“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

― Raymond Chandler

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Well there you go folks, easy-peasy — if  a tad messy! 😉

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Today’s entry is the second for “J.”

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Jhaine:  one of the Southern Realms of Haarth

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‘He, at least, seemed prepared for trouble, with the multiple braids of his hair clubbed into a knot and a pair of short, curved swords strapped to his back.  Asantir’s brows had risen again when she saw them, for swallowtail swords were a weapon of Ishnapur.

“And Jhaine,” Tarathan had answered, when she said as much, “but they are popular now in the cities of the River.” ‘

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 10 — In The Old Keep

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‘ “Except Jhaine,” Audin said, when she asked. “The Jhainarians are horsemen beyond compare and say they have no need of Lathayrans to swell their ranks.”

“What you really mean,” Kalan drawled from behind them, “is that Jhainarians are xenophobes with little love for those beyond their borders. Besides, they’re mercenaries themselves: Jhainarian auxiliaries are among the Shah of Ishnapur’s elite.” ‘

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 30 — The Welcome Cup

Last week I heralded  a new “mini-post” series on the blog, starting today, titled “Here’s SpecFicNZ Wellington.”

As I set out then, SpecFicNZ is the “national association for creators, writers and editors of speculative fiction in or from New Zealand” and I thought some of my blog readers might enjoy “‘meeting” a few more of the member, following the very successful “Here’s SpecFicNZ — Christchurch” series from earlier in the year.

As I also explained, effectively my fellow SpecFicNZ-ers will be introducing themselves using a series of common headings:

• Here’s Who: a short, first person introduction to the member

• Here’s Why: the member writes or publishes speculative fiction, as opposed to any other genre

• Here’s What: an example of the member’s work

• Here’s Where: you can find out more about the member and their work

So without further ado, please meet Elizabeth Heritage.

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Here’s SpecFicNZ–Wellington: Featuring Elizabeth Heritage

Elizabeth Heritage

Here’s Who:

Kia ora koutou, I’m Elizabeth Heritage and I’m a Wellington-based freelance publisher. I have a first class honours degree in history and english, and a post-graduate diploma in publishing – but, more importantly, I have a lifelong love of books and language. Publishers are primarily readers, and I love working in an industry that values not only the imaginative power of prose but the physical arrangement of words. There is a very special joy that comes from being intimately involved in the creation of a book, from manuscript assessment and editing, through design and typesetting, production and printing, to sales and marketing. Seeing a book in stores that I’ve worked on always gives me a thrill of pride – it’s like an invisible sort of fame.
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Here’s Why:

At my wedding party, my father made a speech in which he claimed that I first read The Hobbit to myself when I was 6. I don’t remember whether that’s true, but it certainly speaks volumes about me that that’s the story he chose to tell. These days, I have another special connection with The Hobbit: my pet rat Orville is in the movie! I made a very short film about it:

I have always been a devoted reader and I have always valued those authors whose transformative talent with language creates new worlds and beings so engrossing that they stay in my brain for years. I love books that I can revisit in my head whenever I like, and I consider it perfectly normal to have long-term imaginary relationships with fictional characters. For example, I have been married to the Lord Vetinari in my head now for about fifteen years.

These are interesting times for the publishing industry in New Zealand. The rise of online purchasing from overseas has led to a lot of bookshop closures, and the withdrawal of many international publishers. If you want to support the creation of spec fic in Aotearoa, there are three main things you can do: shop local, get involved, and keep writing. Two spec fic publishing houses have recently opened in Wellington and want to hear from you: Steam Press and Paper Road Press. Good luck!
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Here’s What:

As a freelancer, I work with publishing companies small and large, and with authors who are self-publishing. At the moment I’m working with Te Papa Press, Paper Road Press and SpecFicNZ, to name a few. I also review books for the BooksellersNZ Association, which is wonderful because it allows me to apply lots of verbs to books: reading, thinking about, discussing, weighing up, comparing, writing about. It also means there’s a steady stream of new books arriving at my house, which is absolutely the way life ought to be.

If you’d like to learn more about what I’m working on, visit the ‘my projects’ page on my website:

http://elizabethheritage.co.nz/my-projects/

If you’d like to learn more about how I might be able to help you with your book, look-ee here:

http://elizabethheritage.co.nz/how-i-can-help-you/

I’m always keen to meet fellow bookaholics, so do get in touch.
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Here’s Where:

My website: www.elizabethheritage.co.nz

My Twitter account: https://twitter.com/e_heritage

My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.heritage.98

My book reviews: http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/tag/elizabeth-heritage/

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The “Here’s SpecFicNZ–Wellington” series will be posting  for the next six to seven weeks, with the next  feature post on Thursday 14 November.

Tomorrow, the “Here’s SpecFicNZ-Wellington” course that I heralded last week will kick off and run for the next six to seven weeks.

I’ll also be hosting two guest blog posts by two other SpecFicNZ authors who have fantasy novels being published:

November 7: Aimee Salter, who is a former SpecFicNZ-Wellington member will slip in with a guest post on “Why This Story” for her YA Urban Fantasy, Breakable
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November 13: Freya Robertson will post on “What Lies At The Heart Of Heartwood?”, celebrating the debut of Heartwood, the first novel in a new epic fantasy series.

As with the “Here’s SpecFicNZ” series, these posts are an opportunity for you to follow up on new authors and check out on their work for yourself. So I hope you’ll drop by on those days and see what both these authors have to say.

I am delighted to have another “Fun With Friends” interview now live on SF Signal — and even more delighted that my current guest is NZ-based author, Freya Robertson, whose first Fantasy novel, Heartwood, has just been published by Angry Robot Books.

