Covid lockdown or the writing life — the shutters look much the same.

Well, here we are again: back in level 4 lockdown approximately 15 months after we exited it in 2020, with the Covid-19 Delta strain—not unlike a malevolent genie—out of its bottle and ‘out there’ in our NZ community. :-/

In some ways, given Delta’s degree of infectiousness (I think that’s a word) and the travel bubble with Australia, its arrival in the NZ community was probably only a matter of when, not if.

Having watched the degree of spread in NSW, in particular, I’m fully on board with the government’s decision to go straight to Level 4, particularly given NZ’s only in the early stages of the vaccine rollout.

As mentioned previously, the writing life is naturally self-isolating, so Level 4 means very little change in the day-to-day. Beyond, that is, seeing far fewer people around, when I look out the writing window.

For those for whom lockdown and staying closer to home  means battening down the hatches with a good book, I thought I’d share a few suggestions for pandemic-themed reads:

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

The Plague by Albert Camus

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Ammonite by Nicola Griffiths

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Havoc by Jane Higgins

The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Last Song Before Night by Ilana C Myer (the pandemic is more in the background, but it’s still a theme)

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Some months back now (“I know”, where does the year get to?!) I reminded readers here that there’s a dedicated group of The Wall Of Night series readers “out there.”

The Group title is Haarth 😀 and it’s a private FB group where readers can meet and discuss the books in a fun and friendly forum.

Over the next few months I’m going to be featuring a new post series in which Group members share a favourite quote from the books, including the reasons why it “speaks” to them, and also why they enjoy being part of the Group.

The quotes will follow the order of the books—Heir, Gathering, Daughter—with the first post next week, on Thursday 26 August, then fortnightly thereafter.

I’m looking forward to featuring the quotes and hope you’ll enjoy them, too. 🙂

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If you want to check out Group Haarth for yourself, click on:

The Wall Of Night Facebook Group

I’m sure they’ll love to hear from you.

Although I am still on my ‘reading older books’ mission, and still have two posts on the original grouping of five works left to do, sometimes ‘the new, the new’ (or newish, certainly) arrive thick and fast.

So I thought it was time to share what had made it on to “the New” TBR table recently. 🙂

Trail of Lightning

First up is Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. First published in 2018 (hence newish, rather than recently published new), Trail of Lightning won a Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. It postulates a post-climate change world in which the Dinétah (Navaho Nation) have established a separate, walled realm – where the gods, heroes, but also the monsters of legend walk the land.

According to the backcover synopsis, the heroine, Maggie Hoskie, is a monster hunter par excellence; her sidekick Kai Arviso is an unconventional medicine man. Together they unravel “clues from ancient legends, trading favours with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.”

Trail of Lightning has been on my reading radar for some time, but it’s been recommended to me several times recently, including by The Wall of Night series readers – so how could I not act on that?! 😀

And just imho, the cover is totes kickass: love it!

Foxhunt

Foxhunt, a debut novel by fellow NZ writer, Rem Wigmore, is very new indeed, with that very exciting first publication date scheduled for 20 August from Queen of Swords Press – so not many sleeps left now!

I am lucky enough to have an advance edition and the synopsis promises an interesting read. As with the Trail of Lightning world, Foxhunt postulates a post-climate apocalypse future, one in which environmental transgressors are hunted down by the Order of the Vengeful Wild. When Orfeus, a traveling singer and pansexual transwoman, falls foul of the Order, she must flee for her life, calling in favours and seeking answers from enemies and allies alike.

Described as “queer hopepunk/climate fiction” set in a solarpunk world, Foxhunt’s tagline is: Orfeus the musician is searching for hope in the heart of danger…

I’m always pleased to see new speculative voices coming out of New Zealand and it’s always good to support new authors. So if the synopsis appeals and you’ve enjoyed works such as AJ Fitzwater’s Cinrak the Dapper (also from Queen of Swords, with an interview here and review here), Stina Leicht’s Persephone Station, or Malinda Lo’s Ash, then Foxhunt may be just the read you’re looking for.

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Fugitive Telemetry

What can I say? The Murderbot series by Martha Wells has been one of my favourites over the past few years, so I’m pretty dashed happy to have the latest novella, Fugitive Telemetry (2021), reach the TBR pile.

It’s been a while getting here, because I ordered it in the gorgeous hardcover version (the texture alone is fabulous!) as a birthday gift for another household member and Murderbot fan. BUT it has not only finally(!) arrived, but been read (in short order) by the aforementioned birthday recipient so I am free to read it AT LAST. Huzza!

Checking out the backcover, I’d say this story takes place between novella #4, Exit Strategy, and last year’s novel, Network Effect — so although I’m really looking forward to the next instalment of the new storyline begun in Network Effect, I’m always happy to spend time with Murderbot and the original Preservation crew.

