‘Tis the bleak midwinter (well, almost) but just to counter the general cold and gloom, I shall be venturing forth to the wonderful South Library (yes, still intact despite being on the banks of the Heathcote, and going strong as well) as guest speaker for the Christchurch Friends of the Library.

Here’s the essential info:

Date: Tuesday 14 June

Time: 12.30 pm

Venue: Sydenham Room, Christchurch South Library, 66 Colombo St: cnr Colombo and Hunter Terrace

Entry: gold coin fee

Theme: I shall be reading from some of my recent works and speaking about my personal path to international publication & being a NZ fiction author published overseas—as well as why writing SFF is just the best!

I would love to see some of you there if you can make it, but otherwise I’ll let you know how it all went. 😉

I know I have already talked about Tales for Canterbury (ed. Cassie Hart & Anna Caro, Random Static)  before,  but this is a project that is dear to my Christchurch and Canterbury heart and so I am thrilled to be able to tell you that it has finally arrived on my ‘To Be Read’ table—and I am reading it already!

Tales for Canterbury is an anthology of mainly speculative short fiction that was put together by Cassie Hart and Anna Caro to raise funds for the Red Cross’s Canterbury Earthquake appeal. The theme of Tales for Canterbury is “Survival * Hope * Future” and the stories included within it are grouped around these categories. And although I have only just begun reading I can already tell you that there are some wonderful stories contained within its covers.

All the stories within the anthology were donated by their authors, who comprise an impressive line-up of both internatonal and NZ writers. The full list of donating authors is as follows:

RJ Astruc, Philippa Ballantine, Jesse Bullington, Anna Caro, Cat Connor, Brenda Cooper, Debbie Cowens, Matt Cowens, Merrilee Faber, AJ Fitzwater, Janis Freegard, Neil Gaiman, Cassie Hart, A.M. Harte, Karen Healey, Leigh K. Hunt, Lynne Jamneck, Patty Jansen, Gwyneth Jones, Tim Jones, Kim Koning, Jay Lake, Helen Lowe, Kate Mahony, Tina Makereti, Juliet Marillier, Angel Leigh McCoy, Linda Niccol, Ripley Patton, Simon Petrie, Grant Stone, Jeff Vandermeer, Mary Victoria and Sean Williams.

The fundraising target for the project is $5000 and I would really like to see Tales for Canterbury meet that target—currently the total raised stands at just over half way. So if you would like a great anthology of (mostly) speculative short fiction, either for yourself or to give as a gift, then please consider supporting a very worthy cause and buying Tales for Canterbury today.

All you have to do is click here to order. (I note that both print and electronic copies are now available.)

And please spread the word to everyone you know who may be interested.

I was very happy when I saw that Bella, my UK/AU/NZ publisher, posted about Heir’s Sir Julius Vogel Award success on the Orbit blog yesterday!

And now I’ve just seen that my US publisher, Harper Voyager, have featured it on their blog today as well, here—Kate is my US editor and she was absolutely delighted to hear about Heir’s success yesterday.

Writing is such a solitary business much of the time, with long periods of creative beavering away between largely work-related discussions with editors and agents, that I love the moments when we can all come together and share something exciting and fun. Awards very much fit that bill, which is why I was so thrilled to see both Bella and Kate’s posts.  🙂

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To read more about the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, click here; and here for the 2011 Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony report. For more on ConText, the 32nd National Science Fiction Fantasy Convention where I was a guest of honour, click here.

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And the Reminder: “…on Anything Really’s” Grand Birthday Giveaway Still Running!

Just a reminder to you all that the Grand Giveaway to celebrate the first birthday of my “…On Anything, Really” blog is still running and will do so until 12 midnight NZ time on 30 June (that’s 2011—just to be absolutely clear! 😉 )

Just in case you weren’t already aware, here’s what’s happening:

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1. The period of the competition will be from 31 May to 30 June 2010 (NZ Time) inclusive;

2. Entries in the competition will be drawn from comments on distinct blog posts during that period: so each time you comment on a new post your name will be entered in the draw again—but only once for each distinct post. (For example: if you post one comment each on 10 distinct blog posts, your name will be entered in the draw 10 times; if you post 10 comments on 1 distinct blog post, your name will only be entered in the draw once.)

