Original US hardcover; K Craft art

As those of you who follow this blog may be aware, I’m a bit of a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay’s style of fantasy—most recently mentioning his Fionavar trilogy as one of  my Favourite Epic Fantasy series, and Tigana as one of my Favourite Fantasy Standalone Novels. And I also did a book report on Under Heaven ‘way back’ in 2011.

Also recently, I found myself dipping back into another Kay favourite, A Song for Arbonne, and was reminded again of why I enjoy so much of his writing. In fact there are many reasons why with this book, but the element I particularly want to share today is how Kay can insert a small and apparently incidental happening at the beginning of his tale—and wham kapow, hit you with it again at the end as a major point in resolving the story. Personally I just love this sleight-of-storytelling approach, especially when it is so masterfully done.

Original UK cover

And no, I am absolutely not going to tell you the how and why, because that would be spoiler territory—and to appreciate the artistry I really feel you have to read A Song for Arbonne for yourself. Besides, it’s such a great story anyway, that I don’t want to deny you one iota of reading  pleasure…

Alsoz, dear readers, for those of you who know I’m also a Kinuko Craft fan, it will come as no surprise to you that I very much “heart” the original US hardcover art for A Song for Arbonne.  Yup, love it! But the UK cover (the one I have on my shelves) is also cool. 😉

I was very pleased to see the announcement of New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Award shortlist earlier this week, comprising a full array of nominations in both the professional and fan award categories. (To find out more about the Awards and the name, see my post here.)

For the full 2013 shortlist in all categories, please click here, on Sir Julius Vogel Award Finalists 2013.

My congratulations to all the finalists—but I would like to ‘particularly mention’ friends and SFF community members who have appeared on “…Anything, Really” in recent years: 🙂

Best Novel:

KD Berry for Growing Disenchantments — I reported on my read of KD’s previous novel Dragons Away, here.

Adam Christopher for Empire State — I interviewed Adam on SF Signal, here

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Best Youth Novel:

Frederik Brounéus  for The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse — book report here

Rachael King for Red Rocks — my ‘Just Arrived’ post is here

Juliet Marillier for Shadowfell — my interview with Juliet on SF Signal is here

James Norcliffe for The Enchanted Flute  — a guest post from Jim is here

And of course Alicia Ponder for Wizard’s Guide to Wellington is a fellow Tuesday Poem community member and regular commenter on this blog.

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It’s also very gratifying to see fellow SpecFicNZ members Simon Petrie, M. Darusha Wehm, Dan Rabarts, Darian Smith, Grant Stone, Matt and Debbie Cowens, Grace Bridges, and again Alicia Ponder, represented in the Best Novella / Novelette, Best Short Story, and Best Collected Work categories respectively.

And a shout out for friend Lee Murray for Hope is the thing with feathers, again in the Best Short Story category.

I’m also particularly thrilled to see such a strong line-up in the Best New Talent category, including Adam Christopher and Matt and Debbie Cowens again, as well as Jane Higgins, whom I interviewed on SF Signal, here.

And a well-deserved nomination to Stephen Minchin of Steam Press for Services To Science Fiction, Fantasy And Horror — again, I interviewed Stephen on SF Signal, here.

It’s also a very great pleasure to see friend June Young up for the award for Best Fan Writing — June is another regular commenter here, as well as around the SFF traps.

But again: congratulations to everyone — or dare I say, “Awesome, High Five!”* 😉

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* from The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth series features locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth.

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Border Mark:  the stone pillar that marks the boundary between the Gray Lands, which adjoin the Wall of Night, and the Barren Hills.

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“A thin, shrill wind had risen in the night and was blowing steadily from the north.  It brought a cold dawn with it, creeping across the Gray Lands and around the Border Mark.  The pillar of weathered stone had been standing long before the Derai ever came to the world of Haarth and the inscriptions on its surface were worn down by time.  No one could read them anymore, just as no one knew who had placed the pillar there.  It served now to mark the boundary of Derai influence and the end—or beginning—of the road that snaked south into low, rounded hills, toward the River lands.”

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 27 — The Border Mark

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”“Just what we need,” said Garan. “A coterie of Stone priests.” He had led his company out of the Barren Hills just on dusk, intending to camp overnight by the Border Mark, only to find another group of travelers already settled in by the standing stone.”

~ from ©  The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 28 — Border Crossing

Today is ANZAC day, the day in which NZ celebrates the Australia New Zealand Army Corps and our contribution as a nation in World Wars 1 and 2, and to a lesser extent subsequent theatres of war. The commemorative symbol of ANZAC day is the Flanders poppy.

