{"id":2973,"date":"2011-01-02T12:57:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T23:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2973"},"modified":"2011-01-02T13:00:27","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T00:00:27","slug":"reflecting-on-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/01\/02\/reflecting-on-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

2010 was the year of writing The Wall of Night Book Two<\/strong>—& I finished the manuscript yesterday: woot! And<\/em> posted ‘all about it’ on the Supernatural Underground<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

US Cover<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

AU\/NZ Cover<\/p><\/div>\n

It was also the year of seeing The Heir of Night <\/strong><\/em>published in the USA\/Canada<\/a>, Australia and New Zealand<\/a> in October, with publication for the UK scheduled for this year, March 2011. Since publication, it’s been great to get some really nice pro and semi-pro reviews as well as positive reader feedback, some of which I’ve shared with you here on “…Anything, Really.” <\/em> And it was a huge thrill to make the Christchurch City Librraies’ Simply the Best of 2010<\/strong><\/em> list, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And the year of seeing Thornspell<\/strong><\/em> released in paperback, with a very nice related feature in the NZ Book Council’s<\/strong><\/a> quarterly journal, Booknotes<\/em>, Spring 2010<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

2010 was also the year of beginning to sell foreign rights to the Wall of Night<\/strong> series, of going to Worldcon<\/strong><\/a> in Melbourne and continuing to do books and writer interviews for Women on Air<\/strong><\/a>, on Plains 96.9 FM<\/strong><\/a>—the highlight being compering the public event for Andrea Levy<\/strong><\/a>, award winning author of Small Island<\/strong><\/em> and The Long Song<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 I also got to continue interviewing wonderful poets and to start interviewing speculative fiction authors, including Jennifer Fallon<\/a>, Nalini Singh<\/a>, Mary Victoria<\/a> <\/strong>and Ripley Patton<\/strong><\/a>, which was all great fun.<\/p>\n

As celebrated on 30 December<\/strong><\/a>, I also commenced blogging myself, both here on “…Anything Really <\/em>and on the first of the month on the Supernatural Underground<\/strong><\/a>—as well as doing guest posts with Eos<\/strong><\/a> (USA) and Orbit<\/strong><\/a> (UK\/AU\/NZ), with other writers such as Marianne de Pierres<\/strong><\/a> and a Big Idea post<\/strong><\/a> on John Scalzi’s Whatever.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Quaked!<\/p><\/div>\n

And 2010 was the year of the Christchurch earthquake<\/a>, with an initial 7.1 quake on September 4 and over 4000 “after shocks” since them, some of which, at 5.1 and 4.9 etcetera, have been earthquakes in their own right. The latest “swarm” (32 over a 24 hour period) occurred on Boxing Day and comprised a series of sharp and also shallow quakes that did a lot of building damage again. Having said all that, with no deaths and realtively few major injuries, I still think it would be fair to say that we’re all thanking our earthquake building codes as well as our ‘lucky stars’—as well as hoping for a much less shaky 2011!<\/p>\n

As always, I read a lot of books during the course of the year and mentioned a few of them a while back, here<\/strong><\/a>. But because it is<\/span> New Year here are those, which among so many wonderful books, stood out the most for me:<\/p>\n

Novel:<\/strong> <\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Windup Girl<\/strong><\/em> by Paolo Bacigalupi<\/strong><\/p>\n

—<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non Fiction:<\/strong> <\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>Feeling for Daylight, The Photographs of Jack Adamson<\/strong><\/em> by Rhian Gallagher<\/strong><\/p>\n

—<\/strong><\/p>\n

.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poetry: <\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tigers at Awhitu<\/em> <\/strong>by Sarah Broom<\/strong><\/p>\n

—<\/strong><\/p>\n

.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Young Adult:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>Immortal Beloved <\/strong><\/em>by Cate Tiernan
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>(I don’t feel I read enough Junior fiction to make a selection in this category—& I read James Norcliffe’s The Loblolly Boy <\/em>in 2009 so I can’t pick that!)<\/p>\n

As for what’s coming up in the New Year—life I find is generally what happens when you’re busy making other plans (nods to John Lennon), but I am fairly certain that I will be writing The Wall of Night, Book Three<\/strong>. Other than that—well, we’ll all just have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

Again—Happy New Year to you all!<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2010 was the year of writing The Wall of Night Book Two—& I finished the manuscript yesterday: woot! And posted ‘all about it’ on the Supernatural Underground. It was also the year of seeing The Heir of Night published in the USA\/Canada, Australia and New Zealand in October, with publication for the UK scheduled for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2973"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3011,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions\/3011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}