Given The Wall Of Night writing commitments right now it may be a while before I actually read and share my terribly important thoughts here – but it will happen!

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.”

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1902 – 1991

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Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish born, American author of novels, short stories, and essays. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

I do know what he means about the wastepaper basket. One must be willing to write and throw away until one downloads, or distills, the ‘true and right’ story, in which the right words are all in their right order…

Writing Happening: Shutters Closed

…I’ve got the writing shutters up and am beavering to get Malian clear of that endgame setup and into the denouement.

Things *are* getting there, but it’s been a rocky road although I think the overall result will repay having to repair the axle and change a few wheels en route.

Watch this space for a shoutout when we get across that setup/denouement proper line!

And “just in case” you havena already discovered it on the blog, & by way of a “no post mitigation”, here’s a link to a short story, The Brother King, that I have featured on my website:

The Brother King

USA

The About The Characters post series focuses on the minor characters in The Wall Of Night series, in large part because:

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ from my Legend Award Finalist’s Interview, 2013

Initially, the series focused exclusively on characters from The Heir of Night, but now I’m continuing on with minor characters from both The Gathering Of The Lost and Daughter of Blood — in alphabetical order, by name, of course!

Currently, we’re in “L”, a most excellent letter in the Haarth world. 😀

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UK/AU/NZ

Liannar:  second-in-command of the Patrol, in the Haarth realm known as the River.

“I’d prefer to assess the situation on the Wall in person, in any case.” Raven was matter-of-fact. “Liannar will continue to command on the River in my absence.”

~ from © Daughter Of Blood: The Wall of Night Book Three, Chapter 38 — Dawn Wind

Yep, it’s definitely that time: 1 August rocked around yesterday and that means I posted Instalment 8 — yes, eight! in the Magic In Fantasy series on Supernatural Underground.

Once again, I’m honing in on books that have really lit a spark with me because of their magic — very often for other reasons, too, but it’s the magic that’s the raison d’etre for this series. 😉

Following last month’s approach, I’m looking at three authors, and also aiming to feature a range of Fantasy subgenres and time periods. That’s so the post and the series is not all about either just “the new” or “only older” works.

Magic in the mix…
Art Credit: PJ Fitzpatrick

This month’s authors are Ursula Le Guin, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and NZ’s own Anna Smaill. To check out why they’ve rocked my Magic in Fantasy world, please do rock on over and check out da post. 😀

More Magic In Fantasy — Lighting The Spark

Recently, I refeatured a 2011 interview with Daniel Abraham, author of The Dagger and Coin fantasy series, and co-author of the science fiction series (both book and television), The Expanse.

In the original interview, Daniel Abraham remarked that “writers are thieves” and I posted a response the very next day. For symmetry, I thought you might be interested in rereading the response and its springboard into influences on my own writing again — so here it is!

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“Writers Are Thieves”—aka Influences on Story: from October 20, 2011

Yesterday, in our interview here, Daniel Abraham said that: “More than [being] readers, writers are thieves.”

Fellow author and friend, Mary Victoria, commented: ” … yes, yes, yes. We use a bit of this and a bit of that. We borrow from each other, from the common store of history and myth. We even raid our own memories … nothing is sacred!”

Of course I had to respond that I preferred the word “magpies” to “thieves” ( 😉 ) but the principle is the same. There was a synergy for me in this discussion, because only the day before I had been at Christchurch’s South library, talking about—amongst other things—influences on my work. Or in other words, about all the treasure trove of ideas, artefacts, and experiences over the years that had caused my magpie self to think: “Shiny!” Or “Bright! Or “Gleamy, and Sheeny, and Glittery!” (I was going to say “sparkly”, but you know, those vampires—just can’t go there.) And then purloin them for my writer’s melting pot—long before I consciously decided to be a writer.

Influences on my own work

I’ve talked about influences on story before and you can check out the collected posts here. The thievery Daniel Abraham referred to yesterday was of those elements of literature that delight you a reader—and promptly want in your own stories. And as I said in my Influences of Story post on February 3rd, other writing is undoubtedly an influence on any writer’s development. Diving into the vast sargasso sea of literature always sparks ideas and ‘what ifs’, and on February 3 I showed how this process might work using the example of Hilaire Belloc’s poem, Tarantella.

Other sources for magpie gleaning that I mentioned in my library talk included:

• Fairytales, folk stories, myths and legends. By way of example I discussed Thornspell as a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale from the perspective of the prince, and also how I drew on the Parsifal cycle to inform the backdrop of the story. I also spoke of the way in which The Heir of Night was influenced by the classic stories of Greek and Norse myth.

• History—has always informed my work, as in the Renaissance era, Holy Roman Empire influence on the world building in Thornspell, or the way in which Heir draws on history’s social, cultural, and economic conflicts, both within societies as well as between nations.

