UK trade paperback

I am thrilled to announce that The Heir of Night, The Wall of Night Book One, has won the 2012 Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer.

I found out this morning, via a telephone call from my Orbit UK editor, Jenni Hill. I believe my first words were “I don’t believe it” but I’ve been working on trying to believe it ever since!

The winners in the other two categories were:

The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2012: The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

The Ravenheart Award for Best Jacket Art: Raymond Swanland for The Blood Of Aenarion (Black Library.)

In terms of the The Heir of Night and the Morningstar Award win, I will post my official acceptance speech—read out for me by Jenni—tomorrow, but I am over the moon that “my story” has just won a major international Fantasy Award — and Reader’s Choice ‘to boot!’

The Heir of Night‘s win also checks several firsts, I believe, being the first time either the Legend or Morningstar awards have been won by either a Southern Hemisphere book or a woman author—so go the HEIR, I say!

Most of all though, a HUGE thank you to everyone of you who voted for The Heir of Night—because we couldn’t have done it without you!

Also, just a ‘place holder’ for friends and supporters in Christchurch or within easy travelling distance: when the Morningstar trophy arrives from the UK, I think we should have a celebratory party here: what do you think?

I have had this book for a few weeks now but because of trips away to Natcon, returning home to ‘heap big snow’, together with the general blog round, I have only gotten round to featuring it now.

Winter be My Shield (Harper Voyager) is the debut novel of Australian author, Jo Spurrier, and the first in her “Children of the Black Sun” series. The back cover describes it as epic fantasy and in addition to the title, the cover art and backcover blurb make it clear that this is a winter world.

Hands up those of you who, like me, love winter worlds?

Plus there’s a cover quote from Robin Hobb—and given she loved The Heir of Night as well, I think that has to augur well, don’t you? But enough of that, here’s the quote:

′Unlikely heroes, villains you will cheer for, and cold that eats your bones. WINTER BE MY SHIELD will take you to an unforgiving place, but you won′t want to leave it.′ ~ Robin Hobb

Meanwhile, the back cover has this to say:

“… Sierra has a despised and forbidden gift — she raises power from the suffering of others. Enslaved by the king′s torturer, Sierra escapes, barely keeping ahead of Rasten, the man sent to hunt her down. Then she falls in with dangerous company: the fugitive Prince Cammarian and his crippled foster-brother, Isidro.

But Rasten is not the only enemy hunting them in the frozen north and as Sierra′s new allies struggle to identify friend from foe, Rasten approaches her with a plan to kill the master they both abhor. Sierra is forced to decide what price she is willing to pay for her freedom and her life …”

Waddya reckon, time to get reading? And with any luck, Ms Spurrier might even be up for an interview…

Recently, at the Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony in Auckland, I was thrilled to see Tales for Canterbury (Random Static, 2011) , edited by Anna Caro and Cassie Hart, receive the award for “Best Collected Work.”

This meant a lot to me for a number of reasons. Those of you who followed the ‘A Peak Inside Tales for Canterbury’ series on the blog will know that there were some very fine stories, a few even but rather famous authors 😉 , contained therein. So that’s one reason.

The second reason is that Cassie and Anna put Tales for Canterbury together as a fundraiser for disaster relief following the Christchurch Earthquake of Feburary 22nd, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

No more copies will be available following the end of this month but there are still a few left right at this moment—and as fellow contributor Amanda Fitzwater said on her blog (and I don’t think I could say it better so I’m just going to quote):

“I can tell you from personal experience that even 18 months on from the disaster there are still people in desperate need of help. Can you imagine living in a tent, caravan or even your car in the middle of a bitter winter, because you’ve lost your home and your job in the midst of a housing crisis? Yes, this is happening right now here in Christchurch, and the Red Cross are still here, helping out in the best ways they can.” ~ Amanda Fitzwater

And the third reason why you should consider snapping up one of those final copies (although personally I think 1 and 2 are enough): well Tales for Canterbury did win the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Collected Work, so not only is it award winning but it’s soon about to become rare. So you might want to think through the implications of that…

