The Sparrows

I meant it to be a poem about sparrows
and how the silence that followed
the February 22nd earthquake
included their absent voices —
& not just sparrows but the starlings
and blackbirds, the finches and wax-eyes
that normally fill the day with their bustle
about the business of living …
……………………………. all fallen silent,
hidden away, or gone further to find food
since half the city was covered
in a slick of water and mud. I threw
old bread onto the island of grass
in our own grey sea and waited …
…………………………..… and waited.

And then, finally, they came
their wings clouding the sun.
.
.
© Helen Lowe, 2011

—

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.

Yesterday, Sunday 31 July was the final day for voting in the Hugo Awards—and in fact in the US the ballot is probably still open as Eastern Standard Time is 16 hours behind NZ time at present. But nonetheless, as far as my ballot is concerned, the die is cast: I completed it on Sunday 31, NZ time.

In the end I did manage to read all the fiction finalists, although I had my doubts as to whether I would ‘get there’ on July 1 when I was facing six novels, five novellas and novelettes, and four short stories—that’s a grand total of twenty works of fiction, three less than last year. But still, a not inconsiderable task when you have just a month to read and form an opinion on them all.

And I do feel that it is very important to read them all if I am going to vote, so that I am giving every finalist a fair go. I consider that this is particularly important as the Hugo Award selection process is both reader/fan-based and is also considered to be one of the pre-eminent awards for speculative fiction in the world. So I believe it is important to read every finalist with as open a mind as possible to determine—by my lights—which of the final works in each category merits that accolade.

The second step, following reading the works, is always to evaluate and then rank them, quite often making fine distinctions between a number of very good stories. So although the first step in evaluation may be to say, “do I like this story?” the last question is quite likely to be: “which story do I like the most?” A tough call, but also a very subjective one—and very individual.

That is why, when doing my reports here one each of the five finalists for Best Novel—remembering that one of those finalists actually comprised two novels, Blackout and All Clear—I was careful to set out my evalation criteria before I started, so I could be consistent in my approach to each work. I used the same criteria in relation to the other fiction categories as well, and just to remind you, these ‘rules of thumb’ I followed throughout were:

• the use of genre elements in the work, i.e. its strength as a work of speculative fiction;
• whether the book works for me as a story, i.e. is it compelling, well written and engaging, with particular regard to the emotional depth to the story telling and interesting ideas (although not necessarily for their own sake.) Consistency of both characters and plot is really important to me. And I do rate good use of humour in the story.
• I also appreciate a good ‘twist in the tale’, although I don’t actively require it to enjoy a book—good characters and a good tale well told are my baseline.

In going to the final step of ranking the finalists on the ballot paper (the Hugo Awards use a transferable voting system), I also came back to a comment I made in relation to the book report on Cryoburn: that this is meant to be an award for the very best speculative fiction novel (or short story, novelette, or novella) published in the world in 2010. To me, that means I must be putting my “1” against the novel that for me is the strongest combination of excellence in the use of speculative elements and simply being a compelling read.

When I thought about it in those terms, the ranking of the novels—which is the category I spent most time and attention on here on the blog—on the ballot paper fell into place fairly quickly. Something that I hope comes through in the reports (which I will list in full at the end) is that I liked all the books. But I felt some were definitely stronger in terms of their use of the speculative genre, while with others I had more quibbles around how the book worked for me in terms of the storytelling. I am not going to give you my complete listing, but (as also happened last year with China Mieville’s The City & The City and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl), the final decision around the No. 1 spot on my ballot paper came down to two books: Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House and NK Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

This is the point at which it all gets really tough—and basically comes down to the sort of story and  SFF one enjoys the most, ie personal preference. I enjoyed both The Dervish House and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms but in the end McDonald’s mix of nanopunk scifi and magic realism spoke to me more deeply as a reader—and I really loved his characters.

So there it is: my ballot had been cast and now all that remains is to see whether I am in or out of synch with the majority of my fellow SFF readers and Hugo voters. The awards will be announced Saturday, August 20th, 2011, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony at Renovation, this years World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, to be held over Wednesday 17—Sunday 21 August. So not many sleeps now to find out that final result!

