Thank you for all the comments on yesterday’s Tuesday Poem, My Last Duchess: Ferrerra by Robert Browning.  I am glad so many readers seem to have enjoyed it as much as I do. Another reason I like it so much, aside from my brief commentary yesterday, is that it “captures” what my historical reading has told me about the Renaissance princes: the immense wealth, the passionate interest in the arts—as well as the subtext of worldly advancement—juxtaposed with overweening pride (“I chuse never to stoop”).

This week I am carrying on with my poetry month interviews and will be  talking with Ingrid Horrocks about her first collection, Mapping the Distance (VUP). I have enjoyed reading the collection, which traverses family connections, both to the past and new generations,  as well as experiences of place and the connections between place and people, and am looking forward to the interview.

And here’s what the NZ Listener review had to say: ‘Horrocks writes beautifully and simply. She is not only a keen observer, but also that most fortunate of travellers – someone that things happen to.’

Most importantly though, I have dived into writing Part 3 of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night, Book Two), although I must also put some time toward writing my next post for the Out of this Eos blog—I am thinking that this one will be on “reading for the Hugos” since I am eligible to vote this year. If you haven’t already checked out the list of Hugo Awards’ 2010 finalists for yourself—what are you waiting for?

Apparently the Mythopoeic Award winners will be out on July 11, so I’ll know then whether or not I picked the winner of the Children’s Award in my Monday post! 🙂

FERRARA

On June 13 I wrote about “What I’m Reading” and my self-imposed reading for the Mythopoeic Awards. I also promised to “post my personal winner here before the Mythopoeic Society make their final announcement.” This latter date is now very soon, and sadly, due to my own writing, blogging, radio interviewing, and other general life commitments I have only managed to get through all the Children’s/YA Finalists. As you may recall, the five finalists are (in alphabetical order, by author):

Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand (Tachyon)

This is a story for younger readers (say 8-10) and tells the story of Emma, a young girl who is swept away from her life and family, but survives, discovers a hotel that has been buried under sand, called The Grand Wenlocke, makes new friends and has some adventures in the process, not necessarily all in that order.

Shannon Hale, Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born (Bloomsbury): YA readers

The Goose Girl is a retelling of the traditional fairytale (one of my favourites as a child) and the subsequent three books tell the stories of the Goose Girl’s friends, Enna, Razo, and Rin, as they also discover old powers related to those of the Goose Girl.

Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown)

Once again, this is a book for younger readers (8-10/11) and weaves a number of Chinese folk stories into the tale of Minli, who goes on a quest-journey to find the Old Man In the Moon and change her fortune; is joined by a dragon who can’t fly; and meets a number of friends and helpers, from an ox boy to a king, along the way.

Malinda Lo, Ash (Little, Brown)

Ash is a re-working of the Cinderella fairytale, one that keeps fairly closely to the original idea of the story, although with a twist on the fairy aid given to Cinderella. The most marked difference from the original is the lesbian take on Ash/Cinderella’s love interest. A book for YA readers.

Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends)

Another book for YA readers, Eyes Like Stars, introduces the story of Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, a foundling who has grown up in the Theatre, where the characters of every play ever written are bound by the Book. Clearly a “to be continued” story, this first novel is a coming-of-age story in which Beatrice begins to find out who she is and must decide whether or not to leave the Theatre.

So what’s my pick? First let’s talk parameters. The Mythopoeic Society is an organisation “devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the ‘Inklings,’ ” the most famous of whom were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.  The Mythopoeic Awards for adult and children’s fiction are given to “… the fantasy novel, multi-volume novel, or single-author story … published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings”. For the children’s award the further proviso is given that the award: “honors books for younger readers (from “Young Adults” to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia.”

In terms of what “the spirit of the Inklings” constitutes, reference to the overarching wisdom of Wikipedia suggests three main threads: mythopoeic vision in terms of the incorporation of myth, legend, fairytale (elements that characterise both Tolkien and Lewis’s work); strength of narrative Fantasy; and the exposition of Christian values through the writing. In terms of the latter element, I  assume from looking at previous winners that the Mythopoeic Society judges will look more at the expression of values such as compassion, mercy etc rather than Christianity per se (although I may of course, be quite wrong.) At any rate, I proceeded with my reading on that basis.

