Just to let you know that we have a few revisions to the F-SF Guest Author Schedule:

Today, 14 May, Tim Jones is substituting for Tracey O’Hara with a great science fiction based post—just as a wee break from the fantastic Fantasy run we’ve been having 🙂 —and Tracey will be taking Tim’s slot on Sunday 17.

Fellow Sci-Fi author, Marianne de Pierres, is also shifting from tomorrow’s Friday 15 spot to Monday 25, so I will most likely be substituting a  fill-in post for Friday. 🙂

And don’t forget that the “Enter the Draw to Give Your Name To A Character in The Wall of Night, Book Two” Competition! is continuing throughout the F-SF Guest Author series: I’ll give you all the details again tomorrow or you can check here now. (You’ll have to scroll down.)

I am delighted to welcome Kim Falconer today, as my fourth guest in the F-SF Author Series. I have been aware of Kim’s work for some time, but as with many of the other guest authors, only had the pleasure of meeting her in person at the recent Worldcon in Melbourne. And although it may be argued that the most important way to know an author is through her or his work, it is always very nice to be able to put a face and a personality to fine writing!  So please welcome Kim Falconer, posting on: “Why FSF rocks [her] world.”

F-SF Guest Series Post: Kim Falconer

Congratulations, Helen, on the release of The Heir of Night and thank you for inviting me to ” … on Anything, Really!” I’m delighted to be here.

Speculative fiction is my first, then and finally love and like all true lovers, it takes me places I’ve never been before. While fiction and nonfiction are busy trying to convince me of what was and what is and what should be, Spec Fic is quietly asking what if? Some say that’s a cheap way to travel, entertaining and fun, but it’s more than that. So much more!

There is a wonderful Zen teaching that says: The Great Way is gateless, approached by a thousand paths. Pass through this barrier, you walk freely in the universe. When it comes to storytelling, speculative fiction is the Great Way—it opens the mind. This function of Spec Fic isn’t new, or given only to the spiritual-weird-off beat subgenres. It’s found in every good Spec Fic story—no exceptions—and has since the beginning of time.

From the early development of our species, the shamans told stories about animals and the supernatural places they went when they died. It was our way to express and commune with the unknown and we still need that connection, now more than ever. As an explanation of the universe, science has failed. It’s too inconsistent and ever changing to be a reliable guide. After making all kinds of discoveries over the last two hundred years, we find out now that most of science fact isn’t ‘real’ after all. We aren’t living in Newton’s world anymore. According to new discoveries in quantum physics, what we call ‘real’ is so crazy even the physicists are shaking their heads.

Time flows forward and backward, DNA communicates in superposition, ninety percent of the universe is unknown and ‘reality’ may be an elaborate holographic projection. These notions are not science fiction. They’re current discoveries and theories. The foundation of our world view is changing so fast we are often as unsure about ‘reality’ as we were back in the cave people days. In such a state, we need stories that ask what if to guide us, to help us prepare for the future and to open our minds.

Spec Fic has a powerful effect on how we perceive the world because it turns out the brains can’t tell the difference between imagination and ‘reality.’ If we are emotionally engaged with a story—not aware of reading it but actually immersed to the degree we see the story unfold through the characters’ eyes, become frightened when they are in danger and uplifted when they are safe, tantalised when they fall in love—it is the same, to our brains, as if those events were really happening.

This is the true magic of speculative fiction. It takes us to a place where the what if becomes real. By going there in the mind, we experience it in the body. New neural pathways form, conduits of the Great Way. From that point onward, a different perspective becomes possible because we have, for a time, lived it.

If any story can change the way we think, it’s Spec Fic. Enough to rock anybody’s world, wouldn’t you say?

About Kim:

Kim Falconer is a HarperVoyager author writing epic science fantasy, stories about real people in extraordinary situations—nano-tecnology, witchcraft, quantum computers, fast horses, hot bards, stunning tattoos and environments on the brink of destruction. Her novels always begin with a grain of truth. Kim’s latest series is Quantum Encryption. Book #1 is out now, Path of the Stray. Currently she’s working on Books #2 & #3. There is a sneak preview of Road to the Soul, out February 2011 and her most recent short story, Wolf Being, appears in Spectra Magazine, Sept 2010. You can find her on kim.falconer.com, FaceBook, and Twitter.

