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We’ve survived earthquakes and liquefaction, we’ve counted down with excerpts from the book and finally the first 100 pages, we’ve talked celebrations and blog tours—and now finally, it’s The Day.

Today I’m welcoming The Gathering of the Lost, the second novel in The Wall of Night series, fully into the public arena right here in New Zealand, over the Tasman in Australia (it’s official my books are now Tasmanauts! — waves out to Joanna Preston) and in the USA and Canada. (And in just 9 days time, on April 5, it’ll be out in the UK as well.) And although there’s plenty happening here, later on in first Australian, and then USA, time I’ll be linking through to guest posts on Orbit and SF Signal respectively. So ‘watch this space’ for those links.

You can also check out each edition of the book in more detail by going to the links in the far right sidebar. But now onto what’s happening right here! (As previewed for you on Sunday.)

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First off, this is a Celebration, so I’m doing GIVEAWAYS—and yes, they are fully international. (Kinda like me and The Gathering of the Lost, come to think of it—international! 😉 )

All you have to do to enter the Giveaways Draw is post a comment on this post, or any other posts I may make dated 27 March. But to allow international readers a chance to read and comment, the giveaway draw will close off at midnight Wednesday 28 March, NZ time.

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But Now For Those Giveaways!

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Grand Fantasy Book Prize No 1: a book pack comprising —

• 1 x signed copy of The Gathering of the Lost (of course 🙂 )
• 1 x The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham
• 1 x The Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin, comprising The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms; The Broken Kingdoms; and The Kingdom of Gods
• 1 x The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

Grand Fantasy Book Prize No 2: a book pack comprising —

• 1 x signed copy of The Gathering of the Lost (again, of course 😉 )
• 1 x City of Dragons by Robin Hobb
• 1 x Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Signed Book Plates & Cover Flats:

• 10 x sets of the US The Gathering of the Lost cover flats and 10 x signed ‘Helen Lowe’ bookplates designed by Peter Fitzpatrick, creator of The Heir of Night map

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But As Promised, There is More—

Your Chance To Enter The “Give Your Name To A Character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night, Book Three” Draw:

Everyone who comments on both/either Tuesday 27 (USA/Canada and Australia/New Zealand) and/or April 5 (UK) release days, will go in the draw to give their name to a character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three.

Provisos include:

• Only 1 comment per every distinct blog post I publish here on Tuesday 27 and/or April 5 will count as an eligible entry (so you automatically get 1 chance to enter on both March 27 and April 5 respectively, but you will get a further chance every time I add an additional post on each of those days);
• The successful name must be the real name of the commenter, not a pseudonym;
• The person whose name is drawn will also be recognised in the Acknowledgments to Daughter of Blood and receive a signed, complimentary copy of that book;
• I reserve the right to adapt the winning name to best fit a fantasy character, e.g. “John the Miller” as opposed to “John Miller”
• I cannot predetermine how the “Your Name” character will appear in the story and whether he/she will play a positive or negative role

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How This Will All Run (A few slight changes here from Sunday’s post, mainly because of time zone considerations):

• All draws will be made by Random Number Integer and the “Name/Character” draw will be made by an independent third party to ensure full transparency(!)
• The opportunity to comment on today’s posts and enter the Giveaway draw will close off at midnight Wednesday 28, NZ time, with the results published as Thursday 29’s blog post.
• The opportunity to enter in the “Name/Character” draw by commenting on either today’s March 27 post(s,) or the April 5 post(s) for the UK launch will close off at midnight April 6, NZ time and be posted as Saturday 7 April’s blog post.
• Also—don’t forget to check back to see if you’ve won 😉

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Breaking News:

5.00 pm: My first guest post on the Australian leg of my Blog Tour has just posted on Orbit: “Celebrating “‘The Gathering of the Lost’ and the Power of Environment.” Click on the link to check it out—and I’d love it if you supported the Blog Tour with a comment. 🙂

8.00 pm: And now my first guest post on the North American leg of my Blog Tour has posted as well—over on SF Signal I’m “Celebrating Epic Fantasy & Publication of The Gathering of the Lost.” And, if you miss out on a giveaway here, I’m giving away two copies of The Gathering of the Lost there as well—but you will have to comment there to be in to win.

Now, let’s party on!

