{"id":4360,"date":"2011-03-23T06:30:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T17:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=4360"},"modified":"2011-04-20T20:38:41","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T08:38:41","slug":"of-earthquakes-reader-feedback-on-the-heir-of-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/03\/23\/of-earthquakes-reader-feedback-on-the-heir-of-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Earthquakes & Reader Feedback on “The Heir of Night”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every now and then you receive an email that really makes your day.\u00a0 At the time of the February 22nd earthquake I was fortunate enough to receive two—and believe me, in a world turned to a constant background of sirens and helicopters overhead; people dead, wounded and missing; collapsed buildings and riven earth; plus the shocking phenomenon of liquefaction everywhere, these were two very bright spots in my world.<\/p>\n

I have waited until now, when life here has calmed down a little and most of the liquefaction has been laboriously removed, to share them with you (with the permission of the senders, of course.) Needless to say, these email remain bright spots and probably always will, simply because I will always remember how they were there waiting for me to read when the power came back on here, two days after the quake.<\/p>\n

The first was from Marion<\/strong> in Australia<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

I just finished reading the first in the series and now busily finding out if the other is available in Australia.\u00a0 I really love the story and look forward to following Malian’s journey over the next three books.\u00a0 … I get desperate for great new books, and … having such a strong female as the central character is a joy as well.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you, Marion. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

The second email came from Daniel <\/strong>in the USA<\/strong>, who wrote:<\/p>\n

“hey ma’am, just saw a news squib and some tv pictures of christchurch, looks
\npretty dreadful.\u00a0 i hope you and yours are safe and well, and remain so.\u00a0 [have
\nfinished heir of night, and am eagerly awaiting the next installment.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniel also shared part of why he had enjoyed The Heir of Night<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Heir was a great read, dense, well packed, well paced, with a good blend of past
\nand past influenced present woven together and shown, bit by bit, through
\nvarious characters and their interactions.\u00a0 the divergence of the various
\ncultures, both from a common history and from a common set of contradictions,
\nwas alluded to both as aspects of the individual characters and as
\nbackground\/preparation for later story arcs.\u00a0 i found myself thinking this is
\nso\u00a0going to show up later, as in the dream sequence of rooftop running, and in
\nthe push pull of mine vs ours vs theirs abilities.\u00a0 an aspect of good writing
\nthat i don’t think always gets proper acknowledgement, is the realization of
\nsecondary, or even tiertiary, characters.\u00a0 Kyr and Lira, and the acolytes in the
\nold keep are fully there, not only as characters, but as part and parcel\u00a0of that
\nworld.\u00a0 Kry and Lira, with their steadfastness\u00a0in the Jaransor, both prove and
\ngive the lie to dulce et decorum est.\u00a0 one could go on, but twere better to
\nencourage the book’s reading.”<\/em><\/p>\n

What can I say, except again—thank you.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

And to both Daniel and Marion and everyone who emailed or posted with inquiries about how I was doing after the earthquake, thank you again: I keep trying to say it with these imperfect words, but it really did—and does still—mean a very great deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then you receive an email that really makes your day.\u00a0 At the time of the February 22nd earthquake I was fortunate enough to receive two—and believe me, in a world turned to a constant background of sirens and helicopters overhead; people dead, wounded and missing; collapsed buildings and riven earth; plus the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360","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=4360"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5006,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions\/5006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}