Maze

What I miss is gravel
crunching under foot or wheel,
wide sky above
the road straight into horizon.

I want to walk the crease
of a prairie book, lines of wheat
as even type, all one size
the word gold over and over.

London’s a fused maze
of alphabets: wherever you walk,
each road, wherever it turns,
is utterly paved or cobbled crookedly.

A crazed typesetter has been at work
every night for centuries, his head
swirling with shadows thrown
on crumbling walls by candle-flame.

He has set every line diabolical
in a different font and size,
Hot lead in higgledy-piggledy frames
and gutters overflowing with errata.

© Nancy Mattson
from Writing with Mercury (Flambard Press) 2006

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I met Nancy Mattson in 2008, when she and her husband, Mike Bartholomew-Biggs, also a poet, were resident in Christchurch for several months and appeared as guest poets as part of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective annual Autumn Season of Poetry Readings at Madras Cafe Bookshop. Nancy is an ex-patriate Canadian now resident in London, and I love the way the poem, Maze, captures that experience in poetic form, using the extended metaphor of print. Nancy herself says:

“When I first moved to London twenty years ago I kept getting lost in the winding streets, the layers of history and the echoing voices of writers. What a contrast after the openness of the Canadian prairies, where I was born and raised. I now claim both places as part of my psychogeographic inheritance.”

Today is the third post in The Heir of Night F-SF Guest Author Series and I am delighted to introduce Mary Victoria, a fellow, NZ-based, epic fantasy author (although I also thought I detected elements of steampunk in her recently released novel, Tymon’s Flight.) I was privileged to be able to interview Mary on Women on Air, Plains 96.9 FM when Tymon’s Flight first came out (and include a link to the interview below her bio) and also had the very great pleasure of appearing on the “Writing Strange Lands” panel with Mary at Worldcon. So without further ado, I give you Mary Victoria, on our series theme of: “Why Fantasy-Science Fiction rocks my world.”

F-SF Guest Series Post: Mary Victoria

Stories are full of magic. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. A story can masquerade as reality. It can do a splendid job at impersonating the ordinary, the grindingly mundane. But that is simply the spell it weaves. We are all willing dupes, seeing in black letters on a white page a troupe of living, breathing characters and scenes of joy or infamy. There is no tale that is not an act of invocation. ‘I am Truth, I am Reality,’ says the illusion: believe at your peril. You are entering a web of consensual deceit, catching a ball the author throws at you, participating in a game of shared imagination.

As you can probably tell, I’m of the tedious ‘every author writes Fantasy’ persuasion. Don’t worry, I won’t go all deconstructionist in this blog post. I’ll simply say that genre distinctions do not speak to me. At best they are a pitching and marketing device, a way of providing readers with the stories they like, or at least pretending to provide the story they like before moving on to interesting alternatives. So, why do I write in that storytelling shorthand that makes a reader think, ‘Ah, Fantasy’? Why in particular that code which throws up the warning sign, ‘Epic Fantasy: dragons be here’?

The short, and partially correct answer in my case was that I had a story which cried out to be written as speculative fiction. A coming of age tale set in a giant tree the size of a mountain range had to be either Fantasy or Science Fiction. I suppose it could have taken place in the ‘real world’, as the ravings of a lunatic. But that would have necessitated a clumsy narrative framing device; I was more interested in what happened inside the picture. So I chose Fantasy, or rather Science Fiction disguised as Fantasy, or rather Science Fantasy –

Whoops. Have I given away too much? You’re not supposed to know that yet, not in the first book. But there it is, in a nutshell. The beauty of Fantasy is its flexibility. It is a genre that can morph into anything, that can be anything, from Truth to Dream to Philosophy to Poetry. For a slippery fish such as myself, the possibilities are intoxicating. Fantasy is the ultimate nod to creativity. Anything goes so long as one is able to pull it off. So long as the spell is cast adroitly enough.

I doubt if I will always write Epic Fantasy. I doubt that I am even now, strictly speaking and with an eye to very narrow definitions, writing Epic Fantasy. But I will always be to some degree a writer of speculative fiction, because I love the freedom that form gives. From the subtlest forays of ‘magical realism’ and alternate history to all-out space opera and epic, dragon-ridden sagas, it’s all for me. I love that breadth of choice. And should I break down one day and write a tale of everyday life and love set in a corner of the so-called real world, rest assured that I would still be cheating. Quietly.

