{"id":41062,"date":"2023-05-18T06:30:23","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=41062"},"modified":"2023-05-07T21:09:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T09:09:42","slug":"qa-thursdays-12-toms-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2023\/05\/18\/qa-thursdays-12-toms-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A Thursdays #12: Tom\u2019s Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past year, I\u2019ve been reprising a Daughter of Blood<\/em><\/strong> (and by extension The Wall Of Night<\/strong>) Q&A series that featured in 2019.<\/p>\n

In doing so, I\u2019ve been struck all over again by the degree to which the readers\u2019 questions rock \u2013 and today we\u2019re rocking on with Tom\u2019s Question.<\/p>\n

\"\"

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

Tom:<\/strong> Your blog and Twitter peg you as a foodie, but it doesn\u2019t come through in Daughter Of Blood<\/em> and your other books. Not like the feasts in \u201cHarry Potter\u201d. Why is that?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I <\/em>am a foodie, so you\u2019ve definitely pegged me right there. 😀<\/em> And the feats of feast-dom in Harry Potter are certainly stupendous. When it comes to The Wall Of Night<\/strong>, though, the story has to be about the characters and the world they live in. In this case, it\u2019s not a story centered on food and drink: for example, unlike Joanne Harris\u2019s early novels,<\/em> Chocolat and<\/em> Blackberry Wine. So the references to food and drink have to derive from and support the story being told, in the same way <\/em>lembas bread supports <\/em>The Lord Of The Rings\u2019 story and the Hogwarts feasts support the story being told in Harry Potter. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In WALL such references are fleeting but I hope aid the worldbuilding and \/or scene setting. For example, in <\/em>The Heir of Night\u2019s Feast of Returning, early in the book, Malian is eating (or not eating, in fact) \u201ca piece of dried fruit\u201d, as opposed to fresh fruit\u2014a small detail but consistent with the Wall environment. In<\/em> The Gathering of the Lost, though, in the more clement if not less dangerous environment of Ij, Haimyr the Golden offers the heralds white wine from Emer and candied fruit\u2014an echo of the refreshments offered in fairytales. Later, in the wild country of Northern Emer, a starving, exhausted Carick thinks a stale pie tastes marvelous. In other words, food is present in the series as the circumstances of the story dictate: a supporting actor rather than a player in its own right. I feel that being a foodie, though, helps me to choose the details that count.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"daughter-of-blood-by-helen-lowe\"

USA<\/p><\/div>\n

Previous Thursday Q&A Refeatures:<\/h3>\n

2022:<\/strong><\/em>
\nMarch 31 \u2014 #1 Phoebe\u2019s Question on Book Planning<\/a><\/p>\n

April 21 \u2014 #2 Sam\u2019s Question on Deleted Scenes<\/a><\/p>\n

April 28 \u2014 #3 Sandy\u2019s Question on Characters That Take Charge<\/a><\/p>\n

May 19 \u2014 #4 Lindsay\u2019s Question on Research<\/a><\/p>\n

June 23 \u2014 #5 Chris\u2019s Question on Tirael & \u201cWhat Would Have Happened If\u2026\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

June 30 \u2014 #6 Rosie\u2019s Question on the Web of Mayanne<\/a><\/p>\n

September 8 \u2014 #7 Jason\u2019s Question on Weapons & Names<\/a><\/p>\n

October 6 \u2014 #8 Robin\u2019s Question on Tuckerization Characters<\/a><\/p>\n

November 24 \u2014 #9 Josh\u2019s Question on Whether I Have A Favourite Moment in Daughter of Blood<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

December 15 \u2014 #10 Shannon\u2019s Question re Sections or Characters that were Hard to Write<\/a><\/p>\n

2023
\n<\/strong><\/em>March 30 — #11 Jenny’s Question re Inspiration and Keeping Going<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past year, I\u2019ve been reprising a Daughter of Blood (and by extension The Wall Of Night) Q&A series that featured in 2019. In doing so, I\u2019ve been struck all over again by the degree to which the readers\u2019 questions rock \u2013 and today we\u2019re rocking on with Tom\u2019s Question. Tom: Your blog and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,50,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-writing","category-funstuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41062","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=41062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41065,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41062\/revisions\/41065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}