Helen Lowe's Blog, page 93
February 5, 2017
Some Favourite NZ Places for Waitangi Day
Today’s Waitangi Day, the 177th anniversary of NZ’s founding as a modern nation via the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi /Te Tiriti O Waitangi.
So I thought I’d share several of my favourite NZ things, around and about (Note; this is by no means an exclusive list.)
Victory Beach, Otago Peninsular
Pohutakawa, Wenderholm Beach
Fantail; credit, B Miller
The Giant’s House Garden, Akaroa
Southern Alps
Cabbage trees
Books and readers…
NZ book...
February 1, 2017
The Return of “A Geography of Haarth” & “Meet The Minor Players”
UK/AU/NZ
With the anniversary of Daughter of Blood’s publication just a few ago, on 26 January, I thought it might be a good time to herald the restart of two previous The Wall of Night-related post series.
The first one, A Geography of Haarth (see the category in the far-right* side bar), ran from January 25, 2013, through to November 25, 2014. The series explored the full range of locales and places from the WALL series’ world of Haarth, accompanied by a quote from the books in which the pl...
January 29, 2017
It’s Mind Meld Time Again — This Time on B&N’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
Mind Melds were one of the hallmarks of SF Signal and greatly missed since the Signal team put up their shutters last May.
So I was doubly delighted to learn that Barnes & Noble’s Science Ficton & Fantasy blog is continuing the tradition and to receive an invitation to participate in a Mind Meld on the Alternate History subgenre, curated by Shana DuBois.
The Mind Meld post, titled Alternate Histories We Love also featured contributions from Ken Liu, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Teresa Frohock, Mur L...
January 25, 2017
The Anniversary of “Daughter of Blood”
UK/AU/NZ
Yep, it’s exactly a year to the day since Daughter of Blood was published — and of course it feels like yesterday and forever at the same time!
We had some fun, too, including the reveal of DAUGHTER’s Tuckerization character, Che’Ryl-g-Raham, as well as the Tuckerization draw for WALL 4 which gave me a new character name to weave into the series, one June Gum Young.
The Daughter of Blood and Wall of Night fun continued into May when the series’ got its own FaceBook group, fittingly t...
January 22, 2017
Knowing What Lies Ahead: Charting A Story’s Course
A question I sometimes get asked is whether I always know what lies ahead for each of my characters. The answer in the best tradition of Tolkien’s elves, is both yes, and no. Or in more Kiwi parlance, “Yeah, nah.”
USA
The “yes” response is that sometimes I do know, absolutely, what lies ahead for a characters. On the “no” hand, however, there are cases where (in exactly the same way prophecy works in The Wall Of Night books), there may be many, or at least several potential paths for a charac...
January 18, 2017
All About Relationship: Spinning the Web of Story
USA
UK/AU/NZ
It’s almost exactly a year now since Daughter of Blood was published (gasp!) and in reflecting on that I also found myself reflecting on different aspects of storytelling.
Although my stories have multi-layered plots and action forms a large part of the story, the characters are still the key to the storytelling—and nowhere more so than in Daughter of Blood. (I do hope readers agree! 
January 15, 2017
What I Read Over the Holidays
The Christmas & New Year period in New Zealand (& pretty much throughout the Southern Hemisphere) is also the summer holidays so definitely time to double down on reading material when you head away.
Here are four titles I read and enjoyed while also enjoying the break.
1. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater Genre: Paranormal Fantasy; YA
I’ve read a few Maggie Stiefvater novels now and I think this may just be my favourite, although I liked The Raven Boys a lot as well. The supernatural el...
January 11, 2017
What Makes A Hero?
What makes a hero?
An alternative term for epic fantasy is heroic fantasy and it’s certainly arguable that this particular type of fantasy turns on heroism. Most often, the stories centre on saving the world in one form or other and reader (and writer) discussions around the best type of stories not infrequently involve declarations of preference for good old-fashioned heroes, anti-heroes, or even outright villains as protagonist.
Outside of fiction, the term “hero” also seems to be bandied a...
January 8, 2017
2017: Ringing In Some Changes for the Year of the Book
Do you think the phrase “ringing in changes” arises because church bells used to be rung to mark the new year? It seems likely, but then again, what seems a likely explanation of linguistic tradition frequently turns out to be “not so.”
However, that’s not what I’m talking about today — I guess I just got a tad distracted by my love of language.
January 6, 2017
Picking the Perfect Names for My Characters
USA
In the mid part of last year I posted a few thoughts on names in both my fiction and Fantasy literature generally, including my enduring love affair with the long names of the genre and the use of names in both world-building and character development.
In rereading those posts recently, I also recalled that I was specifically asked about picking names for my characters in an interview with Fresh Fiction, not long after Daughter of Blood was released (into the reading wild.
