Back to properly “bookish” ( 😉 ) posts today—and I’m very pleased to say that the weather has improved since I posted on this same topic on Wednesday, here. Hail, sleet and cold has given way to bright sunshine, although the wind was still more than a little chilly when I snuck out for my consitutional yesterday.

(Are any of you “…on Anything, Really” readers Deadwood fans? If yes, then you may “get it” when I say that the constitutional, on a day of sunshine but cold wind, doesn’t get beyond a little “perambulation.” 🙂 )

But another reason for just sneaking out and quite quickly back was that you may recall that I also talked of “pieces of the puzzle … finally … clicking together” on Wednesday, when I posted about the writing of Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three. Those clicks were coming thick and fast yesterday, and when that happens you definitely want to stay with the roll!

Of course, I can’t tell you what’s actually happening—because that would mean “warding sign: spoilers!“—except that there was action, and backstory, and the characters-de-jour were Malian and Raven… Most of the last few weeks have been Kalan, but this week I returned to a Malian sequence.

Hmmm,  I’m thinking that I need to get some sort of “proper” Daughter of Blood “icon” (or “avatar”?) for the site so that every time I talk about the book from now on I can have a visual to go with… Waddya reckon, sound like a plan to you?

This year, New Zealand is the official guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Aotearoa Blog Carnival is part of celebrating this focus on New Zealand literature and letters, and the theme for the fifth instalment is “A View From Here.” Reflecting on the theme, I felt there were so many slants and angles into it—and I did intend to develop the post into four views, from the micro to the macro, centered on being a writer living in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The four perspectives were to be the view from: my study, from Christchurch, from New Zealand, and as expressed through my books. But when I began writing the view from Christchurch, it just took off and had a life of its own. So I’ve decided to go with it.

This is the view from here as, not even a writer, just a person living in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the spring of 2012.

A View From Here: Being In Christchurch—The Introduction

“A view from here” for anyone based in Christchurch has to include the aftermath of earthquakes that have defined the city for the past two years, with major events on September 4, 2010; December 26, 2010; February 22, 2011; June 13, 2011; and December 23, 2011. The most destructive and devastating of these was the earthquake of February 22, 2011. Part of my personal view on these events can be found in both my Earthquake Reports, commenced post February 22, here, and my Earthquake Poems, collected here.

This was a friend's neighbour's home

As the worst of the earthquakes themselves appear to be passing away, a view from here becomes coloured by many other considerations: a city that is about loss and destruction; people without homes, or living in homes that are physically broken; extortionate rents and property prices in the less damaged sectors of the city; friends and family leaving; so many businesses gone, too; uncertainty around insurance and the rebuild or repair of damaged property; doubt as to what form of “new” will replace the “old” that is gone…

A View From Here on Health:

And then there are other factors that bear on that view: the number of elderly residents who are believed to have died, ostensibly of natural causes but “untimely” because of the shock of the earthquakes and their after-effects; reports of children in counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder; newspaper reports to the effect that statistics for winter flu infections are running at four times the national average, as well as increases in respiratory disorders from earthquake, demolition, and repair works’ dust. (The former two of which may/may not be imbued with asbestos.)

To give you some idea beyond just my own view, here are links to three health-related articles that appeared in The Press newspaper very recently:

•  Infection, Frustration, Stress

• Life becomes Harder for City’s Disabled

• CERA Neglects Peoples’ Plight – Psychologist

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A View From Here On The Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Earthquake Deaths:

Running in the background to all of this everyday reality we have the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the deaths that arose from the earthquakes, mainly from building failures, most notably the CTV and PGC buildings, but a number of other smaller premises throughout the city also figure. As always in these cases, what comes out in the wash leaves a lot to be desired. I can only feel for those who lost loved ones as a result of these failures—which reading between the lines, seem to extend beyond “acts of God” and/or “acts of Nature” to include “acts of People.”  Like many, I will await the report of the Royal Commission to see whether it confirms this impression.

A View From Here On Infrastructure Rebuild:

On almost every street...

“A view from here ” does includes positives, though. A big part of part of the current “city of grunge” is not just demoliton, but a huge amount of infrastructure rebuild, particularly of services such as sewer and stormwater, power and roads, which is taking place as well. Although that makes the city really hard to get around right now, it is still a positive view, a looking forward to a better future.

