Well, I’ve been hoping and planning and working toward going for some time, but yesterday I actually booked my plane tickets so you can’t get more ‘official’ than that.

I expect most people know—but just in case—Worldcon is the  World Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention (or more correctly, the convention of the World Science Fiction Society) and this year the 68th convention is being held in Melbourne, Australia—just a brief 1500 mile (2404 kilometre) hop across the Tasman from New Zealand. (But still, a lot closer than the 10,000 miles to North America, so I am impressed at how many attendees are coming from both the Americas and Europe.)

The guests of honour are Kim Stanley Robinson, Shaun Tan and Robin Johnson.

Worldcon is also where the winners of the Hugo Awards are announced.  The awards ceremony will be of particular interest to me this year, firstly because it’s the first time I have been eligible to vote and secondly because I have actually read and voted on all the fiction finalists: five short stories, and six each novelettes, novellas and novels respectively. I have also blogged twice about the process of “reading for the Hugos” on the Out of this Eos blog: both on 20 July and more recently on 30 July—just before voting closed on the 31st.

So, lots of books, lots of writers, lots of people from around the world interested in science, science fiction and fantasy, plus the Hugo Awards—and it’s all happening in Melbourne, which is one of my favourite cities.

North

homes
white timbered in the south
give way to brown-red
in mid and north –
avenues of birch trees
serried lakes

an elk
runs through deep winter
the night train flares
through cuttings –
inferno cast across jagged firs
frozen earth

rushes headlong
into spring – a pied crow
solitary
above a grey field

(c) Helen Lowe

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Published in Bravado 14

On July 19 I posted on my blog about Influences on Story and talked about two journeys into winter country during the time I lived in Sweden.  This poem arises out of one of those two journeys, made by train into the far north of Sweden which still lay gripped in the very heart of winter.

And The Giveaway Results for the 2 x Signed Copies of  Thornspell are (Ta dum! Ta dum!):

Nymfaux; and

Sullivan McPig.

Congratulations to you both–if you email me your postal addresses at contact@helenlowe.info I will arrange to get the books to you.

Congratulations also to Violet, who also commented here (and on Out of this Eos) but won one of the 2 x Thornspell editions in the Supernatural Underground Draw.

And thank you everyone for visiting and participating. There will be plenty more happening around both Thornspell and Heir into the future, so stay tuned.

PS And yes, I did use the Sorting Hat”. 🙂

The Sorting Hat

On the first day of every month I post on the Supernatural Underground, a blog by a group of speculative fiction authors published by HarperCollins USA (The Eos imprint of HarperCollins is publishing The Heir of Night, which is  for adult and crossover readers, in the US on 1 October.)

Today’s post is “All About the Characters”—so do click on the link and have a read.

There’s also a giveaway: My editor at Eos, Kate Nintzel, is giving away two AREs of Heir for blog posters from the USA/Canada only, while I am putting 2 x signed copies of Thornspell into the draw for readers from other parts of the world.

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But just so visitors here don’t feel left out, if you comment on either this post—or yesterday’s More Australia/New Zealand Cover Excitement—post before midnight, August 2, NZ time, you’ll go in the draw to win one of another 2 x signed copies of Thornspell.  And as you may recall from earlier in the week, the new paperback edition of Thornspell, which was only  released in New Zealand on July 2, “has already just about sold out”. 🙂

If you’d like a second chance to win, just rock on over to the Out of this Eos blog and comment on my article posted there, which is about the Hugo Awards (again before midnight, August 2, NZ time—but don’t forget to check back here to see if you’re one of the winners.)

On July 12, I blogged about getting a call from Bella, my UK editor, about ideas for the Australia/New Zealand cover for The Heir of Night, which will come out here in October. (It’s also out in the USA on 1 October, although Kate at  Eos/HarperCollins is my editor there.)

As posted on the 12th, Bella and the Orbit (Little, Brown) team were keen to get a cover that captures the adventurous feel of the book; also one based around Malian (the central character in Heir)—so we have all had fun over the past few weeks with weapons, armour, clothes, the whole nine yards really re appearance.

Yesterday I got to see the preliminary result (and sadly, it’s embargoed, so I can’t show you yet) but  I think the depiction of Malian looks awesome and all the fun research around amour, weapons, clothes—as well as reflecting on her ‘character’ in the book—has definitely paid off.

So watch this space, because as soon as I can I will be putting up the cover image for you to check out, too. 🙂

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Meanwhile, I have just posted “All About the Characters” on the Supernatural Underground, (a blog by a group of HarperCollins USA speculative fiction authors). There’s a giveaway for folk who comment there, but just so visitors here don’t feel left out, if you comment on either this or tomorrow’s post before midnight, August 2, NZ time, you’ll go in the draw to win one of 2 x signed copies of Thornspell.

If you’d like a second chance to win, just rock on over to the Out of this Eos blog and comment on my article posted there, which is about the Hugo Awards (again before midnight, August 2, NZ time—but don’t forget to check back here to see if you’re a winner.)

