‘On writing’ … now how’s that for a portentous “I’m-currently-a-writer-in-residence-don’tcha-know” type post title?

But to be honest, I couldn’t think of a better way of summarising it, so thought: “what the heck—portentous and pretentious it is!” I hope you will forgive me … (No, don’t answer that!)

So what about writing, then? Well, you see, one of the very good things about being a writer and having the internet (along with all the totally bad things, ie “time suck, big time” et al) is that you get to e-meet some interesting folk out there who would otherwise never have crossed your horizon. Like the excellent crew at SF-Signal (‘very many greetings’ and ‘y’all rock, definitely!’ salutations ensue) whom I’ve gotten to know a little, in a guest blog post-y and Mind Meld-y way over the past year.

(So when am I getting to the ‘on writing’ part? Patience, O little grasshoppers—although in fact, I’m already there, ie ‘Be a writer: meet some fun folks.’)

OK, now I really am at the (more serious)  “on writing ” part. One of those good SF Signal folks, Paul Weimer, guested over the weekend on writer Mhairi Simpson’s blog with a post titled “The Unwritten Stories in My Head.” You really should read it in full, here, but in summary it’s about having great ideas for stories and why we don’t write them.

Paul says it all boils down to fear, and I suspect he is all if not mostly right. He mentions some of the fears: rejection (aka “non selection”: he-he, ‘a rose by any other name’— is still a sourthistle!) in all its many guises; having to contend in the savage arena of public opinion, and simply that the ideas themselves may be ‘not good enough.’ These are not only very real fears, but may also be ‘fears of substance’, because yes, all these things will be in your cup should you choose to become a writer. And you will drink of them, too, down to the lees.

But here’s the thing—if we give in to the ideas and begin to write them down, they become their own reward. I suspect there may be a tendency “oot thar” to think of storytelling as a linear art (there’s the plot after all, right?) but in fact I think it’s more like a rainforest. The path is there before your feet, but in fact it’s not an asphalted or concreted superhighway: its muddy and leaf-littered; it bends, it wends, it may even loop back a time or two … And there may not be blue sky overhead, but layers of canopy and liana creepers … If you look closely there may be slow creeping tree sloths, or spider monkeys, or jaguars with the coughing roar that heralds danger. And it is a rainforest, so there’s defintely danger out there. As the intrepid explorer, best to bring the heavier of your machetes, not to mention quinine, mosquito netting, steel-toed boots and a pith helmet. (A flak jacket and bullet proof vest may also be advisable … ) So danger, yes: for sure. But there’s also colour and magic, wonder and mystery to be found in the rainforest that can comprise a host of characters peeping between the vines, or brave new worlds glimpsed around a bend in the great river we traverse in dugout canoes …

Or to say it in poetry, with a quote from the poem Angel Fish, by my friend-in-poetry Bernadette Hall:

“… The brain according
to the Novel prize-winning scientist
Gerald Edelman, is not at all like
a computer. It’s more like a rainforest

‘teeming with growth. decay, competition,
diversity and selection.’ So this word
is a toucan, this poem, a yellow
casque hornbill hiding beneath a canopy”

(from The Lustre Jug, VUP, 2009)

The other thing about the rainforest of ideas that is writing, is that they’re connected to dreams—and even if the reality proves to be more mud, mosquitos and malaria, (not to mention piranhas) than Winston Churchill’s “broad, sunlit uplands” it may nonetheless prove both wonderful, and a wonder, if we grant ourselves the opportunity to investigate our dreams.

So I think, when it comes to investigating a dream of writing, the final quote must go to Goethe:

“Whatever you can do
or dream you can,
begin it.

Boldness has genius, magic
and power in it.

Begin it now.”

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Kia kaha, dear grasshoppers: begin it now!

Finland

She returned to Finland with her children
wrapped tight against the ice of the night.
So blue their throats ached.
It was a return to the old times, familiar pain,
the first crack of a river in thaw, black haunting
of spindly trees, skeletal white morning sky.
Air so sharp it sliced their hearts with grief.
Her family never sent the gold they had promised,
her husband bought book after book
that would not feed them.
Her children became jewelled possessions
lining her soul with love like the map of Finland.
One night he biked home to an empty house,
all doors open, books piled neatly in each room.
He finds a library has no sound and dreams himself lost
in the shell pink canals to his children’s hearts.
His love will become a foreign language.
She settles them into the long winter,
dark fatherless months waxing over them,
stitching bright cloth, sharing words by the fire,
she coaches her children in their mother tongue.