A View From Here On Democracy, Justice, and Government:

CERA and The Recovery: What Happened to Democracy, Legal Right of Redress, and Community?

The broken bridge

Far less positive from my view, and I believe—or maybe only hope!—that of many other Christchurch citizens, is the way the government (both parliament and the executive) has responded to the earthquakes by granting the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), and the minister who oversees it, war time powers of fiat that appear to effectively be taking away many of Christchurch citizens’ legal rights with regard to their properties, as well as a community focus on the central city’s rebuild.

The Proposed Central City Rebuild: Where Did Natural Justice Go?

Recently, and this is only one example but of major concern to me, the Minister and CERA unveiled a “gold-plated” rebuild plan for the city, that is to be completely paid for by the city’s residents. Now this may be fair enough in principle, although I note that Christchurch is also New Zealand’s second largest city so from that point of view it could be argued that there is in fact a national interest in seeing it gets back on its feet as soon as possible. (Atlhough whether roofed over sports stadiums and giant convention centres count as getting the city back on its feet has to be questionable at best.)

From the other side...

But, well and good, fair ’nuff and all that, Christchurch’s rebuild is a matter of local interest only and to be paid for entirely locally. So far so good: I can live with that. What I can’t “buy”, is that the people who live in those broken homes I mentioned above, or can’t live in their homes because they are too broken and so are paying both rent and  a mortgage, or are living in cars and tents and caravans because there isn’t enough housing to go round, or the rents are extortionate as also mentioned above, are the ones also having to pay a 10% increase in their rates to pay for the rebuild.

Except here’s the thing: that 10% increase still won’t cover the gilded rebuild plan, that our own parliament has enacted legislation to ensure we get no say as to whether we want, or not.

Does that sound like the icing on the earthquake devastation cake to you? Well, from where I’m looking right now, I have to tell you that it’s a pretty wretched sort of view.

Traditionally, the dictum has been that it is those who pay the piper who should call the tune. For anything else to be the case–for an agency such as CERA to have the ability to take your money for a plan you have no say over at all, either through local or national elections to appoint those who legitimately set taxes and strike rates, seems profoundly and fundamentally unjust. The just scenario, in my view, would be to say that if Christchurch is paying for its own rebuild solely out of its own pocket (because there is no “national” interest) then it is Christchurch citzens who should decide on the style of coat that is to be cut to fit our financial cloth.

Anything else is contrary to natural justice and adding a further social and financial burden to those already imposed by the earthquakes.

And that’s a pretty tough view to have to wake up to, every day.

And Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse… It Does! The Great Environment Canterbury Debacle

Yes, as if that is not enough, on top of everything else, there is more.

But because this could otherwise get to be a really long, not to mention “incredibly depressing” post on “a view from here” I shall chiefly refer you to:

The Press editorial of last Saturday, 8 September, here: “Black Day for Democracy In Canterbury and the Nation”

What About The Writing Part?

Die Erbin Der Nacht: The Heir of Night; forthcoming in Germany Aug '13

Now you may say: wow, I thought this was a writer’s blog and there is not a great deal, if anything, about books and writing in the above.

My reply is simply this: every writer is a human being and a citizen first, and after two years of natural disasters and their aftermaths, the view from Christchurch is very much going to be coloured, first by human concerns and secondly what it means to be a citizen in “this place.”  Mine is only one view from here, as a human being and a citizen who happens to also be a writer.

But if there is a writing perspective, besides the Earthquake Poems referenced above, it is that this is the environment within which my writing is currently happening. How I try and ensure that the writing still continues to happen, despite of or as part of everything else discussed above, will have to be the subject of another post, however.

Conclusion

I think we all hope the view from here will get brighter, but at the moment there are still as many, if not more, clouds than silver linings in post-earthquake Christchurch, and what feels like a great many big challenges ahead for our community—but also, in terms of some of the larger issues of government and accountability, for the whole of the New Zealand community.

That’s how I see it anyway. And however one-eyed or misguided, this is my personal “view from here.”