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When The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night Book One) was published in 2010, I celebrated with a Fantasy SciFi Guest Author series here on the blog, which was great fun. (You can read all the posts here.) But every book and launch should be a little different, right—so this time I’m off on a two hemispheres, at-least-three country tour of friend and fellow authors’ blogs.

The tour will be  a mix of guest blog posts and Q&A, and in the posts I’ll be reflecting/discussing different angles on the WALL series and The Gathering of the Lost in particular.

Here’s the schedule as it stands at present:

• 27 Mar: (aka “Kick-off!”)
  
• SF Signal (US & international) — Guest post celebrating epic fantasy and publication of The Gathering of the Lost
  
• Orbit (AU) — Guest post on the influence of environment on The Wall of Night series & The Gathering of the Lost.

• 29 March: Big Idea on John Scalzi’s Whatever (US & international) — Guest post for The Gathering of the Lost 

• 30 March: Trent Jamieson (AU) — Guest post on combat and war in The Wall of Night series and The Gathering of the Lost

• 1 April: Supernatural Underground (US/international) – The Gathering of the Lost launch post.

• 2 April: Civilian Reader (US) – Q&A with Stefan Fergus

• 5 April: Gillian Polack (AU) Guest post on the influence of history on The Wall of Night series and The Gathering of the Lost

• 7 April: Chronicles of the Tree (NZ) – Q&A with Mary Victoria

• 9 April: ismellsheep (US)  – Q&A with Sharon Stogner
  

• 10 April: The Shared Desk (Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris, US) (guest post on adventure in fantasy / Gathering)

• 16 April: (US/international) Character Interview with Kim Falconer on the Supernatural Underground

• Week of 16-20th (Date to be advised) Q&A with John Fultz (US)

• 19 April Mur Lafferty (US) (guest post on writing women in fantasy / The Gathering of the Lost)

• 24 April Kate Elliott  (guest post on world/culture in fantasy / The Gathering of the Lost)

There may be a few more to come as well: I’ll revise the schedule as they confirm, if so.

I’ll definitely be cross-posting from my blog here to each of the stops on the blog tour as they occur, with links for you to follow. Tweeting, too, for those of you on Twitter. And there may be giveaways—perhaps not on every stop but “should be, for sure” on some.

But Wait There’s More: E-Media Interviews

In addition to the blog tour, I’ve also got some e-media interviews in the pipeline. First up today I’ll be talking with Nalini Haynes of Australia’s Dark Matter Fanzine — and she tells me our interview will appear in Issue 9 available free May 2012 from National Library Archives: http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-123161 So definitely look out for that!

I’ll update these details too as they come to hand!

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But see what fun’s in the pipeline? So do come on tour with me (you can be my “Barmy Army” he-he ;-)): it’s going to be a lot of fun!

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Next Tuesday, 27 March, is Publication Day for The Gathering of the Lost and on Thursday (22nd), I posted, here, indicating that I intended to mark the occasion on my blog, as well as having a real-time launch event on 23 April. And I threat— I mean promised that there would be “celebratory goodness” to go with the on-blog launch.

I then mentioned the possibility of a book giveaway to mark the occasion, plus a competition for blog readers to comment and go into a draw to give their name to a character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three. And since no one posted to say “Nah, don’t do that!” I have decided to go ahead.

So next Tuesday, the 27th, do visit and take part in the blog party. And if you comment on the day, your name will go into a draw to win any of:

Grand Fantasy Book Prize No 1: a book pack comprising —

• 1 x signed copy of The Gathering of the Lost (of course 🙂 )
• 1 x The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham
• 1 x The Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin, comprising The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms; The Broken Kingdoms; and The Kingdom of Gods
• 1 x The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

Grand Fantasy Book Prize No 1: a book pack comprising —

• 1 x signed copy of The Gathering of the Lost (again, of course 😉 )
• 1 x City of Dragons by Robin Hobb
• 1 x Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Signed Book Plates & Cover Flats:

• 10 x sets of the US The Gathering of the Lost cover flats and 10 x signed ‘Helen Lowe’ bookplates designed by Peter Fitzpatrick, creator of The Heir of Night map

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 PLUS ~

The “Give Your Name To A Character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night, Book Three” Draw:

Everyone who comments on both/either Tuesday 27 (USA/Canada and Australia/New Zealand) and/or April 5 (UK) release will go in the draw days to have their name included as a character name in the next book in The Wall of Night series, Daughter of Blood.

