Helen Lowe's Blog, page 10

Relooking At Leadership in Speculative Fiction

I’ve been a tad under the weather this week, which inclined me toward refeaturing a backlist post. In pursuit of which I stumbled on an earlier series on “Twelve Great Leaders of SFF” — so I hope you will forgive me for a “reprise” week.

The characters featured are in alphabetical order by name, so no preference should be inferred from the order in which they appear.

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Twelve Great Leaders of SFF: Part 1

B is for Bitterblue from Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue (Genre: YA; Fantasy)

I have always ...

On Crows Reprised — in “The Wall Of Night” Series

So-o, on Monday I featured an Alice Hoffman quote on crows, which I like very much — as well as quoting from the poem A Murder of Crows by that maestro of the mot juste, Joanna Preston.

Today, I’m rounding out my crow theme with some excerpts from The Wall Of Night series, which I believe “speak” to why the Alice Hoffman quote appeals.

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“The fog in front of him lifted slowly and drifted apart, revealing the tall figure of a man.  His back was turned to Kalan and a long black cloak fe...

On Crows…(Plus A L’il More :-) )

“A crow can recall every route it has ever taken…crows are messengers, spies, guides, companions, harbingers of luck, deliverers of trinkets and treasures, tireless in all ways, more loyal than any other man or beast.”

~Alice Hoffman

I’m sure you all know Alice Hoffman’s writing, but if not, you may recognize the names Practical Magic and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But she’s published over thirty books so there is a lot more to check out and enjoy.

For today, though, I’m focusing on this quo...

Meet Orth: Meet The Minor Players In “The Wall Of Night” Series

How can it be “About the Characters” time already?! But it is and this month’s character is Orth, who plays a relatively small, but important, part in the ongoing story.

In fact, if you’ve also read the recent Supernatural Underground (“how could it be 1 November already?”) post on villains in The Wall Of Night (with two great companion posts from Kim Falconer and Amanda Arista respectively, focusing on their series), Orth is pretty much one of those villains — despite also being a Derai, who a...

What I’m Reading: “City of Girls” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Probably in keeping with the rest of the reading world, I chiefly associate Elizabeth Gilbert with her memoir Eat, Pray, Love. So I was intrigued when I spotted her novel City of Girls in a local “book fridge.”*

“OK, what’s it about?” you cry. Welp, I would call it recent historical fiction, of the kind that focuses on a particular phase of a character’s story then follows them through the rest of their life, but always tying the rest back to that first phase or experience.

In this case the mai...

Those Books Keep Coming!

Which as a reader and writer, is a very good thing, I hasten to add.

As regulars will know, I’ve made it through reading and posting on all five titles in my initial Book Booty post for 2024. (Awesome: high five.) And am making good progress on the ‘stretch’ titles from September — two out of three ain’t bad, to quote the song.

So what better time to feature some new additions to the TBR table. Starting with:

Pinch Perkins and the Midsummer Curse by Cathy Fitzgerald

I heard of this book through...

3 Authors Talk Writing Villains: New On Supernatural Underground for November

AKA “Villainy Among Friends” as I get together with Kim Falconer and Amanda Arista to dig a little deeper into this year’s them of Villains in Fantasy Fiction.

KimFalconer

Amanda Arista

 

For this month’s instalment we’re focusing on writing villains and their importance to driving the story forward. After all, there’s very little for a hero to do, without a suitably villainous antagonist to lock horns with.

The Amassia series

A whole world may be encompassed in that “suitably”, and Kim and Aman...

It’s Halloween! Time For A Listicle

As you can probably tell by the late hour for this post, I’ve been running to stand still today — but it’s also Halloween, which seems the perfect time for some listicle fun. And what better theme than tales that bridge the human and supernatural realms, especially those with a little but of dark and spooky thrown in.

Starting with the now-classic Faerie Tale by Raymond E Feist, the definitely eerie tale of power struggles in Faerie breaking through into the everyday world, with dangerous and o...

What I’m Reading: “Educated” by Tara Westover

I had been wanting to read Educated, by Tara Westover for some time, so seized the day when the same friend who loaned me Songbirds offered her copy to read.

Many of you may already know the book and/or have read it yourself, but for those that don’t and haven’t, the backcover synopsis is as follows:

“Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records...

“Homing”: from the ‘Ithaca Conversations’ Series

I’ve been talking poetry a bit more than usual lately (at least since the sad demise of the Tuesday Poem community), mainly sparked by the Boosted campaign for the Canterbury Poets, so in that spirit, it feels like time for a poem.

Homing is from the Ithaca Conversations series and (for those who don’t know the story) centers on Odysseus’s (aka Ulysses) return to his home island of Ithaca after twenty years’ away: ten years fighting in the Trojan War (The Illiad) and ten years of storms, shipwr...