Magnolia stellata

It is now officially spring here, as my posts of September 1 and 9, here, attest—but those posts were all about the ‘balmy’ and the ‘mild’ and the spring flowers, whereas spring, as you probably well know, is also the most changeable of seasons–so yesterday, the mild (warm) norwesters were banished by the southerly, blowing in from the Antarctic and bringing snow to many regions and hail showers to Christchurch. Which was ok, as it turned out, because the power stayed on (by no means a certainty post-earthquakes) so I was able to stay at home with the heater and the cat (the two being pretty much a “single unit deal” these days when it’s cold) and work on writing Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three.

Just before you get the wrong idea, it wouldn’t have mattered what the weather was like, I would have been writing Daughter of Blood anyway—but there is something about cold blustery weather outside, keeping you indoors where it’s warm, that is very conducive to writing. Rainy weather is also very good…

So I thought you might like to know, whether because of the southerly (also known as the ‘southerly buster’, which may give you some idea) and the hail or not, the writing went quite well. I have been working on a section of the book that has proven particularly difficult, with sections moving in and out and around—all very fluid—not to mention ‘characters behaving badly’, by which I mean, having their own idea of what they want to do, which may or may not marry up with mine. But over the past few days all the pieces of the puzzle have finally been clicking together—which is rather a nice feeling, especially when it involves sections of story that up until now have been behaving as though they are irreconcilable.

Storm on the Wall of Night; artist, Peter Fitzpatrick

One thing I have learned in my writing life to date though, is that nothing is ever completely irreconcilable. It’s more a matter of me, as the author, being patient and listening to the story and the characters and “working with” them to find the “right flow and direction” for the book, rather than trying to impose my will unilaterally from above. So far, that has never ever worked for me in terms of achieving a good result for the story.

Needless to say, it is both a very nice feeling and a considerable relief when the pieces of the puzzle do start fitting together.

It’s also very rewarding, as I think: “Yes, yes, this is exactly right for the character”, and not only that, but the story really starts to move along!

And right now, as I “pen” this post, and that wild southerly wind is soughing in the wattle outside my study window, I can’t help thinking about those far more terrifying storms on the Wall of Night, and what difficulties and adventures Malian and Kalan might be encountering right now, whether together, or separately…

Re-vision

There is a moment, somewhere, when I see you.
Truly see you.    A gift.
………………………………….   Before a glass, a Renaissance self-
portrait.  Maybe in a courtyard, a Gothic arch

Or by a Roman column: unruly curls snaking,
your father’s smile.  Sicilian sun.
………………………………………………….A fishing harbour,
gulls rising through blue, many steps, and you
carry my burden. Ionian light and Jason searching
for himself.                     ………………………A spear
of light in a dark atrium; you sparkle.  The trickle
of water.
………………………………………………….The old so new.

Or perhaps in relief
against a white wall; always white walls.
Blue-and-white tiles and men mending nets.
The voice of the market. Bull-fight roar in the wind.

Twin iron beds in a whitewashed room. A fan
to cut hot heavy air. A small table:
bread on white paper, a knife
beside cheese, sharing stories
and red wine thicker than water.

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© Karen Zelas

Published in Night Glass Table, (Interactive Press) 2012

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

Night’s Glass Table is Karen Zelas’s first book of poetry and one of three collections launched at the recent Christchurch Writers’ Festival. Published by Australia’s Interactive Press, it also won the Interactive Publications 2012 IP Picks Best First Book competition.

When I first read Re-vision, I was struck by the way it instantly transported me to the sunshine and sense-of-history of the Mediterranean, where the relationship between the poem’s narrator and companion is established within a continuum that is both present and past, real and mythic—and finally grounded in the here-and-now of:

“bread on white paper, a knife
beside cheese”

and the red wine, which like blood, is “thicker than water.”

A beautiful, elegant poem, with just the right balance between present and post, the concrete and a sense of the ephemeral.

Night’s Glass Table is available from bookshops in NZ and directly from Interactive Publications, here.

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About the Poet:

A former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Karen Zelas has been Fiction Editor of Takahē literary journal for the last five years. Her poetry has been widely published within New Zealand, including in Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, Takahē, pending in JAAM and broadcast on radio; also Australian ezines Snorkel and Eclecticism and recently blogged by Interlitq (UK).

