Early in the new year is often a time for renewing subscriptions and that is certainly the case for me—post office, subscriptions to journals, and in my case, renewing my online subscription to the Chicago Manual of Style.

I had heard of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) previously, but it only came fully into focus at the beginning of last year when I was doing the copyedit for The Heir of Night and my US publisher, Voyager (née Eos), advised that they used CMoS as their “house” style guide. (And of course, wise readers that you are, you know I do not mean haute couture.)

What to do? I thought. I don’t know anywhere locally that stocks the CMoS for sale and even if the library has it, I can’t spend the next  couple of weeks living day and night under their roof … so of course I went to ‘te search engine’ and found out that—surprise!—you can purchase access to the Chicago Manual of Style Online.

Up until that point I had relied on Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, supplemented by Eats, Shoots & Leaves and a basic facility with English at high school and university—but I recognized that it was time to strike out into deeper waters. And from the moment that I first “opened up” CMoS online, it was a case of true and instant love. Because the CMoS is a source of “great knowledge” and holds the answer to all those gnarly little grammatical questions that plague you when you are at the copyedit and proof edit stage of a manuscript. As the Compleat Angler once was for trout fishermen, so the CMoS is for those who like to cast for and then land good grammar—the perfect life companion for those like me who love to delve down into detail, as well as focus on the grand sweep!

So when I worked my way through the subscription renewal reminders yesterday and came to the CMoS, there was no question or hesitation over renewing for another year—I know that I will not only use the manual extensively as I revise The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two, but I will enjoy using it as well. In fact—true confession time—I have, um,  been known to delve into it ‘just for fun’ …

(I should perhaps also add that the good people at the Chicago Manual of Style offices had no knowledge of the intended writing of this blog post, and certainly no hand in it by means of either coercion or inducement! 🙂 )

It’s Friday and I’ll confess to having taken things a little easy this week, giving myself a breather having finished the manuscript (ms) for WALL2—working title, The Gathering of the Lost—on 1 January. I’ll be starting serious revision next week, but the main task I’ve been doing this week is the glossary—or “grossary” as I started calling it with Heir, both because it was … um … quite large, and also because of the large number of monsters contained therein … But I love glossaries, especially with “big” stories, as I find they help keep track of the characters, and also artefacts and places within the ms—to me, glossaries are part of the essential “texture” of the epic Fantasy!

I’ve also gone back to the ‘to be read’ pile on the book table this week, which still includes Justin Cronin’s The Crossing and the 3-book set of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series. Since December 19, I’ve also added in Dark Moon, the second in Meredith Ann Pierce’s “Firebringer” trilogy and my friend Beth-Anne Miller’s debut romance novel, Into the Scottish Mist, which is being published on February 4 in the USA . I’ll be doing an interview with Beth-Anne on the Supernatural Underground on 1 February and she will also be doing a guest post here on “…Anything, Really” on February 4 itself.

Also coming up on the interview front is Mary Victoria with Samiha’s Song, the second in her “Chronicles of the Tree” series, which began with Tymon’s Flight. I’ll be interviewing Mary here on 15 February, and am really looking forward to reading the book.

Right now I’m in the middle of William Gibson’s Zero History and enjoying it, almost as much as Spook Country, which I thought was ‘absolutely fabulous.’

So how about you? What are you all reading right now?

Of My Mother, High Noon in the Tropics, & Lemon Self-Saucing, Chocolate Steamed Pudding

by Helen Lowe

When I was a child, we lived in Singapore for three years and clung, in expatriate exile, to New Zealand culinary traditions. It is not that we completely shunned the exotic cuisine that surrounded us, but by and large we continued to “eat New Zealand”. Now I regret the opportunities lost, but as a young child I simply accepted it, as children do. Perhaps it was my mother’s way of asserting identity and normalcy in a strange land, but—whatever the reason—she was determined in her pursuit of New Zealand butter, lamb, milk powder, and cheese for our consumption. When New Zealand products could not be sourced, Australian produce would graciously be countenanced as a “next best” alternative.

So even in Singapore, just eighty miles north of the equator, our family continued to enjoy the Kiwi Sunday roast, usually of lamb but with chicken permitted as an acceptable substitute. In addition to the roasted meat and vegetables we always had dessert as well, usually either a cake or a cooked pudding. It seems probable that consumption of these Kiwi delights in the heat and steam of a Singapore noon—we always ate our Sunday dinner in the middle of the day—was only possible because we lived in an old colonial mansion, with high plastered walls and electric fans clicking ceaselessly overhead. It was very pleasant to sit in the cool dim interior with the heat and brassy glare of the day held at a distance.

My mother was adamant about other things than diet. We children were not, she determined, to be spoiled by the expatriate lifestyle that she clearly thought hedonistic, or grow up expecting “to be waited on hand and foot”. (Servants were an integral part of the expatriate Singapore life.) We were to clean up after ourselves, keep our rooms tidy and make our beds—and yes, learn to cook.