(c) Victoria Broome

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

On December 6 last year I first mentioned the “Poet’s Corner”, an email series I ran where I invited poets to feature a work and also “speak” to it—so the reader got to hear the poet’s voice twice: through the poem itself and through the “Poet’s Note” on their own work.

Victoria Broome’s ‘Finland’ is another poem from the Poet’s Corner series and one I found powerful and evocative from first reading, but I think the truest evocation of the poem is simply to share Victoria’s own words:

The Poet’s Note:

“I first wrote this poem about 25 years ago and it was from a strong memory I had of a customer who used to come into a bookshop I worked at. She was from somewhere in Scandinavia and I picked Finland. She was married to a man who rode a bike everywhere and she came into the shop to pick up all the books he ordered; they had young children and she rarely spoke. I remember her as looking resigned most of the time and one day another customer told us that she had left and taken the children with her, back to where she had come from. Literally her husband had come home to an empty house.

I have worked on the poem over the years and this is its final incarnation. It is one of my favourites, I think, because it is the first poem I managed to write that stepped outside my own personal experience and told a bigger story; and also was perhaps the first poem that gave me a sense of really being a writer. A lot of people respond strongly to it and interestingly an acquaintance who is from Finland felt it was so authentic that I must have been there.”

You can also read Victoria’s poem “The Foreign Office” here.

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About the Poet:

Christchurch poet, Victoria Broome, has been writing poetry “for as long as she can remember”. She won the CNZ Louis Johnson bursary in 2005 and has had poems published in anthologies and a variety of New Zealand literary magazines and most recently in Flap – The Chook Book 2, which is the second anthology from a group of women writers called the Poetry Chooks. Victoria was an inaugural student at the Hagley Writers Institute and completed a two year course, 2008-09. The manuscript completed over these two years, Big Red Engine, was runner up for the prestigious Kathleen Grattan Award in 2010.

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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.

US cover

UK cover

Only 22 days left now to release day for The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two.

To mark the countdown, I am posting a series of excerpts from the book, and on Thursday 30 I featured an excerpt from the Prologue.

Today it’s an extract  from the opening of Part 1, The Festival of Masks:

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from The Gathering of the Lost

(c)  Helen Lowe

Chapter 1, The Road to Ij

Spring came to the River in a flurry of blustering winds and driving rain that turned the local roads into quagmires and hurled the first fragile blossoms to the ground. Two heralds were blown out of the city of Terebanth with the weather and turned east toward Ij, following the great Main Road that had endured since the days of the Old Empire. At any other season a river passage would have been faster, but the combination of contrary winds and spring floods, fed by snowmelt in the headwaters of the Ijir and the Wildenrush, would keep the merchant galleys in port for at least another month. And unlike the adjoining local roads, the Main Road was well paved and drained and would not turn to mud in the spring rain.

Even so, it took the heralds the best part of a chill and dreary month to complete their journey. The rain continued, steady and unrelenting, and they slept in small wayside inns or camped in the leafless woods. Both heralds were swathed in thick gray cloaks, but they and their horses were equally sodden by the time the first watery sunshine appeared, just before the toll bridge and the great Patrol fort at Farelle.

The bridge, with its seven great arches spanning the river, was a relic of the Old Empire. Together with the fort, it marked the last stop before Ij, which lay an easy, two-hour ride away. The floodwaters had finally begun to recede and the riverbank was lined with barges, while mules, wagons and foot travelers crammed the bridge. The heralds stood up in their stirrups, trying to make out why flow of people and goods had slowed to a trickle.

“Something on the far side,” the first one said, while his companion angled her horse toward a solitary traveler coming toward them. His garb and the lute on his shoulder suggested a journeyman minstrel and his progress was steady despite the crowd, although he seemed glad to stop in the lee of the herald’s great, gray horse.

“ ‘The whole world comes to Ij in the springtime’—isn’t that what they say?” He addressed the gray-clad rider cheerfully.

… “

Because there ended being a reasonable degree of interest, both in specific books and generally, as promised I have done a draw for the book giveaway and used Random Number integer.

And the result is:

Echo City: Anita

Julian Comstock in 22nd America: Lisa (not ‘Lisa Eden’—sorry!)

Land of Hope and Glory: Simon

Seven Princes: Daniel

The Scarab Path: Persia Rose

And because I don’t have  a book for everyone this time—I wish I did!—I am going to offer a signed cover flat for The Gathering of the Lost, my imminent ‘new book out’ (on 27 March!), to everyone who didn’t get a book this time.