I have written a number of ANZAC short stories with a more civilian focus on the ANZAC experience. One of these stories, The Walk Home, will be read on Radio New Zealand National tonight at 7.06 pm as part of their ANZAC Day programme. See “Ways To Listen” at the bottom left of the programme page.

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Another story, The Fountain, can be read in Tales For Canterbury (Random Static, 2011), with a “peek inside” the story, here.

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To read my friend Leigh Vickridge’s ANZAC poem, click on NZEF Trooper 203453

Introduction:

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

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” the members who live right here in the Christchurch area. As I also explained, effectively my fellow authors will be introducing themselves using a series of  common headings:

Here’s Who: a short, first person introduction to the writer
Here’s Why: the writer writes speculative fiction
Here’s What: an example of the writer’s work
Here’s Where: you can find out more about the writer and their work—and I really hope you will!

So without further ado—please meet Elizabeth (Liz) Gatens.

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Here’s SpecFicNZ–Christchurch: Featuring Elizabeth Gatens

Elizabeth Gatens

Here’s Who:
I’ve always known I’d never be an astronaut. Aside from the Yorkshire accent and even thicker glasses, the zero-gravity environment made me ponder the wisdom of white space-suits. With such practicalities in mind, I settled on the next best career and trained as a librarian. After five years of enabling prisoners to escape via their imagination I swapped hemispheres and entered the dangerous world of children’s librarianship. Recently, I’ve realised I’d wound up on the wrong side of the printed page. It’s the yet unwritten stories I’m hungry to explore. I now live in Christchurch with my Kiwi husband, and when I’m not procrastinating in my role as the current SpecFicNZ secretary I’m busy dreaming my way to distant realities.

Here’s Why:
I’m a magpie for the shiny bauble of what if. Ideas intrigue me, the possibilities of different futures and alternative pasts, but I need relatable characters to suspend my disbelief from. They don’t have to be kind, or particularly noble, and I often find the back-story for the villain more interesting than the suffering of the hero. Language and word-play tickle my funny bone, and I like every sentence to pull its weight, preferably more if a double-meaning can sneak in to twist the plot.

I’m currently working on my first novel, told from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator who never lies. The idea for my latest short story, “Monocarpic Colony Blues”, started with a prince, but the heroine refused to be rescued. My other short story, “The Glitch Doctor,” developed from a common phrase being taken literally and projected into a cyberpunk future. The opening scene is below.

Here’s What: (Excerpt)

The Glitch Doctor (© Elizabeth Gatens)

My GPS went to hell on the first solar flare. It wasn’t an issue. I’d been around, knew my way through the rat runs, the obsolete streets dividing the millions of plugged-in, socially disconnected lives festering in their single-room sanctuaries from the real world. On foot, I trailed an automated delivery mule to an intersection where street signs flickered their scrambled directions against the dawn aurora, neon-blue against apocalyptic pink. Almost pretty, if you were into that kind of shit.

The corner church had long been hacked into tiny living units, sterile cells for a sterile existence. Usertopia. Dull as the grave, and just as lonely. The vicarage next door still promised an audience with God, or at least a conference call. My first job of the day. An ageing caretaker answered when I knocked, her distrust overruled by her surprise.

‘I thought you’d be a man.’

Me too. Disappointed, I tugged up the zip on my low-cut dress and stuck out my hand. ‘I get that all the time. I’m the technical support you requested. But you’re not the vicar.’

She didn’t shake my hand. The official health warnings about the latest pandemic had clearly ruined her manners. ‘He’s asleep. He has an important meeting today with all the civic leaders.’

Ah, yes, the much-promoted public debate, as in actually together in the same room at the same time, to discuss ways of clearing the docks of assorted lowlifes. I tried again, flashing an ID card from my coat pocket. ‘You called for my help. I’m the Glitch Doctor.’

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Here’s Where:

‘The Glitch Doctor” won first place in the 2011 Cyberpunk competition run by Shades of Sentience. It was published in “Award Winning Australian Writing 2012“.

“Monocarpic Colony Blues” will be published in the upcoming “Regeneration: New Zealand Speculative Fiction II Anthology”, by Random Static.

You can learn more about me here on the SpecFicNZ website.

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The “Here’s SpecFicNZ–Christchurch” series will be posting every Wednesday for the next six weeks.

