Helen Lowe's Blog, page 9

The 10 Most-Read Posts of 2024, Right Here on “…Anything Really”

It’s that time, innit — when 2024 is in its final countdown for 2025.

While we may feel mixed about what the Year of the Wood Snake augurs, it’s become tradition for me to mark the year’s final days with a review of the ten most-read posts on my blog. As always, the ten are largely grouped in chronological order, but also by theme, to the extent possible.

Three Main Themes:

For 2024, the themes are very clear. The first comprises posts centered on The Wall Of Night series, which in turn comprise...

A-a-nd — It’s The Holiday!

Yes , it is — so I’m taking a wee break from the writing desk to spend time with family and friends.

“Getting it’s red on” — a pohutakawa summer.

Wherever you are, if you’re celebrating the Christmas-New Year break, then I wish you the best of times.

Otherwise, I promise to return soon to the ranks of those for whom it’s “business as usual” with the customary routine of home, work, and whatever we do in between.

Back to it very soon — promise!

I also hope a WALL #4 milestone update may follow s...

Is It The Holidays Yet? Is it? Is it?

I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I am more than ready for a break — although that feeling of being rushed off one’s feet, thus needing to put them up with a wee cuppa, is partly due to it being the “end of year”, with the Christmas and New Year holidays immediately ahead.

Christmas in Aotearoa

Plus, you know, all that shopping: for special food and drink, and gifts for family and others you may be spending Christmas with. Not to mention the frantic cleaning and tidying ahead of guests a...

‘Songs From The Sea’

Songs from the Sea

Songs from the sea sighing
in beneath the spindrift to the land’s
curve, lying long beneath green bush
where the nikau palms stand sentinel
all along that shining margin
between sea and land, where the wind
goes walking through the wild grasses
and sea birds glide, sailing the currents
of the air above shifting saltwater
tides, plaintive, melancholy, crying
to the wide and empty skies.

All their songs are sung for you,
sough of the wind and sigh of the sea
are your lullaby and...

What I’m Reading: “Pinch Perkins & the Midsummer Curse” by Cathy Fitzgerald

With midsummer fast approaching here in the Southern Hemisphere (acknowledging that it’s midwinter for northern folk), how could I not grab Pinch Perkins and the Midsummer Curse from the To Be Read pile?

I am so glad I did because it’s a fun, fastmoving, read with just enough scary to keep a reader on the edge of their seat.

Pinch Perkins and the Midsummer Curse is Junior fiction — but I always think the best test of children’s fiction is if you can read it to a child and enjoy it just as much ...

Meet Palla: Meet The Minor Players in “The Wall Of Night” Series

UK/AU/NZ

Yep — we’re now in the realm of “P”! Characters beginning with, that is.

Just to run over the “Meet the Minor Players” drill it focuses on the minor (or more correctly, sometimes “more minor”) characters in The Wall Of Night series because:

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

~ Helen Lowe (from my Legend Award Finalist’s Interview, 2013)

Welp, that’s a “long gal ago” interview now, but the principl...

A Grand Finale of Villainy #3: Yep, It’s Arcolin!

Currently I’m wrapping up my Year of Villainy in Fantasy with a Grand Finale,

As you’ll know from last week, I’ve joined with Kim Falconer and Amanda Arista to illustrate the genre and storytelling themes discussed in “Villainy Among Friends” with an upfront look at a villain from one of our books.

Given The Wall Of Night series pantheon, the question was which one to choose — but in the end it was hard to go past Arcolin and his encounter with Faro in the Ship’s Prow House, in the early part ...

A Grand Finale of Villainy on Supernatural Underground: Villain #2

On Monday, I posted all about the Grand Finale to my Year of Villainy in Fantasy, happening now on Supernatural Underground.

I also gave a shoutout for #1 in the Grand Finale’s series of feature posts:

Rhiannon in Curse of Shadows by AK Wilder

Now it’s time for our second villain-antagonist*:

Spencer Haverty in Diaries of An Urban Panther by Amanda Arista

 

My post, with a villain from The Wall Of Night, will be next up on December 6. So now I have to pick one. The only question is, which amon...

A Grand Finale of Villainy: New On Supernatural Underground for December

It’s December 1 and so I’m coming to the end of the “Year of the Villain in Fantasy” on the Supernatural Underground.

But with the help of my friends and fellow authors, Kim Falconer and Amanda Arista, we aim to go out with a Grand Finale of Villainy, ending the series in style.

Last month, we joined forces to talk villainy in the genre and how villains can be as vital as heroes in advancing a story — and did so with reference to our own books and storytelling as well.

Supreme villainy…

It...

Relooking At Leadership in Speculative Fiction: Part 2

As noted on Monday, when introducing this two-part backlist post, the characters are featured in alphabetical order by name, but no preference should be inferred from the order in which they appear.

J is for John Aversin in Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane (Genre: Fantasy)

At face value a fairly ordinary sort of guy, John Aversin is the local leader (knight/baron) in the largely abandoned northern part of the kingdom in which he lives. He is a leader out of necessity and duty, but when events (a  d...