—

The full list of my reports on my reading of the Hugo Award finalists for Best Novel is as follows:

• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra; Allen & Unwin here in AU/NZ) — my report is posted here.
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) – you can read my report here
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) – again, you can read my report here
• Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) – my report is here
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) – my report is here

Books are arriving thick and fast at present and the current “just arrived” on my book table is Charlaine Harris’ Dead Reckoning, the latest in her Sookie Stackhouse series—more paranormal fun with Sookie, Eric, Bill, and the rest of the living, dead, and shapeshifting community of Bon Temps. Here’s the back cover blurb:

“There’s a reckoning on the way … and Sookie has a knack for being in trouble’s way, not least when she witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte’s, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is known to be two-natured, suspicion immediately falls on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but before she can investigate something else — something even more dangerous — comes up.

Sookie’s lover Eric Northman and his ‘child’ Pam are plotting something in secret. Whatever it is, they seem determined to keep Sookie out of it, almost as determined as Sookie is to find out what’s going on. She can’t sit on the sidelines when both her work and her love life under threat — but as she’s gradually drawn into their plans Sookie finds the situation is deadlier than she could ever have imagined.”

So what’s new on your book table? Or is there a book that you’re hoping to read soon but haven’t got to yet?

The Hugo Award reading process has been fast-paced and pressured, with six major novels to be gotten through between 1 July, when I finished work on The Gathering of the Lost The Wall of Night Book Two, and tomorrow, 31 July, when the voting closes. But here it is, squeaking in under the wire, my final report back on Connie Willis’ Blackout and All Clear, which as one story published in two parts comprises two books being considered as one for the purposes of the award.

Those of you who have been following these reports will be familiar with my evaluation criteria by now. But for others coming new to it all I have set the criteria out in full at the end of the post (below the complete list of finalists for the award.) Any specific considerations that come up for me in relation to a specific work I mention within the body of the report.

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.

The Basic Story:

In Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis has returned to the world of her award-winning novel, Domesday Book, in which historians based in Oxford are able to use time travel to observe past events at first hand. In this case the three central protagonists, Polly, Mike, and Eileen (Merope), time travel back to World War 2 to observe events around Dunkirk and the London Blitz first hand. But “slippage”, the feature of time travel that is supposed to help prevent history from being changed by the intrusion of observers from the future, is growing worse and then Polly, Mike and Eileen’s drop points refuse to reopen, stranding them in the horror of the Blitz. As events unfold, they begin to suspect the worst, which is that the slippage and stranding may have happened, not to prevent them from changing the past but because their actions have already changed it—that they may in fact have caused the war to be lost.

Meanwhile, back in Oxford, two of the characters we first met in Domesday Book, Mr Dunworthy and Colin Templar, who is in love with Polly, are desperately trying to get the drops to re-open and pull the three trapped historians out of the past.

The Report:

The summary above is the speculative plotline of Blackout/All Clear, but when all is said and done, this story is really about the two phases of the Blitz, the bombing raids of 1940-41 and the “doodlebug” rocket attacks of 1944—a “praise song”, as it were, to the courage and fortitude of the Londoners who not only survived those terrible events, but kept going and fought back and won the war. So Blackout/All Clear is as much an historical novel as it is a speculative fiction one.

Overall, I believe it is probably a stronger historical than speculative fiction work, simply because the SFF element—ie whether time travel has actually caused the Allies to lose the war, and will the time travel drops re-open in time to save Mike, Polly, and Eileen?—is actually quite slight for the approximately 1200-page length of the two novels. For me, this was really more the background of the novel, something that worried and drove the three central protagonists but did not greatly concern me as a reader.

This is because, as a reader, I “knew” that somehow or other the course of history had to work out (ie from the beginning, I never had the sense that this was going to turn into a true “alternate history” novel.) This sense was reinforced by the use of the character of Colin Templar from the earlier novel, Domesday Book, as the young man driven to find Polly. I already knew from the earlier work that Colin was creative and resourceful and therefore likely to succeed. You also may recall from my first report on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms that I claimed to be rarely surprised by the twists and turns in stories. In this case I can fairly say that I was able to predict the reason for slippage and the closure of the drops (which is the resolution of the story for the central characters) from a fairly early stage. So from a speculative point of view, I felt that the story was actually quite “slight.”

The strength of Blackout/All Clear lies in the convincing depiction of the historical period and the depth of the characters. Polly, Eileen and Mike were all engaging personalities that I cared about emotionally—although that emotional engagement might have been more profound if I had felt more uncertainty about the final resolution of the story. And then there were the Hodbin children, Alf and Binnie, whose paths kept intersecting Eileen’s, and through her those of the other time travellers. These were no cute, engaging kids but quite the opposite: they were utterly convincing little horrors–and for me, the the two most compelling characters in the book, not just because they were so real but because as genuine citizens of World War 2, their future was less certain than that of the three central characters.