Sarah Broom

It is with great sadness that I record the death of New Zealand poet, Sarah Broom, who died last Thursday, 18 April, after a prelonged illness with lung cancer.

My first encounter with Sarah was through her poetry, when I read and loved her first collection, Tigers at Awhitu (Auckland Universty Press, NZ; Carcanet, UK) in 2010. We never met in person, but did correspond via email when her health allowed—and of course, there was always the poetry.

For me,  Tigers at Awhitu was the outstanding poetry collection of 2010 and I believe her death leaves a considerable gap in the New Zealand poetry community.

In terms of her work, I featured Sarah’s poem “All my life” on December 18 last year, when I was guest editor on the Tuesday Poem Hub:

“So we sat, and the waves
crashed in like gifts, or insults,
and the children played,
digging trenches to defend
against the sea, and then a head
bobbed up and down
in the waves, a bit too far out,
and an arm waved, and again…”

To read the poem and my commentary in full, please click here, on All My Life.

In 2009-2010, I also organised an e-feature called “Poet’s Corner.”  The poem Sarah chose to feature was also from Tigers at Awhitu, titled “Keep moving.”  In her poet’s note, Sarah wrote:

“Keep Moving was written when I was heavily pregnant and also already ill with lung cancer, though I didn’t know the latter at the time.  I did know that it was inordinately difficult to move!   Looking back at it, the poem has gathered more and more weight for me, and in my book it is placed as the final poem in the first section of the book; the poems in the second section were all written after my diagnosis.  The ‘razor pass through the mountains’ has something to do with the path I have had to traverse since then. 

 At the time, though, the poem was quite mysterious to me.  I hope that readers might find that it speaks to their own experience of having to turn away from familial and social demands, from  loved ones even, to do those things one needs to do.  Is it ok to be so outrageously large?!”

Keep moving

I lumber over the land, knees swollen
and knotted like kumara roots.
Who is that child so far down below
who reaches out to me? I can barely hear
his cry, he is simply too far away. I trudge
through drying braided rivers, I step
over tussocky brown hills. What do you say,
you small people waving your hands at me
from beside the lake? You think I should stop,
you want to help, the child needs me? …

… meanwhile, I have my eye
on that razor pass through the mountains. 
I think I may have been there before.”

To discover Sarah’s work for yourself, please seek out a copy of Tigers at Awhitu.  Her second collection, Gleam, will also be published by AUP in July this year.

To hear Sarah read from and discuss Tigers at Awhitu, click on the following Scottish Poetry Library podcast interview: Sarah Broom

My deeply felt condolences to Sarah’s husband, Michael, and her three children—no matter the gap left in New Zelanad poetry, theirs is the greater loss.

Haere ra, Sarah: haere ra, haere ra, haere ra.

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To read further tributes to Sarah, please see the following:

Siobhan Harvey: Sarah Broom In Memorian on Beatties Bookblog

Dr Jack Ross: Dreamtigers – i.m. of Sarah Broom

Well, first and foremost I’m looking forward to getting back into some writing after two weeks away, by which I mean writing Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three, of course. 😉

Tomorrow will bring the regular Tuesday Poem, but I shall be taking a break from my series of poems in response to works of art (aka ekphrastic poems) to commemorate the death of Sarah Broom, a newer New Zealand poet whose first collection (Tigers at Awhitu) I admire immensely.

Elizabeth Gatens

On Wednesday I shall be starting a new mini-series, announced last Wednesday, introducing several of my fellow writers from SpecFicNZ–Christchurch. The first of the authors up will be Elizabeth Gatens.

I also hope to start bringing you some of the photos of wild and scenic places in NZ–perhaps over the weekend when we’re all in the mode for a bit of awesome and/or “Middle Earth” revisited 😉

And that, I feel, is probably enough to be going on with for one week!

“Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written.”

~ Samuel Butler, 1835 – 1902

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To find out more about Samuel Butler and those books that insisted on being written, you can read his Christchurch City Libraries’ biography, here.

So right now I’m having fun reading Patricia Briggs’ Frost Burned–which I talked about in a “Just Arrived” post recently.

So how about you–what’s your weekend reading?

And are there any books you’ve heard particularly good buzz about recently and would like to share the tip?

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth series features locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth.

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Bonamark:  one of the seven marks of Emer; a shortening of Bonacon Mark

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 ‘Every other crossroads boasted a smithy or an inn, sure signs of prosperity, and the whole great valley of the Tenne, from the Bonamark border to the river Argent, was as fertile and peaceful as the River lands.’

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