To get your book, or a cover flat if you want one, please email me through contact[at]helenlowe[dot]info with your postal address. If I haven’t heard from book winners by Wednesday 7, I will re-draw for any book that’s unclaimed.

Hector's dolphins, Akaroa

So finally, after tweeting about this several times, here is the post on my excellent adventure—which basically involved having a visitor (always good) and using that as the spur to actually have a holiday.

Basically, I haven’t had a real holiday for quite some time—they’re always ‘busman’s holidays” where I’m doing something for the book or have an event, and even with family and friends, events are not exactly restful as we all know!

The Giant's House, Akaroa

And because the spur for the holiday was entertaining  a visitor, I did all those things that you do when you’re visiting a place, but so often don’t when you’re local. And that is why it was an excellent adventure, besides being a bit of a road trip as well, because really it brought home that I ‘should’ do these things more often!

So what did we do on the excellent adventure?

— We went over to Akaroa (NZ’s only French-in-origin settlement) and took a trip both on the harbour and beyond it along a bit of the coast, and saw Hector’s dolphins (lots of them!), white flippered penguins and NZ fur seals.

— And also visited the Giant’s House in Akaroa, the most amazing garden that is full of colourful mosaic sculptures. This I have seen several times now and it is always stunning.

Mt Cook, seen across Lake Pukaki

— the next loop of the road trip was down through the South Canterbury hinterland to Mt Cook National Park. Mt Cook, or Aoraki, the Sky-piercer, is NZ’s largest mountain so this is alpine territory in NZ’s semi-arid high country. And there’s a glacier—the Tasman glacier—with a terminal lake that features actual icebergs. How cool is that?

Mt Cook, across the Hooker valley

—And finally we returned to Christchurch via the inland scenic route, with stops at cool places like the Rakaia gorge.

And although I am an indifferent photographer, even of the ‘point and click’ school, here are a few photios by way of ‘excellent adventure’ evidence.

Iceberg

PS The food encountered en route, like my photography, was mostly indifferent, although the Trading Rooms cafe in Akaroa was the exception that I’m afraid otherwise proved the rule. Sadly, the meal out we had in Christchurch must also be included in the ‘mediocre’ score card. 🙁

Glacier terminus with Mt Tasman behind

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Rakaia Gorge

March 1 marked the start of NZ Book Month and I’m very excited to be participating in two events:

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18 March: Flights of Fancy—Kiwi Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror

SpecFicNZ have organised a Book Month Event on Sunday 18 March, with seven speculative fiction authors reading at the Air Force Museum in Harvard Avenue, Wigram, from 1-3 pm. The line-up, in alphabetical order, is Diane Berry, Jennifer Fallon, Amanda Fitzwater, Liz Gatens, Jane Higgins, Helen Lowe and Paul Mannering.

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Starting 19 March: “The Great NZ Book Race”

Students from Katikati College (Bay of Plenty)  and Papanui College (Christchurch) will be supporting their local writers by reading, reviewing, and then passing on books, from person to person until they reach the other school by the end of Term Three. Their aim is to get their book read and reviewed by the most New Zealanders. Find out more by clicking this link—but Thornspell is one of the books featured and you can see its feature page here.

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And for even more great NZ Book Month initiatives — look here. And if you’re on Twitter, check out the #nzbookmonth tag!

New Zealand will be the featured country at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair and as part of the run up the “Aotearoa Affair—from Kiel to Kaitaia” blog is now up and running. Part of the “Affair” will be a monthly blog festival—and the first festival, around the theme of “Crossings” has just launched!

You can check it out, here.

My contribution, featuring excerpts from The Heir of Night—which is to be published as Die Erbin Der Nacht (Blanvalet) this year—features under “Word Trails” and also here.

But there are many other wonderful contributions and I hope you will be able to explore them via the links on the Crossings page, here.

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UK cover

Only 27 days left now to release day for The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two.

To mark the countdown, I am posting a series of excerpts from the book. On Monday 27, I featured the USA/Canada back cover text for the story, with the UK/AUS/NZ introduction yesterday, on Wednesday 29.

As of today, I am beginning extracts from The Gathering of the Lost story itself, and since the beginning is traditionally regarded as the very best place to start, I shall commence by re-posting the extract from the Prologue that was first featured as part of the UK cover reveal on January 12. But whether it is a first time read for you or a re-read, I hope you will enjoy—and there will be more to come, very soon!

