) who threatens and hurts other people”

The arrows of evidence, I feel, are clear—they point to:

Orth:  a Derai warrior of the House of Swords

“Slowly and deliberately, one of the Derai walked toward the fallen warrior. His build was as massive as the bow he carried, and Jehane Mor and Tarathan exchanged a glance, recognizing Orth from the Farelle bridge. The Derai circled the fallen Darkswarm, slinging his bow over his shoulder and drawing a long, wickedly curved knife. He waited a moment longer then moved forward in one swift movement, wrenching the helmet off the fallen warrior’s head, jerking his head up by the hair and cutting his throat.

“Just to be sure,” said Tirorn. “Now, being Orth, he’ll mutilate the rest of the face and take the ears as a trophy.”

The huge Derai did just as Tirorn had predicted before letting the head fall forward again onto the pavement. He looked down at his fallen enemy for a moment longer, kicked the body, then walked back to his comrades.”

~  from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 6 — Facestealer
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Earlier today I posted: “And if I’m really lucky, I’ll be able to come back to you later today to tell you that the tweaks are all present and correct and the edit is done: oh blessed words.”

Well, now I can confirm that the tweaks are all present and correct and the edit is done: the “send” button has been pressed. Another frabjous day. 😉

It’s been a very long—and frequently winding!— road but the journey of a thousand miles ends as it began, with one step; or in the case of a writer, one word on the page until we come to the final line:

“…the page on the desk
is blank, the pen
a burden to the hand –
she lifts it
draws in breath
…………..will again
until the final line.”

from Orison, featured here on November 15, 2011.

Yup, that’s right folks, no “proper” post today “because” of Daughter Of Blood — The Wall Of Night Book Three, yadda, yadda…But y’all know that bit already, right.

So I hope you’ll be right on board with my saying that rather than trying to think of something fun/interesting/insightful to post I’m spending the time putting the final tweaks to the Daughter manuscript. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll be able to come back to you later today to tell you that the tweaks are all present and correct and the edit is done: oh blessed words.

After that (somewhen) I also hope to post some more about some of the hows and whys and wrinkles in the process — although there’s also the risk that once it’s done I won’t want to talk about it at all!

But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, onwards with with the tweaking. 😉

In case you missed it last week, just a headsup that Rebecca will be starting a new Big Worlds On Small Screens sub-series next week:

(Ta-da!) Fantasy/Sci-Fi Films You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.

Sounds good, huh?

Anyway, first up is Mirrormask—and Rebecca’s off to a good start because I at least have never heard of it!

Rebecca acknowledges, though, that she runs the risk of everyone contending the sub-series title every week. 😉

I also understand Rebecca’s going to trying out a new format, so check back in next Wednesday for the big reveal.

Meanwhile, to check out the full list of TV series and films reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

To discover what Rebecca does in her spare time (ahem: more reviews!) check out:

They’re All Fictional

Fairytale v: O Brother

Okay, so I don’t remember / it like that. They said we / were going for a picnic and I didn’t even want to go / but they said we needed to get out / of the house and so we were / supposed to feed the fucking ducks / or something, me and my little sister. / So we’re chucking bread / at the ducks and the sparrows / are coming down too and grabbing / the bread my sister can’t  / throw far enough and the ducks / are getting really pissed off and / then one of them grabs / a sparrow by the leg and pulls / it down under the water and / my little sister starts / crying and chucking bread at this duck / and then the sparrow bobs up / and is floating with its little / wings spread out and my sister / has snot running down over / her lips and then we look / around and Mum and Dad aren’t / there and we don’t know / our way back to the car and I’m starting / to feel cold and my little sister / won’t stop that stupid / hiccup-cry-sniff / and we’re walking away / and sniffing and back at the duck pond / I know the sparrow is still floating / with its wings out. / Then I see a piece of Lego I must / have dropped on the way / from the car and then another / and I pick them up and put / them in my pocket and we keep walking / and picking up bits of Lego / and by now it’s getting dark / so it’s lucky the last few pieces are white / like the moon and we come out / into the car park and our parents / are waiting in the car looking disappointed / and we climb in the back seat and the vinyl / is cold and slippery on my legs and / I wish I had long pants and Dad says / it’s all my fault and I need to be more responsible. / We should have stayed put where they wanted us / floating with our wings out.

(c) Helen Heath

Published in Graft, Victoria University Press, 2012

Reproduced here with permission.

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About The Poem:

Currently, I am re-posting poets who have had multiple poems featured here on “…Anything, Really” since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010.  Fairytale V: O Brother first featured on July 3, 2012, at which time I noted that the  poem is drawn from the “Fairytale” sequence in Helen’s collection Graft-–and “is possibly my favourite of those poems.”
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About The Poet:

Helen Heath is the author of Graft, a collection of poems. In 2009 she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML, where she is currently working toward her PhD. Her research project explores how science is represented in poetry. She is using this research to write poems about the intersect between people and technology. Helen won the inaugural ScienceTeller Poetry Award in 2011 for her poem ‘Making Tea in the Universe’. Graft received the Jessie McKay award for Best First Book of Poetry in the New Zealand Post Book Awards, 2013, and the collection as a whole was shortlisted for the bi-annual Royal Society Science Book prize 2013 (making it the first ever poetry or fiction book to be shortlisted). Graft’s publication was also included in the NZ Listener’s Top 100 Books in 2012, and Best New Zealand Poems 2012. Helen Heath’s writing has been published in many journals in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US. She blogs at helenheath.com and writes poetry and essays.