Several anthologies contain Karen’s work. She was editor of Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury, Prose and Poetry (Wily Publications, 2009) and her historical novel Past Perfect, published by Wily in 2010, has now been republished as an ebook by Interactive Publications, Brisbane [see here].

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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.

On August 2, I introduced my first “…on Anything, Really” book review by guest reviewer, Andrew Robins — in that case of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “2312.”

Today Andrew is reviewing John Scalzi’s “Redshirts.”

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Review: “Redshirts” (TOR, 2012; 314 pp) by John Scalzi

by Andrew Robins

On one level Redshirts is a relatively straightforward vehicle for a clever idea. If you are a fan of classic Star Trek or other shows in the genre, you will “get” this book and have an enjoyable read.

In jokes abound. Scalzi is an accomplished writer, with a well established audience. This book is very much for them.

The US edition consists of a 230 page “main sequence”, and four Codas that together encompass another 84 pages. Given that I did not flick ahead at any stage while reading, I found this to be a bit confusing. The story certainly felt like it was finishing, and yet plenty of pages remained.

Confusion quickly turned in to satisfaction, as I found the Codas to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the book. They served to reveal a number of subthemes that while present in the main story, had not had a lot of airtime, and wrap up various subplots in a satisfactory fashion.

They also widened the perspective of the story (in particular giving a female point of view that up until then had been somewhat lacking) – and gave it some added gravitas.

Whether or not you think this was required or not will depend on the type of reader you are. But for me this worked. It shifted my view of Redshirts from a “read once, enjoy once” book, to a “maybe sit down and write a review” kind of book.

Now, one of the first things I realised when I came to write this review was that there was not a lot I could say about the main sequence of the story without major spoilers. If you have seen classic Star Trek, especially the more budget constrained later episodes, then you know the setting. As you can probably guess from the title of the book, the stories’ protagonists are not particularly exalted members of the crew – and as such they face some pretty unique challenges staying alive. Their struggle to do so pretty much defines the book, and to a certain extent the characters themselves. None of the characters are particularly complex – but they don’t really need to be in order for the story to work.

That’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the story.  I enjoyed Redshirts. I suspect if I was more of a Star Trek nerd I would have enjoyed it even more.

For more information on John Scalzi and his writing, see his site, here.

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About the Reviewer:

Andrew Robins is a long time reader – and sometime reviewer – of science fiction, fantasy and history. People pay him to test stuff, mainly radios – which most of the time is more fun than it has any right to be. Any and all views expressed in this review are entirely his own.

To read Andrew’s review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “2312”, click here.

Having been discussing Wordsworth’s Daffodils, here and here, and posting last weekend’s daffodil array from my garden, I thought I’d share a few more photos in the interests of spring garden interest, diversity, and —to quote the politicians ;-)—“equal time.”

Magnolia stellata

Hellebores

Wattle in flower

"Matchsticks"

Daffodil array; via my garden 😉

On Thursday I posted a “true confession” as a writer, here, in which I discussed my very first piece of fan fiction: an eight-year-old’s riff on William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.”

I also noted that, given I was living in tropical Singapore at the time (where daffodils do not occur naturally):  “…both my reading of William Wordsworth’s Daffodils and my unshamedly derivative response to the poem were both works of complete imagination—which I personally feel is quite a tribute to the original work.”

Reflecting further, I also think I unconsciously gleaned another very important understanding from the poem, which is the importance of observation. Wordsworth’s Daffodils is all about close observation, and also awareness of one’s response to that observation in terms of both immediate emotion and subsequent reflection.

Although only eight, I suspect I “got” that understanding of the poem at an intuitive level. It may be that it “spoke” to a quality already present in my make-up. Nonetheless, keen observation of both the surrounding world and human nature are essential qualities for writers, whether we pen poetry or prose. So in retrospect, I feel I owe William Wordsworth and the daffodils a “thank you” for the early lesson.

To listen to actor Jeremy Irons reciting Daffodils, click here.

If you’re within the zone for Plains 96.9FM, listen out at 11.20 am tomorrow, Saturday 8, for my interview with Rhian Gallagher, who recently won the NZ Post Book Award 2012 for Poetry, for her collection Shift.