… because just for a few more days/weeks Tales for Canterbury can still be purchased HERE

And just in case you have forgotten or not yet checked out how great some of the stories are, you can take a peek inside nine of the stories right here—and here’s the lucky tenth, Tina Makereti’s wonderful Shapeshifter:

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“Shapeshifter

by Tina Makereti

Sometimes I think men just take what they want. See that fella over there?
The one with the eyes like icy water and a puku that sticks out from his
middle like he’s swallowed a boulder? He just came up here before and
kissed my tit. Got his wife to take a picture. Ha ha, look at me, I’m kissing
Pania’s boob. Like that hasn’t been done before. Jeez, you’d think they’d
have a bit more class. I must’ve been felt up by half the country.

I’ve got nice boobs, the way they did me. Of course I’d still prefer
the soft, fleshy kind at the end of the day. Wouldn’t stand up to all that
touching though. Good thing they did me in bronze. I’ve got nice legs
too. I’m particularly proud of those.

Fifty-four this year and hardly any wear and tear on the old body.
Which sounds like a good thing, but isn’t so great for me in the long run.
There are a lot of stories around about what I am and who I am, and how
I got here. Some say I am really the reef out there; that I provide all the
fish for the people, for my descendants. Some say I used to be a selkie,
a seal-person who needed both sea and land to live. Some say that my
family forced me back into the ocean, but others know it was my husband
Karitoki’s trickery that sent me back there. There is a little bit of truth in
all those stories. People find it hard to hold in their heads: that it can be
this way and that way. That at one time I took on the skin and swiftness
of the seal underwater, that I married an earthly man, that I became the
reef. My spirit is as malleable as the shifting sand on the ocean floor.

…”

Great start, isn’t it? To read the rest though, you’ll just have to get hold of Tales for Canterbury… 😉

Welcome, Melvin Sterne:

Melvin Sterne

Way back in 2005, I had just completed the manuscript for my first novel and was also writing short fiction. One of the very first stories I sent out into the world was The Brother King, which I entered in the international (but US-based) Carve short story competition. You may imagine my delight when The Brother King was longlisted for the award. Although it did not proceed further, I was even more delighted when it was subsequently selected for publication in Carve-zine  (Volume 6, No. 5), September 1, 2005—and then for  The Best of Carve Magazine (2005), published March 2006.

The editor who presided over The Brother King’s selection was Melvin Sterne, and Melvin continued to encourage me to value my writing and “keep going” during the intervening period until Thornspell was published in 2008. We have remained in touch since while Melvin has pursued his academic career, and I will always be deeply appreciative of his early encouragement and support.

So I am delighted to have Melvin here today as a guest “…on Anything, Really,” in order to introduce his debut novel, Zara: Welcome, Melvin.

—

Introducing Zara (Ink Brush Press 2012)

Zara tells the story of a young prostitute in Bombay, India, who, after having started a legitimate business to purchase her freedom, and being cheated in the process, resorts to blackmail to find help to claim her rightful earnings. When the cell phone with the incriminating photos is seized by a police commissioner, and he, in turn, is murdered and the phone stolen, Zara, a poor, illiterate Muslim woman, must team with a rich, literate, Hindu policewoman to solve the murder and retrieve the missing phone. This means, of course, setting aside some serious personal differences (both women have “issues”), and along the way, discovering much about themselves, their past, their weaknesses, and, ultimately, their strength.

I like the novel for three good reasons. I try, in the way that Graham Greene wrote, to touch on serious social issues, but in way that is both academic and entertaining. I’d like to think that it is a book that transcends genre in this way — that it is both intelligent in the subject it takes on, but a fun read, as well. Second, the book is based on many of my experiences and observations in Bombay — a fascinating world unto itself — where many of the ordinary rules of society that we, in the west, take for granted — just don’t apply. And, finally, Zara herself is based on a woman I met in Bombay, and her life story (save the fictionalized events that make up the novel) are absolutely true. She was sold into child labor at 6, and into prostitution at 20 or 21. 