There would be a creeping sense of possibility, a whiff of magic in the pages, that gave the game away.

About Mary Victoria:

Mary Victoria was born in 1973 in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Despite this she managed to live most of her life in other places, including Cyprus, Canada, Sierra Leone, France and the UK. She studied art and film and worked as an animator for 10 years before turning to full time writing. She now lives in Wellington with her husband and daughter. Her first book, Tymon’s Flight, was released by HarperVoyager in August 2010. The sequel, Samiha’s Song, is due out in February 2011. Visit her on Live Journal: http://maryvictoria.livejournal.com/

To listen to Helen Lowe’s radio interview with Mary Victoria, click here (then either press the “play” icon to listen or download the mp3.)

AU/NZ Cover

In “breaking news”, I am to be in Auckland at Armageddon over Labour Weekend—on Saturday 23, in fact. I will be joining the Whitcoulls team (Stand 45) at 11.30 am to talk about the genesis of The Heir  of Night and why I love—and most particularly write!—epic fantasy. So if you live in Auckland or are visting over the Labour weekend break, I would love to see you there.

The Details Again:

ASB Showgrounds: Saturday 23 October
Whitcoulls, Stand 45
11.30 am

Be there, or be square! 😉

"The Heir Of Night" map: artist, Peter Fitzpatrick

The Heir of Night map is currently featured on the  Out of this Eos blog, with a joint post by artist Peter Fitzpatrick and myself, discussing the genesis of the map. You can check it out here.

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And there’s two new online interviews available: one with Rebecca Fisher of FantasyLit.com; and the other on the Galaxy Bookshop (Sydney) blog.

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Plus three new online reviews for The Heir of Night:

SFFANZ

Fiction Kingdom

SFRevu

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And last, but by no means least, in Wichita, Kansas, The Heir of Night is on the “Staff Recommends” stand of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at Bradley Fair, recommended by the wonderful Georgette. Thank you, Georgette—both for the recommendation and for sending through the photo!

Today The Heir of Night F-SF Guest Author Series continues with Nicole Murphy, a Paranormal Urban Fantasy writer from Australia, who is also a fellow blogger on the USA-based Supernatural Underground. I met Nicole in person at the World Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Melbourne and am delighted to welcome her to Helen Lowe on Anything, Really today, blogging on the series theme of “why F-SF rocks my world.”

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F-SF Guest Series Post: Nicole Murphy on “Loving Humanity – Why Speculative Fiction Rocks!”

The very first story I wrote wasn’t actually a fantasy, although it was fantastical.

It was called Thunder King and it was about a boy and his horse, Thunder King, who won five Melbourne Cups, three Caulfield Cups and in between times had adventures in the Aussie bush, such as killing rampaging lionesses and then adopting the orphaned cubs.

I was eleven.

The next story was a fantasy, although not in the genre sense of the word. It was about me and my friends and we’d grown up and become air hostesses and flew around the world having super fabulous adventures.

Even at the age of eleven, it was quite clear that I’d never be tall enough to be an air hostess.

However, at the same time that I was writing these very first stories, I was also reading the book that was going to change my life – The Lord of the Rings.

Suddenly, my head was full of elves and dwarves and orcs and uruk-hai and every walk was a journey to find my hobbit friends and every car journey a trek towards the fiery pit of Mount Doom.

From that moment, I’ve written fantasy or science fiction in some way. There’s been the occasional foray into the real world (my fanfic with Duran Duran was the saucy hit of my fellow year ten students) but always my mind has been drawn to the unreal, the fantastical, the imaginary.

I can’t imagine why a writer wouldn’t want to write science fiction or fantasy. What’s so special about our world? Humans are humans, the laws of physics are immutable and once you’ve seen the countryside, there it is.

Why not let your imagination completely fly? Why not have magic and dragons and monsters and aliens and spaceships?

Of course, I know it’s not that easy. No matter the world you set your story in, there are certain things that can’t be done, certain boundaries that must be respected. You might be writing about fantastical creatures, but you’re writing for humans.

This for me is where speculative fiction becomes really interesting. How do you make something different, yet give it the resonance that readers can connect to? That gets you (the writer) into thinking about people – who are we, what do we want, what do we need? What are the similarities of the human experience which mean you can take your reader to Tatooine, or Middle Earth, or in my case the town of Sclossin, or in Helen’s case into a keep in the shadow of a mountain wall, and they will believe it and believe in the characters and read the story?