Provisos include:

• Each comment on every distinct blog post I publish on Tuesday 27 or April 5 will count as an eligible entry;
• The successful name must be the real name of the commenter, not a pseudonym;
• The person whose name is drawn will also be recognised in the Acknowledgments to Daughter of Blood and receive a signed, complimentary copy of that book;
• I reserve the right to adapt the winning name to best fit a fantasy character, e.g. “John the Miller” as opposed to “John Miller”
• I cannot predetermine how the “Your Name” character will appear in the story and whether he/she will play a positive or negative role

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All draws will be made by Random Number Integer

The results of the Tuesday 27th giveaways will be published here on the blog on Thursday 29 March (NZ time) to accommodate differences with USA & Australian time

The results of the “Name/Character” draw will be posted here on April 7 (NZ time) to accommodate differences with UK time.

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Only three days now until The Gathering of the Lost is finally here so I thought I’d add in another excerpt. But first I’d like to particularly mention SFFANZ stalwart and avid FSF reader, Jan Butterworth, who texted me last night that she was in hospital getting her ” … heart checked out so couldn’t email or comment on blog”  but that she was “still counting down 2 Gathering.”

For those of you who may not know, Jan was also the reader who won the contest when The Heir of Night was released to give her name to a character in The Gathering of the Lost. This means that Jan also gets a mention in the Acknowledgments and will get a personalised copy of the book as soon as I have my author copies. And there is indeed a character called Jan Butterworth in The Gathering of the Lost!

Unfortunately I can’t make today’s excerpt about that Jan Butterworth character because it could be a bit too spoiler-y, but I would like to to send lots of positive thoughts Jan’s way—and both hope that heart checks out A-OK, Jan, and you enjoy this excerpt from the book.

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from The Gathering of the Lost

(c)  Helen Lowe

Chapter 7, Across the River

The approaching clip of horses’ hooves was muffled by the thick fog that looped across the road and into the trees. There was a flat, eerie quality to the half-lit world, as though the forest itself held its breath. The heralds, too, waited, pressed low beneath arching fern. Above their heads a bird called, heralding the day. Another answered it, deeper in the woods, and a moment later a great clamor of birdsong filled the forest, just as the first of the riders emerged through the fog.

The heralds saw the horse’s head first, splitting the white air, its ears forward and nostrils flared. A second later the spiked helmet of its rider appeared, turning slowly in a sweep of road and wood. The visor was lowered, concealing the rider’s face, and the horse too was armored, its breath curling through the metal chanfron as it walked forward. Together, horse and rider looked like some beast of ancient legend—or something altogether stranger, a shape of night itself emerging from the mist.

The rider stopped on the crown of the road and five others materialized out of the whiteness to join him. The heavy armor of both horses and riders clanked beneath the birdsong and their breath steamed on the air. The dark, secret visors turned, peering between the trees, but they did not penetrate the heralds’ hiding place. After a few minutes the riders moved on, breasting the mist and half-light beneath the canopy. One by one, just as they had first appeared, they disappeared, while the heralds waited, motionless.

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And if you would like to read the first 100 hundred pages of the book in sequence , rather than my excerpts taken from ‘all over the place’ (although I rather think that’s fun, too!), you can now do so here.

Haven’t read The Heir of Night yet? Then you can check out an excerpt here.

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With publication of The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two just four (4!) days away in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and thirteen in the UK, I thought it was high time to start talking about what I’m going to do to celebrate the big release.

Firstly, I’m actually going to have a real-time book launch at the University Book Shop on the evening of Tuesday 3 March. I didn’t have a launch for The Heir of Night because the first of the major Canterbury earthquakes, the 7.0 on September 4, had just happened and with the city so devastated trying to organise a launch event just didn’t seem appropriate. I did have two blog parties (one for the USA and one for  the UK/Aus/NZ) and they were both a lot of fun, but this time, after 18 months of earthquakes, a real-time celebration feels like absolutely the right thing to be doing. And as the current Ursula Bethell writer-in-residence at the university, holding the launch on campus also seems like the right thing to do.