Zara could be any one of millions of women in sexual slavery today. And yet, strange at is may seem, she never accepted the label of “victim.” She was strong in ways that were remarkable, yet touchingly vulnerable in other ways. She was very human, yet something more. What struck me most about her was her demonstration of faith and courage. Through no fault of her own, she could be killed in her home town for being a “sinner,” literally, a rape-victim. And, as a non-virgin, she would never marry or have a normal family life. But she chose to remain in a brothel because it was the only way she could earn enough money to set aside a dowry for her little sisters so that they would not have to undergo the same fate. I was struck by the image of “saint and sinner” side-by-side, and by Jesus’s words, “No one has greater love than this: That he should give his life in behalf of his friends.” Zara did that in real life, and from the day I met her, I felt her story deserved to be told. The only question was, How? It took me four years to write Zara through its many drafts, and even when “finished,” several more to polish it and find a publisher in these difficult times.

Melvin

—

About the Author:

Melvin Sterne worked construction for 20+ years with the Boilermakers and the Ironworkers before returning to college to earn his BA, MA, and Ph.D. He has published more than two dozen short stories, poems, and essays in magazines of national and international circulation, with several winning awards. Zara is his first published novel, but in the past month he has had two other books accepted by two different publishers in the USA. He currently directs (and teaches in) the communications program at the S P Jain Center of Global Management, in Singapore. Some might also remember him as the founding editor of Carve Magazine, which he published for six years.

You can go to Melvin’s website, here.

Zara can be purchased through Ink Brush Press (http://www.inkbrushpress.com/) or at Amazon.com, here, or from your favorite local bookseller.*

It will also be out in Kindle format in the near future.

You can also check out the Zara website, here.

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*[Helen]: I suspect ‘only in North America’ for bricks and mortar outlets, but check “How to Order” here.

UK/AUS/NZ

By which I mean, there’ve been a few more reviews come in, so I thought I’d share a few of the quotes:

Fantasy Book Review UK:

“Returning to this world was a wonderful experience for me. I enjoyed Lowe’s first instalment in her ‘The Wall of Night Series’ and was eagerly anticipating the return. The characters and ideas portrayed in Lowe’s writing enthrall me and capture my imagination like very few other books. … The Gathering of the Lost returns the reader to a world of hidden history and shadowed loyalties and keeps you there until well past your bedtime, loving every minute of it.” — Joshua S Hill

Waiting for Fairies, USA:

“…the story has progressed in a direction that I hadn’t expected… It has grown deeper, wider. What we have now is no longer simply a traditional hero’s journey with a new twist. The Heir of Night was a book all about seclusion, isolation, and walking lonely paths with few allies.

USA

The Gathering of the Lost is completely different and new. It is a book about companions: friendships and everything that those things entail. We see loyalty, betrayal, lust and love. The story didn’t go as far forward in length as I would have liked, but what it did not it made up for in sheer breadth and scope. The more I consider it, the more I realize that this book completely changed the game. And that is amazing. Lowe has managed to shake the very foundations of her world … while paradoxically remaining true to the expectations she laid out in the very first book.” — Kiara

BooksellersNZ Blog: (NZ)

“The strong imagery is truly thrilling. I could just imagine the book as a movie in my head, with it’s clever plot and vivid characters, it is the ultimate fantasy novel.” — Tierney Reardon

Shades of Sentience (Aus)

“Throughout it’s easy to note that Lowe’s writing style has grown significantly, and we also see the worldbuilding (already quite deep and interesting) has grown yet again …There’s a surprising amount of detail invested in the inhabitants of the cities, and the customs shown show a great deal of care to adding depth to the smaller details. Politics plays a slightly larger part in this book, yet it’s still a good balance between that and adventure as the plot twists and turns onwards. Everyone plays to their own agendas, leaving the main characters to struggle to see who is friend and who is foe.” — Katherine Stubbs

Canvas (NZ Herald)

“Lowe’s world is somewhat fantasy-standard in its medieval trappings, but it’s also richly imagined with vivid characters.” –– David Larsen

at Fossil Gorge

That time of the year when the leaves fall,
branches emerge in the rocks below:

brachiopods, coral from an ancient sea.
The leaves are brown, yellow, the fossils

are white as time, but the turkey
buzzards are black and do not fall.