As I said at the beginning, this was really a story, not so much about time travel and the three central characters, but about the Blitz and the war and the courage and fortitude of the Londoners who endured that time—and by so doing bought us the future that we enjoy today. It contains a wealth of detail of the events and the people that lived through them: air raid wardens, rescue workers, ambulance drivers, doctors and nurses, shop girls, school children, civilians—but every one of them making a difference. The three time travellers were interesting and sympathetic, but mainly as a lens onto the WW2 events and people amongst whom they moved in the story. And for me, it is the “praise song” element that gave Blackout/All Clear its life and power, and which kept me engrossed in the 1200-odd page read—not the speculative storyline or character studies (the Hodbins aside.)

And in case of doubt, as an avid reader of both historical fiction and non-fiction, this book did hold my attention throughout.

—

To reiterate, the complete list of finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, by book title, comprises:

• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra; Allen & Unwin here in AU/NZ)
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) – you can read my report here
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) – again, you can read my report here
• Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) – my report is here
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) – my report is here

The evaluation criteria I have been using for all the Best Novel finalists are as follows:

– the use of genre elements in the work, i.e. its strength as a work of speculative fiction;

– whether the book works for me as a story, i.e. is it compelling, well written and engaging, with particular regard to the emotional depth to the story telling and interesting ideas (although not necessarily for their own sake.) Consistency of both characters and plot is really important to me. And I do rate good use of humour in the story.

– It has also emerged through my previous reports that I appreciate a good ‘twist in the tale’, although I don’t actively require it to enjoy a book—good characters and a good tale well told are my baseline.

The Next Step:

And now, having read and reported back on all six novels on the shortlist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, I am faced with the difficult and daunting task of deciding how to order them on my ballot. I’ll be doing that tomorrow and reporting back on how the process went—but only after the voting has closed!

In the meantime, what do you think—how do you think I might vote having read my reports on each and all of the books? And if you’ve read any or all of them yourself, how did you feel about the story/stories?

Between working on my own books, and keeping up with the reading on other peoples’ books, especially those on various SFF award lists around the globe, I haven’t had a lot of time for astronomy fun lately. So today I thought I’d just briefly mention one of my favourite sites, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Each day this wonderful site features an image of a space related theme, with an explanation by a professional astronomer. So if, like me, every now and then you like to look up and see the stars and imagine the sheer amazingness of the cosmos “out there”, then this could be a site that you will enjoy as well.

Just to give you a taste of the astronomical goodness to be experienced, here is July 15th’s picture of the day, which shows two overlapping galaxies. To see the image in full and read the professional explanation of all this wonder, click here.

NGC3314, Overlapping Galaxies

My reading of the Hugo Award finalists for Best Novel is proceeding a-pace and my report back “de jour” is on the fourth of the six novels to be read, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cryoburn. (I note that I think Connie Willis’ Blackout and All Clear, with a report still to come, are being treated as one book for the purposes of the award, but reading-wise it’s definitely two books.)

Those of you who have been following these reports will be familiar with my evaluation criteria by now. But for others for whom this may be a first report, I have set the criteria out in full at the end of the post (below the complete list of finalists for the award.) Any specific considerations that have come up for me in relation to a specific work I mention within the body of a report.

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold.

The Basic Story:

Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan embarks on another adventure, this time on the world of Kibou-daini where those who can afford it buy cryogenic storage instead of death, with the expectation that they will be revived when either a cure for their terminal illness or life prolonging technology is developed. With the proposed expansion of Kibou-daini’s cryo corporations onto the worlds of the Barrayar empire, Miles Vorkosigan, in his role as Imperial Auditor, attends a conference on Kibou-daini to begin his investigations. Bribery and kidnap follow and Miles finds himself uncovering corporate chicanery, corruption, and a miscarriage of justice …

The Report:

Cryoburn is space opera, a form of science fiction where the focus is less on science and technological evolution as humankind advances into space, and more on fun characters and derring-do within some future space milieu. So although cryogenic technology is central to the plot, the story does not focus on it in the same way that a book like CJ Cherryh’s Cyteen, for example, focuses on genetic engineering, or William Gibson’s Neuromancer on the evolution of sentient AIs. The Cryoburn story is mainly another adventure of the irrepressible Miles Vorkosigan. The ongoing adventures of a particular hero protagonist are one of the defining characteristics of space opera as a subgenre of SFF—and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan is one of the more enduring and popular of such heroes.

