Over the weekend I went to see the interactive show Van Gogh Alive, which is currently here in Christchurch.

It really was amazing and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is able to get along. The show immerses the viewer in both Van Gogh’s art, as it evolved over his lifetime, and also in his life — including his words, which wowed and moved me as much as his art.

Here are three quotes that really resonated with me. The first is on the essentials of the writing life:

“To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace”

I particularly heart the piece about drinking one’s coffee in peace. 😉

The second concerns the importance of connection to people and the world, which I often refer to in the context of John Donne’s famous meditation that “no man is an island”:

“. . . The more I think about it the more I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.”

The third is the most poignant:

“I cannot change the fact that my paintings do not sell. But the time will come when people will recognize they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”

Courtney Schafer

On Monday, March 1, I posted the third in this year’s Magic Systems in Fantasy series on the Supernatural Underground — this month featuring friend and fellow author, Courtney Schafer discussing the magic in her Shattered Sigil series.

As I say in the introduction:

“When I first read friend and fellow author, Courtney Schafer’s debut Shattered Sigil series I was really impressed by … the depth and intricacy of the magic (without it seeming in any way convoluted) and the way in which Courtney’s magic systems bound the world, the narrative, and the characters into a cohesive whole. “

Shattered Sigil #1

To further encourage you all to head on over and take a read (if you have not done so already 😉 ) here is a taster of Courtney’s insights into the series’ magic systems:

“I do love magic in fantasy, so it’s always fun to geek out about magic systems and how they influence and enrich a story. I know some writers start by working out the magic first and deciding on characters and plot to suit the world they’ve built, but I always start with the characters and build the magic as I figure out what makes my protagonists tick and what problems I want them to face in the story.”

Shattered Sigil #2

But as with the previous two interviews, there is a great deal more, all of it well worth your time, both in terms of the creative process and another unique take on magic in fantasy fiction.

An Interview With Courtney Schafer: Talking Magic In The “Shattered Sigil” Series

Shattered Sigil #3

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The Magic Systems In Fantasy Series To Date:

AK Wilder & The Magic of Crown Of Bones (AMASSIA #1)

T Frohock & The Magic of A Song With Teeth (LOS NEFILIM #3)

2021, film tie-in edition

When I’m writing, I often don’t feel like reading in the same genre, particularly the precise subgenre of epic fantasy, which is why I’ve been dipping into crime (The Dry by Jane Harper) and more recently science fiction (The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.)

Historical fiction, though, has always been one of my most enduring loves, which led me recently to The Dig by John Preston, which has been made into a film, starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes,  and Lily James.

The book is a fictionalised account of the excavation of the Sutton Hoo archaeological site, in the months immediately preceding the United Kingdom’s entry into World War 2.

The Sutton Hoo site is one of the UK’s most significant archaeological excavations, one which illuminated and “rewrote” understanding of the early Anglo Saxon era. A significance given greater gravity and urgency, I imagine, by the looming shadow of war.

Needless to say I am very much looking forward to reading it. Here is what the NZ publisher, Penguin NZ, has to say on their site in terms of what the book is about:

2008 edition

“A brilliantly realised account of the most famous archeological dig in British history …

In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Pretty, the widowed landowner, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find… and pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.

John Preston’s recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig – the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain – brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure.”

Well, I shall see for myself when reading on…

I also understand the novel was first published in 2008, but republished in 2021 for the film tie-in, which is the edition I bought — yes, from a local bookshop, too: so old school! 😉

As those of you who checked in here on Monday will know, it was the tenth anniversary of the February 22, 2011 earthquake, which did so much damage in Christchurch and Canterbury, and affected all our lives profoundly.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

A National Remembrance Service was held in Christchurch, at the Canterbury National Earthquake Memorial. The leading address was given by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who concluded her speech with the final lines from one of my earthquake poems, The Sparrows.

I felt, and feel, tremendously honoured, humble, and moved, that my words were chosen to play a part in such a significant event: in remembering those who passed away and honouring Christchurch and everyone who has suffered and endured through the past decade.