That’s the real beauty of speculative fiction and why I’ll never tire of writing it – because in order to do it well, you’ve got to be fully connected to our world. You’ve got to find people and their traumas and triumphs endlessly fascinating. You’ve got to be able to feel part of the human race, and yet be able to step away from it and see it objectively.

People might THINK that capital L literature is where you will find books that deal with the human condition and offer insight into this madness that we call living. But we who read, write and love speculative fiction know that it’s our often mis-represented and resented genre that truly gives us the opportunity to consider the good, and the bad, of the world around us.

And that’s why I think fantasy, science fiction and horror rock!

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Photo by: Cat Sparks

About Nicole Murphy:

Nicole Murphy has been a primary school teacher, bookstore owner, journalist and checkout chick. She grew up reading Tolkien, Lewis and Le Guin; spent her twenties discovering Quick, Lindsay and Deveraux, and lives her love of science fiction and fantasy through her involvement with the Conflux science fiction conventions. Her urban fantasy trilogy Dream of Asarlai is published in Australia/NZ by HarperVoyager. Book one Secret Ones is out now. She lives with her husband in Queanbeyan, NSW. Visit her website http://nicolermurphy.com

Scrutineers have duly scrutinised, the “sorting hat” has sorted (in fact, an online random number generator was used) and the result of the giveaway draw is as follows:

1st Draw: The Gift Set of 5 books published by Orbit comprising:

The Heir of Night — Helen Lowe
Death Most Definite – Trent Jamieson
Feed – Mira Grant
Soulless – Gail Carriger
Surface Detail – Iain M. Banks

has been won by Joffre Horlor

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2nd Draw: The 3 x Gift Sets Comprising The Heir of Night & Thornspell (by Helen Lowe) have been won by:

Debbie Cowens
Jason J
Tina

3rd Draw: The 2 x “They Came From Orbit” Worldcon posters have been won by:

Rebecca Bosevski
Simon Litten

4th Draw: The 10 x Heir of Night (A3) cover posters have been won by (in alphabetical order by first name):

Cassie
GiadaM
Katrina Whittaker
Kevin Mclean
Obsidian Tears
Paul Callaghan
Rob Baigent
Sam Hall
Sullivan McPig
Wen Baragrey

5th Draw: The 10 x signed ‘Helen Lowe’ bookplates designed by Peter Fitzpatrick, creator of The Heir of Night map have been won by (in alphabetical order by first name):

Charlotte K
Damien
Donna S
Helen
Janlb
Kathy Edwards
Katrina
Matt Cowens
Mette Stephanie Jensen
Rebecca

Congratulations to all the winners—and thank you so much to all of you for visting, commenting and helping make The Heir of Night’s AU/NZ launch day a  success!

Please get in touch through contact@helenlowe.info to provide your postal address so I can get your prize to you.

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And Remember:

The “Enter the Draw to Give Your Name To A Character in The Wall of Night, Book Two” Competition! will continue throughout the F-SF Guest Author series.

Everyone who posted either yesterday for The Heir of Night launch, or on any of the posts by guest F-SF writers, running until 24 October, can enter the draw to have their name included as a character name in The Wall of Night Series, Book Two

Provisos:

• Each time you comment on a post by an F-SF guest author (in the series starting tomorrow) your name will get an additional entry into the draw (only 1 new entry per F-SF author post, however);
• The name included in the book is to be your real name;
• I reserve the right to adapt your name to best fit a fantasy character, e.g. “John the Miller” as opposed to “John Miller”, but your full name and the winning of this competition will be included in the “Acknowledgments” section of the book.
• If you don’t want your name included in the draw, just write “n.i.d.” (not in draw) after your comment.

So do keep visitng to support the guest authors and keep your name in the running to be included in The Wall of Night: Book Two.

“The Heir of Night” F-SF Guest Author Series:

On Thursday 6, I announced that, as part of celebrating the launch of The Heir of Night into Australia and New Zealand, a number of my fellow AU/NZ F-SF authors—and one from Canada 🙂 —would be joining me on the blog for a  F-SF Guest Author Series.

The first of my fellow authors, whom I would like to welcome to Helen Lowe on Anything Really, today, is Australian Dark Fantasy author, Alan Baxter.

