Publicity Still from "Boy"

Recently I watched the NZ film Boy on dvd, which I enjoyed, but at the end of the film I was struck by how much, both in this film and in a whole line of NZ films I’ve seen, the stories are focused around people who are—not to put to fine a point on it—losers. The father, in the case of Boy, but there are many more that spring to mind: Eagle vs Shark; Apron Strings; Via Satellite; Scarfies—all the way back to Goodbye Pork Pie.

There’s also our most successful recent export, the tv series Flight of the Conchords, where it’s hard to argue that the three central characters are anything but losers.

I have to say, it’s got me thinking, wondering what it is that leads us to focus on, even celebrate, the loser when we hold up the mirror of film to our culture and society? Is this really how we see ourselves—although it doesn’t seem to fit with our approach to sport, for example. Or is it just another form of cultural cringe writ large?

I don’t have any answers yet—am more just struck by having recognised what I perceive as a theme, but thought it worthwhile putting the observation out there and seeing what others think. Do you agree or diagree? Do you have any rationales to offer? And do you think we are starting to move past the “loser” phase with films like Dean Spanley and The Vintner’s Luck. But then again, you could argue that these are not precisely NZ stories … so does the different focus just underline my theme?

I’d be fascinated to hear your thoughts.

I haven’t done an “astronomy” post for a while, but I loved this shot—a NASA Picture of the Day from mid-October—which shows a partial eclipse of the sun by the moon, as seen from space. By the way, sharing cool photos like this is about as far as my “astronomy” goes, but I hope you get the same buzz out of them as I do.

And since we couldn’t have fireworks here in Christchurch last night, due to rain, I thought having the sun on the blog might do by way of substitute! 🙂

Great things are happening for Christchurch poets this week:

Victoria Broome’s first individual collection, Big Red Engine, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Kathleen Grattan Award, which is New Zealand’s richest poetry prize. I interviewed Victoria on Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM earlier in the year and very much enjoyed the poems she read then, so will have my fingers crossed for Victoria ahead of the announcement of the winner on November 21.

Victoria’s second collaborative anthology, which has been put together with her four fellow poets—Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski—in the longstanding group The Poetry Chooks is being launched at South Libray this Saturday at 1 pm. The anthology is titled Flap: The Chook Book 2 and is being launched by well known poet and novelist Fiona Farrell.

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A second Christchurch poet (also non-fiction author and academic), Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, has today been announced as the University of Waikato’s Writer-in-Residence for 2011. Jeffrey plans to work on two projects during his year at Waikato: a new collection of poetry, working title  Second Cuts, which will centre round New Zealand’s shearing culture; and  a memoir which stems from a photograph of a Kamikaze pilot striking an aircraft carrier with Holman’s father on board.

Jeffrey—who is a fellow member of the Tuesday Poem Blog—is also launching a collection of poetry titled Fly Boy (Steele Roberts), on poems of flight, on Sunday 14 at The Air Force Museum of New Zealand.

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It’s  certainly nice to see the book and poetry postives starting to happen again as we deal with the aftermath of our “earthquake spring!”

Recently, I did a guest spot on Out of this Eos blog, talking about why I loved both my covers for The Heir of Night (here), and then in the interview on Over the Edge Books, Christine asked me about favourite covers, which got me thinking …

… a process that was re-sparked today when I saw a trailer for the HBO version of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones (which you, too, can check out here.) It looks great, I have to say, very atmospheric—and includes the chilling catchline that is the motto of the Starks, the central family in Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series: Winter is Coming!

A Game of Thrones: Steven Youll cover

The reason that put me in mind of covers again is because one of my all time favourites is the Del Rey paperback cover by Steven Youll for A Game of Thrones. I remember the first time I saw it, clear across the room in the (now, sadly, gone) Bag End Books in Dunedin—and the whole look of it just reached out to me and said: “Buy me, I’m your kind of story!” And it really was! The cover both spoke for the book and was true to the book in a really powerful way.

Tigana: Spanish cover

The Mel Odom cover for Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana is quite different: stylised rather than realistic. It’s formality reminds me of a Renaissance-era tapestry, which is appropriate for the book, and yet also speaks to what I call the “High Fantasy Romantic” nature of the story. In this case I already knew the author’s work, because I had read and enjoyed The Fionavar Trilogy previously. Nonetheless, the Mel Odom cover was still a compelling factor in drawing me to Tigana. I have the US edition, but my favourite version of the Mel Odom cover appears on the Spanish edition, where it was (according to the author’s website, Bright Weavings): “incorporated into a new design by Víctor Viano.”

