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.

ABANDONED GEOGRAPHY

she’s been in this silence for a long time
too many journeys to nowhere
her body her only home

the absence continues
lingers in every doorway
every footpath

the nor’wester whizzes through
all the gaps left unwritten on the body
of the aching land

released from the contested space
of re-arrivals she stands

both asleep and awake
no longer dreaming

only a trace of a woman
in abandoned geography

.

© Sugu, Pillay
Published in Flaubert’s Drum (Interactive Press) 2012

Reproduced here with permission

—

About the Poem:

Today, September 4, is the second anniversary of the 7.1 earthquake in 2010 that first shook the city of Christchurch and its environs—and although the 6.3 earthquake of February 22, 2011 was the one that killed 185 people and comprehensively destroyed the central city and large parts of the eastern suburbs, September 4, 2010 remains a significant event.

So when I discussed a Tuesday Poem feature with Sugu Pillay, to celebrate the release of her poetry collection Flaubert’s Drum (launched at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival this past weekend) and she sent sent me a selection that included this poem, Abandoned Geography—well, given the date, it just had to be “the one.” I also feel it complements David Eggleton’s Christchurch Gothic from last week—a poem of the way we were “before”, here in Christchurch—very nicely.

It’s not just about complementarity and remembering September 4, however: I believe this is a very strong poem in its own right. Abandoned Geography uses simple, spare langauge to capture the magnitude of the event for the individual person caught up in, and at least partially overwhelmed by, the disaster’s enormity.

—

About the Poet:

Born and raised in Malaysia, Sugu Pillay has postgraduate degrees from Victoria University of Wellington and the University of London. A trained teacher of ESL/ESOL, she has taught in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Christchurch. Awarded a Creative New Zealand Grant (1997), she completed her collection of short fiction, The Chandrasekhar Limit and other stories, published by the Writers Group, Auckland in 2002. In 2009, her play, Serendipity, premiered in Wellington. Her second play, Salaam Pukekohe, was co-winner of Playmarket’s 2010 Write Out Loud script development programme. Flaubert’s Drum (previous title: In Medias Res) highly commended in ‘IP Picks Best Poetry 2012’, is a collection of mostly published poems from 1995 to 2012. A former resident of Christchurch, Sugu now lives in Wellington.

—

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.

I’m a writer! Or so the tag says. 🙂

I very much enjoyed my day at the Christchurch Writers Festival yesterday, starting the day in my “Why YA” panel with John Boyne and Jane Higgins, doing the Margaret Mahy Memorial Reading of “The Man Whose Mother was A Pirate” later in the day and attending the grand finale session with 5 grand New Zealand poets: Riemke Ensing, Bernadette Hall, Cilla McQueen, Harry Ricketts, and Ian Wedde. A long but great day for a writer—or so the tag says. 😉

To find out more about how the “Why YA” session went, you can read the ZacKids from Christchurch City Libraries’ write up, here. And yes, there’s even a  few photos—thank you, Christchurch City Libraries.

The 1st of the month is my regular guest post day on the Supernatural Underground—and for September 2012 I am delighted to be interviewing Juliet Marillier specifically on her new YA novel, Shadowfell, which is released in North America this month.

In particular, Juliet and I discuss the more romantic aspects of Shadowfell and the new focus on romantic elements in both Fantasy generally and YA Fantasy in particular—or is it so new?

To celebrate the release of Shadowfell, the recent success of The Heir of Night in winning the Gemmell Morningstar Award, and antipodean Fantasy authors generally 😉 — we are also doing a joint Shadowfell / The Heir of Night giveaway, to be drawn from comments on the Supernatural Underground interview.

So without further ado, to read the interview and “comment at will”, click Here.

Daffodil array

Today is 1 September–& that means it is the first day of spring here in New Zealand, and I must admit it’s feeling like it with daffodils, forsythia and wattle all busitn’ out all over and adding their different shadings of yellow to my garden, together with hellebores still doing their winter rose thing and magnolia stellata adding a more refined touch of pearl-shell and blush to the general exuberance.

Forsythia

So here’s a few photos to ‘go with’ the post & share the colour. 🙂

—

.

And just to recap on what’s coming up:

Later today (1 September, US EST) I will be featuring an interview with Juliet Marillier, focusing on her new YA novel Shadowfell, which is released this month in North America-. Plus to celebrate we’ll be doing a joint Shadowfell/The Heir of Night giveaway. So watch this space, here — and also, spread the word!

—

Tomorrow (Sunday 2) at 9.30 am I’ll be appearing at the Christchurch Writers Festival on the “Why YA” panel with John Boyne and Jane Higgins, compered by James Norcliffe. We’ll be discussing whether there is a genuine and valid divide between juvenile and adult writing, or whether YA is nothing more than a marketing phenomenon, as well as whether there are different types of YA fiction and what trends can be discerned in writing for the age group.

—

Also tomorrow and also as part of the festival, this time at 2.30 pm,  I’ll be doing one of the Margaret Mahy memorial readings — in my case, I shall be reading from The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate, a personal favourite form the Margaret Mahy canon.

(You can read my personal tribute to Margaret Mahy here.)

The Christchurch Writers’ Festival began yesterday but unfortunately I was not able to get along—& sadly, one event I missed that I really wanted to attend was the launch of the two latest poetry collections from Australia’s Interactive Press: Karen Zelas’s Night’s Glass Table & Sugu Pillay’s Flaubert’s Drum.

Night’s Glass Table was the winner of Interactive Publications 2012 IP Picks Best First Book competition; Flaubert’s Drum was Highly Commended in the same competition.

