Helen Lowe's Blog, page 46

From The Blog Backlist: “The Magic Of Winter Worlds”

Under snow …

As promised on May 31, on the 11th anniversary of the blog, I’m going to be revisiting posts from the backlist on a semiregular basis, because after eleven years there’s a fair amount of backlist to revisit.

On 31 May, I was tossing up whether to revisit the backlist in a totally random way or go for themes. I still haven’t finally decided, but I suspect it’ll probably end up being a bit of both, i.e. I may settle on a theme for a while, then randomly leap to something else.

To kic...

What I’m Reading: “Prodigal Summer” by Barbara Kingsolver

First off, I have to confess to some queue jumping. A few weeks back I posted on Reading Older Books, but Prodigal Summer was not one of the books mentioned. Although it’s a little more recent than some of the others discussed, being first published in 2000 – as opposed to Maquis in 1945, for example – the main reason was that I was just starting to read it.

Now here it is, jumping the Reading Older Books queue.

For the very good reason, dear readers, that I loved this book! I really enjoyed ev...

About The Characters: Meet The Minor Players In “The Wall Of Night” Series — Meet Lien

USA

The About The Characters post series focuses on the minor characters in The Wall Of Night series, in large part because:

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ from my Legend Award Finalist’s Interview, 2013

Initially, the series focused exclusively on characters from The Heir of Night, but now I’m continuing on with minor characters from both The Gathering Of The Lost and Daughter of Blood — in alphabeti...

Reveals and Reflection

Reading older books

I haven’t forgotten that I promised to report back to you on some of those new-to-me, but otherwise older books that I’ve read recently, or to repost material from the backlist – and those posts are in the pipeline.

Reaching the chaos gate…

For today, however, although I’m mindful that it’s only two weeks since I let you know that Malian had reached the chaos gate (which provides the working title for WALL #4), I thought you might like to know that this past week I’ve been w...

On Supernatural Underground Now: Magic Systems In Fantasy #6 with Amanda Arista

Amanda Arista

Wow! 1 June has been and gone already — the year feels as if it is sprinting by!

Nonetheless, you know what the first of the month means: I’ve posted on Supernatural Underground (Which I have also been doing for eleven years, along with m’own blog, as mentioned on Monday.)

This month’s post is with fellow Supernatural Underground author, Amanda Arista, who writes two urban fantasy series: Diaries of an Urban Panther and the Merci Lanard Files.

Amanda writes heroines with strong ‘v...

The 11th Anniversary of the Blog: Looking Ahead To The Backlist :-)

I am scheduling this post ahead of time, as we are currently in the middle of a Very Heavy Rainfall Event, with a state of emergency declared in the area where I am and the possibility of both power failure and evacuation on the cards. So I thought I’d get this loaded, no matter what occurs between my now (midday Sunday) and when this goes live at 6.30 am on Monday morning.

Aside from all of that, Monday 31 is the 11th anniversary of my “…on Anything, Really” blog. (I don’t know if you’re thinki...

Inside The Writing Life: Many Placemarkers

I was going to say “bookmarks” but in fact my assortment of airline boarding passes, supermarket dockets, old envelopes, and postits, with the very occasional actual bookmark, probably can’t be graced by that title.

Similar placemarkers do feature in books I’m reading as well (and sometimes remain there to be refound several years later), but the sheer number in my “working set” of The Wall of Night #1 – #3 is indicative of the work in progress.

In other words, if I’m referring back to earlier v...

Tweet O’ The Week: For WALL Readers :-)

For those of you who are not on Twitter but are The Wall Of Night series readers, this probably counts as last week’s most significant tweet:

“Newsflash for #TheWallOfNight #readers — Malian has reached the Chaos Gate! Is this significant? Answer: THE CHAOS GATE is the #workingtitle for The Wall Of Night Book #4 … ”

It’s still not “the end”, but it is a pretty big sign post pointing that way – and a destination envisaged from the outset of the storytelling process.

There is still writing to do, ...

When Time & Many Re-Reads Take Their Toll

Harking back (again – because I did so on Monday as well ) to the May 6 post in which I discussed rereading books that count as very old friends, you may recall that the “old friend” in question was Patricia McKillip’s The Riddlemaster of Hed.

My favourite cover treatment — but not my edition!

I was still mid reread when I posted, but alas, when I came to the end of the book I discovered that time and not infrequent rereads have both taken their toll, because the last ten pages have completely...

Reading Older Books

[image error]On May 6 I mentioned rereading books that count as very old friends, which is something I like to do, despite the importance of keeping up with new books and titles, which is as important for authors as it is in any other field.

Conversely, I also believe it’s important to know what’s been written before, if only in order to know if “the new” is really all that new. O-o…

Needless to say, there is an awful lot pundits insist should and must be written now, which has in fact been done before if on...