“Fame is for the future to decide.  All that the present can offer is celebrity.”

~ J.M. Coetzee

—

I think this just about says it all really… And remarkably succinctly, too. 😉

UK/AU/NZ Cover

Well, besides the mass market release of The Gathering of the Lost in the UK on Thursday 21, that is—as first canvassed on Monday. 😉

But seriously, expect a few more of those feature re-posts from the Great Gathering Blog Tour 2012 over the next week or so, to celebrate the mass market launch… (The first, The Power of Environment, posted Thursday.)

But also coming up, we have a review of The Fractal Prince—by Finnish author, Hannu Rajaniemi—due for Monday. I loved his debut novel, The Quantum Thief, last year, so am looking forward to seeing what reviewer, Andrew Robins, has to say.

There is also a new post series in the wings, but more on that later…

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

Still with the letter “A”, Aeris is the second entry in my A Geography of Haarth series, featuring locales and places from The Wall of Night.

—

“Aeris: a city kingdom in the lands beyond the River, in the Southern Realms of Haarth.”

.

” “The Lost are another reason behind my journey here,” she told Kalan. “At the end of last summer, the Band received a report of strange doings in Aeris. Lightning and thunder out of a clear sky one day; on the next a stone barn caught fire and couldn’t be put out. I investigated and the Lost weren’t there—but they had been.” She watched his eyes widen.

“The Little Pass from Aeris to Emer,” he said. “They must be using that. It’s hardly more than a goat track, but passable in summer. And once in the wilds of Northern Emer they could go anywhere if they had the right guides.” “

~ from The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 27 — Rumor and Doubt

UK/AU/NZ Cover

On Monday I posted about the forthcoming mass market release of The Gathering Of The Lost in the UK—fun stuff indeed!

And  thought, why not re-post some of the guest posts I did for the US and UK trade release last year as a way of celebrating that — after all they are all good posts and very apt. So I thought—particularly with the next instalment of A Geography of Haarth coming up tomorrow—that I’d start with this guest post that I did for Orbit Australia: enjoy!

—

“Celebrating The Gathering of the Lost And The Power of Environment

One of the strongest influences on my writing has always been environment – my appreciation of the natural, technological and cultural elements of the surrounding world, with a flow-on to the creation of milieus within my works. This is particularly true of The Gathering of the Lost, where readers will encounter new lands within THE WALL OF NIGHT world, such as the River, Emer, and Aralorn.

Imagination certainly counts in fantastic world building, but when writing a great river, for example, it helps to have experienced big river systems, whether the Waikato and Clutha, in my own New Zealand, the Murray in Australia, or the Mississippi in the US. The River in The Gathering of the Lost is not any of those waterways, but I suspect that growing up with the Waikato and the Clutha has helped give it authenticity.

I lived close to the Waikato for a considerable period, but did not get to know the Clutha until I was an adult. Yet by then it was already entrenched in the landscape of my imagination—because of family stories and its place in New Zealand’s colonial history of gold mining, as well as its prevalence in photographic and painting art. My own view is that it is not possible to live with a landscape that resonates so powerfully in culture and history and not be influenced by it. After all, even a conscious decision to fight against its sway is still an influence.

But the “elephant in the room” when discussing the environment of this book has to be that The Gathering of the Lost was completed during the period of major earthquakes that devastated my home city of Christchurch between September 4, 2010 and December 23, 2011. The February 22nd 2011 event in particular resulted in both loss of life and widespread destruction. The Gathering of the Lost is dedicated to those who died, and to the police and emergency services that played so vital a role on February 22nd and during its aftermath. Working to complete this book during that time, with the June 13 earthquake coming just as I was on final deadline, was something of a challenge.

I now live in a city where “the broken”—from fissured roads, to slumped river banks, to compromised houses—as well as large scale demolition, is everyday reality. While I cannot know how these events will finally work themselves through, I suspect that it is not possible to experience such sustained trauma in the physical environment without it influencing my cultural imagination, and through that my writing, to some extent.

But that is for the future. Because despite what happened in the recent past I did finish The Gathering of the Lost—and hope you will find it a story where the influence of both natural and cultural environments come through in the world building. “

—

Just for the record, one year on, the jury’s still out on that “influence on the cultural imagination” question, by the way. 😉

As promised, here is the giveaway result for the UK trade paperback edition set of Elspeth Cooper’s Songs of the Earth and Trinity Rising, Books 1 and 2 of The Wild Hunt series.

The draw for the books has been made from amongst those who left comments on my interview with Elspeth Cooper last week.

Both Elspeth and I were very pleased to see the level of interest in both the interview and the books. 🙂

But for now, down to business—the giveaway draw!

[Cue: Drum Roll!]

The winner of “The Wild Hunt” book set comprising Songs of the Earth and Trinity Rising is:

Peter

Congratulations, Peter!

Peter, if you email me via my website on contact[at]helenlowe[dot]info with your postal address, I will pass it on to Elspeth so she can then forward you the books.