The poem was included in Leaving The Red Zone: Poems From The Canterbury Earthquake, edited by James Norcliffe and Joanna Preston, and published by Clerestory Press, in 2016.

The full text of the speech, including full audio, is here:

National Remembrance Service: the Prime Minister’s Speech

The Sparrows follows, for those who wish to read it in full. The image below it is of the painting, I meant it to be a poem about sparrows, by Dunedin artist, Claire Beynon, which features the first two lines of the poem:
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The Sparrows

I meant it to be a poem about sparrows
and how the silence that followed
the February 22nd earthquake
included their absent voices —
& not just sparrows but the starlings
and blackbirds, the finches and wax-eyes
that normally fill the day with their bustle
about the business of living …
……………………………. all fallen silent,
hidden away, or gone further to find food
since half the city was covered
in a slick of water and mud. I threw
old bread onto the island of grass
in our own grey sea and waited …
…………………………..… and waited.

And then, finally, they came
their wings clouding the sun.
.

© Helen Lowe, 2011

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Today is the 10th anniversary of the February 22nd, 2011, earthquake that devastated my home city of Christchurch and the surrounding Canterbury area.

Dust over Christchurch: in this case, minutes after the February 22nd quake

The period from 4 September 2010 through to the first quarter of 2012 was one of continuous seismic activity, with over ten thousand events recorded, four major earthquakes and an additional three to four that were also significant in terms of damage. The most significant event, however, in terms of loss of life, injury, physical devastation, and human and economic cost, was the February 22nd event.

This was a friend’s neighbour’s home

The aftereffects of the earthquake were years of disaster recovery slowly transforming to the rebuilding process that is still ongoing, along with ongoing insurance processes that were as traumatic as the preceding natural disaster; a failure of leadership at the government level, and widespread hardship for many, including unprecedented demands on mental health services. This is, of course, only my personal summation, but reading some of the material appearing in national and local news media in the leadup to this 10-year anniversary, I am not alone in my view.

A close friend’s car: fortunately he wasn’t in it.

In posting on the tenth anniversary today, I was intending to look in more depth at some of these factors and also to note some of the positives that helped me and others to keep going through the past decade. Short version: the people, the people, the people at personal, neighbourhood, and the wider community level. All these matters are addressed, to some degree or other, in the Categories Earthquake Reports and Earthquake Poems, right here on the blog. (Look in the far-right side bar 🙂 )

The people, the people, the people: helping dig out at our place, which took a week all up.

This past week, though, led me to understand that while I could have written such a post, my heart just wasn’t in it. The beginning of that understanding was last Sunday, 14 February, while listening to the Sunday Morning programme on Radio New Zealand. (That’s NZ’s main public radio broadcaster, for those of you who are not NZ-ers.) The host was talking to a documentary filmmaker, Gerard Smyth, about the about-to-be-released sequel to his 2011 documentary, When A City Falls. The new documentary is called When A City Rises: The Peoples’ Story, and no doubt charts the course of the past decade.

I say “no doubt”, because the moment host and filmmaker began talking I found I could not listen. I had to get up and switch the radio off.

The moment was painful, both because of the door it blasted open onto all the difficulties of the past decade, but because it illuminated that for me, those much vaunted processes of “healing” and “moving on” are—at best—still very much a work in progress.

I believe this realization began toward the end of last year, when visiting friends said, “You’ve got on with your life. You’ve moved on.” To which I replied “Sort of.” I could not be more positive than that, because in the moment of replying, I realized that having moved on was not my truth.

An anthology of poems from the earthquake era

My truth is that the past decade has left a faultline through my life, one that begins with February 22nd and the damage to my home, and ends in my heart. Rather than narrowing as the decade progressed, it was significantly widened in places, not only by the government-led*  “recovery” and “rebuild”, but chiefly the brutality of the insurance process. Perhaps not surprisingly, once so major a faultline occurs, subsequent life events that are not directly connected to it, from terminal illness among close family and friends, through the massacres at two Christchurch mosques on March 15 2019, to Covid-19, all become fractures off the main fault.