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

In case you missed it, there was an excellent interview with US warpoet, Brian Turner, discussing his memoir, My Life As A Foreign Country on Radio New Zealand’s Sunday Morning programme yesterday.

The interview focuses on Brian Turner’s experience in the US military in Iraq and Bosnia. To hear the in-depth interview, which is well worth your time, click on:

US Poet, Brian Turner, On Sunday Mornings

Earlier, Brian Turner’s experiences resulted in two acclaimed poetry collections: Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise.

I am a great admirer of the poetry contained in these collections, which I have featured on two occasions. The first poem featured was AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem) from Here, Bullet:

“Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds,
just under the turbulence, with anesthetics
dripping from an IV into her arm,
and the flight surgeon says The shrapnel
cauterized as it traveled through her
here, breaking this rib as it entered,
burning a hole through the left lung
to finish in her back, and all of this
she doesn’t hear…”

At the time, I offered the following commentary:

“I first heard of Brian when I was driving to one of the Autumn Poetry Readings of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective in 2009 and tuned into a public radio documentary on contemporary war poetry. Brian Turner was one of the featured poets and I heard his poem ‘AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)‘ for the first time.”

I found the poem deeply moving because of that connection it gives us to the frail humanity of Thalia Fields who is “about as far from Mississippi//as she can get.” Currently, I am slowly working my way through the Here, Bullet collection and it is full of poems that make that same connection. These poems are about the war in Iraq and the key adjective I would use to describe them is “observational.”  The poems observe, record, note, but make no judgments outside of the personal—leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind on the subject of this war, its brutality and its human cost. In this sense, I am finding it war poetry in the tradition of the First World War poet, Wilfrid Owen, who wrote: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

To read the full poem and commentary, click on:

AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)

Subsequently, I also featured VA Hospital Confessional on the Tuesday Poem Blog:

“Each night is different. Each night the same.
Sometimes I pull the trigger. Sometimes I don’t.

When I pull the trigger, he often just stands there,
gesturing, as if saying, Aren’t you ashamed?

When I don’t, he douses himself
in gasoline, drowns himself in fire.

A dog barks in the night’s illuminated green landscape
and the platoon sergeant orders me to shoot it.

Some nights I twitch and jerk in my sleep.
My lover has learned to face away…”

The commentary included the following :

“I felt, both on first hearing and subsequent reading, that it had the element I most look for in writing of any kind, which is what I call ‘heart.” In the poem I heard the note that I believe resonates in all great art and reaches out to the listener, the reader, or the viewer: that depiction of what NZ poet, Dr Glenn Colquhoun, has described as the “ache” of our human condition.

Part of that depiction may be gritty reality, another part may be compassion—both qualities that I found in Brian Turner’s first collection Here, Bullet…Brian Turner’s second collection, Phantom Noise, is still war poetry, but this is no longer the poetry of the combat zone but of its aftermath, that return to civilian life where the experiences of war, even when the individual tries to keep them locked down, still bleed into everyday life …”

To read the full poem and commentary, click on:

VA Hospital Confessional

Again, to hear yesterday’s in-depth Sunday Morning interview, check out:

US Poet, Brian Turner, On Sunday Mornings

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Brian Turner served for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq, from November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999-2000 he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. Born in 1967, he received an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before joining the army. His poetry was included in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with a feature-length documentary film.

Brian Turner’s latest book, My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir has been called “Achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful” by Nick Flynn and “a humane, heartbreaking, and expertly crafted work of literature” by Tim O’Brien. His collection Here, Bullet (Bloodaxe Books, 2007) was first published in the US by Alice James Books in 2005, where it has earned Turner nine major literary awards, including a 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship and a 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. In 2009 he was given an Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship. His second collection, Phantom Noise, is published by Alice James Books in the US and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK. It was shortlisted for the 2010 T S Eliot Prize.

To read more about the poet and Phantom Noise you may also enjoy the following article that appeared in The Guardian newspaper in October 2010: “Brian Turner, words of war.”

Right now, my book-de-jour is Brandon Sanderson’s Words Of Radiance, the second novel of the Stormlight Archive.

I am around about the middle with my reading, chipping away a few pages at a time—not because I’m not enjoying it but because I’m so busy right now I don’t have  a whole lot of reading time.

So I am taking my time and really enjoying the read so far—I’m currently around half way through. (These are Very Big Books, mind you?)

How about you: what’s your reading matter-de-jour?