Having only read the first of the Miles Vorkosigan novels before Cryoburn (which is, I believe, something like the 12th or 13th in the sequence) I am not well qualified to comment on the development of Miles as a character through the series. But it is at least clear to me that evolution has occurred: the Miles of this book is definitely a more mature character—as he should be, since twenty years of intervening adventure and experience has elapsed.

Genre-wise, therefore, I think Cryoburn is a good example of the space opera subgenre. In terms of the story, I found it an enjoyable light read. The plot was well crafted, the characters likeable and engaging, although I thought that they were stock “types”: e.g. Miles as the (albeit more mature) enfant-terrible trickster-hero; Roic, the loyal, competent soldier-retainer; Jin and Mina, the cute, plucky kids. So no in-depth character studies here, but a likeable, recognizable cast moving—for me, reasonably predictably—through a light-adventure read. The other aspect I note in terms of the cast of characters is that other than a brief appearance by the “goons”, Hans and Oki, toward the end of the story, there are no “bad guy” characters either featured or explored in any depth.

Overall, I enjoyed Cryoburn, which held my attention throughout. But it did not engage me deeply as a story, either in terms of the plot or characters. There were no great surprises and no major highs or lows of storytelling, or pushing of the genre envelope. For this reason, although I liked it and would read another Vorkosigan novel on its strength, I will hesitate over Cryoburn’s ranking on my Hugo ballot, given that the Hugo is an award for the very best speculative fiction novel in the world published in 2010.

—

To reiterate, the complete list of finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, by book title, comprises:

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra; Allen & Unwin here in AU/NZ)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr) – you can read my report here
Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) – again, you can read my report here
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) – my report is here

The evaluation criteria I am using for all the Best Novel finalists are as follows:

– the use of genre elements in the work, i.e. its strength as a work of speculative fiction;

– whether the book works for me as a story, i.e. is it compelling, well written and engaging, with particular regard to the emotional depth to the story telling and interesting ideas (although not necessarily for their own sake.) Consistency of both characters and plot is really important to me. And I do rate good use of humour in the story.

– It has also emerged through my previous reports that I appreciate a good ‘twist in the tale’, although I don’t actively require it to enjoy a book—good characters and a good tale well told are my baseline.

My next and final report will be on Connie Willis’ Blackout and All Clear, with a round up on all six finalists to follow.

The Reporting Rolls On …

That July 31 deadline for final voting on the Hugo Awards is coming up very fast now—that’s the bad news. The good news is that I have now read all the short story and novelette finalists and nearly finished all the novels, with half of Connie Willis’ All Clear (definitely the ‘fattest” of all the contenders) to go. Today I am doing my report back on Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House.

Before starting, I will also briefly reiterate the evaluation criteria I am using for all the Best Novel finalists:

– the use of genre elements in the work, i.e. its strength as a work of speculative fiction, given that the Hugo Award is for excellence in this field;

– whether the book works for me as a story, i.e. is it compelling, well written, and engaging, with particular regard to the emotional depth to the story telling and interesting ideas (although not necessarily for their own sake.) Consistency of both characters and plot is really important to me. And I do rate good use of humour in the story.

– It has also emerged through my previous reports on both The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and Feed, that I appreciate a good ‘twist in the tale’, although I don’t actively require it to enjoy a book—good characters and a good tale well told are my baseline.

So on to the report.

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald.

The Basic Story:

From the back cover: “In the sleepy Istanbul district of Eskikoy stands the former whirling dervish house of Adam Dede. Over the space of five days of an Istanbul heatwave, six lives weave a story of corporate wheeling and dealing, Islamic mysticism, political and economic intrigue, ancient Ottoman mysteries, a terrifying new terrorist threat, and nanotechnology with the potential to transform every human on the planet.”

I think that probably satisfactorily encapsulates the book. The six central characters are: Necdet, a ne-er do well turned visionary; Can Durukan, a sheltered nine-year-old boy with a heart condition who experiences life through the medium of his computer; Georges Ferentinou, an ethnic Greek and retired economist; Adnan Sarioglu, a commodities trader; Ayse Erkoc, an antiquities dealer; and Leyla Gultasli, a commerce graduate looking for a career in marketing.

