{"id":43,"date":"2010-06-06T18:05:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T06:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=43"},"modified":"2010-06-09T15:22:44","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T03:22:44","slug":"diana-wynne-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/06\/diana-wynne-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Diana Wynne Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen’s Birthday Sunday\u2014it’s a long weekend here\u2014has been one of those grey, wet, winter days and is just closing in for a dark, brooding sort of dusk. And I have to say that the weather exactly suits my mood, because after spending\u00a0 most of the day doing more revisions on Part 2 of\u00a0 Gathering<\/em>, I popped over to Tor.com<\/strong><\/a> for a little R’n’R only to read (quoting Ansible<\/strong><\/a>) that Diana Wynne Jones<\/strong> has “chosen to stop chemotherapy treatment for cancer; her doctors fear that she has only months left to live.” <\/em>You can read the full article here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

My mother died of cancer a few years back and I know that she, too, reached a stage where she felt it was the right thing to do to end any but palliative treatment. But it’s tough. Very tough: for the person’s who is ill, for their family, and for all those who love and value them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I do not know Diana Wynne Jones, but I have known, loved and valued her work since my early teens.\u00a0 The first book I recall reading was A Power of Three<\/em><\/strong>\u2014and I loved it.\u00a0 Within the next few years I read both Eight Days of Luke<\/strong><\/em> and Cart and Cwidder<\/strong><\/em>, which together are possibly still my favourite of all her books. But it is hard to say, because I don’t believe I have ever read a Diana Wynne Jones novel that I didn’t like and sometimes the book one likes best can depend on reading mood. And “Most Recently Purchased’ was The Merlin Conspiracy<\/strong><\/em>, which I feel is (again!) Diana Wynne Jones at her best.<\/p>\n

So has Diana Wynne Jones been an influence on me as a writer?\u00a0 The answer is\u00a0 a resounding “yes.”\u00a0 I love her stories and I love the way she tells <\/em>her stories. In that sense she is an exemplar, for me, of what it mean to be a good writer.\u00a0 But most of all she has given me many hours of pleasure as a reader and stories and characters that I have carried with me, like old and trusted friendships, for many years.<\/p>\n

And what gift could anyone give you that is more than that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tribute to Diana Wynne Jones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","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=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}