• The space programme, astronomy, and the environment—all influenced my love of science fiction.

• Narrative Poetry—you just can’t beat it: from those great classics The Iliad and The Odyssey, and the medieval Morte d’Arthur, but also the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales from the late Middle Ages, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene or Milton’s Paradise Lost from the early modern period.

• Sense of Place—another influence that I have discussed in two recent posts, here and here, and also last year, here. And of course sense of place also ties into awareness of environment again.

• And then there’s music, dance, opening up the newspaper … And as Mary so rightly pointed out, our own life experiences to be mined if so desired.

Life, the universe and everything, it seems, are a dragon’s hoard, and writers the thieves turning over this gem and that jewel, searching for the elusive Arkenstone …

Dragon’s hoards

So how about you? Are there particular writing elements that spin your wheels as a reader? Or that strongly influence you as a writer? Where do you draw your inspiration?

& songbirds as harbingers…

Two weeks ago, I posted on some of the reasons I enjoy reading older and downright old books. The reason I don’t often pass by firsthand, nonfiction accounts of war and wartime experience, bears on Reason 3 of that post (historical perspective) — but may also count as its own reason. In short, because I’m currently writing heroic fantasy, with war at the heart of its subject matter, I am always interested to read the real, lived experience of soldiers, operatives and spies, and civilians.

If I have gleaned one consistent theme from such reading it’s that, by and large, war is not heroic. It’s brutal, banal, messy, muddled, and chaotic, but very rarely heroic. When heroism does occur, it’s very often understated and/or so matter-of-fact that it’s easy to miss.

All of which is consistent with my reading of Maquis. In terms of context, the author, George Millar (1910 – 2005) was a British soldier who escaped from a German POW camp and made it back to the UK, then parachuted into France with the SOE in 1944 to operate behind enemy lines. He was highly decorated, receiving the DSO, the Military Cross, the Légion d’Honneur, and the Croix de Guerre avec Palmes.

Maquis is Millar’s firsthand account of his experience organising and working with the French Resistance, known as the Maquis. The work Millar undertook was helping organize local resistance cells, training the resistance volunteers in sabotage (which the Germans apparently called terrorism), particularly explosives, and organising and leading sabotage missions. Although first published in 1945 and successful then, the edition I read was from 1956 and not so highly redacted in terms of wartime sensitivities and secrets.

The book is very readable and insightful, but not at all heroic. If anything, it’s the opposite. Although the brutality, banality, mess, muddle, and not infrequent chaos are present, I would not call it a bleak or “grimdark” read. If anything, the accounts are matter-of-fact and one of the aspects that leap out is the degree of mistakes, carelessness, and outright folly that both resistance and operatives get away with. Except when they don’t, of course—and another element that is quite clear, albeit as subtext, is that of luck in eluding capture and death.

Beyond being a firsthand account, the character portraits of those George Millar meets and works with, either directly or indirectly, are part of what makes Maquis an interesting read. As regards Millar himself, while at the heart of the narrative he doesn’t indulge in boasting or bravado. He is clearly coolheaded and also something of a maverick, but not so much so that he can’t work with others or take orders when required.

Another, reasonably strong impression that comes through is that he wasn’t driven by emotion, particularly retribution (in fact he seems to perceive it as often – but not always – counterproductive) and so can express respect for the Germans, despite being the enemy, where their conduct merits it, as well as for his maquisard allies.

If firsthand accounts of war experience are of interest, then I believe Maquis will prove a worthwhile read. Similar narratives include The White Mouse by Nancy Wake, Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean, and Popski’s Private Army by Vladimir Peniakoff.

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Previous “Reading Older Books” Posts:

• Reading Older Books
• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
• Amazons II Anthology
• Reasons For Reading Old & Older Books

News from the Wall…     Credit: PJ Fitzpatrick

I’m really pleased to let you know that as of as of last Friday I reached what is effectively the cusp between the endgame setup and the denouement of the WALL series!

I am pretty sure that I’m currently still writing the last of the endgame set up, rather than the beginning of the final denouement – but being on the cusp means that the two are rather blurring into each other at this point. 😉

As part of that process, I’m also having to rejig some earlier material to fit. Before I forget what adjustments are required, as forgetting always means a great deal of head scratching, if not outright cursing, later on: O-o!

Anyway, that’s the news and it’s tracking in the right direction: huzza!

Meanwhile…

I shall continue writing, writing, of course and closing the gap on “the end.” And with the “Inside the Writing Life” posts between updates.

Remember, too, that if you are looking for updates, the places to check are:

“About My Books” & “About What I’m Doing” (under Categories in the far-right-hand sidebar)

The “Inside the Writing Life” posts may also feature under “About Writing”, as well as “About What I’m Doing.”

And thank you, as always, for checking in. 🙂