Hearts on trees, March 2015

“All right?” became a catchphrase for mental health and community wellbeing promotion in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes. When I apply its lens to my personal journey through the past decade, my truth can’t manage more than that “sort of.” Then again, maybe that’s what surviving looks like: it may always be a process rather than an endpoint.

Keeping Going: awhi-ing** Christchurch’s Sir Julius Vogel Award finalists & winners, 2015; Photo :Wei Li

And if you’ve read to the end, thanks for bearing with me, and for being here. 🙂

Still smiling — it must be OK… 😀 WORDChristchurch 2016

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*For me, there must always be a question mark over the "led", as in my view leadership 
at that level has been almost entirely missing-in-action.

** "Awhi" means to embrace and cherish, with a strong nuance of emotional support, 
in the Maori language.

Whoosh! Yep, that was the first six weeks of 2021 vanishing into the past as I registered it was Mid-February “already”!

USA

Daughter Of Blood On USA/ Canada Special

On which note, that also means we’re halfway through the month of the Daughter of Blood e-book being a Kindle Monthly Deal in the USA/Canada, at the smokin’ hot price of 0.99c. There is more info available through the link, and I’ll do another reminder before it closes, just icymi. 😀
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Supernatural Underground

Also by way of a round up on those first six months, I now have two Magic Systems in Fantasy posts up on the Supernatural Underground — and both are author interviews, too. So if you havena checked them out, here are those links again:

Magic Systems in Fantasy: AK Wilder Talks Crown Of Bones with Helen Lowe on the Supernatural Underground

An Interview with T Frohock — Talking Magic in A Song With Teeth & the Los Nefilim Series
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Oh Yes, WALL #4…

Otherwise, besides keeping up with my blogging on the Supernatural Underground and here, pretty much all I’ve been doing is writing, writing on WALL #4 (The Chaos Gate) and I’m pleased to report that I am making steady inroads into the endgame (which I reported having just embarked upon, shortly before the end of the year.)

This may all add up to making t’author a dull sort of gal — but in fact I do not feel dull when I’m writing, even though it is (proverbially) often as much if not more about sweat and cussedness, than inspiration. And if readers conclude the end result is not dull, then it doesna matter, after all, if the author may be, from time to time. 😉

Over the last few weeks I’ve posted about some of my Christmas – New Year viewing and reading. Obviously the holiday’s been over for some time now, but it’s still appropriate to talk about Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (first published in 1974) in that context, because I picked it up in a secondhand bookshop in Picton, while waiting to cross from the South Island to the North on the Cook Strait ferry.

A fact that resonated when I began reading, because The Dispossessed is a tale of two worlds, Anarres and Urras, that lie in close proximity (Anarres is, in fact, the moon of Urras) and whose people were originally one. Now, by choice and treaty, dealings between the two are restricted to a closely controlled trade, all of which is limited to one spaceport. In terms of a setting, it’s as if NZ’s North and South Islands decided to limit all their dealings to a trade that could only occur in Picton, and where the traders and sailors from the North Island could never go beyond the port limits.

The reasons for this division in The Dispossessed is political, with the people of Anarres having departed persecution in Urras to establish a libertarian-anarchist society on its moon, with the basis of the agreement being that they would never return. For those who associate libertarianism with the thought and writings of Ayn Rand, I note that the society of Anarres is modeled more closely on the ideas of William Godwin and Prince Kropotkin’s famous treatise, Mutual Aid.

The Dispossessed is centered on the character of Shevek, an Anarres’ physicist whose work on the Principle of Simultaneity offers the potential to revolutionize interstellar communication and travel. It is written in alternating sections. Those in Anarres chart the course of Shevek’s life, leading to his revolutionary decision to self-exile to Urras in order to develop his work more fully. The second storyline is set in Urras, following that fateful decision.

The Dispossessed is a character study, exploring the personality and thought and influences that shape Shevek and his work. It is also an exploration of social and political difference, including how those differences shape and are shaped by misogyny, sexism, and sexual mores. The book also establishes two distinct worlds within Ursula Le Guin’s larger interstellar civilization, a loose affiliation of worlds that will become known as the Ekumen. In addition, the narrative explores the scientific thought underpinning the Principle of Simultaneity.

