Helen Lowe's Blog, page 111

A New Review for “Daughter Of Blood”

“Shaping Up To Be A Modern Classic of Fantasy Storytelling” — Fantasy Book Review
.

UK/AU/NZ

USA

Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three, has received a new review from Fantasy Book Review (UK) and reviewer Joshua S Hill.

As you can probably gather from the summary quote, the short version is that he liked the book.

If you want to read the longer version and find out the whys and wherefores, click on:
.

Fantasy Book Review: Daughter Of Blood by Helen Lowe

I should add that like many o...

Supernatural Underground — I Count The Goodness

The first day of every month is my regular column on the Supernatural Underground:

“Today, I turned the key and opened up my post office box and found — a little yellow card!But being yellow carded via your post office box doesn’t mean a hiatus in the sin bin. What itmeans is …”

By way of a hint, what it means is I’m talkingabout books, writing, friendship and community. To read on, click on:

Being Supernatural Underground: I Count The Goodness

With books, writing, friendship, and community I...

Big Worlds On Small Screens & “Fantasy Films From the Eighties That Weren’t That Bad” — Rebecca Fisher Discusses “Time Bandits”

~ by Rebecca Fisher

If any film could be accurately described as containing everything but the kitchen sink, I’d stake my money on Time Bandits. You could describe it as a zanier episode of Doctor Who, or a slightly more child-friendly offering from Monty Python, or a mash-up of Roald Dahl and Douglas Adams – but its combination of dark comedy, time-travelling adventure and tongue-in-cheek musings on the nature of God and Evil make it truly unique.

Kevin is a young history buff with two pare...

Tuesday Poetry: A Haiku by Yosa Buson

Blown from the west
Fallen leaves gather
In the east.

– Yosa Buson, 1716 – 1784

—

Oh yes, autumn has decidedly arrived at last. And as I said last week, since any poetic celebration of the season would not be complete without haiku, today I bring you another from one of the great haiku masters, Yosa Buson.

Share

What I’m Reading: the “Los Nefilim” Trilogy by Teresa Frohock

Los Nefilim is the series title for three linked and chronologically sequential novellas by my friend and fellow author, Teresa Frohock. The three individual titles are:

In Midnight’s Silence Without Light or Guide The Second Death

I am not quite sure how to tag this series in genre terms. In many ways it’s paranormal urban fantasy, except the urban environment is Barcelona and the year is 1931, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. So in that sense it’s historical fantasy, where Spain’s des...

“There are people in every time…”

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past, which in fact never existed.”

~ Robert Kennedy, 1925 – 1968

—

I’ve referred to my recent conversation with Mary Victoria several times recently, but Mary and I are both good friends and on the same wavelength so our chats tend to be wide-ranging.

The comment that sparked this post and the link to the Robert Kennedy q...

Inside Middle Earth: More Pics from the Holiday

As promised last week, here are a few more pics from inside Middle Earth — and inside m’holiday.

I’m a keen walker, so the holiday was always going to include some hiking:

And perhaps because it’s a national park, there’s art as well as nature — this is a waka (traditional Maori canoe) paddle, marking the beginning of a bridge. Nice, huh?

But this is my favourite — a shot from where the track through the bush (forest) traverses a headland with cliff, clear aquamarine sea, and reflection im...

Writing the Hidden Story

UK/AU/NZ

Yesterday I discussed the mystery and magic of the hidden story — the themes and subtexts that can imbue a work without the author consciously realising they’re there.

I concluded that this phenomenon arose from the evolution of the story, rather than the author’s upfront intention. Which is all well and good — very good even, as I hope some of yesterday’s examples suggest.

But what about when the author intends to include the hidden story, which can also be known as the subtext or...

The Hidden Story …

UK/AU/NZ

USA

Recently, in an interview conversation with my friend and fellow author, Mary Victoria, we talked about the writer’s intention in storytelling and also how stories can evolve independently of that.

We did so chiefly in the context of the recently publishedDaughter of Blood, but Mary also mentioned the — by and large — matter-of-fact equality between men and women in the Wall of Nightseries’ Derai society.

She also asked whether I intendedportraying “a more or less equal playing f...

A Podcast Interview with Mighty Mur Lafferty—Plus Moar!

Yes, there will be moar — but first up, yesterday my podcast interview with the Mighty Mur Lafferty aired on her I Should Be Writing site.

Mur is an author herself, as well as a podcaster, and we had a relatively indepth chat that canvassed not only writing epic fantasy, Daughter of Blood and The Wall of Night series, but also writing process, the realities of writing beyond the first book contract, and advice to aspiring writers—as well as muses, donkeys, and rain forests.

If any of this sou...