(UBS have the launch up on their Facebook site so it would be wonderful if all you FB folk felt you could  “like” it here. 🙂 )

But of course I am aware that the bulk of my readers and followers do not reside in Christchurch NZ (And am quite sure, too, given the earthquakes, that many of you are adding a ‘thank goodness’ to that last remark, a sentiment I fully appreciate!) So I shall be having a blog party on both the 27th and the 5th—but you will have to bide a wee yet to find out my nefarious plans for celebratory goodness around that … maybe even until tomorrow, or the day after that! But there ‘could’ be a grand book giveaway and—just possibly—another competition for a reader to give his/her name to a character in Daughter of Blood: The Wall of Night, Book Three.

But maybe you all feel giveaways and name/character competitions are old hat? In which case I shall of course bow to the collective will and not do either! (But you had better post and let me know either way.)

AND there’s going to be a Blog Tour, also starting on the 27th: I shall post the schedule for that here, too, in the next day or so.

And we might just get in one more book extract before release day …

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Oh yes, we’re getting very close now—and having shared an excerpt from the prologue and each of The Gathering of the Lost’s five parts, I thought I’d carry on the countdown with scenes that feature various of the central characters.

This one is the featured text from the inside cover pages of the book and the action takes place in Part 1, Festival of Masks:

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from The Gathering of the Lost

(c)  Helen Lowe

Chapter 5, The Guild House

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She stopped  ten paces from the Guild House gate, which gaped at her, silent as an unanswered question, and waited.

The minutes lengthened, but Jehane Mor remained motionless until she felt the touch of Tarathan’s mind, letting her know he was inside the Guild House grounds. The moment she broke cover, slipping out of the shadows and toward the unlit entrance, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around as a dense, inky blot with long tendrils trailing beneath it dropped from an eave diagonally opposite the gate. The tendrils exploded toward her in a jet of black matter and she sprang back, gathering her power to counterattack—only to drop to the ground for the second time that night as an arrow sang.

But the unseen archer was not aiming at her and the arrow flew true, piercing the attacker’s ink-black core. The creature emitted one thin, keening whistle before folding in on itself and collapsing to the street.

Jehane Mor rose to her feet, taking in the stain of black matter oozing across the cobblestones as the archer dropped from a vine-hung balcony half a block away. He fitted another arrow to the string, quartering the street and surrounding roofs with his eyes as he walked toward her, but it was not until he drew near that she recognized Tirorn of the Derai.

“Darkspawn,” he said …”

On January 16 I posted the very exciting news, here, that The Heir of Night has been nominated for the Gemmell Awards in both the Morningstar (Best Fantasy Newcomer) and Legend (Best Fantasy Novel) categories.

The Gemmell Awards have been established to honour heroic fantasy author David Gemmell—and to celebrate excellence in the heroic/epic fantasy genre, and on February 16 I shared some of the reasons why I feel honoured that The Heir of Night has been nominated, here.

But once the longlist of nominated works is released, the Gemmell Awards are solely reader voted, so for The Heir of Night to make it into the next round, ie onto the shortlist, then it does need support—in the form of votes recorded prior to 31 March, just ten days away.

So if you enjoyed The Heir of Night and would like to see it succeed in such a  major international competition then I  would love it if you felt able to click on the following links and vote now for “The Heir of Night.”

• The Morningstar Award:  to shortlist The Heir of Night for Best Fantasy Debut—vote here

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• The Legend Award: to shortlist The Heir of Night for Best Fantasy Novel—vote here

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Although I know it involves voting twice, please do vote in both Award categories, as it would be wonderful if The Heir of Night could make a good showing amongst both the Morningstar’s  ‘new names’ and in the more ‘wide-open’ Legend section—your vote will definitely count in both sections.

And thank you so much for any/all support!

Day of Delivery

It wasn’t simply your name
or how it arrived at twilight,
a dream, somehow Jungian,
instinctive and ancestral.

It was my whole day:
a journey, a crossing,
a boy who appeared
and forgot to check
for danger. A thrash of brakes;
the way the boy slipped
beneath my silver bonnet;
the way I was emptied
of breath: this was a landscape
as uneven as the beginnings
of motherhood.

And the way the boy reappeared,
unscathed, smiling, moments later
and ran away: this was a window opened
on a newly decorated room, the paint drying,
a cot emptily expectant, a mobile waiting
to play its music, and a woman
in a chair rocking herself to sleep.

