Nine days ago — and already I can’t believe it’s been that long — you joined me here to celebrate the release of The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. And today it is out in the UK—where of course I hope the story will take wings! 🙂

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But right here, now, today, I would like to celebrate what really does feel like the final milestone in the publication process.

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Here’s what’s happening to do just that:

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First Up — The Draw To Give Your Name To A Character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night, Book Three” Resumes:

Here’s the buzz:

Everyone who has commented 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 published 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 if/when I add an additional post today—and there’s already been the Ursula Le Guin quote post earlier);
• 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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UK/AUS/NZ cover

And It’s A Celebration Right—So of Course There’s  Giveaways!

So what have I got for you today:

* An Absolutely Tremendously Fabulous “Helen Lowe” Gift Set Comprising —

• 1 each signed first editions of  Thornspell, The Heir of Night and The Gathering of the Lost

* An Absolutely Tremendously Fabulous “Grand Fantasy” Gift Set Comprising —

• 1 x signed first UK (of course!) edition of The Gathering of the Lost
• 1 x copy of NK Jemison’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
• 1 x copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker

* 10 x Copies of the UK Launch Day Poster (featured) signed by the artist, Peter Fitzpatrick (who also drew “The Wall of Night” series map) and the author (that’s me! 😉 ).

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And Here’s How It All Works Again:

•  All you have to do to enter any of the draws is post a comment on this post, or any other posts I may make dated 5 April. But to allow international readers a chance to read and comment, all draws will close off at midnight Friday 6 April, NZ time.
• All giveaways and draws are fully international.
• 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 results will be be posted as Saturday 7 April’s blog post.
• Also—don’t forget to check back to see if you’ve won. And do contact me through my website (details will be part of the April 7 post) to claim your prize!

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Want To Find Out More?

You can check out more details, including reading more of the book, via the links in the side bar — see “The Gathering of the Lost: Read More Here”

And you follow the stops on the Blog Tour to date by clicking on the links below:

• SF Signal — launching the tour in North America with a post “Celebrating Epic Fantasy & Publication of The Gathering of the Lost.”

• Orbit — where I kicked off the Australian tour with a discussion of The Power of Environment in my writing

• John Scalzi’s Whatever — with a guest post on the Big Idea that manifested in The Gathering of the Lost

• Trent Jamieson’s Trentonomicon — with a guest post on “Romance vs Reality: War & Conflict in Epic Fantasy and ‘The Gathering of the Lost.’”

• Galactic Chat — you can check the podcast out here.

• R is for Romance in The Gathering of the Lost on the Supernatural Underground, here.

• And there’s an indepth interview with the Civilian Reader here

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Breaking News:

The next stop on the Blog Tour is now current on Gillian Polack’s blog, Even In A Little Thing where I’m talking historical influences on The Gathering of the Lost and The Wall of Night series, including geography, cultures, heraldry and names!

You can check it all out here.

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And it is UK release day after all, so the celebration is current on Orbit, my UK publisher’s blog with a lovely focus post on The Gathering of the Lost.

Get into the launch day spirit—rock on over and take a look, here! 😉

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… on the UK release day post & launch celebrations due to “technical difficulties” (which I suspect lie chiefly with the technician — moi!) but it should be with you shortly.

Technical difficulties now resolved — with a little help from my friends! — & we are about to launch. Yahoo!

“The story is not in the plot but in the telling.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

I love this quote—and what better way to begin April 5, which is also UK release day for The Gathering of the Lost (yahoo!) than with a quote that so perfectly exemplifies my own feelings about story.

(Although as Paul Mannering from SpecFicNZ observed on Twitter, given received wisdom, shouldn’t it be “in the showing” — he he, thanks Paul 😉 )

But no, entirely in the joy and love of the storytelling, in my humble opinion.

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And speaking of the UK launch, my launch post will go up at 12 noon here, just after the clock ticks over into April 5 in the UK—so watch this space for the celebration.

Also, remember that a comment on any blog post dated April 5 will add a further entry of your name into draw to have a character in Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three named after you (yes: you!)— so comment at will! (You know I love to hear from you “anyways.”)

Just a quick note to say that we had an absolutely fabulous realtime launch for The Gathering of the Lost last night—with big thanks to Philip King, Gillian Newman and the University Book Shop for hosting, my NZ publisher Hachette for their support, and to Dr Christina Stachurski, my lead editor Kate Nintzel,  and my partner Andrew for their good words on the occasion.

The gathering crowd

And a huge thank you to everyone who came along and helped make it a great party—you all rock!

'Talking to' the book ...

I will definitely write more later, by meanwhile, here are a few photos just to give you a  flavour ‘in the meantime.’   🙂

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yellow admiral –
……..in the stone garden
……..a leaf falls

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(c) Helen Lowe

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

* Note: a “yellow admiral” is a rare NZ native butterfly

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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.

