This is just to say… that Natcon Day 2 has been a full day of events, including the Sir Julius Vogel Awards—but we’re right on the midnight hour so I’ll bring you the full report some time tomorrow!

Watch this space … 😉

Well, I suppose Day 1 was really last night when the Con launched, but today has been the first “full on” day where I both attended and participated in panels, as well as attending a reading by fellow Christchurch author, Beulah Pragg.

L-R: Lyn McConchie, Mary Victoria, Trudi Canavan, moi

The panels I participated in were “Women in Fantasy and SF” with fellow authors Trudi Canavan, Mary Victoria and Lyn McConchie, where we discussed how the roles of women in Fantasy & SF writing have evolved, as well as the scope available to women authors writing now and thoughts for the future—with a brief side foray into that perennial favourite, cover depictions!

L-R: Trudi Canavan; myself

Points of interest included the importance of publishers’ perception of the market for female led Fantasy & SciFi, but also of keeping the focus on “character”, as well as a discussion of what motivated the respective authors on the panel when writing female characters.

The second panel, on World Building, comprised Russell Kirkpatrick, Trudi Canavan, Simon Petrie and me—three authors at the epic end of the Fantasy spectrum with Simon carrying the flag for hard SciFi.

L-R: Russell Kirkpatrick; Trudi Canavan; myself; Simon Petrie

This led to an interesting and wide-ranging conversation on topics as diverse as what motivates us when we world build and also how we approach it, with processes varying from the structured and planned to the “instant spark” and subsequent evolution of the world from that point. Discussion also covered the forces that shape world building, from environment and culture to magic and the laws of physics, as well as the extent to which the mechanics of a world, whether scientific or magical, need to be explained.

The power of successful world building to create the standout Fantasy & SF that sticks with us was canvassed, with examples such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings cited. But also raised was the inherent dichotomy that no matter how fascinating a world, if the characters fail to achieve the same level of interest, then the story and the world building ultimately may not succeed.

Overall I am enjoying the Con and meeting up with a range of people involved in the SFF scene in NZ, and to a lesser extent Australia.

And tomorrow, of course, as well as a further round of panels and readings, we also have the Sir Julius Vogel Awards for excellence in Science Ficton and Fantasy. Although I am not up for anything myself this year, I know plenty of people who are and am looking forward to the award ceremony tomorrow night.

On May 21, Wen Baragrey guest posted, here, on the “Help Baby Jayden” fundraising campaign and also discussed the online charity auction to commence on June 2.

And of course it’s now June 2, which means that at some stage today the online auction will commence with all the auction items going up progressively over this coming week.

The auction will take place on Jayden’s blog, so if you check in today things should be starting to happen.

Here’s the link: http://helpbabyjayden.wordpress.com/

Yes that’s right,  I’m in Auckland for UnConventional, the National Science Fiction Fantasy Convention, with Trudi Canavan as international Guest of Honour.

Here’s my programme:

• Women in Fantasy and SF: Saturday 2nd,  3pm —  Damsels, love interests, butt-kickers. Just what is the place of women in the genre and how has it changed? Panelists: Trudi Canavan, Lyn McConchie, Helen Lowe, Mary Victoria

• Worldbuilding: Saturday 2nd, 5pm — The thing that differentiates SF & F from the rest of fiction writing is the extent to which worldbuilding becomes integral to the writing process. The panel of authors discuss how they go about it. Panelists: Helen Lowe, Russell Kirkpatrick, Trudi Canavan, Simon Petrie

• Promoting your Book:  Sunday 3rd,  11am — How do you make your stuff sell? Writers and editors discuss what they do to get the word out there. Panelists: Trudi Canavan, Helen Lowe, Stephen Minchin, Grace Bridges

• Reading: Sunday 3rd, 4 pm

And I’ll be blogging in a few daily reports on my personal highlights…

UK/AU/NZ mass market paperback

Yes, it really is the last gasp for voting in the international Gemmell Awards, including the Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer—in which, you may recall, The Heir of Night is a finalist. 🙂

Voting for the Morningstar winner wraps up at 12 noon, Thursday 31 May UK time today. Yes, today!

After that it will be the nail-biting wait for the final Award ceremony on 15 June… (Hmm, my nails are short already—alarm!—does this mean I have to chew my fingers?)

But in the meantime, if you haven’t already voted but would like to support The Heir of Night to win, then all you have to do is:

Click Here

Then click again in the circle immediately above “The Heir of Night — Helen Lowe”

Before 12 noon, UK time! Easy-peasy… 😉

And thank you!

Last week really felt like the week of interviews—they were coming through thick and fast, although in a very good way!

Robin Hobb; photo by Alex Ogdan

So now I have had a chance to draw breath, I thought it was time for a recap, just in case you missed any of the fun. 😉

• First off the blocks was an indepth interview with Nalini Haynes at Australia’s Dark Matterzine, here.

• Quickly followed by a chat-in-brief with Robin Hobb on the B&N website here

• And a far more indepth conversation, again with Robin Hobb, on world building, character development, magic and more, here — plus a Robin Hobb/HelenLowe ‘Easter Egg’ especially for “…on Anything, Really” here.

• 

  Nalini Singh; photo credit Deborah Hillman

  Quickly followed by a fun chat with New York Times best-selling author, Nalini Singh, on The Realm, where she managed to extract some of my dark secrets, here…

• And last but not least, a chat with Patrick Hester on SF Signal Podcast, with the focus on the story I’m telling in the Wall series, my writing process and more… All right here.