Now, back to the five Children’s Award finalists.  Obviously to get to the final list I knew these were all going to be good books, although I will admit to being disconcerted by the difference in reading age, particularly between The Hotel Under the Sand and Where the Mountain meets the Moon and the other three finalists. Because the reading level was so much younger, it was more diffcult for these two books to engage me as an adult reader, so I had to be careful to allow for that when making my evaluation. The other difficulty I felt was in trying to fairly measure the four  Books of Bayern, which constitute four independent stories, but have to be evaluated as one entity against the other four finalits—one of which, Eyes Like Stars is the first of a proposed series and where the story is clearly not complete.

So, in terms of evaluating against the “strength of narrative Fantasy” criterion, I did find some difficulty in comparing apples with apples.  For this reason, I probably gave more weight to the second criterion: “mythopoeic vision in terms of the incorporation of myth, legend, fairytale.” In this case, my summing up of the five contenders was:

The Hotel Under the Sand: This is a charming story, with a lovely Edwardian feel to both the hotel and the characters, but—I felt—the weakest of all the five finalists in terms of incorporating the elements of “myth, legend, and fairytale.”

Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born: I have always loved Shannon Hale’s retelling of The Goose Girl fairytale, and the way she wove it into a real and believable novel. I do have a slight, enduring caveat, in that as a child I always loved the role of Falada and was disappointed with how that played out in Hale’s retelling. In terms of the mythopoeic elements, the author has created her own magic system for the Bayern world, based around the natural elements of wind, fire, water, but I do feel that the incorporation of the elements of “myth, legend and fairytale” are strongest in the first book. Hence the quandary: do I weight my evaluation on the basis of that first book, or do I make it on the incorporation of mythopoeic elements across the four. In the end, on the basis of its finalist placing as The Bayern Tales, I  decided that evaluation did have to be on the basis of all four books.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon: as with  The Hotel Under the Stand I found this a charming story and I felt it was one of the strongest contenders in terms of weaving elements of traditional Chinese folklore into an entertaining and adventurous quest for the young heroine.  I also gave it bonus points for the clear thread within the story of values such as compassion and mercy, in terms of being written in the “spirit of the Inklings”.

Ash: All such views are subjective, but I felt Malinda Lo’s book was the strongest contender in terms of incorporating deeper mythic and magical elements into the retelling of the Cinderella fairytale. She incorporated a parallel, mysterious, and dangerous world of the fey; together with a change in mythos in the mortal world; and an overlapping tradition of legendary/folktale encounters between fey and human that both gave Ash’s story texture and also had a bearing on how it played out. And in terms of the narrative, I felt the lesbian love story angled worked well. ’nuff said.

Stars in her Eyes: This book also suffered from not being quite of like kind, i.e The Bayern Tales is a completed four book series, whereas Stars is the first book in the Theatre Illuminata series, with two yet to come. But I did love the idea of it, the foundling brought up in the Theatre with the cast of every play ever written  as her companions. Slight overtones of Neil Gaiman’s  The Graveyard Book, perhaps, but in a good way, i.e Stars is definitely its own story. The working in of Shakespearean elements, particularly some of the more fantastical characters, such as Ariel (The Tempest), Ophelia (Hamlet) and the four fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are well done, as is the sea witch from The Little Mermaid story. But these were the strongest claim to including mythopoeic elements of “myth, legend, and fairytale”—but in the end, for me, not as compelling as the use of similar elements in Ash, Where the Mountain meets the Moon and The Bayern Tales.

So in the end, here’s my “order” for the Mythpoeic Children’s Award 2010:

1: Malinda Lo, Ash (Little, Brown)

2: Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Little, Brown)

3: Shannon Hale, Books of Bayern consisting of The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born (Bloomsbury)

4: Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand (Tachyon)

5: Lisa Mantchev, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends) [mainly because the series is not yet complete.]

So now I have just have to wait, along with everyone else, to see who the Mythopoeic Award judges choose as their winner for 2010!  My breath is suitably bated. 🙂

But as I said at the beginning, these are all good books and I am just glad that the process of “reading for the awards” gave me the impetus to read all of them.

—

Final Note: Kage Baker, the author of The Hotel Under the Sand, died earlier this year. The Hotel Under the Sand was her first book for children and, I believe, a testimony to “what might have been” if she had been able to write more books for younger readers.