Instead they hover like silent blowflies,
wait and dip as funerary fishhooks or

gently flapping scissors wrapped in black
crepe, festooning the sky with menace.

A scatter of iron filings but purposeful;
black fillings in the mouth of the sky.

There is something large, someone says,
something large and dead in the woods.

There should be a verb to harbinge for
they harbinge the worst that is to come,

or seem to, as the leaves fall, and yet they
hang like hinges and what so frightens me

it is that something in the woods and what
it was and is and what they will make of it.

(c) James Norcliffe

First published in the Iowa Review.

Reproduced here with permission.

—

About the Poem: The Poet’s Note

“This poem was written in America during my time as a participant in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Programme in 2007. The programme director, the poet Christopher Merrill, arranged a number of trips and occasions for the 30 or so of us, writers from all around the world. One particular trip was to the gorge named in the poem, a gully really, not far from Iowa City. There was a reservoir adjacent and the sloping concrete wall was dotted with turkey buzzards sunning themselves, wings outstretched. They were a bizarre and sinister sight and even more sinister when they were in the air, where they hovered, as the poem describes. Carrion birds, they were quite shudder-inducing.

The other remarkable thing about fossil gorge was of course the fossils themselves. They were white and very clearly defined, and of course astonishing to find in the Midwest, just about as far from the ocean as it was possible to get in the USA.

Thus the poem plays about with colour contrast and time contrasts: the ancient past and the present; what has been, what is, and what is to come. I like the gothic impulse in the poem which tries to capture the turkey buzzards and the apprehension they induced.

It seemed appropriate to offer this poem to David Hamilton, editor of the Iowa Review, and the poem was published in the 2008, Fall Issue of that Journal.”

—

About the Poet:

James Norcliffe has published a collection of short stories, titled The Chinese Interpreter, six collections of poetry, most recently Rat Tickling (Sudden Valley), Along Blueskin  Road (CUP) and Villon in Millerton (AUP).  His latest collection, Shadow Play, was a finalist in the 2011 Proverse International Writing Prize and will be published by Proverse in November this year. Also forthcoming this year is a book of selected poems, Packing a Bag for Mars (Clerestory Press), a collection for younger readers with writing prompts.

His poem The Death of Seneca featured in Best NZ Poems 2011.

He has also written several novels for young people including most recently the award winning The Loblolly Boy and its successor The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer and this year’s The Enchanted Flute (all Longacre/Random). James is currently the Children’s Writer in Residence at the College of Education, University of Otago.

James has had a long time involvement with Takahe magazine, edits the Redraft anthologies of poetry and writing by young people with Tessa Duder, and is poetry editor for the Christchurch Press. He has won a number of awards for both his poetry and his writing for young people. With Bernadette Hall he was presented with a Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for lasting contribution to literature in the South Island, New Zealand.

James lives at Church Bay near Christchurch, spending what little spare time he has with his family, listening to music and creating a garden.

.—

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.

Storm on the Wall of Night

After 10 days away it seems like time for taking stock and maybe even doing a bit of a head count on what’s coming up.

.Firstly, after all this book launch and blog tour carry on, not to mention Natcon, the main focus now is knuckling down for a writing blast on Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book 3. At least the icy blast out-o’-doors is conducive to spending time indoors and at the writing desk. 😉

In terms of what’s happening here on the blog, this Thursday 14 I will be featuring “Zara” the debut novel by my friend Melvin Sterne–so Melvin will be here just to tell you a little bit about the book and himself. Zara is published by Ink Brush Press in the US.

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And very soon, probably next week, I hope to bring you an interview with Kristin Cashore focusing on her new novel Bitterblue—although many of you will already know her as the author of Graceling and Fire.

.I also have  a whole bunch of new books on the TBR table—and a few new reviews of The Gathering of the Lost to share.