In other words, The Dispossessed works at several different narrative levels and in my view represents Ursula Le Guin at the height of her powers, as does her equally famous novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The latter has been one of my favourite books for a long time, but The Dispossessed has now joined it on the favourites’ shelf.

The edition I bought was published as part of Gollancz’s SF Masterworks series, a title that is apposite to the work, imho. I also note that The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed both won the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for Best Novel, deservedly in my view, as both are outstanding works of fiction.

The edition I acquired in the Picton secondhand bookshop was a paperback, 336 pages, brought out in 1999.

UK/AU/NZ

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!

At present, we’re currently in the realms of “L” – a popular one for names in the Haarth world. 😉

—

USA

Ler: a marine escorting Lord Nimor, the Sea House envoy

Kalan laid about him with the longer of the black blades … Reith was fighting alongside him for a time, then Ler took his place, covering the retreat until the Darksworn horn sounded again and more cavalry swept forward.

~ from Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three – Chapter 49, The Burned Man

Naturally “self-isolating”…

Several times last year, I posted on the solitary aspect to the writing life. (I’ve included the links below in case you would like to take a look, or revisit.)

For me, periods of solitude are a necessary part of the creative process, but within which I sometimes find myself “listening to the silence.” Possibly because I seek my necessary solitude in relatively solitary places.

On almost every occasion, though, I realize that what I am hearing is not silence at all. Being near the sea, the waves are a constant background murmur on even the calmest days. Some days, needless to say, they roar – but I would not describe those days as silent, not in any way. 😉

Amid the solitude

Listening past the sea’s voice, a myriad other constants may be discerned: the tweet and twitter of birds, the hum of insects, and the sound of leaves, moved by the wind. The occasional voice, or car engine, or dog barking, provides a “pop” that marks the contrast.

Whenever I stop and consciously listen, I become aware of how these background sounds create a texture that shapes my perception of milieu just as much, if not as overtly, as what I see.

Unquestionably, I bring this awareness to my writing in order to create atmosphere and to “worldbuild.” The process is not always conscious, any more than experiencing the complexity of apparent silence. Yet just as I occasionally pause to consciously listen to the silence, when writing I will actively consider the sounds – and other attributes – that best support the mood or physical environment I wish to convey.

All of which led me to decide this was an “Inside The Writing Life” post, although it arose, quite simply, out of pausing to listen.

These little guys always have a lot to say — Fantail; credit, B Miller

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Those Earlier Posts:

Writing In A Time of Corona Virus – March 23

Inside The Writing Life: “Naturally Self-Isolating” – May 28

Inside The Writing Life: Fun With Friends – September 17

USA

Hey, hey — my US editor (the wonderful Kate Nintzel) has let me know that Daughter of Blood (The Wall Of Night, Book 3) is a Kindle Monthly Deal for February, so will be available at the ‘bargain basement’ price of 0.99c throughout that time. 😉

The qualifiers are that it’s for the USA/Canada and their related markets only, and being Kindle it’s also ebook only.

But for those of you who’re ‘over there’ it’s a great opportunity, whether buying for y’ownself or as a gift for someone else — and, of course, if you know someone else who may be interested, please do let them know.

I’m working on the assumption, of course, that those of you who follow me here are already convinced it’s a good book. 😀

There’s more info here:

HarperVoyagerUS: Daughter Of Blood

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And here’s a wee excerpt, just to get in the spirit…

Prologue

Tongues of lightning flashed out of a bruised sky, the wildfire flickering along a broken colonnade before splitting apart around a man’s tall figure. Dead leaves drifted to either side as the rift in the air closed, but no ripple disturbed the length of the newcomer’s surcote, white over blue-black mail, or the fall of his long hair as he passed beneath a crumbling arch and into an open court, bounded by twelve paired pillars. A wide pool lay on its far side, with shallow steps leading out onto a stone platform where a woman gazed into the motionless depths. Her gossamer sleeves stirred in a slight breeze, but otherwise she was as still as the surrounding water and did not turn when the man joined her.

…

USA