(c) Siobhan Harvey

Reproduced here with permission

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About the Poem: The Poet’s Note—

“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry,” W. B Yeats

While compiling a first New Zealand poetry collection for publication, my life was consumed by the wrangle I conducted with myself. I needed to row, deliberate and re-examine a lot: which poems to include; which to discard; which to edit and how; which to write from scratch. ‘Day of Delivery’ is a poem which falls into the latter category. Compiling the poetry collection, it became clear that I needed to write ‘Day of Delivery’ because it would maintain the themes of family and ancestry which underpin the book, particularly the section, ‘My Son and I’ in which it’s placed. In truth, however, it’s a poem which I’ve struggled with wanting and not wanting to write ever since the experience behind the poem occurred 6 years ago. In 2003, while driving along the undulating Tripoli Road in Tamaki, Auckland and with the afternoon sun low and strong enough to nearly blind me, a boy ran out in front of my car. I put my brakes on, but not before the child disappeared under my bonnet. I can still feel the panic I experienced, exacerbated as it was by the certainty that I’d killed somebody. As I fumbled to open my door, however, the child reappeared and ran away. Dramatic and surreal perhaps, but it took on extra, poetic intent because that happened to be the first day I instinctively knew my son was going to be born. Since, my mind has fused the two events, and so the poem attempts to balance the near death of the mysterious boy with the coming life of my son. Even as I write this, I know the reason I long disputed the need to pen ‘Day of Delivery’ lay in the fact that its grave confessional – that I almost killed another human being – would be inextricably entwined with its completion. That internal argument ended once ‘Day of Delivery’ was written, and there was release in letting it out into the world.”

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About the Poet:

Siobhan Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Lost Relatives (Steele Roberts, 2011) and the book of literary criticism, Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion (Cape Catley, 2010). Her poems have recently appeared in The Evergreen Review (US), Meanjin (Aus) and The Tuesday Poem. She was runner-up in 2011 Landfall Essay Prize. Recently launched, her Writer’s Page on The Poetry Archive (U.K.), co-directed by Andrew Motion, can be found at: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=15762

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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.

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Yes indeed, not many sleeps left now—so on we go to an extract from Summer’s End, the fifth and final part of The Gathering of the Lost.

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from The Gathering of the Lost

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(c)  Helen Lowe

Chapter 53, The Solitary Tower

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” … The second dream she found more problematic, because the figure in darkness did remind her of the shadow cloak and she had been thinking about Nherenor before she slept. The vision could simply have been a manifestation of that—but it could also be a warning. Malian checked her back trail with greater care as she rode on and extended her seeker’s sense, as unobtrusively as possible, over the terrain ahead. Once or twice she thought she caught the echo of a horse’s hooves behind them, but although she lay in wait each time and continued to seek out vantage points with a wide view of the surrounding country, she saw no other rider.

Gradually, the high hills gave way to more rolling country, with villages clustered around crossroads and fords. Flocks of sheep still predominated, but Malian began to see geese grazing beside streams, and groves of olives and nut trees by farmhouses. Inns became more frequent, some little more than a village alehouse, while larger settlements boasted a secure stable and rooms for hire. Wherever possible she would stop: to water her horse and drink a mug of ale in the heat of the day, or to eat an evening meal and sleep afterward in the stable hayloft, avoiding the stiflingly hot attic rooms that were all an itinerant scribe could afford. At every halt, whether short or long, she would listen to the conversations around her, alert for any indication that there was more to this community than any other sleepy country village.

The local language was yet another dialect of that spoken in Emer and on the River, although the accent was broad and she began to encounter unknown words. She was careful never to ask questions beyond directions to the nearest shrine of Serrut—or Serru, as they said it here, dropping the final consonant altogether. Instead she listened for any difference that rose naturally to the surface of local conversations. But the talk, Malian found, whether in Hayfield, or Oakwhistle, or Forge Crossing, was always the same. People discussed the weather and harvest prospects, and gave consideration, whether serious or idle, to the qualities of horses, dogs, and prize rams. Their outlook matched the Ormondian hill farmer’s view of the world: “As far away as Ishnapur,” they would say, giving it the same sound as ‘beyond the rim of the world.’ And they had never heard of the Derai Wall.

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So what is Malian doing, so far from the Wall of Night? You’ll have your chance to find out very soon—in just eight days time!

It’s official—and I have the poster to prove it! Die Erbin Der Nacht, the German edition of The Heir of Night, is to be published in August. (See the poster below.)

Pretty exciting, huh?!

And very nice, too, to have my first book published in Germany the year New Zealand is the international guest at the Frankfurt Book Fair—see more here.

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