And it’s the Tuesday Poem’s second birthday today so we’re starting another ‘community’ poem, like the one we did last year: great fun!

Yes, the Blog Tour has taken on whistlestop dimensions today—largely because of time zone complexities—but here is another in-depth interview, this time with bookblog Civilian Reader.

And yes—there’s another chance to win a copy of The Gathering of the Lost, so rock on over and check it out—

Right Here.

I did my first podcast interview via Skype last week, with Sean Wright of Australia’s Galactic Chat.

You can check it out here.

I understand it is reasonably lengthy, aka “in depth”, so you might want to download the mp3 😉

US cover

UK/AUS/NZ cover

Where would we be without a little romance to make the world go around?

It’s no different in the Wall of Night series world of Haarth — and where better to talk romance than on the Supernatural Underground. So I’m there right now with a post on romance in The Gathering of the Lost:

“Because Malian and Kalan, the two central characters from the first book, The Heir of Night, aren’t kids anymore. They are five years older and so of course romance is going to be there in the story, especially as they are hanging out with other young people — and at least part of their adventures take place in the land of Emer, which even has a tradition of “springtime love” …”

To check out the rest and enter the giveaway, click here.

USA Cover

It’s been quite a week, with the launch of The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two for the USA/Canada, Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday, as well as commencing the Blog Tour, with stops this week at:

* SF Signal — launching the tour in North America with a post “Celebrating Epic Fantasy & Publication of The Gathering of the Lost.”

* Orbit — where I kicked off the Australian tour with a discussion of The Power of Environment in my writing

* John Scalzi’s Whatever — with a guest post on the Big Idea that manifested in The Gathering of the Lost

* Trent Jamieson’s Trentonomicon — with a guest post on “Romance vs Reality: War & Conflict in Epic Fantasy and ‘The Gathering of the Lost.’”

Plus a radio interview on PlainsFM Morning, podcast here, and a blog feature on Harper Voyager Books.

(I’ve also been doing some other ex-Blog Tour interviews “behind the scenes” but I’ll being details of those and where to read/look/listen as they are published.)

UK/AUS/NZ cover

Meanwhile, coming up this week, 2 – 8 April, I have the following on the schedule:

• the realtime launch for The Gathering of the Lost at the University Book Shop, University of Canterbury (if you’re local and want to attend, email gillian[at]ubscan[dot]co[dot]nz) — I am certainly looking forward to “pressing pause” and taking the opportunity to celebrate with readers and friends, particularly after the long slog, discussed on Orbit, to get to this point …
• the UK release of GATHERING on 5 April—& I thought we might have another wee celebration here on the blog to toast “the best of British!” 😉

And of course the Blog Tour is continuing with the following stops coming up—and you’ll see there’s one more added from the first annoucement on March 26:

• 1 April: Supernatural Underground (US/international) – where I shall be talking about romance in The Gathering of the Lost  (by the way, that is 1 April US time)

• 2 April: Civilian Reader (US) – an interview with with Stefan Fergus

• 3 April: Beatties Bookblog (NZ) – where I preview the forthcoming UBS launch that evening

• 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) – An interview with Mary Victoria (and I am about to start responding to her thoughtful questions this very day!)

So as you can probably guess from all this I am very busy—but it is great to be getting out and around the traps and I look forward to seeing many of you along the way, either in person at the realtime launch on Tuesday, or on the Blog Tour! 🙂

The Heir of Night UK--nominated for the Gemmell Awards

Which means, in fact, that it is the last chance to vote and nominate respectively–but you can dance too if you want too. 😉 I’ll certainly be doing a happy dance if I make it to the next round of either category in the Gemmell Awards!

About the Gemmell Awards

If you don’t know about the Gemmell Awards yet, here’s the deal. The awards were established to honour heroic fantasy author David Gemmell and celebrate excellence in the heroic/epic fantasy genre. This year, The Heir of Night has been nominated in two categories, the Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2011,  and the Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut 2011.

Getting through to the next shortlist round is reader voted—so given some of those big names on the Legend long list, obviously I need all the support I can muster! So if you enjoyed “The Heir of Night“ and feel you can in good conscience do so, then please take this last chance to vote for it by clicking now on the following links:

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

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

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About The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Nominations for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards also close today. The Awards are made annually by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ), for works published or released in the previous calendar year, and recognize achievement in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by New Zealanders. Anyone may nominate and there is a list of eligible works on the SFFANZ site here—and another on the SpecFicNZ site, here.

So if you loved a scifi, fantasy or horror story, novel or film published or released by a New Zealander last year then do not hesitate—nominate! Now, at once today: it’s your last chance!