Looking back, I can see that my mother, in her own unique way, was a staunch egalitarian. Another quality that I admired then, and still do now, was her refusal to pay our household employees what she considered sub-standard wages, even if that was “the market”. Nor would she insist on an “amah”  living in.

“She has a family of her own,” my mother would say. “She should be able to go home to them at the end of the—no more than eight hour—working day.”

My cooking lessons started with puddings and cakes, which may explain why I am still far more adept and intuitive with baking than with main courses, even though I love cooking in all its forms—yes, even the preparation. One of my early favourites was a chocolate steamed pudding with a self-saucing lemon sauce, particularly delicious when served with vanilla ice cream and runny cream.

I remember standing at the bench, which at eight I was barely tall enough to reach and so stood on a footstool, beating the mix in a blue and white Cornish-ware bowl that had travelled with us from New Zealand. The lemon went at the bottom of the metal steaming bowl, which did not have a lid as the modern ones do—we tied greaseproof baking paper around the top with string. And then, in the high heat of a Singapore Sunday, it would boil merrily away until it was ready to be carried in triumph, hot and steaming with the lemon sauce spilling down the chocolate sides, to the table.

They tell me that the grand old house is gone, long since demolished to make way for the Mt Faber cable car. But I still have the blue and white Cornish-ware bowl and I still make the lemon self-saucing chocolate steam pudding—but only in winter.

Esther Campbell Lowe’s Lemon Self-Saucing Chocolate Steamed Pudding

Ingredients:

1 egg
½ cup sugar (white)
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup plain white flour
1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder
½ teaspoon of mixed spice
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon of cocoa
½ cup of brown sugar
1 ½ ounces butter (approximately 1 ½ tablespoons or 45 grams)
milk—as required

Method:

1. Break egg into a bowl, add the ½ cup of white sugar and the lemon juice;
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, spice, salt and cocoa;
3. Mix brown sugar through the rest of the dry ingredients then rub in the butter with your fingertips;
4. Mix together with sufficient of the milk to form a moist dough;
5. Place the lemon mix at the bottom of a steam pudding bowl, then spoon in the chocolate mix on top;
6. Cover the top of the bowl then steam rapidly for 1 hour;
7. When ready, turn out and serve with ice cream and/or cream as preferred.

Enjoy!

—

I wrote the first draft of this anecdote in a food-writing course with Lois Daish, several years ago now, and re-wrote it for Narratives with Nosh, Stories Poems & Recipes, Ed. Margaret Beverland with Jenny Argente, Tauranga Writers, 2009, where it was published as “Of My Mother and High Noon in the Tropics.” I felt it would be a fun way to end the selection of poetry and prose, both mine and others, that I have featured over the Christmas-New Year holiday season.

On Sunday 2, I posted Reflecting on 2010, and cannot believe that I omitted to mention what really was one of the highlights of my year—when Robin Hobb very generously provided a cover quote for The Heir of Night!

And the quote—which I pretty much know by heart now 😉 — is:

.

As I said way back on 16 June—thank you, Robin Hobb. I (still!) feel very honoured

—

Omission No. 2 arises from my Monday Summary of Reviews, when I posted on the reviews received for The Heir of Night since its publication in October—but of course, Thornspell also got another fabulous, 5-star review this year, from Rising Shadow. Here’s a snippet:

“Thornspell is a charming, rich and well imagined retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story … I think that everybody who likes beautiful prose, romantic adventures and good stories, will love this book. There are several similar books, but Thornspell is clearly in a league of its own, because the quality of the writing is superb and the story is fascinating … This book is so good that once you start reading it, it’s almost impossible to put it down. Highly recommended!”

You can read the full review here—but I did think it was very cool to get another review two years on from original publication!

—

I think those are the only omissions so far, though who knows what will happen as the new year grows older and busier!

meditation
in darkness
the first bird calls

by Helen Lowe

—

Although the Tuesday Poem blog  is officially in recess until January 18, I would like to post this haiku in memory of my fellow Tuesday Poet, Harvey McQueen, who died on Christmas Day. Although Harvey had been ill for some time, and very recently posted:

“… my cruel malady
spurs me to confess
increasingly, I
long for oblivion”

I was nonetheless taken by surprise yesterday, when I read here of his death.

I had only known Harvey a short time through the Tuesday Poem blog but was impressed by his intelligence and generosity of spirit. It is a cliche to say someone will be sorely missed, but I know that in Harvey’s case this is the simple truth.

Harvey, I have appreciated your contribution every Tuesday—I know that I am going to miss it and you a great deal.

Finishing the manuscript for The Gathering of the Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two, right on New Year, which like Janus, the Roman God of Doors, is a time for looking both back and forwards, made me both look back to the launch of The Heir of Night on 28 September (USA/Canada) and 7 October (Aus/NZ) respectively and think that it could be time to compile links to some of the great online reviews that have come in, here in one place.

And here they are (‘roughly’ in date order):

• Fantasy Book Review (UK)
• One Librarian’s Book Reviews,
• Fresh Fiction, 
• Specusphere
• Angus & Robertson.
• FantasyLit.com
• Rising Shadow
• Bookloons
• SFFANZ
• Fiction Kingdom and
• SFRevu.