The Report:

I began reading The Dervish House with some trepidation, because earlier in the year I had been unable to complete Ian McDonald’s River of Gods. You may recall that this puzzled me at the time, as River of Gods checked many boxes for the kind of story I like: cyberpunk science fiction, a complex plot, and diverse cultural elements within the story. I thought at the time that it might just have been too demanding a read following the February 22nd earthquake and its aftermath. It was some time later before I realised that I hadn’t really liked any of the characters, so found it hard to engage with any of their intersecting stories.

Hence my trepidation with The Dervish House as I could see it was the same kind of story, following the six characters mentioned above and their intersecting lives over the five days referenced in the excerpt from the back cover—a similar story premise to River of Gods. The difference, although the complexity of the plot was still challenging and took time to get into, was that I quickly found myself engaging positively with the characters. I either outright liked or was at least strongly interested in the characters, their backstories, motivations and current situations. I also believe that there is a seventh character in the book, arguably the most engaging and compelling of them all, and that is Istanbul itself—an early positive for me as a reader who has always been fascinated by the portrayal of the city in literature, so I was probably always going to be hooked by those wonderful, poetic lines from the opening page:

“It is after the hour of prayer, but not yet the hour of money. Istanbul, Queen of Cities, wakes with a shout.”

In terms of genre, this story of near-future Istanbul where nanotechnology—and also nano-terrorism—is the face of the future, is undoubtedly science fiction. And the kind of SFF I love, with cyberpunk morphing into nanopunk. But the focus on Istanbul itself as character, and the nearness of that future, also makes The Dervish House very close to magic-realism in genre, especially with elements such as Ayse’s quest for “The Mellified Man” and Necdet’s encounter with Hizir, the Green Saint, as a spirit guide. Although these two elements could potentially sit uneasily together, in The Dervish House the juxtaposition works and is part of the richness of the story.

There are many interwoven elements within the plot of The Dervish House, including historical and political twists and turns, but another element added to the cyber-nanopunk SFF and magic-realism is that this is also a “caper” story (in the same way that The Sting and Ocean’s Eleven are “caper” movies.) So plenty of twists and turns for a gal who enjoys a good dose of twisty-turniness in her reading. This also makes The Dervish House into something of a melange, story-wise—and I was very aware of the risk, when reading the first half to two-thirds of the book, that the extent of melange had the potential to overwhelm the story. But in the final half to one-third of the novel, Ian McDonald really pulled it off. The disparate threads of the melange came together into a coherent whole that really worked for me as a reader. I closed the covers and felt both satisfied and as though I wanted more, which is a great feeling. A very big part of that coming together for me was the emotional engagement with the characters.

In terms of quibbles, my main reservation about The Dervish House was that I did have to push myself to get into it. This is storytelling with layers of complexity and McDonald’s style is lavish, with a fair bit of description, which I did find difficult, especially when I was still warming to the characters and overall story arc. A little like the stork in the opening passages, I felt that we spent a fair amount of time “circling” the story—but as I have indicated above, both plot and characters definitely came together for me in the latter part of the book and repaid that earlier perseverance.

One thing I found myself really liking about this book was that the ending is upbeat. Possibly because of everything we have been through in Christchurch with earthquakes and their aftermaths, or perhaps because of simply looking at everything happening in the world right now, but I found myself really enjoying the fact that the story came together in an overall positive, upbeat, hopeful way.

So for me, The Dervish House is currently another very strong contender for the top spot on my Hugo Award ballot.

—

To reiterate, the finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, by book title, comprise:

• Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra; Allen & Unwin here in AU/NZ)
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
• The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
• Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) – you can read my report here
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) – again, you can read my report here.

I hope to bring you my report on Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold tomorrow.

All Over

On that first afternoon
it was all about noise:
sirens, the continual tuk-tuk-tuk
of helicopters, and the slow drone
of freight planes airlifting in supplies—noise
and the smell of smoke
hanging in a pall
across the inner suburbs
as the CTV building burned.