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F-SF Guest Series Post: Alan Baxter

Helen was very kind to invite me for a guest post on her blog today about why fantasy and science fiction rocks my world as a writer. That’s easy – absolutely limitless scope for storytelling.
I grew up a voracious reader. From the age of three I would sit on my father’s knee and read the paper with him. I didn’t understand the news, but I loved the concept of the written word, and I could read. I soon graduated to books and discovered the magic of stories.

When I was very young I loved books like Runaway Ralph, Charlotte’s Web, Stig Of The Dump. They were all, to some extent, fantasy stories. The constraints of non-genre fiction bored me.

Even back then I loved writing. At seven years old I wrote a story about a guy that goes back in time and has crazy run ins with dinosaurs. My teacher refused to believe I’d written this several page epic and rang my parents. When they told her that it was all my own work I had to read it out to the class. I had discovered two joys – writing fiction and other people enjoying what I’d written. I still remember standing in class, watching the other kids listen as I read. It was an epiphany moment for me.

At around ten or eleven years old I discovered real fantasy. A family member bought me a copy of The Hobbit for my birthday and I was transported beyond anything I’d experienced before. I immediately followed that up with The Lord Of The Rings and everything by Ursula Le Guin and then began consuming fantasy fiction as fast as I was able. I then discovered science fiction and, by about 15 or so, horror introduced me to the darkness available between the pages of a book.

Throughout this time I’d been writing stories, none of which were very good, and started my first (thankfully abandoned) novel at sixteen. It took me a long time to decide to take writing seriously, but by my late twenties I’d decided that I was a writer. It drove me, I couldn’t imagine not telling stories. And I couldn’t imagine not writing in the speculative genre.

Fantasy, science fiction and horror appeal to me for the complete freedom they give a writer to explore exactly what needs exploring. At the heart of things, any good story is really an exploration of the characters and the ways they grow and develop when presented with the path of life before them. As the characters grow, the world around them is changed. With SF&F that path of life is utterly unlimited. Any situation you can think of can be explored.

My writing always tends to be dark. There are probably many reasons for that – my personal history, my love of horror, the nature of life itself being often rather darker than we’d like – so I don’t avoid it. I enjoy exploring the darker side of human nature, and how good people stand up against that. SF&F is an excellent medium for that too.

I’m fascinated by ancient history and mythology. I love to play around with various religious mythologies in my fiction and explore the human need for belief. My novels, RealmShift and MageSign, are based around those very issues, with lots of magic and demons, mayhem and excitement thrown in. I think they’re best described as dark fantasy thrillers. That genre definition is probably where I’m most comfortable writing. Those two novels are contemporary urban dark fantasies and I’m working on a third novel now, separate to that duology but in the same version of our world I created with those two. My short fiction covers more of the traditional fantasy and science fiction ground and I’d like to write novel length works within those sub-genres one day too.

There are so many stories to be told. I can’t imagine ever getting bored with the massive scope that SF&F allows for creating those stories that I’m compelled to tell. Everything else, by comparison, seems boring.

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Alan Baxter

About Alan Baxter:

Alan is an author living on the south coast of NSW, Australia. He writes dark fantasy, sci fi and horror, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website – www.alanbaxteronline.com – and feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.

You came from all over AU/NZ—with a few from as far afield as the US, Italy and Denmark, just for good measure—over 475 of you in fact, which is “some party” where I come from! All that virtual chocolate cake that Mary Victoria brought with her last night is definitely gone. 🙂

And you posted with enthusiasm as well, all to help me celebrate the launch of The Heir of Night into AU/NZ—put simply, you rock and I think we can agree that Heir is now well launched.

But it’s not all over yet.

Firstly, I now have to draw the winners of the giveaways and that will happen later today—given this is a big draw I thought it was important to have scrutineers on hand, both to ensure that every eligible name really does go into the “Sorting Hat” and that there is no foul interference (by Slytherin, of course) as the names are drawn out. So do check back because that list will go up today.

Secondly, the FSF Author Guest Series is about to commence with a guest post by Alan Baxter, an Australian writer whom I met at Worldcon—we shared a reading, in fact. I think you will very much enjoy his guest post today and I hope you will show your support by commenting here and/or by clicking through to vist his website and find out more about Alan and his writing.