But now, without further ado:

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from “The Gathering of the Lost”

(c) Helen Lowe

Prologue

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Malian’s dream was darkness: blackness without stars, water without light, a tower without a shadow that she remembered climbing—but that too fell away as she plummeted, diving head first through the dream. She kept her eyes open, remembering the crow in the shadow tower, the one that had told her this was something she would need to learn how to do.

The crow had been right, Malian thought, not that it helped when the universe of her dream was devoid of light.

“It is not the eyes.” The voice of Nhenir, the legendary helm that had once belonged to Yorindesarinen, the greatest of all Derai heroes, was a mixture of light and dark, speaking into Malian’s mind. “Your inner awareness must be open: you must learn to eat the dark lest it eat you.”

Malian did not answer as she plunged deeper, and then deeper again into the well of her dream. Mind, heart and soul, she felt as if she were made of darkness—but was that not fitting since her name was Night?

She was far, far down in the dream before she saw light, a single star drowned at the bottom of the well. She turned toward it and the light grew, finally becoming a torch that gleamed white in a crystal bracket. Malian caught at it with her mind and stepped forward—into the center of an enormous cave that was ringed with more torches.

The cave was so vast that both its roof and the light were lost in the darkness overhead. But the space surrounding Malian was not empty: thousands of warriors lay all around her on stone biers. All were armed, but their helms and weapons, like their companion beasts—horses, hounds, and even the occasional hawk—were disposed around them. They looked exactly, Malian thought, like the depictions of legendary heroes in ancient sepulchres. Yet these warriors were alive: she could see the steady rise and fall of their breath.

“Asleep,” Malian whispered, “they’re all asleep.”

Slowly, she paced their silent rows—and saw young faces and those that were older, keen faces and grim, worn faces and sad. Every face looked resolute, as though some grave purpose had brought them to this one place, and a great many, Malian noticed, were beautiful, the men and the women alike.

The crystal torches were spaced evenly around the cavern, with a gonfalon hanging beside each light. Malian did not know either the runes or the heraldic devices depicted, but saw that every pennant was colorful and finely wrought. Far down the length of rows, in the very heart of the cavern, three great standards rose on staves of yellow, white, and bright red-gold. The banners were worked in the colors of fire and their brilliance both dazzled Malian and drew her close.

The central banner and the highest of the three was vermilion silk with a pattern of silver and gold flames at its center. Living fire, Malian realized, when she finally stood below it, and with some kind of creature, a serpent or perhaps a lizard, coiled at the heart of the conflagration. The eyes of the lizard, too, were burning coals.

It’s just a banner, Malian told herself, only a device.

She would never say now: It’s just a dream. For her kind, there was no such thing. She looked away with an effort, turning her eyes to the banners on either side. The one on her left was orange and gold and fiery rose, all three colors shifting and weaving together with a bird of fire device extending its full length. The bird’s wings were like knives, its tail a fall of shooting stars. The banner to Malian’s right bore a bird device as well, partially concealed by folds in a fabric that was both intensely white and indigo-blue as the hottest flame. The brilliance hurt Malian’s eyes, so she looked down at the biers instead, one beneath each of the blazing banners.

All three were draped with rich cloth that matched the standard overhead—but for the first time in all that vast hall, two of the three biers stood empty. Armor and weapons alone were laid out on the central plinth and the one immediately to its right. Malian considered them, her brows drawn together, before turning to the bier beneath the white-hot banner. The warrior who lay there was armed like all his companions, but a coif of silver mail covered his head and chin, and a naked sword was set upon his breast. His gloved hands curved around the hilt and his expression was full of grief and weariness, the folded lips stern.

The mail of the coif was cunningly wrought, a master smith’s work, but the sword was plain, with a simple guard and straight blade that was dull as pewter. Clearly though, the man was a leader, despite the plainness of the sword. The runes worked into the cloth on which he lay, as well as his position beneath the standard, led to that inevitable conclusion. Although perhaps, Malian decided—with a quick glance at the bier’s empty companions—he had not always been the only leader.

Her eyes returned to the sword, because there was something about it despite the unadorned simplicity—something that drew the eye and asked to be grasped, held aloft and wielded against one’s foes. Malian half extended her hand, even though she knew that grasping the sword might trigger some warding spell.

“It is not yet time.” The voice spoke out of the flames on the central banner and Malian snatched her hand back. Her eyes flew to the creature in the fire’s heart and saw that the watching eyes were no longer fiery coals, but had grown dull.