—

Notes re the Giveaway:

• The giveaway was full international

• The draw was made using Random.Org Integer Generator

• If the winner has not contacted me by 12 midnight on Saturday, 16 February (NZ time), I will re-draw on Sunday 17 (again, NZ time.)

Thank you again, from both Elspeth and myself, to everyone who has participated!

At the Workingmen’s Club Picnic

In a forest of legs,
I watch bulging sacks jump haphazardly
And eggs pirouette on spoons
Before I turn to look for you –
………….All the way around
And back again:
Looking down, shoes I do not recognise
Looking up, page after page of faces.
The world has slowed,
It is filled with other children’s fathers.
My mouth is sticky,
In my chest there is some other kind of race.
Ferris wheel buckets tumble
In a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and blue,
Children’s voices float
Back and forward on the air.

I turn and the long moment shatters,
Your hand wraps around mine;
Its puckered knuckles
And calluses, roughly reassuring.

Together, we stride back
To cars circling brightly coloured blankets,
Stripes crossed like swords.
Mum has emerged from the car
And sits on a folding chair,
Her red cardigan draped across her shoulders
While the sleeves just hang.
You reach into a cardboard box in the boot
And bring out a flask with two white cups
(Like a man with two hats)
And an egg
For me to peel.
The shards of brittle white shell
Edge beneath my nails
As I reach for the wobbly moon
With a shadow inside.

© Gail Collier

Reproduced here with permission.

—

About the Poem:

“As my father has aged and become ill, I found myself coping with a sense of loss but was unable to write about this due to its immediacy. I found I was able, instead, to access a childhood memory of a moment of loss – of being lost in a crowd and the sheer physical panic that overcomes a child as they lose sight of their parent.

I also found that the setting enabled me to recapture objects and experiences familiar to annual picnics in the sixties, but much less so now: cardboard boxes carrying picnic foods, hard-boiled eggs, three-legged races.

Because it is a very biographical poem, I also wanted to be true to the particular circumstances of my family. I tried to use my mother’s cardigan to symbolise the passivity of a parent suffering from mental illness, without commenting on it directly which would have been incongruous with a small child’s consciousness.  The ambivalent tone created at the end of the poem, as the hopefulness of the white of the egg is tempered by the  the dark yolk within, was also an attempt to project the precarious uncertainty which was always, therefore present.” — Gail Collier

—

About the Poet:

Gail Collier is an English teacher who squeezes her poetry writing between the demands of NCEA marking. She is raising the last of four children in the southern suburbs of Christchurch, where she grew up, and hoping for a hiatus before grandchildren appear. Gail is a member of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective and has been published in The Listener, The Press, Micropress, Manuka Musings, Takahe and the infinity we swim in (NZ Poetry Society, 2007).

—

To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub—and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world—either click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

UK/AU/NZ Cover

The mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost will be released in the UK on Thursday 21 February—handsprings and cartwheels!

Look out for my guest post on Gathering’s  UK publisher , Orbit’s blog on the big day: the subject matter is still strictly hush, hush but an advance rumour is that weaponry may feature… 😉

So check in on Orbit–and here—on the 21st for the celebratory posting.

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”

~ Ray Bradbury,  1920 – 2012

—

Although to be honest, much as I admire Ray Bradbury—and I do, as I discussed here when he died—I think about a novel like To Kill A Mockingbird, the one-and-only novel penned by Harper Lee and I have to say: quality, yes; doomed, I don’t think so.

I posted on receiving The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden in November.

And I am still reading the book. In part that’s because I’m busy: with my own books to write, with interviewing and blogging and all the other multifarious aspects of the life literary (as opposed to ‘aquatic.’ 😉 ) In part though, it’s also because it’s a cookbook, which is more of a ‘browser’ than a sit-down-an-and-read type book.

Shall I tell you what I really love about this book, though? It’s not actually the recipes although they are great, too. It’s the interest I find in the introductory sections, which deal with the many distinct regions of Spain and their culinary history. And it’s the features on the people—personalities like Angelita Garcia de Paredes Barreda. whom I have just read about on page 138. Wonderful!

Oh yes,and the photos of Spain: glorious—although personally I could do with a few more ‘legends’ to tell me what I’m looking at. (Yes, Penguin: Michael Joseph, I am looking at you!)

But since I’m only at page 138: onwards!

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

Today I begin my new blog series, “A Geography of Haarth” featuring locales and places from The Wall of Night series. And what better place to start than at the very beginning, with “A.”

—

“Academy Island: one of the central islands forming the city of Ij; location of the Academy of Sages”

.

“The city itself was a sprawling jumble of roofs dominated by three soaring landmarks: the slender spires that marked the Academy of Sages, the great dome of the College of Minstrels, and the single, sheer tower of the Assassins’ School. Each dominated one of the city’s central islands, with the marble cupolas and copper domes of the old nobility and merchant princes clustered around them. The far greater expanse of tiled roofs that sheltered the lesser citizens of Ij spread away on every side, interspersed by markets and warehouse areas.”

~ from The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 1 — The Road to Ij