We’ll be talking about Rhian’s win, Shift, and her poetry generally in the interview. It’s a really thoughtful interview from Rhian, so do listen if you can.  But if you can’t hear it live, then I’ll link here once the podcast is up, so all should not be lost.

I also featured the NZ Post Book Award win on the blog, here ‘when it happened.’

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On August 2 I featured Andrew Robins’ first review on “…Anything, Really”, of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, here.

Here’ll be back here on Monday with his second review, this time of John Scalzi’s Red Shirts. So be sure to check back here for that.

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USA

And if you haven’t seen it already, I have an interview with Juliet Marillier featured on the Supernatural Underground, with a joint giveaway of her new YA, Shadowfell, and The Heir of Night, that closes midnight on Friday 7, US Eastern Standard Time.

Just click Here to read and/or post a comment to enter the draw.

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And last but not least, if you have not read it already, my “Fun With Friends” Interview with the interstitial and amusing Tim Jones on SF Signal is well with a read—& very exciting, too, to have a New Zealand author featured at the time SF Signal has just won a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine! (My post on that is here.)

There–bet that title got you all interested!

And no, it’s nothing to do with posting anonymous comments deriding other writers and their work. (No matter the megrims of the writing life, it’s also way too short.)

Or anything at all to do with 50 Shades of Anything Vaguely Erotica… Read Thornspell have you, or The Heir of Night? ‘Nuff said then and moving right along!

"Why YA"; via ChCh City Libraries

No, what this is about is a confession elicited from me in conversation immediately after my “Why YA” session at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival on Sunday. (My brief account of the session is here; the fuller report of Christchurch City Libraries, here.)

It arose in conversation with an elderly gentleman who first assured me that he had not read any of my books. (Bless you, sir, thought I.) But was nonetheless curious to know at what age I had first caught the writing bug. Answer: around 8 years old. And following on from that, whether I thought reading had influenced my yen to write at all? To which I replied: indubitably (yup, spelled that right—checked; phew!) and undoubtedly—because what I first loved to read, I shortly longed to emulate.

Daffodil array; via my garden 😉

As evidence of the same, I was obliged to confess that the very first piece of creative work I penned was fan fiction: my very own, eight-year-old’s riff on William Wordsworth’s The Daffodils. (And yes, I do still have it; but no, you won’t see it posted here—ever.)

Amusingly, I had not even seen a daffodil at that time, or not within conscious memory, as we were living in Singapore. So although I hold many wonderful recollections of the Lion City (including a fine National Library from which I withdrew many books) actual daffodils do not figure amongst them. So both my reading of William Wordsworth’s Daffodils and my unshamedly derivative response to the poem were both works of complete imagination—which I personally feel is quite a tribute to the original work.

So there’s the true confession, as an eight-year-old I penned poetic fan fiction, but the more serious point is that what we love we will often, if not always, seek to emulate. And that what may start as straightforward replication will quickly give rise to the desire to make it “more so” in some way or other, or “better”, or even “new”—or perhaps best of all, spark a whole raft of “what if’s?”

I’ve talked about this impulse in two other posts here on “…Anything, Really.”  The first is titled “Influences on Story 3: Other Writing” where I discuss the “What If” impulse generated by other writing in the context of Hilaire Belloc’s poem, Tarantella, but also referring to The Lord of the Rings and David Eddings’ Belgariad.

The second post is titled “Writers Are Thieves—AKA Influences On Story” and it broadens the discussion to folklore and myth and probably just about everything, really!

So how about you—have any “true confessions” about your own creative starting point?

John DeNardo with SF Signal's Hugo Award; photo via Tor.com

For those who may not already know, last weekend was Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Fantasy Convention, a major feature of which was the Hugo Award Ceremony.

And this year,  SF Signal won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine.

Needless to say I am absolutely delighted—and also very proud to be an occasional SF Signal contributor.

Given the consistency and quality of SF Signal’s content, I feel this award is very well deserved, and would like to offer my warmest congratulations to John DeNardo and the SF Signal team.

To read the full roll of 2012 Hugo Award winners—including the Hugo for Best Novel going to Jo Walton’s “Among Others”—click here.