Heir also received two ‘print only’ pro reviews from Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly respectively.

Library Journal was enthusiastic, stating that:

“Lowe’s first novel, a series opener, calls to mind the inchoate evil of Barbara Hambly’s classic  “Darwath Trilogy” (The Time of the Dark; The Walls of Air; The Armies of Daylight) and reinvigorates the epic fantasy with appealing characters and a richly detailed world.”

Publisher’s Weekly was more temperate, describing The Heir of Night as:

” … a mostly standard fantasy tale … [although] Lowe clearly portrays Malian’s difficulties in leaving home and facing up to a vital if unwanted birthright, adding depth with descriptions of the stoic and proud Derai warrior culture.”

Needless to say, I prefer “reinvigorates the epic fantasy”— way to go, Library Journal! 😉

2010 was the year of writing The Wall of Night Book Two—& I finished the manuscript yesterday: woot! And posted ‘all about it’ on the Supernatural Underground.

US Cover

AU/NZ Cover

It was also the year of seeing The Heir of Night published in the USA/Canada, Australia and New Zealand in October, with publication for the UK scheduled for this year, March 2011. Since publication, it’s been great to get some really nice pro and semi-pro reviews as well as positive reader feedback, some of which I’ve shared with you here on “…Anything, Really.” And it was a huge thrill to make the Christchurch City Librraies’ Simply the Best of 2010 list, here.

And the year of seeing Thornspell released in paperback, with a very nice related feature in the NZ Book Council’s quarterly journal, Booknotes, Spring 2010.

2010 was also the year of beginning to sell foreign rights to the Wall of Night series, of going to Worldcon in Melbourne and continuing to do books and writer interviews for Women on Air, on Plains 96.9 FM—the highlight being compering the public event for Andrea Levy, award winning author of Small Island and The Long Song.  I also got to continue interviewing wonderful poets and to start interviewing speculative fiction authors, including Jennifer Fallon, Nalini Singh, Mary Victoria and Ripley Patton, which was all great fun.

As celebrated on 30 December, I also commenced blogging myself, both here on “…Anything Really and on the first of the month on the Supernatural Underground—as well as doing guest posts with Eos (USA) and Orbit (UK/AU/NZ), with other writers such as Marianne de Pierres and a Big Idea post on John Scalzi’s Whatever.

Quaked!

And 2010 was the year of the Christchurch earthquake, with an initial 7.1 quake on September 4 and over 4000 “after shocks” since them, some of which, at 5.1 and 4.9 etcetera, have been earthquakes in their own right. The latest “swarm” (32 over a 24 hour period) occurred on Boxing Day and comprised a series of sharp and also shallow quakes that did a lot of building damage again. Having said all that, with no deaths and realtively few major injuries, I still think it would be fair to say that we’re all thanking our earthquake building codes as well as our ‘lucky stars’—as well as hoping for a much less shaky 2011!

As always, I read a lot of books during the course of the year and mentioned a few of them a while back, here. But because it is New Year here are those, which among so many wonderful books, stood out the most for me:

Novel:

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

—

Non Fiction:

Feeling for Daylight, The Photographs of Jack Adamson by Rhian Gallagher

—

.

Poetry:

Tigers at Awhitu by Sarah Broom

—

.

Young Adult:

Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan

(I don’t feel I read enough Junior fiction to make a selection in this category—& I read James Norcliffe’s The Loblolly Boy in 2009 so I can’t pick that!)

As for what’s coming up in the New Year—life I find is generally what happens when you’re busy making other plans (nods to John Lennon), but I am fairly certain that I will be writing The Wall of Night, Book Three. Other than that—well, we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Again—Happy New Year to you all!

New Year’s Day 2011–and I have finished the manuscript for the second novel in The Wall of Night series—working title The Gathering of the Lost.

Needless to say, I am ‘over the moon’—and have just posted all about it on the Supernatural Underground (because the first of every month is ‘my day’ for an author post!) So rock on over there and check it out! 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a 2010 reflective, but tonight—well, I’m just celebratin’ that feeling of “the end!”

Best wishes for the New Year — may 2011 bring all of you all good things!

Book covers postcard

I’m looking forward to having more fun together here on “…Anything, Really” and creating works of fantastic fiction! 😉

I’ll be posting for New Year’s Day—1 January, US EST—on the Supernatural Underground so I’d love to see you over there this evening, NZ time.

The Sorting Hat

The “Sorting Hat” has sorted the results of the giveaway draw from the “Milestone: 250 Posts Reached—& Now Passed!” post and the result is:

The gift set of a:

• signed Heir of Night chapter sampler from Worldcon, together with
• a signed ‘blue’ USA cover flat,
• a signed book plate, and
• a “Helen Lowe” book covers postcard, and (last but not least)
• a signed Thornspell cap

go to Catherine.

The ‘random’ giveaway of a second signed cover flat of the blue US cover goes to DonnaS.

If you email me through my webmail, contact[at]helenlowe.info, with your postal address, I’ll get the loot in the mail! 🙂