Push

He has found the green door at last,
in a faded, jaded street.
And, slightly askew, it reflects
the slant of his memories.

Behind it, there might be a childhood,
if he could only reach the handle,
and against the glass
(the sunlight blood of stained glass roses)
there is the shadow of his father.

And the hallway builds back
into those small rooms.
In that one the faces turned
like flowers to the sun of her entrance.

That beautiful woman who spilt his love
easily as tea, and he only
the second best china.

But listen, there is his mother singing,
and a chorus of relatives rehearsing
their relatively small disagreements.

He hears his grandmother calm the dog
barking at the approach of a strange future.

How much? He asks the scrap-yard dealer.
Well, the man says,
these things don’t come cheap.

(c) David Gregory

Published in “Push” (Black Doris Press) 2008

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem: The Poet’s Note

“Doors feature on the covers of all three of my collections of poetry. In using them as a motif I have also posed two questions to myself; why are they important to me and will there be a resonance for the reader? In choosing the poem from which the title of my recent collection, “Push” is drawn, this questioning is continued. I draw back from “explaining” the poem; the meaning for the reader is not necessarily the meaning for the writer. It is a delight to me when someone has drawn different inferences from the words which then revalidate the work.

Readers over a certain age may recall the ancient pop song “Green Door” where a line goes, “I don’t know what they got but they sure play it hot behind the Green Door”. The door constitutes a physical and metaphysical separation from something both desired and unknown. The song, and the poem also resound with the idea of the ”search”, where one moves forward in life, often with an increasing baggage of memory, and where the recognition of an physical element (the door) is also the recognition of a pivotal point in that life. That pivotal point may lie in the past, but can condition one’s attitude to the present. It is possible to be unaware of this pivotal point until a flash of recognition illuminates it. In this case, that point has become a thing that is pivotal in itself; that both conceals and reveals, allows and bars experience, includes and excludes, and, as the poem says, these things don’t come cheap. And have I answered my own question?”

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About the Poet:

David Gregory is a Christchurch based poet active in the promotion of New Zealand writing. He is an editor for Sudden Valley Press and a member of the Canterbury Poets Collective and has three books of poetry to his name , “Always Arriving” and “Frame of Mind”, both by Sudden Valley Press, and “Push” by Black Doris Press . His work has been published and performed locally and internationally.

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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.

The 2012 Mythopoeic Award shortlist  has been announced. The Awards are given annually by the Mythopoeic Society and here’s what the fiction lists look like:

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature:

— for the fantasy novel, multi-volume novel, or single-author story collection for adults that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings”

• Lisa Goldstein, The Uncertain Places (Tachyon)
• Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (Doubleday)
• Richard Parks, The Heavenly Fox (PS Publishing)
• Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless (Tor)
• Jo Walton, Among Others (Tor)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature:

— for  books for younger readers  in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia

• Lisa Mantchev, Théâtre Illuminata series, consisting of Eyes Like Stars, Perchance to Dream, and So Silver Bright (Feiwel and Friends)
• Tamora Pierce, Beka Cooper series, consisting of Terrier, Bloodhound, and Mastiff (Random House)
• Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze (Big Mouth House)
• Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races (Scholastic)
• Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Feiwel and Friends)

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Points of interest include:

• Jo Walton,  Among Others has recently won the Nebula Award for Best Novel and is a finalist for both the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel
• Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless is also a finalist in the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel — just as The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making features on the Locus Award shortlist for (Best) Young Adult Book
• Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze recently won the Andre Norton Award for (Best) Young Adult SF and Fantasy Book

Nice to see some new titles included on the shortlist, together with a selection of currently ‘trending’ books .

First off, a fun quote:

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space” — Anonymous

I’m not sure it’s the quote I want to live my life by, but I like the idea of it. 🙂

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And something I really enjoyed seeing recently, two shots featured by the Accidental Formalist, showing a fox caught on security cameras, exploring the Tudor and Georgian rooms of the National Portrait Gallery by night.

You can check the photos out Here — and you should: you’ll love them!

And speaking of foxes, Bernadette Hall’s very cool poem The Fox is featured here.

No, I know, not an author interview somewhere “out thar” in the ethernet—what am I thinking?

In fact there’s not a great deal of time for reading these days in between the book writing and all that social media-rization, aka interviews, guest posts and tweeting-like-anything. Which is all good stuff, but hey thar, a gal gotta stay in touch with what else is happening in the world of books and writing, and the very best way to do that is by reading.

Yes, reading!

And right now the book I have on the go is “Started Early, Took My Dog” by Kate Atkinson.

So far, I have to say, I am enjoying it. She (the Kate, that is) has a very dark view of human nature but then again—read the newspaper, listen to the radio. Her view of who we are as a species and what we are capable of has plenty of evidence to back up the darker view. I like to think that is not all we are, or can be, but it’s certainly hard to argue against Ms Atkinson…

Anyways, here’s what the back cover blurb says—and yes it is another “Jackson Brodie” novel (although that in fact is a very simplistic view of the array of characters and storylines within the covers of the book):

“A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn’t bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy’s outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished…”

With luck, I’ll get it finished within the next three months or so. 😉

But definitely, so far, so good.

How about you? What are you reading right now?