Wildwood Dancing: Kinuko Craft cover

Moribito: Kinuko Craft cover

As I said in the Over the Edge interview, when it comes to cover art, I love just about anything I’ve ever seen by Kinuko Craft.  Particular examples include her Wildwood Dancing cover for Juliet Marillier; the Japanese-styled cover for Nahoko Uehashi’s Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit; and her many covers for novels by Patricia McKillip—although I think Od Magic is probably my favourite. Anyway, because I love these covers so much, I’m including both Wildwood and Moribito here. These also (imho) highlight the versatility of Craft’s work.

So how about you—what are your favourite book covers? What cover has made you buy the book—and did the story live up to the cover’s promise?

AU/NZ Cover

Tarran, at Angus & Robertson Edwardstown, in Adelaide, Australia, has done a review of The Heir of Night and you can read it here, but yes—she is recommending it! Hurrah!

Double hurrah (and thank you, I have to say!)—Tarran has also emailed that I will be “Author of the Month” for Angus & Robertson Edwardstown’s November newsletter, which is seriously cool.

So now I had better go and finish my guest post for Tarran & the store blog before—yup, you’ve guessed it—getting into The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Series: Book Two) for the day.

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After Note: My guest post is now ‘live’ on the Angus & Robertson Edwardstown blog here

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines –

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches –

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind –

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined –
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance – Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963

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William Carlos Williams is one of my favourite poets and also one of the defining voices of 20th century American poetry.  In this poem, the title poem of his 1923 collection Spring and All, I particularly like the way he defies contemporary poetic dictum by the powerful use of multiple adjectives to create a ‘more is [much] more’ effect in the following stanza:

“All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines – ”

Overall though, I just love the acute observation inherent in the poem and its powerful sense of energy, however “sluggish” and “dazed” the spring that approaches—but oh, that imagery! And the wonder of:

” … Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken”

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Blog—and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world—either click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

On Saturday I did a wrap up post on the F-SF Guest Author Series and I’ve kept you updated on interviews and reviews, as well as attending Armageddon but you may have been wondering what else I’ve been up to while all this was going on. The answer is easy—which is that finishing The Wall of Night Series Book Two (working title: The Gathering of the Lost, or just Gathering for short) is pretty much the only game in town right now.

In my It’s Friday update on 15 October I said that: “My goal for the month … [is] … to see if I can’t knock off 60,000 words, which should just about see the book done.  I’ll keep you posted on how I’m going …”

How am I going? Well so far I’ve done 15,000 new words, plus a fair amount of revision, but given time and target I think it would be fair to say that I am not getting the words out as fast as I had hoped. But then I have also found in the past that just cranking out words for their own sake doesn’t necessarily advance the story—and what I can say is that the 15,000 new words I’ve written since the 15th  definitely do advance the story.

So what drives me when I’m writing a book? Mostly, that I want the story to have integrity, which for me is mainly about continuity and consistency of both plot and characters—and you will recall that on October 22, I blogged on the importance for me of remaining true to character in my writing. I also think a lot about trying to write in an interesting way, not just repeating the words and phrases, or using the same adjectives or ideas to describe certain characters or environments.

And what encourages me to keep going and cranking those words out? Mainly, I’ve been carrying this story around with me for a long time—parts of it, as I’ve said in some of the online interviews I’ve done, from a very early age—so I really want to tell it: that always brings me back to the writing desk.

But a really big encouragement lately has been getting so much positive feedback for The Heir of Night, with people out there saying they have really loved it and “can’t wait” for Book Two. Having waited myself in the past, I don’t want my readers to have to do that, so am very keen to get Gathering done and out there to you.

A little bit about what Gathering is about? Well, it definitely continues the story of Malian and Kalan as begun in The Heir of Night, but the heralds, Tarathan of Ar and Jehane Mor, also get some serious point-of-view time. And I have just finished a sequence with Asantir and Haimyr which I really enjoyed writing—put simply, the story rocked along. There are also some new characters introduced in Gathering, in part because the unfolding story requires their presence and in part because the action has shifted away from the the Wall of Night to other regions of Haarth. One of these new locales is Ij, the home of Haimyr the Golden and one of the great cities of the River (which is a loose confederation of independent city states.) Another new locale is the duchy of Emer, the home of the heavily armoured Emerian knights …

But which point-of-view characters you will meet in each place, and what befalls them there, is something you will have to “wait and see …”

As for getting through the writing and reaching that final line and last word—as I said on October 15, please feel free to offer incentives (virtual chocolate cake et al)  :-)—although in fact the biggest aid to writing is always uninterrupted time. So a week with a mostly clear diary, as I have ahead, is writer’s bliss.