On 20 July, Eos (HarperCollins USA) posted the first of my articles on “The Hugo Awards: The Reading Has Begun!”

The second article in the series, “The Hugo Awards: Going Down to the Wire” has just been posted today. So I’d love you to go over and have a read—and most importantly, enjoy!

I started this week reading China Mieville’s The City & The City, which was the sixth and last of my bid to read all the fiction finalists for the Hugo Awards before today, which is the final date for voting to occur. As with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-Up Girl, which I had just finished reading last week, I found The City & The City a great read—so I foresee a difficult decision ahead today!

But as a soon as I put The City & The City down, I still had five of the six novella finalists to read. I had read John Scalzi’s The God Engines early on, but that still left me with the rest of the list:

• “Act One”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
• “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace, Orbit)
• Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow (Tachyon)
• “Vishnu at the Cat Circus”, Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days; Pyr, Gollancz)
• The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

And yes, I have gotten through them all, as well as all the short stories and novelettes earlier on. So now I have to think about the hard part, which is actually voting …

But as soon as that’s done I’m going to do some serious relaxing. Translated, that means curling up on the sofa and kicking back with another of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. I’ll have to check, but I think I’m up to Number 6 in the series, Definitely Dead.

Ti
Akaroa Heads

Cordyline on a windswept point    stark
each frond stabbing
sharp as a taiaha’s  blade
defying the elements
facing down the ocean – that vast expanse
conquered first by Kiwa
the far voyaging     salt encrusted
sculpted by endless distance
always looking    ever longing for land
lying over the next line of horizon –
the darker smudge of blue
lifting to green above the deep swell
the first sighting    eyes shaded
of that solitary tree piercing sky
above a coastal headland    marking
the moment of transition
the place between.

(c) Helen Lowe

—

First Published in Blackmail Press, “Crossed Cultures” Special Edition, 18 April 2008
Re-published, Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury Prose & Poetry, Ed. Karen Zelas, Wily Publications, 2009

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Notes:

i) Ti Kouka—the Maori name for the NZ ‘cabbage tree’; scientific name Cordyline Australis
ii) Taiaha—a Maori stabbing spear, used now in ceremonies of greeting and challenge
iii) The Maori name for the Pacific ocean is Te Moananui a Kiwa, ‘the great ocean of Kiwa’, a mythic voyager

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Friday 30 July is New Zealand’s National Poetry Day and the Tuesday Poem Blog is stepping out by featuring poems from the 3 finalists in this year’s Poetry Category of the NZ Post Book Awards. Check it out here or by clicking on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

Tuesday Poem Blog poets are joining the celebration by posting a poem with “New Zealand” as a theme—or for poets not from New Zealand—on the joys of poetry and making poems. So have a look, have fun, and enjoy the ride!

… You post stuff and then find a link to it somewhere else, on a site you didn’t even know about until then …

Valles Marineris (as featured in Tim's poem); photo from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft

Well, that’s what happened to me today when I found a link to my Tuesday Poem post of Tim Jones’ “The First Artist on Mars” on Marooned—Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books On Mars. Which I thought was kinda cool … and Tim’s poem entirely deserving of the notice!

To find out more about Tim Jones, you can visit his website here. To discover his Mars sequence “Red Stone” you’ll have to read his collection, All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens—or check out Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (Interactive Publications, 2009; ed. Tim Jones & Mark Pirie), which contains at least one other Mars poem from Tim and lots of other wonderful science fiction poetry on a wide range of subjects.

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I’ve also been preparing for the last of my NZ Poetry Month interviews for Women on Air, this time with Bernadette Hall, who is one of NZ’s most celebrated contemporary poets and whose most recent collection The Lustre Jug (VUP) is a finalist in this year’s NZ Post National Book Award for Poetry. I loved the collection when it came out last year and am thrilled it’s up for the big award—but Bernadette is such a warm, wise person and so easy to talk to that really I am just looking forward to having another conversation with her on air.

And if you’d like to get a feel for The Lustre Jug and Bernadette’s poetry, you can read these poems online:

Leda at the Billabong (Best NZ Poems 2008)

The Fox (Best NZ Poems 2009)

And tomorrow—being National Poetry Day—we’ll be featuring the title poem from Bernadette’s collection, The Lustre Jug, on the Tuesday Poem blog, together with poems from each of the other finalists.

I was talking with the wonderful Annie, Product Manager for Thornspell at Random House New Zealand yesterday, and she told me that the new paperback edition, which was released in New Zealand on July 2, “has just about sold out”.

How cool is that?

I have to say, I think it’s pretty cool given that the month is not even out yet, but no more than I’ve come to expect of da ‘Spell!

In fact, I’m so excited about it that when I do my next Supernatural Undergound post on Sunday, August 1, I might have to do another Thornspell giveaway—to go with the two copies of The Heir of Night ARE that my US editor, Kate Nintzel of Eos, will be giving away.