“Time for what?” Malian’s dream voice echoed in the vastness of the chamber.

“The Awakening. But it is not yet time and you are not the one appointed. So who are you then, that steps so boldly into my ages-old dream?”

Malian knew that it was dangerous to reveal her name—but could be even more dangerous not to, caught in so deep a dream. Her heart was racing, but she raised her chin. “Malian of Night is my name and I, too, dream.”

Silence fell all around her and the fire in the torches lengthened, growing brighter. When the voice spoke again, it held a note of wonder: “Malian. Who named you, child?”

What an odd question, Malian thought, astonished. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

“It is not,” the voice reflected, “a name that belongs to Night.”

Malian could not recall ever having thought about her name before, but it certainly wasn’t a common Night form. “No,” she agreed. “Does it matter?”

“I would be interested to learn who it was that gave it to you,” the voice replied. “When you find out, you must return and tell me.” Malian heard a note beneath the unhurried, reflective voice that she could not quite identify, although she thought it might have been excitement.

“I may not be able to find you again,” she said.

“I think you know that you will,” the voice replied. “You are very strong, for all your youth. Besides, it will be easier if I wish to be found.”

Did you wish to be found this time? Malian wondered. She decided to be bold. “Who are you? And who are they, all these warriors? What are they doing here?”

“They are sleeping,” the other replied, “until the hour and the time appointed, which is not now. Your name would mean something to them, too, though—as would the name of the one who gave it to you. It could be . . . a very great gift.”

Malian shook her head. “You talk in riddles,” she said. “But one gift deserves another: you still have not told me your name.”

Humor tinged the voice’s reply. “You still have not told me who named you. So: a riddle for a riddle, an answer for an answer, a gift for a gift. You know my name already for it is also your name—although you might not recognize it as such.”

Malian ran a hand over her hair. “I’m not sure that you play fair,” she said ruefully. “Is that a prerogative of age?”

“My dear,” said the voice, “it is not that I am old. I am dead. I died a long time ago, so that they might live.”

…

UK cover

US cover

As of Monday it was exactly 1 month to the release of The Gathering of the Lost The Wall of Night Book Two in the USA, Australia and New Zealand on 27 March—and just 1 week later in the UK on 5 April.

(Please note the date update here, with Australia and New Zealand coming forward to 27 March and the UK going back 1 day to 5 April.)

And because I am very excited about seeing The Gathering of the Lost finally out there in the world I am marking the countdown with a series of excerpts from the book—but first, I thought we’d better check out the back cover copy that is always the very first ‘entry’ into a story.

So on Monday I featured the back cover copy from the USA/Canada version—and today it is the turn of the UK/AUS/NZ edition. Enjoy!

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The Gathering of the Lost

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SHE WILL NOT STAND ALONE.

Five years after the Darkswarm assault on her stronghold home, Malian of Night remains missing, believed dead in the wilds of Jaransor. But not all accept her death and now her enemies are on the hunt. Suspicion falls on the heralds Tarathan and Jehane, who find themselves caught in a web of intrigue and murder during the Ijiri Festival of Masks. They flee bearing word of a death on the Wall – and a call to duty and honour that Malian must answer or be forsworn.

Yet after five years of searching, the legendary weapons of the Derai’s greatest hero remain lost. Without them, a return to the Wall of Night promises only defeat and death.

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Praise for The Heir of Night:

‘A richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery,
and conflicting loyalties, set in a well-realised world’
Robin Hobb

‘Gallops along at a rate of knots that almost
leaves you gasping for breath’
WalkerofWorlds.com

‘Refreshing . . . a well-told tale’

SFX Magazine

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May Day –
the last hydrangea bends
under snow

(c) Helen Lowe

Published in the taste of nashi, the Third NZ Haiku Anthology, Windrift, 2008
Submitted by E Berry, NZ selector, for the Red Moon (US) international haiku anthology 2008

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On Saturday I posted some photos of hydrangeas in my (currently) summer garden, here. And Steve B commented to say that he was very jealous–and currently his garden was “under a foot of snow.” So I promised I would post this haiku today, as a commemoration of when my garden suffered a similar fate. Although the event the poem commemorates occurred a few years ago now, we had similar weather this past winter, as the photo ‘vouches.’  The hydrangea shown on Saturday is the same one, featuring as a snowy mound against the fence, on the far right of this photo.

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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.