To check out the interview, click on:

Fun with Friends: Helen Lowe Talks with Freya Robertson, Author of HEARTWOOD

As always, comments are welcome. 😉

after the funeral
…………freeing a bee
…………from the spider’s web
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© Helen Lowe
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Highly Commended, NZ Poetry Society International Haiku Competition, 2009   (Judge, Sandra Simpson)

Published in moments in the whirlwind, Ed. Barbara Strang, New Zealand Poetry Society anthology, 2009

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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.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been having a conversation about epic fantasy here on the blog — sparked in large part by The Gathering Of The Lost have been voted onto the final shortlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Which last is, by the way, absolutely awesome, folks—and I know I’ve said it before but let me reiterate again just how much I appreciate all your support to get the book there.

The David Gemmell awards are all about epic-heroic fantasy, of course, with David Gemmell being one of the pre-eminent authors in the genre over the thirty year period from 1984 (when Legend was first published) until his death in 2006. The awards commemorate his legacy, but they’re also all about promoting the genre — and I am decidedly into that, both by supporting the initiatives of the Award organisers, such as the interviews with all the finalists, plus adding my mite to the cause through the posts such as the conversations on epic fantasy, here on my own blog.

So far, the topics we’ve discussed have been:

What Makes Fantasy Epic?  and

What Makes for “The New” in Epic Fantasy?

Is Epic Fantasy Currently Enjoying A Resurgence?

Each week’s topic has been sparked by the previous week’s conversation, which is kinda cool, and the conversation has also spilled over onto Twitter. Here’s one of my favourite tweets to date:

“…Epic Fantasy is more about characters confronting central truths about their entire existence.”

I believe the tweeter meant the entire existence of their culture / world, as opposed to just the existence of the characters, although obviously the latter would be hard to separate from the former… But yes, I think it’s another good thread teasing out what makes a story sit in the ‘epic’ quadrant of the fantasy spectrum.

To continue the tradition of last week’s conversation sparking this week’s topic — and please do feel free to suggest what you would like to talk about as wel l— last week one commenter mentioned the possibility for trends to be region specific, e.g. with readers in the US and UK, which are traditionally viewed as reasonably similar, occasionally reflecting divergent trends. I found this interesting, because it reflects a question I often refer to in my Fun With Friends interviews on SF Signal — whether there is anything that distinguishes Australian and New Zealand epic fantasy, or fantasy for that matter,  from that coming out of the US and UK, for example? And is there any distinction between the UK and US in terms of genre preferences?

This is even without bringing in Fantasy in translation from other cultures—so on either score, within English language fantasy and epic in particular, or looking at works coming out of other cultures, I am very interested to canvass your thoughts.

A week ago, I had to bid farewell to Ignatz, my little cat buddy of 21 years. Needless to say, after so many years he has left a huge gap.

I first introduced Ignatz here on January 19, 2011, in  a post titled: “And here’s the cat.”  In that post I told the story of Ignatz’s arrival in my life, 21 years ago, and also how he got his name — I feel it’s worth a read, if you have the time.

The second feature was in June 20, 2011: In Which I Have Been Remiss…

I posted another photo of Ignatz earlier this year, on April 1:  Here’s Another Photo of My Cat…

Anyway, I’ve been thinking this week about the character of Ignatz, aka Iggy, The Igster, The Germ, Pignatz (he did like his food, in fact one friend liked to say that he had “a thin ‘feed me’ face on a huge ‘I’ve been fed’ body” 😉 ) and here are a few of the words and phrases I came up with:

• valiant
• determined
• loyal
• loving to his “peeps” (but)
• shy of strangers
• a scrapper
• long-lived (clearly!)
• cute as a button
• greedy 😉

In fact, I would like to borrow a few words from a poem I penned for another friend, long ago, for his epitaph:

There is no praise I could say more of you than true:
true heart, true friend, greatly beloved.

And greatly missed.

Farewell, little cat buddy; good bye, Ignatz the Cat: haere ra, haere ra, haere ra.

Last week I ran a giveaway Philip Mann’s The Disestablishment Of Paradise (Gollancz), to run over the full week.

The draw is now done and the winner is:

Gillian Polack

Congratulations, Gillian!

For everyone else, thank you for participating and I will do more of these on an ad hoc basis, so keep watching the Saturday space.

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In terms of the question, which was: “What book first got you into reading science fiction?” — here’s the list:

Analog, Science Fiction and Fact

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

Robert Heinlein, Have Spacesuit Will Travel

Robert Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

Anne McCaffrey, DragonFlight

William Sleator, The Green Futures of Tycho

Yoko Tsuno, The Three Suns of Vinea

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth.

After a brief but excellent sojourn in “I”, we now enter “J.” 😉

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Jaransor:  a range of uninhabited hills that lies to the west of the Gray Lands

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‘Kyr looked at her curiously.  “What do you know of Jaransor?” he asked

Nhairin shrugged.  “Only what anyone does. Those hills have long been forbidden, off limits, because too many of our people have foundered there.  And the old records say that Jaransor is hostile to both the Derai and the Swarm.  They claim that it is one of the ancient places of this world, possessed by a power that sleeps but lightly and is dangerous if woken.  They also say,” she added, “that Jaransor is ghost-ridden and drives people mad.” ‘

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 25 — The River Of No Return

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‘Kalan stared at the cairn, recalling the first and only time he had seen the Winter woman: a rider cloaked in white and seated on a white horse amidst falling snow, with a hawk resting still as stone on her forearm. In Jaransor, he thought—and was seized by the loss, pain, and terror, mixed with exhilaration, that had accompanied their flight through those hills. He clenched his hand hard around his sword hilt to stop himself crying out against the memories’ sharpness. The metal of pommel and guard pressed into flesh, cold as the snowflakes that had fallen from an iron sky, five years before.’

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 31 — Tenneward Lodge