3. Three separate book sets are available to be won, each one to be drawn separately:

The Grand Epic Fantasy Giveaway Set, comprising:

• a signed UK, trade format first edition of The Heir of Night
• a hardback, anniversary edition of Sara Douglas’s Battle Axe
• Trudi Canavan’s The Ambassador’s Mission
• Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia
• Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

The Grand YA Fantasy Giveaway Set comprising:

• a signed hardback copy of Thornspell
• Cassandra Clare’s complete Mortal Instruments trilogy: City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass
• Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief
• Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan

The Grand NZ Poetry Giveaway comprising:

• AUP New Poets: Harry Jones, Erin Scudder & Chris Tse
• Ingrid Horrocks’ Mapping the Distance
• Anna Livesey’s the moonmen
• Kerry Popplewell’s Leaving the Tableland

If you only wish to be entered in one of the draws, please enter the category you are interested in (e.g. Poetry; or YA Fantasy, or Epic Fantasy) by your name the first time you leave a comment.

The draw will be made on Saturday 2 July 2011 (NZ Time) using Random Number Integer.

On Saturday I posted on the first evening of ConText, but then events took over and I was so busy that I couldn’t find time to post—at least not in a lucid and coherent way 😉 — about all the fun of Saturday and Sunday.

In terms of today’s post, well first of all I apologise for the poor quality of the photos, but the weekend was beset with technical difficulties in the camera department …

So what did happen? Of my own panels on the Saturday, the highlight was probably the noon session with Catherine Asaro and Russell Kirkpatrick where we talked about “Keeping It Real in SFF”, particularly in terms of believable characters and societies in the midst of fantastic settings and events. The thing that made it most fun was when Catherine and I had a quite different point of view from Russell on the relationship between individuals and societies, particularly when it came to influencing events—so we got to have lively discussion rather than simply sitting there politely agreeing with each other.  I suspect this made the session more fun for the audience and I know we three panelists had a pretty good time. 😉

L. to R. Frank Victoria, me, Donald Wolcott: Word & Inage Panel

My favourite Saturday panel in terms of attending was Donald Wolcott’s workshop on musical improvisation. Donald is Catherine Asaro’s musical collaborator and in this session he took us through the process of how he improvises around both musical themes generally and also in relation to Catherine’s speculative works. I found the session fascinating and was pleased to be able to pick up on some of the aspects it raised when Donald and I joined Frank Victoria for the “Word & Image” panel on Sunday 5.

The focus of the session was to discuss the creative relationship between writer and artist in speculative fiction and how the different art forms spark off each other to generate new creations. Once again, I found this a fascinating session, not least because of the insights into both Frank and Donald’s creative process and the way in which the discussion illuminated both strong similarities but also differences between the art forms. And although it can be difficult to be 100% sure when one is on the panel, I received the impression that the audience enjoyed the session as well.

Frank Victoria & me with "Tymon's Flight" & the cover poster behind

Immediately following on from the Word & Image panel was a Reading, where I read from both my own works and Mary Victoria’s Chronicles of the Tree novels: Tymon’s Flight and Samiha’s Song. I also had Frank, Mary’s husband, on hand to help me out as required during the Q&A that followed the reading. I should say straight off that we recorded the reading and hope to bring you this to you here in the next day or so. But just to give you an idea of how it went, I interspersed the readings so the audience got a better flavour of the distinction between my and Mary’s “voices” as authors. Both Frank and I felt this approach “worked” in terms of how the reading went, with the order being: Tymon’s Flight, Thornspell, Samiha’s Song, The Heir of Night—and yes, ta-da-da-dah-dum, in a world first exclusive for ConText (;-)) an excerpt from the prologue to The Gathering of the Lost, Book Two of The Wall of Night series.

