"The Heir of Night" Cover Flat

Giveaway: Sullivan M. & Andrew–thank you for your comments; I have a signed cover flat here for each of you. Sullivan, I know I already have your details, but Andrew — if you email me your address through contact@helenlowe.info I’ll get yours out to you. 🙂

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5 days left to go …

And my editor in the US has sent through a review from the Library Journal for The Heir of Night: (I have only reproduced the actual ‘review’ part, the […] comprises a summary of the story.)

“Lowe, Helen. The Heir of Night. Eos: HarperCollins. (Wall of Night, Bk. 1). Sept. 2010.
c.496p. ISBN 9780061734045. pap. $7.99. FANTASY…

VERDICT 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.”

To celebrate the countdown to Publication Day, I have 5 of these  Heir of Night (USA) cover flats to give away to readers who comment on this blog today–that’s until midnight, NZ Time, 23 September. I’ll sign them for you, too. 🙂

US Cover

Yesterday, I thought I had 10 sleeps to go until official publication of The Heir of Night, but today my US editor, Kate Nintzel, told me that although the official date is still the 1st October, at HarperCollins USA they always release on a Tuesday—so it’s the 28th September. Not many sleeps at all, at all!

So now onto the newly revised 6-day countdown:

Heir has just had its second blog review, this time from Rising Shadow in Finland. You can read the review here.

And I have a guest post on the Out of this Eos site on Writing Fantasy—& Why I Love It. So do rock on over to Out of this Eos and check it out. (There are giveaways, too, if you’re in the USA.)

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd,
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound, 1885-1972

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Last week I posted a haiku by Bassho as my Tuesday poem. This week I have chosen a very short poem by Ezra Pound, a poet greatly influenced by Chinese and Japanese verse, to complement the haiku. In a Staion of the Metro is not a haiku, but I believe it encapsulates much of what the haiku form seeks to accomplish, chiefly the capture of that single “a-ha” moment in the most succinct form possible. I am also intrigued by the way the title is effectively part of the poem—although not necessary for the subsequent two lines to also work—and that like a haiku, the poem works equally well when the lines are read in reverse order.

Recently I posted The World as Meditation, a poem by Wallace Stephens. Ezra Pound is another American poet from the same era, much of whose poetic work I admire greatly, while admiring his politics, most notably fascism and anti-semitism, not at all.

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To see 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.

There are just 10 days to go now until the release of The Heir of Night on 1 October in the USA and Australia/New Zealand. (The UK release is scheduled for March 2011.) So I am now seriously into countdown mode and will be focusing more exclusively on Heir and my books and writing over the next 10 days.

To celebrate the realse of Heir, I will be posting more regularly on both the Eos (USA) and Orbit (UK/AU/NZ) blogs, as well as my regular Supernatural Underground spot on the first of each month.  I will let you know here when those posts are up—and remind you right now that I shall also be guesting with a Big Idea post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog on 21 October.

There are also a few blog interviews in the wind, so I will let you know when those are happening as well.

But just to kick off the 10-day countdown, Heir has just had its first blog review, from Rebecca Fisher of FantasyLit.com, and you can check it out here.

Original 1922 Cover

Today is international “Talk Like a Pirate” day and to join in the fun I thought I’d list some favourite  pirate reads:

Captain Blood Rafael Sabatini

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson

Peter Pan J.M. Barrie

The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate Margaret Mahy

The Princess Bride William Goldman

Missee Lee Arthur Ransome

The Hotel Under the Sand Kage Baker

How about you? What are your favourite pirate books?

Terri Garey

As you may know, I post once a month on the Supernatural Underground, a blog for HarperCollins USA speculative fiction authors.  On Tuesday, fellow Supe author, Terri Garey, posted this this fun piece of zombie flash, titled “Love Stinks and So Does Your Breath”:

“Is that a femur in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Even embalming didn’t help, and she didn’t care for waxy buildup on her fingers any more than she did her floors.”

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To read the rest, click here.

Enjoy!