Halloween is one of those festivals that it always feels odd celebrating in New Zealand, given its very close association with the northern hemisphere’s seasonal cycles. Even the nature of contemporary celebration—dressing up in scary costumes, jack o’ lanterns, trick-or-treating—are all activities that make more sense in the gathering dark of autumn evenings, rather than the long, light, early evening of late spring/early summer in the southern hemisphere.

The modern, secular festival of Halloween derives originally from the Celtic festival of Samhain, which was associated with harvest end and the passing of the year from summer into the dark and cold of winter. From what I have read, it also had elements of a “day of the dead,” when what more eastern traditions would describe as “the hungry ghosts” had to be placated with offerings of food. Once Christianity became the dominant religion, the 31 October/1 November date for Samhain became the religious festival of All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Day, which formally commemorates all the Christain saints. The day after All Saints is All Souls, which remembers those who have died in the faith, but without achieving sainthood. (There are definite overlaps to the earlier Celtic  tradition here. Even the bonfires of Guy Fawkes, a few days later, echo the bonfire tradition of Samhain …)

But whether a harvest festival or a feast of the dead, it is hard to get into the spirit of Halloween on a clear spring evening with lilac, wisteria and the first poppies all blooming, and fresh green growth everywhere. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, I have always turned to story to get the Halloween experience, and because I don’t really care for horror movies, that pretty much means books. (OK, there’s Buffy, as well …)

One of my all-time favorite Halloween stories is the Scottish tale of Tam Lin, and my favourite retelling is found in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Armourer’s House (Oxford Children’s Library, 1951), in the Chapter titled “A Tale for Hallowe’en.” Here’s a small sample to give you a feel for why, even though it’s very much a kids’ retelling, I think it’s well worth a read.

by PJ Fitzpatrick

” … Oh, but it was wild and lonely up there, with the larks singing in the wide skies, and the whaups crying, and the land dropping away from her feet to the blue hills of the Border Country. And all at once Janot was afraid, and just for a moment she thought that she would take the gold pin from her gown and leave it for a gift to the Fairy Kind, and go home quickly, as she had come. But she was not one to turn away from a thing because she was afraid; so she bent forward across the well-curb, and broke off a long wild-rose spray that arched above it. There were two pink blossoms upon the spray, and as she broke it off, the petals fell from one of them, as is the way of wild roses when their branch is shaken. She leaned forward to watch the five petals floating in the dark water, and there was her own face looking up at her from the depths—aye, and another face looking over her shoulder! A thin face it was, and dark enough to startle any maid.

For the time that it might take your heart to beat twice, Janot never moved. Then she turned slowly from the well-curb, still holding the rose-switch in her hand. Close beside her on the green-sward stood a brave young gallant, clad all in green, from his close-fitting hose to his feathered bonnet. And oh, but he was bonny, despite his black hair and his wan, dark face; there was a cleft to his chin and a quirk to his eyebrow, and the eyes of him were bright and grey …

… I am called Tam Lin,” said the young man, and, as he spoke, he doffed his bonnet to her so low that it swept the fern …”

So that’s a very small sample of one of my favourite Halloween stories. What is yours? And why? I’d love for you to tell me.

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The etching in Jaransor, from The Heir of Night, from a series of images done by PJ Fitzpatrick
who drew the Heir map, but the "feel" also suits the description of Carterhaugh, a "wild and
lonely" place.

Series Wrap-Up

Firstly, I apologise for taking so long to get to this. The F-SF Guest Author Series wrapped up on Wednesday with James Norcliffe’s post—and it is now Saturday (already–how did that happen?) Well a few things did happen, including visits from family and friends from out of town, and another friend returning from the best part of two months overseas—the stuff of life, to which even blog posts must occasionally take second place. 🙂

The bonus is, having had that little bit of extra time has really given me the chance to reflect on the series—mainly on how much I enjoyed it. The theme was “Why Fantasy-Science Fiction Rocks My World”, and one of the aspects that amazed me was how each new guest could take that theme and give it a fresh twist. Authors spoke of “what if” and “why not” and “wonder”; of hope and hope of change, the human need for belief and acts of invocation; of whether we are, in fact not living in a science fiction novel (and if so, by whom?)—and how, however often the laws of physics may be abandoned in both fantasy and science fiction, the Mighty and Immutable Laws of Fiction must always prevail.