The exciting news though is that the festival is just one stop in the current nationwide tour for the launch of these books. So if you’re in another centre and couldn’t have been there today anyway, here’s the gigs coming up:

• Porirua: Sunday, 2 September, Metropolitan Café, 7 Lydney Place, 4pm

• Wellington: Monday, 3 September, Wellington Central Library, 5:30 for 6pm

• Auckland: Tuesday, 4 September, Poetry Live, Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Rd, 7:30pm

• Tauranga: Wednesday, 5 September, Tauranga Campus, Waikato University, Durham St, 6pm

And of course there’ll be another book launch at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival at 6.30 pm on Sunday 2, when Kerrin P Sharpe will launch her collection Three Days In A Wishing Well (Victoria University Press.)

And don’t forget the other poetry events at the festival, featured here.

In short: it’s all poetry today and all good! 😉

.L-R: John Boyne, Jane Higgins, Helen Lowe

Why YA?

YA – young adult – is a comparatively recent literary genre.

Once readers moved straight from children’s to adult novels but now there is a rich variety of fiction for teenagers. Is there a genuine and valid divide between juvenile and adult writing or is YA nothing more than a marketing phenomenon? Are there different types of YA fiction? What trends can be discerned in writing for this pivotal, impressionable and techno-savvy age group? These questions and more occupy the attention of three successful YA authors, John Boyne, Jane Higgins and Helen Lowe.

John Boyne is perhaps best known for his 2006 novel for younger readers, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which was shortlisted for or won a host of international awards, topped the New York Times Bestseller List, has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and has been made into an award-winning film. Noah Barleywater Runs Away was published in 2010 and The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brocket has just been published.

Jane Higgins is a senior researcher at Lincoln University, where she specialises in working with young people in transition from school. The Bridge is her first novel and won the 2010 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing and an Honour Award for Young Adult Fiction in the 2012 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. She is currently working on a sequel.

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger, with three novels published internationally. She has won the Sir Julius Vogel Award three times and Thornspell (2008) was a Storylines Notable Book. The Heir of Night received a Single Titles Reviewer’s Choice Award in the United States in 2010 and won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut in 2012. Her new novel is Gathering of the Lost.

Chair: James Norcliffe is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and educator who has authored several books for young adults.

—

Thought you might like to see the “official” programme page for the “Why YA” event—although am not sure 100% agree with the premise that “YA – young adult – is a comparatively recent literary genre.”

Which is good–may have something to discuss come Sunday morning at 9.30 am. 😉

The link to the full festival website is here.

Today SF Signal have posted the third interview in my “Fun With Friends” series in which I interview fellow SFF authors from Australia and New Zealand, with 5 questions focusing on “who they are” and “what they do” in writing terms.

This interview is with friend and fellow NZ speculative fiction author, Tim Jones, right Here.

Please do click through to take a look—and consider leaving a comment to support Tim and the series.

Christchurch Gothic

Summer’s Avon spelt the names of atua in green,
and through trees sun shafts dug at dappled lawns,
as if to unearth a circuit-board of worm-holes,
the universe beneath the labyrinth,
the silent presence of mountain shingle
across the curve of the island’s waist.

Teen racers hummed like bees in a hive,
and late autumn was the harlequin
hurrying past them down Bealey Ave,
towards the rusted, busted, midnight hour,
its sword-and-sorcery pageant of flashing sabres,
its chorus lines of black on moonlit runnelled iron.

They drained the swamp for bodies,
and found a city in a smog overcoat the colour
of mid-winter: a swallowed-up netherland.
Around it, paddock windbreaks rose in ranks,
long shadows falling like guillotines,
as night exhaled its nausea.

Frosted spring melted into this deep carpet,
and from Port Hills rolled the squared-away harvest,
whose matted roots expressed pedigrees of settlement,
a holding pattern of heartbeats, brainwaves, fingerprints
down blind alleys. The city breathed in  —
a hot air balloon sailed above its festoons of bitumen.

© David Eggleton

First published in New Zealand Books, 2009; also published in Time of the Icebergs (Otago University Press) 2010

Reproduced here with permission.

—

About the Poem:

I have long been an admirer of David Eggleton’s “more is more” style of poetry and the way he evokes a strongly New Zealand “sense of  place” through his work.  David is also the 2012 Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury for the second half of this year; as the incumbent for the first six months, I felt it would be only in keeping with a spirit of Ursula Bethell collegiality to request permission to feature one of his poems as a Tuesday Poem—and was delighted when he agreed.

Choosing only one poem out of the selection he sent through was tough—but as soon as I read Christchurch Gothic, which evokes my home city as it was before the first major earthquake in 2010, I felt it had to be “the one.” At one level this is because I feel the poem does capture ‘the way we were’; at another I am aware that next Tuesday, September 4, is the two year anniversary of that first earthquake.  But mainly, and I feel most importantly, I simply love the poem. I hope you enjoy it just as much.

—

About the Poet:

David Eggleton has had six books of poems and a book of short fiction published, as well as several works of non-fiction, including Ready to Fly: the Story of New Zealand Rock Music,  Into the Light: a History of New Zealand Photography, and Towards Aotearoa: A Short History of Twentieth Century New Zealand Art. He has also released a number of poetry recordings featuring his collaborations with musicians, and been involved in poetry text collaborations with practitioners of a variety of other art forms, from sculpture to fashion design. His first collection of poems, South Pacific Sunrise, was co-winner of the PEN New Zealand Best First Book of Poems Award in 1987.  David’s awards also include the Robert Burns Fellowship 1990, New Zealand Book Reviewer of the Year 1991 and, uniquely among New Zealand poets, the London Time Out‘s Street Entertainer of the Year (Poetry) 1985.

—

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.