Meeting Bu: 1

The final highlights of my Saturday and Sunday  at ConText—other than the Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony which I have already reported on here—included that  I got to do The Grand Symbiosis: History & Fantasy panel with my partner, Andrew (our fellow panelist was Steve Litton.) Doing a panel with Andrew was a lot of fun, especially as we were talking history & SFF, two of our favourite subjects. Another highlight was that I got to meet Bu, the Caber, for the very first time, in company with his friend Kirstin Wright … I thought

Meeting Bu: 2

Bu was quite, quite charming, if a little shy …:)

And Bu’s friend Kirstin was one of the many fellow SpecFicNZ members that I got to meet over the course of the weekend, both at panels and ‘around the traps’, as well as at the formal get-together on the Saturday night. I think all of us enjoy the buzz of feeling that we are a community of speculative writers and artists—and I would like to thank Ripley Patton in particular for

with Ripley Patton at ConText

doing so much to make that happen.

The Sir Julus Vogel Award

I think the full ConText and Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony reports may have to be several posts because I have so many convention highlights to report. But I will start with a little more on the Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony because The Heir of Night jointly winning the award for Best Novel was definitely a defining moment of my weekend.

The evening began with the convention banquet, followed by the award ceremony, and I was very pleased to have my partner there with me, as well as my publicist, Karen (from Little Brown), my friend Emily who had driven three hours just to get there, and a number of other writing, artist and SFFANZ friends. So even before the awards ceremony, the evening was a convivial and friendly end to the main part of the convention.

The Award ceremony was hosted by Norman Cates and Lynelle Howell of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards committee, with the professional awards primarily being presented by international guests of honor, Catherine Asaro, and Donald Wolcott. I was also honored to be asked to present the award for “Best New Talent.”

The Award for “Best Novel” was first off the award presentation blocks, so I was not kept in suspense long—and was absolutely thrilled when The Heir of Night was announced as joint winner with Lyn McConchie’s  The Questing Road. I felt—and feel—tremendously honoured to receive such an accolade for Heir from readers of SFF, but also to share the podium with Lyn McConchie who has been pioneering New Zealand-based SFF in the international arena (almost?) as long as I have been reading it.

Of course, then I could relax—and fully enjoy the bottle of bubbly that Karen bought for our table—as the remaining awards were announced. Although I was back on tenterhooks again when the Best Artwork award came up, because The Wall of Night map from Heir, drawn by Peter Fitzpatrick, was a finalist. Although disappointed that the map did not win the award, I was still thrilled when the award went to Frank Victoria, the husband of my friend Mary Victoria, for the cover of Tymon’s Flight, Mary’s first novel in the Chronicles of the Tree series.

Other moments of tension—despite the insulating effect of those bubbles ;-)—came during the short story award, where my friends Ripley Patton and Lee Murray were both finalists, but the award went to Paul Haines for  High Tide at Hot Water Beach. My other major moment was announcing the award for “Best New Talent” where both contenders,  Mary Victoria and Karen Healey, are writers whose work I very much admire—and whom I like very much as well.  I was correspondingly glad that I only had to announce the result and not actually make it—and in the end the award went to Karen Healey, author of Guardian of the Dead.

So like all such ceremonies, there were both disappointments for friends and their work, as well as the joy of being able to congratulate others on their success. The latter included both Simon Litten, who won the award for “Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror”, and Paul Tobin who received the award for “Best Production/Publication” as editor of the anthology White Cloud World.

The full list of professional awards given was as follows:

Best Novel:

• The Heir of Night (Orbit) by Helen Lowe
• The Questing Road (Tor) by Lyn McConchie

Best Novel: Young Adult:

• Summer of Dreaming by Lyn McConchie

Best Novella/Novelette:

• A Tale Of The Interferers – Hunger For Forbidden Flesh (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight magazie) by Paul Haines

Best Short Story:

• High Tide At Hot Water Beach (A Foreign Country anthology) by Paul Haines

Best Collected Work:

• A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction (Random Static) eds. Anna Caro & K Buchanan

Best Production/Publication:

• White Clouds World Anthology, ed. Paul Tobin

For the full list of categories and finalists, both professional and fan, please see here.

