{"id":50,"date":"2010-06-07T20:24:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T08:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2010-07-24T20:03:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T08:03:36","slug":"50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/07\/50\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen&#8217;s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s grey and wet has carried on into today for a bleak, rainy Queen&#8217;s Birthday with a decidedly chill wind blowing in from the south (think the same as &#8220;north&#8221; if you&#8217;re in the northern hemisphere.)\u00a0 A good day for staying close to home and doing a bit of a round up for the past week, in which I:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Started this blog\u2014and so far have kept to my resolution of posting, however briefly, every day.<\/li>\n<li>Celebrated the launch of the\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supernaturalunderground.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>Supernatural Undergound <\/strong><\/a>blog and also the launch of Helen McKinlay&#8217;s fourth book, <strong><em>Grandma Meets the Queen<\/em><em>, <\/em><\/strong>in the best selling <em><strong>Grandma<\/strong><\/em> series.<\/li>\n<li>Went along to the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catalystnz.blogspot.com\/\">Catalyst<\/a> <\/strong>Open Mic poetry night\u2014a once-a-month gig where mainly poets, but also storytellers and musicians &#8220;rave on&#8221; at Al&#8217;s Bar in the Central City. And it&#8217;s not just about the poets\u2014there&#8217;s an &#8220;audience participation award&#8221; as well, won this week by my partner, Andrew. (Yup, he&#8217;s definitely the &#8220;live one&#8221; out there.)<\/li>\n<li>Interviewed poet and writer, Mary McCallum, initiator of the exciting <a href=\"http:\/\/tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>Tuesday Poem Blog<\/strong><\/a>, for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.womenonair.org.nz\/index.htm\"><strong>Women on Air<\/strong><\/a>, (<a href=\"http:\/\/plainsfm.org.nz\/\"><strong>Plains 96.9 FM<\/strong><\/a>)\u2014the interview aired this Saturday and you can listen to it <a href=\"http:\/\/plainsfm.org.nz\/on-demand\/woa-marymccallum-5june\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (to listen: press the play icon or download the mp3 version.)<\/li>\n<li>Checked out the shortlists for both the<strong><a href=\"http:http:\/\/www.aussiecon4.org.au\/index.php?page=66\/\/\"><\/a><\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehugoawards.org\/2010\/04\/2010-hugo-award-nominees-details\/\"><strong>Hugo<\/strong><\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.mythsoc.org\/awards\/2010\/\"><strong><\/strong><\/a> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mythsoc.org\/awards\/2010\/\">Mythopoeic<\/a> <\/strong>Awards (so many great stories to read, so little time); and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">of course<\/span><strong> <\/strong>(most importantly of all)<\/li>\n<li>Kept writing <strong><em>The Gathering of the Lost<\/em><\/strong> (The Wall of Night Series, Book Two.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And just to get the new week kicked off right, today I got two great emails:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the first was from <strong>Tim Jones<\/strong>, asking if he could feature a poem from my <em>Ithaca Conversations<strong> <\/strong><\/em>sequence, <em>Homing, <\/em>as next week&#8217;s Tuesday Poem on his<em> <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/timjonesbooks.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>Books in the Trees<\/strong><\/a> blog.\u00a0 Tim selected <em>Homing<\/em> and another <em>Ithaca Conversations <\/em>poem,<em> <em>The Trojan Shore <\/em><\/em> for\u00a0 <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/jaam.wordpress.com\/previous-issues\/jaam-26\/\">JAAM 26<\/a><em> <\/em><\/strong> when he was guest editor in 2008, so of course I am happy to see it featured again.<\/li>\n<li>the second was from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.traceyohara.com\/\"><strong>Tracey O&#8217;Hara<\/strong><\/a>, Paranormal Romance author<strong> <\/strong>and blogger on the <a href=\"http:\/\/supernaturalunderground.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>Supernatural Underground <\/strong><\/a>to say that her novel, <strong><em>Night&#8217;s Cold Kiss<\/em>, <\/strong>has been shortlisted for a <a href=\"http:http:\/\/romanceaustralia.wordpress.com\/\/\/\"><strong><\/strong><\/a><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/romanceaustralia.wordpress.com\/2010\/06\/07\/romantic-book-of-the-year-2010-finalists\/\">Romance Writers of Australia<\/a> <\/strong>Romantic Book of the Year Award (a RuBY)\u00a0 for a novel with romantic elements. Way to go, Tracey!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And last but not least, today being the official day: to the Queen\u2014Happy Birthday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s grey and wet has carried on into today for a bleak, rainy Queen&#8217;s Birthday with a decidedly chill wind blowing in from the south (think the same as &#8220;north&#8221; if you&#8217;re in the northern hemisphere.)\u00a0 A good day for staying close to home and doing a bit of a round up for the past [&hellip;]<\/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-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","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=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}