SpecFic Christchurch Does the Long Lunch

On June 24 I blogged about the first meeting of a small group of Christchurch Spec Fic writers after we had all attended an event with Elizabeth Knox—and how we  agreed to meet again “soon” over the traditional long lunch. Such was the level of enthusiasm, that “soon” turned out to be yesterday, where the original “gang of eight” became a “gang of nine” around the long tabe at Cafe NG. The lunch was indeed satisfyingly long and many subjects were traversed, including the forthcoming launch of SpecFicNZ at Au Contraire (the New Zealand Science Fiction-Fantasy Convention in Wellington on 27-29 August), as well as short fiction, flash fiction, poetry, novellas and the midnight screening of Eclipse, the latest Twilight film . . . We all agreed that we wanted to keep the get-togethers and conviviality a regular event, so a monthly reprise of the lunch is planned. So if you write speculative fiction and either live in the Christchurch area, or are visting Christchurch on the first Saturday of the month, contact me via the “contact” button above and I will let you know when and where.

Foreign Country Anthology 2010 (Random Static)

A couple of writers around the table, namely Janine and Ripley, have short fiction in the newly available anthology Foreign Country from Random Static. To learn more, check out Ripley’s blog or preorder here.

Locus Fun!

Well, this bit’s fun for me, anyway.  Earlier this year, Writers House negotiated the sale of the UK/Australia & New Zealand rights to The Wall of Night quartet to Orbit (Little, Brown & Co, UK) and in May the news appeared in Locus. Cool, huh?! I’ve only just got my hands on the hard copy, so I thought I’d share it with you. 🙂

And here’s the actual words …

from Locus May 2010: People & Publishers

And The Giveaway Results for the 2 x Signed Copies of the All-New Paperback Edition of Thornspell are (Ta dum! Ta dum!):

Gryffindor and Ravenclaw! Oops!  I meant to say:

Wen Baragrey; and

Jan Butterworth.

Congratulations, Wen and Jan–if you email me at contact@helenlowe.info I will arrange to get the books to you.

Congratulations also to both BarbaraE and Rachel who also commented here but were winners in the Supernatural Underground Draw: BarbaraE got one of the Heir AREs from Kate at Eos, and Rachel won one of the 2 x Thornspell editions there.

To everyone else who posted and participated: thank you so much and there will be plenty more happening around both Thornspell and Heir into the future, so stay tuned.

Oh, what’s that? Ok, the “sorting hat” is shouting out that it’s contractually entitled to have its mugshot included, so here it is folks:

The Sorting Hat

Well, it’s not Friday, but because of the paperback release of Thornspell yesterday and the giveaway, I thought we’d leave the weekly wrap up for today, which here in NZ is officially July 3.

OK, on to the wrap-up.  Firstly, the giveaway: the “sorting hat” has been grumbling this morning because of having to deal with both the Supernatural Underground and Anything, Really giveaway draws”, with lots of comments along the lines of “I’m going to put them all in Slytherin!”—mutter, mutter—and  “Any more of this malarkey and I’m calling in the shop steward for the Union of Magical Accessories”—mumble, mumble … But I am confident that the hat will come through soon and I should have a result for you some time this afternoon. 🙂

As I said earlier in the week, there’s been a lot going on.  I wrapped up the second part of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night, part 2), which I believe puts me at slightly over halfway to finishing the manuscript. And although I have a synopsis of Parts 3 and 4 (of course!), there’s a few interesting ways of getting into Part 3 “playing” in my mind right now. I guess you might say the fingers are twitching to get typing!

But I couldn’t leap into it straight away because this was another big blog week—in this case, making my debut on the Supernatural Underground on July 1 and celebrating the release of Thornspell in paperback yesterday. Busy, busy—but fun, too. I loved sharing my love of fantasy and fantastic worlds with all the posters on the Supernatural Underground.

On the poetry and radio station side of life, I had the privilege of interviewing Sarah Broom about her first collection, Tigers at Awhitu (2010: Auckland University Press, New Zealand; Carcanet, UK.) All part of making July poetry month on Women on Air, ahead of National Poetry Day on Friday July 30.  In my opinion, Tigers at Awhitu is distinguished by its balance of intellectual and emotional depth, strength of poetic form and sheer richness of language so I felt privileged to have the opportunity to speak with Sarah on air. Perhaps the more so because Sarah completed writing Tigers at Awhitu while going through ongoing treatment for lung cancer—no small ask.  The interview will play shortly on Women on Air and for those who can’t pick up Plains 96.9FM, I will be putting the interview on podcast later this week.