.So it’s all looking good, but as aforesaid—I am looking forward to some relatively uninterrupted time on The Wall of Night Book Three.

Given Christchurch’s recent snow dump, thought a few photos might be in order.

The first one comes courtesy of Christchurch City Libraries and is snow in Christchurch ca. 1862.  Rather liked this one & the simplicity of Christchurch of yore.

The rest are what I returned to the other day, having been 10 days away in far more temperate–subtropical even!—climes, with the final day an enforced holiday due to all flights being cancelled (because of the snow.)

Snow in the backyard...

So here are a few snaps of what I found when I actually made it home after a ‘winter wonderland’ flight in across the Southern Alps and Canterbury Plains.

...and the front

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And the village green gets a dusting as well.

Civilian Reader is one of the blogs I have been following of recent times—you will find the link in the side bar. It’s newish on the books and genre scene, but then again, so am I… So it seemed suitably serendipitous to answer the Civilian’s call for guest posts on “Should You Read What You Write?”

Nor was I alone—writers as diverse as Gail Carriger, Mark Lawrence, Anne Lyle, and Jon Courtenay-Grimwood, amongst others, have all weighed in.

It would appear though, that I was alone in interpreting the question as: “Should You Read What You (Literally) Write?” as opposed to: “Should You Read What (/in the Genre That) You Write?” But hey, different drums and all that! 😉

Anyway, I think the responses are really interesting and well worth a read, right Here.

But in terms of what I “would” have said, if only I had gone for the second interpretation of da question, I did have a go via a series of tweets, as follows:

• ‘Read everything. Read like there’s no tomorrow-& watch films!’
• For me,it’s about embracing story in all it’s forms, so tv shows come in too & also music–total immersion…
• …It’s that bigger idea of the ‘verse of storytelling, the what-ifs the different tales told—and ways/means of telling ’em—can spark.

So I “think” that’s a decided “yes” to reading, not only in your genre, but way beyond, perhaps even as far out as the galactic rim… (Babylon 5 ref. ;-))

Yesterday morning, I woke up to the news that Ray Bradbury had died.

Since then tributes have flowed in, from President Obama to Margaret Atwood, Stephen Spielberg to Mia Farrow and Neil Gaiman. The range of tributes and people making them reflects Ray Bradbury’s contribution to literature and the world of ideas: Fahrenheit 451 is arguably his most well known work in this respect.

But I, like many others, have my own small, personal tribute to make, one that relates to my first encounter, in my mid-teens, with Ray Bradbury—in my case through a battered, secondhand copy, not of Fahrenheit 451 (although I read that in due course) but of a collection of short stories titled The Golden Apples of the Sun.  I can’t recall now how it came into my hands, whether I picked it up myself on spec, or whether someone gave it to me. I do remember that it came to me unrecommended though, but that I was favourably influenced by the title and the jacket (featured), while having no idea who Ray Bradbury was.

I recall, too, that reading it ‘blew my mind.’

I don’t think there was one story in there that I did not get something out of, sometimes in terms of language and character, but mostly in terms of ideas. Every story encapsulated an idea that fascinated, or intrigued, or made me think: “Yes, yes, wow!” They made me want to write similar stories—tales that sparked a sense of wonder and imagination and resonated with readers so that they, too, thought: “Ah, yes.”

I lost that original battered, shabby collection somewhere on my travels, but never my recollection of the stories. So when I found another copy a few years back I snapped it up instantly. I have other works by Ray Bradbury, most in better condition and more elegantly presented, but this small, well-worn volume of The Golden Apples of the Sun will always be the one I prize the most—because it was one of the defining works that cemented my love of science ficton.

A small tribute perhaps, but reflecting a profound influence for me as an individual. And to be honest, I cannot think of any writer currently who is putting out anything encompassing the same depth and breadth of ideas—and so feel doubly diminished by his passing.

Here in NZ it may be something of a truism, when someone well known dies, to say:

“E hinganga o te Totara haemata o te waotapunui a Tane: A mighty tree has fallen in the forest of Tane.”

But in this case, I think that it is really true.