As I’ve already mentioned in earlier posts this, this is NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week and there have already been several interesting posts on what it means to write speculative fiction in New Zealand and as a New Zealander. (By the way, you can check this week’s blog posts out here.)

I don’t think I have a lot of profound insights to offer, but the theme of the week has caused me to pause and reflect. For a start, I am a writer (check), I am a New Zealander (check) and I write Fantasy-Science Fiction (which falls within the aegis of  “speculative fiction”—so “check” again.)

But what does that mean, to be a New Zealand speculative fiction writer, any more than to be, for example, a British, American, or Japanese  speculative fiction author? Does it mean that one “should” write self-consciously New Zealand stories, with NZ characters, and NZ cultural themes and settings, i.e. with the speculative literary equivalent of buzzy bees and No. 8 wire on every other page?

Yet what, then, of UK author, China Miéville, whose novel The City & The City has just jointly won this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel and is set in the fictional East European city of  Beszel/Ul Qoma. Does that mean that China Miéville is not writing UK speculative fiction, or is not a UK spec-fic author? Or his Hugo co-winner, Paolo Bacigalupi, who is American and a spec fic author, but whose novel The Windup Girl is set in a dystopian future Thailand, with many characters therein who are not American, although a handful are. But is this enough to make it American speculative fiction?

And where does Neil Gaiman’s American Gods fit in? Some would claim it as the quintessential American spec-fic novel in a cultural sense, but although now resident in the US, Gaiman was for a long time a UK author. So how does that work?

Or what about when Japanese anime director, Hayao Miyazaki, made the film of UK author Diana Wynne Jones‘ novel Howl’s Moving Castle, which is about a Welsh wizard in a Fantasy world—doesn’t that just make your head hurt when trying to tie nationality to story?

It makes mine ache a fair bit, I have to say. So maybe I just need to keep things simple. I’m a writer. I write Fantasy-SciFi, which is a form of speculative fiction. I also happen to live in New Zealand. By and large, I like living in New Zealand (although like everyone else in Christchurch I’m ready for the whole earthquake and aftershock experience to be over; about now would be good) but I am not personally convinced that my place of residence and what and how I write are deeply or intrinsically linked. I certainly don’t feel the need to consciously include the literary equivalent of buzzy bees or No. 8 fencing wire in my books—in fact, I find the whole idea of actively tryng to do so decidedly naff.

As a writer, I try to tell the best stories I can, in the best way that I can. If others, reading my writing, find elements they consider distinctively New Zealand, then I’ll be very happy about that as well, because these associations will have arisen naturally, out of who and what I am. And for this Kiwi writer, in NZ SpecFic Blogging week, that’s exactly the way it ought to be.

So what about you? Do you agree? Disagree? Don’t care?

US Cover

AU/NZ Cover

Before going to Worldcon in Australia, I prerecorded this interview with Ruth Todd of Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM ahead of the Christchurch Writers’ Festival, then scheduled for 9-12 September.

Sadly, the festival had to be cancelled because of the earthquake and its aftermath, but the interview is currently available on podcast.

To listen, click here, then either click on the play icon or download the mp3 (it’s free.)

Lord of the Rings Panel with Alison Croggan (l) & Rose-Marie Lillian (r)

Still in the spirit of NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week, I have just blogged about my experiences at Worldcon on the blog of my UK publisher Orbit—so do check it out!

As with the Out of this Eos post on the Hugo Awards, the accompanying photos are by fellow SpecFicNZ member, Joffre Horlor. (The one with this post, sadly, is just a “snap”, but you can click to enlarge.)

Phil & Kaja Foglio, Accepting their Hugo Award for "Best Graphic Story"

This week is NZ speculative fiction blogging week and you can find out more by visiting the Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand (SpecFicNZ) blog, here—as well as linking through to many great posts.

In the spirit of NZ SpecFicNZ, I am providing a link through to the final in my series of articles on this year’s Hugo Awards, which was published yesterday on the Out of this Eos blog of my US publisher, Eos.

The photos that accompany the article are by fellow SpecFicNZ member, Joffre Horlor.