Anyway, I think it’s time I went and had another chat with the hat …

The paperback edition of Thornspell is finally out in New Zealand today—up until now, it’s only been available in the hardback edition. I really like the hardback edition, it’s a wonderful book, but since the NZ book market is almost exclusively paperback, I think it will be helpful to have Thornspell available in that format. And as I mentioned a few weeks back, the paperback edition has kept the wonderful cover art by Antonio Xavier Caparo, but also includes excerpts from some of the very good professional reviews Thornspell received in the United States.  All in all, it’s a very nice book—and the one typo that a reader picked up for me in the hardcover edition has now been corrected.

Thornspell has its own website here, where you can read excerpts from the book. Chapter 1 is there in PDF format, but if you click on all the individual images from the cover (did I say “wonderful” and “Antonio Xavier Caparo?” OK, moving on then …) you should get a relevant quote from the book.

I’d love to know which quote or image is your favourite, if you’d like to leave a comment here.

(The Thornspell website also has a lot more reviews, some from online blog reviewers if you want to check them out.)

But in brief, Thornspell is a retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the prince destined to break the spell of the 100-year sleep—if he lives to do so and can learn to find his way through the layers of magic that surround the sleeping castle. And in order to do that he’s going to have to take on the powerful faie who cast the original death spell and is not only still around, but waiting to have another go … Thornspell has been described as “swashbuckling” and “romantic”,”mysterious”, “adventurous” and “magical”—but why not find out for yourself?

To celebrate the paperback release and also my debut post on the Supernatural Underground blog, I will be giving away a signed copy of the new paperback edition to two readers (again with names to be drawn from the “sorting hat”) who post a comment here before midnight, July 2, New Zealand time.

The Supernatural Underground is a blog for writers of speculative fiction published by HarperCollinsUSA and I’ll be blogging there on the first of every month—and my inaugural post has just gone live.

Do go over over and have a look. And to make it worth your while :-), you’ll see there’s 2 signed copies of Thornspell up for grabs for international readers (the AREs of Heir are for North American readers only at this stage, sorry!)

And to celebrate the release of Thornspell in paperback here in NZ tomorrow, I am also giving away a further two signed copies of the new paperback edition to readers (again to be drawn from the “sorting hat”) who post a comment here before midnight, July 2, New Zealand time.

I finished that second draft revision of Part 2 of The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Series, Book Two—it’s all about the 2-s, clearly:-)) yesterday—yahoo! And am all fired up to race into Parts 3 and 4! (Rubs hands together briskly.)

On the rest of the agenda for today—I’ll be writing my very first blog post for the Supernatural Underground, which should be posted sometime after 4 pm today, NZ time. (It won’t be 1 July in the States until then as their time zone closest to ours is still 16 hours behind us, currently—first in the world to see the sun and all that jazz!)

… over the next few days!

Poetry on Women on Air: National Poetry Day—And Month!

July 30 is National Poetry Day here in New Zealand, so by way of celebrating poems and poets we are making July Poetry Month at Women on Air. We’ll be interviewing at least one poet on every show from now until July 31, which means five weeks of amazing poetry and poetic voices coming to listeners every Saturday.  The poets will also be featured on the Women on Air website here, together with one of their poems for you to read and enjoy.

Our poet for Saturday 3 is Sarah Broom, whose first collection Tigers at Awhitu (2010), was published simultaneously by Auckland University Press, here in NZ, and Carcanet in the UK.  When I first read this collection earlier in the year it absolutely blew me away with its combination of wonderful use of language, poetic control, reflective intelligence and emotional power. During much of the writing of Tigers, Sarah was going through treatment for lung cancer (no, she has never smoked), treatment which is ongoing, which is another reason I am grateful for the opportunity to have her on Women on Air this Saturday and to help bring her voice to a wider audience.

Excerpt From Three Birds ii

…

You sit in the bush before dawn,
listening to the seep of the soil, feeling
the rags of the night air on your skin.
You wait until the kokako starts to sing
in the still-dark trees, until slowly
you start to make out its ash-grey form
against the greying light. Eyes black
as the rotting leaves, and at its throat
a hurtled scarp of sky.

© Sarah Broom

—

And I Join the Supernatural Underground Blog—I July

The Supernatural Underground is a blog of speculative fiction authors published by HarperCollins USA, and I will be blogging on the Underground for the first time tomorrow, 1 July—and the first of every month thereafter. And no, I haven’t finally decided what I am going to blog about yet. But yes, there will be giveaways. At least two copies of the ARE of The Heir of Night for within North America only, and a couple of copies of Thornspell (given its paperback release on July 2) for international readers.

On Friday 2, actual paperback release day, I’ll also be giving away a further 2 copies of Thornspell right here on this blog. So keep watching this space.