The Sir Julus Vogel Award

Last night The Heir of Night (Orbit) won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel jointly with Lyn McConchie’s The Questing Road (Tor.)  I’m still celebrating right now but I  will bring you a fuller report on the awards ceremony and the convention later in the day. 🙂

The Netherlands cover for Dutch translation of The Heir of Night, to be rendered as Kind van de Nacht in Dutch, arrived today—and it is very cool! So much so that I have to share it with you straight away.  My Netherlands publisher, Luitingh, have used the blue USA cover (the artwork done by Greg Bridges)  but introduced very strong, gold lettering for the title, with what I term a ‘beaten metal’ effect to the font. I think it is really funky and hope that Dutch readers will like it, too. 😉

The first Netherlands’ edition, which is to be published in hardcover, is scheduled for release in July.

And here, without further ado, is the cover:

I had hoped to bring you some colorful photos of the ConText opening from last night, but alas—the camera refused to co-operate with the whole colorful opening photo meme.  So regrettably, I shall have to rely on words to paint in the details instead!

Intriguingly, dance was the main theme of the opening ceremony, with a solo jazz performance by international literary Guest of Honor, Catherine Asaro, and two colorful and entertaining sets from belly dancing quartet, Arabian Rendezvous. Angie, the leader of the belly dancing troupe, also performed a solo dance with a sword balanced on her head—an impressive display of dexterity and balance.

Immediately following the opening I was off to do my first panel, on the ‘Wild wild world of the writing blog’ with fellow author and SpecFicNZ president Ripley Patton. The focus of the ensuing discussion was both around why we decided to blog as opposed to using other social/internet media, and why we felt the need to use the internet at all—i.e. why not ‘just write’?

The answer was that blogging offers us a way to communicate and interact with readers and the wider writing community—an opportunity that is more important because of the physical isolation of living in New Zealand, a long way from the areas where many/most of our readers are located. A ‘far step’ too, from  regular conventions and conferences of the kind that we are getting to enjoy this weekend, which offer a realtime opportunity to communicate with readers.

So the internet is an important medium for two-way communication with readers and the wider reading/writing community. In addition, Ripley and I both found that we preferred blogging as our main medium of communication because we want the primary focus of that communication to centre around our books/writing, as opposed to being more socially orientated.

Questions were asked around privacy and how much information should be shared, but we both felt that to a large extent decisions around this would be personal to the blogger and probably driven by the primary focus of the blog. In general, Ripley and I both feel unease when the content of a blog, particularly a writing blog,  becomes too heavily personal or pursues controversy for its own sake—again, our focus is primarily on writing-centered content.

And that, folks, by and large, was the opening evening of ConText, the 32nd National Science Fiction Fantasy Convention. Tomorrow I have panels on Keeping It Real in SFF (with Catherine Asaro and Russell Kirkpatrick), the Grand Symbiosis between History and Fantasy (with Steve Litten and Andrew Robins) and a kaffeeklatsch to keep me busy ahead of the SpecFicNZ party tomorrow evening.

On Monday, I posted my schedule for Context, the  32^nd New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention, which is to be held in Auckland over this long weekend, 3-6 June.

One of my panels, at 2 pm on Sunday, is Word and Image with artist  Frank Victoria and musician Donald Wolcott—a discussion on the creative relationship between writer and artist in speculative fiction, how the idea of the story is given effect through word and image—as well as how word and image spark off each other to generate new creations.

As part of that panel, I have put together a resource folder on the inter-relationship between word and image from the earliest beginnings of The Heir of Night story—which is also the inception of The Wall of Night series. The Word & Image folder includes material by artist Peter Fitzpatrick (Fitz to just about everyone) on how he took what I can only call my “hopeful hieroglyphics”  and turned them into the interior map for The Wall of Night series.

Just for fun, Fitz has also done a Word & Image poster, featuring the red AU/NZ Heir cover, to accompany the folder. I like it so much I thought I’d give you all a sneak preview today—& if you like it too, post a comment: I’ll give the first 5 people to do so today an A4 copy signed by Fitz as artist and me as author.

Meanwhile, if you’re at the convention over this weekend, there’ll be flyers available as well. If you’re not attending, stay posted, as I’ll be reporting here on my highlights and any other fun that’s going down.