In short, a great deal of territory was traversed, with wit, insight and panache. So I hope you will join with me now in thanking all the authors who contributed to the series:

Alan Baxter (AU: Dark Fantasy)

Nicole Murphy (AU: Paranormal Urban Fantasy)

Mary Victoria (NZ: Epic Fantasy)

Kim Falconer (AU: Epic Fantasy)

Tracey O’Hara (AU: Paranormal Urban Fantasy)

Marianne de Pierres (AU: Science Fiction)

Michael Pryor (AU: Fantasy YA)

Tim Jones (NZ: Science Fiction, Fantasy)

Juliet Marillier (AU: Historical Fantasy)

Anne Hamilton (AU: Junior Fantasy)

Julie Czerneda (CAN: Science Fiction, Fantasy)

Gillian Polack (AU: Fantasy)

James Norcliffe (NZ: Junior/YA Fantasy)

If you would like to re-read the full series (plus a few spin-off posts), or if there is an author you missed and would like to read now, you will find the collected posts under Categories: F-SF Author Guest Series in the far right-hand sidebar.

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Competition Result

AU/NZ Cover

The other reason for delaying this post is that I have been waiting for the “Sorting Hat” to do its independent thing with the competition that has been  running from the AU/NZ launch.  You may recall that, as part of the launch of The Heir of Night into AU/NZ, together with the giveaway prizes, I also ran a competition concurrent with the F-SF Guest Author series, as follows:

“Everyone who posted either on October 7 of AU/NZ Launch Day or on any of the posts by F-SF writers in the Guest Author Series, would enter the draw to have their name included as a character name in The Wall of Night Series, Book Two. The qualifying provisos for the competition were:

• Each time an individual commented on a post by an F-SF guest author their name gained an additional entry into the draw (but only 1 new entry per F-SF author post would be allowed);
• The name included in the book was to be the commenter’s real name;
• I also reserved the right to adapt the winner’s name to best fit a fantasy character, e.g. “John the Miller” as opposed to “John Miller”—but the winner’s full name and success in the competition would be set out in the “Acknowledgments” section of the book.”

OK, that’s the background. On to the result! All 99 eligible names were entered into a database, independently verified and then run through a random number generator, and … (trumpet flourish):

The Winner is:  “janlb” — Jan Butterworth!

Congratulations, Jan. 🙂

And yes, I have already thought of a way to weave “your” character into the continuing story!

Bonus Giveaway

You’ll recall that I also offered to give away a copy of Thornspell to anyone who could work out the “numerical literary style” used in Anne Hamilton’s guest post. An answer was put forward, but Anne has advised that it was not—alas!—correct. (You can check Anne’s guest post, here to see what she had to say under the Comments.) But I also said that if the verdict was a “thumbs down” for “777”, then I would ask the Sorting Hat to “choose again” amongst all those who commented on October 7 and during the course of the series, and give the Thornspell copy away as a secondary prize. This, too, has now occurred and …

the winner is: Brendon

—who posted as part of the AU/NZ launch celebration on October 7. Congratulations, Brendon, If you email me via my website (see Contact above), I’ll arrange to post the book to you.

USA Cover

I have a guest post on my US publisher’s Out of this Eos blog today, on “The Heir of Night and Characters Under Pressure.”  Here’s an intro:

Last week, I had a guest post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, talking about the “Big Idea” behind The Heir of Night, which centers around how good and evil are often portrayed in fantasy, particularly epic fantasy. Writing that post got me thinking about how, as an author, a big idea gets to “work its way out” through your story. In The Heir of Night (Heir) it’s definitely all about the characters, who they are, what code of values they subscribe to—and how they behave in relation to those values when the chips are down. So I guess that’s why Heir is quite an adventurous story (OK, it’s also because I like treks into dangerous territory, sword fights and hunts and battles with demons, to be strictly honest!) as well as being character driven:  because it’s only when the going gets tough that the person you believe you are gets tested …

You can read the rest here.