And on Friday’s, I’ll be telling you:

What I’m working on:

Today that’s been continuing to write Part 2 of the second book in The Wall of Night series, working title The Gathering of the Lost. Writing in this case includes a mix of revising the first draft and writing in new material, driven by considerations such as:

• do all these plot threads tie together in a consistent way?
• are the characters evolving in the way I envisioned when first setting out to write the story arc.

In my experience, the story arc always remains true as the book evolves, but there can be a LOT of shifting around of characters and plot within that framework … (just to make that more appropriate, there are shapeshifters in this book 🙂 )

What I’m Reading:

At the moment that’s Trudi Canavan’s The Ambassador’s Mission, the first in the series that is sequel to her Black Magician Trilogy. This new trilogy, set in the same world and with some of the same characters, is called the Traitor Spy Trilogy.

I have only just started but am looking forward to the read and—I hope—will get to interview Trudi on air later this month.

Enjoy your weekend!

Worldcon is in Melbourne, Australia this year, which of course feels very “nearby” when you live in New Zealand with ocean on every side. But although Australia is our closest neighbour, it’s just not that close—London, in fact, is closer to Moscow than Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, is to Melbourne.

Don’t believe me?  You can check it out right here on the World Clock Distance Calculator, which says that the shortest distance from London to Moscow is 1559 miles/2508 kilometres; the shortest distance between Wellington and Melbourne is 1603 miles/2579 kilometres.

There’s not much in it, but it still makes you do a double take on the whole concept of “close”.

All the same, it’s an awful lot closer than North America, Japan, or the UK where the last few Worldcons have been held. And Melbourne is one of my favourite cities anywhere, and my new novel The Heir of Night will be almost out—so like many others in the NZ SF-F/SpecFic community in NZ I made sure to get my registration in.

Jennifer Fallon, whom I interviewed recently here, will also be attending, together with a large number of other writers, as a quick look at the Also Attending list will show. And yes, it was a thrill to see my name on that list, too!

And although China Mieville‘s name is not on the list yet, I did hear a rumour that he might be attending …

In the meantime, the shortlist of Hugo Award nominees is out, so let the reading begin!

It may be June 2 here on the far side of the world, but it’s still June 1st in the US—and that’s launch day for a brand new blog, Books That Go Bump in the Night or The Supernatural Underground: Vampires, Faeries, Immortals Werewolves, Demons, Shapeshifters: http://www.supernaturalunderground.blogspot.com/

And I should add—angels, especially if you’re a fan of Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter Novels, Angels’ Blood and Archangel’s Kiss.  (If you want to check out my recent radio interview with Nalini Singh, you can listen to it here: http://plainsfm.org.nz/on-demand/woa-nalinisingh-22may/)

But back to the Supernatural Underground: this blog has been put together by a bunch of Paranormal Romance writers whose books are published by HarperCollins USA, mainly the Eos, Avon and HarperTeen imprints. I found out about the Underground because my second novel, The Heir of Night, is being published by Eos in October—although Heir is Epic Fantasy, rather than Paranormal Romance—and because my friend Tracey O’Hara, whose first book, Night’s Cold Kiss was published by Eos last year, is an official Books That Go Bump in the Night blogger.

Besides Tracey, there’s a whole lot more Paranormal Romance writers, who’ll be blogging on Books That Go Bump in the Night at least once a month, talking about their writing and the genre they love —and I know a whole lot of other people out there love it, too. And that’s not just anecdotal observation, as a recent Borders US poll of Romance readers had the Paranormal subgenre polling at 98% popularity!

So if you like your Romance sizzling hot and supernatural, this is the blog for you.  If you head over there today you can check out all the inaugural activity and may just be in the running for a prize.  In fact, I understand there’s going to be lots of book goodie giveaways all month as each participating writer begins blogging.

Definitely well worth a look-see, in my book.

And here’s a few more links relating to this post:

Nalini Singh: http://www.nalinisingh.com/

Tracey O’Hara: http://www.traceyohara.com/

Today’s Tuesday–and that means that all around the country, and even internationally, poets are posting their Tuesday Poem. And over on the official Tuesday Poem blog, today’s poem is “Midnight Sonata” by Rebekah Tysoe, a second year student studying for a Bachelor of Communications at Massey University. You can read Rebekah’s poem here:  http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

In 2003, I won the “Previously Unpublished” category of the Robbie Burns Poetry Competiton, on the theme of  “Dunedin”, with this poem:

Rain Wild Magic

Rain, wind, wild, mist
shrouding the harbour
in mystery, wrapping around
hills hidden in half shadow,
while the harbour laps
against black rocks
and the salt mired spikes
of harakeke where the ducks
huddle in the lee of this
wilder shore and gulls flock
into a corner of sea wall—
a damp communion
of weather-driven misery.
The toi fronds dip and bend
above a leaden tide
as rain slides down
the light-refracted windscreen,
lies like beads on my face,
wrapping the whole world
in its shroud of mystery,
that is the spell of Dunedin:
a slow, creeping magic of rain
and mist and murky skies
that steals into your heart
and then your soul,
catching you unaware,
that day you wake
and find love there.

(c) Helen Lowe

When I wrote this poem I was living in Portobello on the Otago Peninsula, which lies between Otago Harbour and the Southern Ocean—a wild place with wilder weather.  It’s an early poem, but I have tried to capture the  intensity of place and weather.

I’m  Helen Lowe, a novelist, poet, broadcaster, and lover of  story. This blog is going to be a work-in-progress for a while in terms of its “look”—but in terms of content I’ll be focusing on my writing, so expect to see plenty here about both novels and poetry, what’s coming up and what’s happening, as well as the interviews I do on radio—and I hope there’ll be a few online interviews showing up here!

But it won’t just be my creative work: I’m looking forward to having conversations around what I’m reading now, the books I’ve loved reading in the past as well as creative influences from other areas.  I also love food and wine, trees, getting out into wild places . . . as well as having a little cat buddy who likes to have his share in the conversations. So hope to keep that promise of “anything really …”

So for the moment, this is just “hello”, but like Arnie in the Terminator movies, “I’ll be back!”

(And if you want to find out more, the bullet points at the top right of the blog page will take you to my website: http://www.helenlowe.info/)