But in the days following
I recall the silence of a city
where daily business had all but ceased,
cars off the road, people staying home
or fled—over 70,000 now
the pundits claim, since February 22nd—
and at night the profound darkness
of a power blackout. On the evening
when the street lights blinked back on
we were out walking in the blue dusk:
the light overhead flick-flick-flickered –
and then the whole street
was bathed in a saffron haze,
illuminating the other side
of the road and a friend
outside the wreckage
that had once been her business
My friend’s father, helping her,
had just lost his home, and she,
looking dry-eyed at collapsed bricks,
said simply: “It’s over. It’s all over.”
.
© Helen Lowe, 2011

—

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.

Yesterday I wrote about being in “the lull” between different stages of the book project—and one great thing about that lull is that it also provides an opportunity to catch up with writing friends and what they’re doing. So a few weeks back I posted as a guest in Nicole Murphy’s “Dreams and Fulfilment” series celebrating the launch of Rogue Gadda, the third and final novel in her Dreams of Asarlai series. And was also delighted to have Nicole as a guest here on “…Anything, Really” talking about “The Challenge.”

Having a little time in hand also means that I have the opportunity to read other writers’ work, including works-in-progress.  Once such work-in-progress is Ghost Hand (working title), my friend Ripley Patton’s first novel. I already know Ripley’s accomplished short story work—and the first draft of Ghost Hand did not disappoint. A paranormal YA, I thought the storyline was fresh, the pace good, and the characters interesting—a great start to a first book and I am now really looking forward to seeing the second draft.

And tomorrow, USA time, I am helping fellow Supernatural Underground author, Juliana Stone, celebrate the forthcoming launch of her latest paranormal romance novel, His Darkest Salvation, by giving away a copy of The Heir of Night. I think Merrie Destefano will also have a book up for giveaway—so head on over to Juliana’s site and check out the celebratory and giveaway action there.

As those of you who followed my “Completed Today” mini-series, which you can find in the “What I’ve been Doing…” category in the right sidebar, will know, meeting my 1 July book deadline for The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Book Two) was a major, 24/7 project. In a few weeks I know that the copyedit phase of the book will be racing back to hit me, not unlike a freight train in terms of  the need to focus in on the nitty-gritty detail of a 200,000 word manuscript. But right now I am in “the lull”, that period in between project phases where you take stock and try and figure out what to do with yourself when you’re not working 24/7 on “book.”

I’ve already checked the “promptly get ill” box. (Isn’t it funny how that happens: that you’re working really hard and it’s only when you stop that your body says, “whoa, now I can stop”—and promptly picks up whatever current ill is going around?) And I’ve had my long weekend and have further holiday plans in the wind—an absolute necessity I suspect, for both mental and physical health, given there are still two big books in this series to not just write, but “write right”—but part of being in the lull is that you finally stick your head up above the parapet and take stock of all the things you haven’t been doing. Like  this year’s tax return, now definitely due—and like most of the human race I loathe doing tax returns!

But another big part of that above-the-parapet check is that we are still in earthquake aftermath here. I hesitate a little, given events like the bombing and massacre in Norway over the past few days, because that is such an horrific event and yet here I am, still talking about the aftermath of an earthquake that, however catastrophic, happened five months ago now …

I don’t believe, though, that it in any way diminishes the horror of events in Norway, or Syria, or Libya, or the tsunami and consequent nuclear disaster in Japan, or the  tornadoes in the United States, to say that a big part of the background to the past months of striving to complete the book has been living with the aftermath of cumulative earthquakes. And part of being in the lull for me has been my mind and eyes ‘refocusing’ to realise that there is still a huge amount to be done, even at the “suburban rear lines” level, to claw back some level of normalcy and amenity. In many ways it seems a hopeless task, at its lowest level a constant struggle against mud and dust, which always comes back—but I have also realised that it is vital to do it, not to give in but to begin reclaiming your life and home and to keep on taking it back on a day to day, week by week level. Often this means doing the same basic jobs over again, but not to do it means throwing in the towel—and that is untenable, if you plan to dig in and stay.

And although I am sometimes ambivalent about how much I really want to dig in and stay in a city that is probably not going to return to anything approaching what it was for 10-20 years, I know that part of reclaiming Christchurch is to do the small reclaiming every day and week at a domestic level—taking care of the “pence”, so to speak, because if we all do that then the “pounds” that are the city really will recover and evolve “new” out of that process.

I have also begun to write a little about the experience of the earthquakes and their aftermath through the poems I have been posting as part of the Tuesday Poem Blog community and you can read the poems begun to date, as follows:

• A Canterbury Tale
• Allow Me to Say
• Midwinter
• Indifferent Planet
• This Will Be Us