Yes, I opened my email the other day and discovered that I’d been awarded the MUSE Medallion by the (International) Cat Writers Association for my short story – Opener of Doors – published on the Hazard Cat website August last year. Judge’s comment: “I was hooked from the first page. May all of us have a cat to plead for us at our own crossing. Indeed, no one can say ‘No†to a determined cat.â€
2011 has been a great year thus far.
And the other Shoe
Xmas Story Clearing
I find that at this time of the year a lot of anthology editors are clearing their desks, so that it can be a good time (Sept/Oct.)to get submissions to them. At least this seems to be working for me. A 2012 Halloween anthology has just accepted my ghost story, The Mailman. And it may be the influence of Xmas, but the other night I sat down and wrote another ghost tale that, once I’ve tidied it, I’ll submit to the same market for a different anthology.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Published by Dell, paperback dated May 2009.
reviewed by Shari Aarlton.
I thought this was a brilliant book, gentle, sensitive, loving, witty, and sweet in turns while tossing in all sorts of literary excerpts and allusions.
It starts with an author who receives a letter a year after World War II, sent by a pig-farmer on the English Channel Island of Guernsey asking about writing by Charles Lamb. She replies, starts getting letters from other people who were on the island during the German Occupation, and who belonged to this society – which had started as a way to get out of possible trouble with the German curfew.
Gradually in the letters that flow between the author and what have become her friends on the island, she learns the story of the occupation, and of Elizabeth Mckenna whose character holds this book together. Finally she flies to the island to visit, meets Elizabeth’s little daughter, Dawsey the pig-farmer, and all those who have been writing to her. The outcome changes her life.
The book bounces back and forth between tales of the German Occupation of Guernsey, and the current day (actually 1946) when the author is writing and receiving the letters. You get to know her, her family and friends, and the people of the island in a series of letters that are totally believable.
I loved this so much that I looked up the author, and was really sorry to find that she died just about the time that this book was published. And it was a long time coming. Ms. Shaffer was stranded on Guernsey during a visit in 1976 or 1980. (I saw both dates quoted) and while there she read a book about the occupation of the Channel islands during WWII. Years later her book club teased her into writing a book, and this was the result.
Like Lyn, I often look at an author who has written one or only a handful of terrific books and then died, and wonder what other work they’d have done if they’d lived longer, and I think that Mary Ann Shaffer’s death may have cheated us all out of some wonderful writing.
HAVE YOU OVERLOOKED – JOY CHANT?
This is the pen name for Eileen Joyce (Joy) Rutter, born January 13th 1945 in the UK. Joy Chant is best known for her three fantasy books in The Vandarei saga. Chant’s first book, RED MOON AND BLACK MOUNTAIN appeared in England in 1971 from Allen and Unwin and won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award the next year. (It was published in 1972 in America by Ballentine Books.)This was followed by The Gray Mane of Morning (1977) and When Voiha Wakes (in 1983).
The thing that caught my attention was Chant’s explanation that the Vandarei books grew out of her childhood world based on imagined games and elaborate legends that she told to herself about her world. This world started when she was around six or seven judging by her account, and, for another ten years, continued to settle into what it would become. Red Moon, Black Mountain was marketed as a book for children although it was very readable by adults, but since the main characters were all children, apparently Allen and Unwin decided to list it this way. It’s what I think of as a ‘sidestep into another world’ book, involving and interesting and in a fully realized world. But it was the second in the Vandarei sagas that I found the best of her work.
Gray Mane of Morning was runner-up for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1981 and placed tenth in the Locus Poll Award. It is a depiction of the struggle between a settled people and a nomadic one, and it mirrored in Vandarei many of the genocides enacted in our world under such circumstances. The Khentorei are horse-riding nomads whose tribes inhabit the realm of the plains. The Kalnat, known as The Golden People, have a city, Malde. Those nomad tribes that camp on the plain’s edge nearest Malde pay tribute to the city’s rulers. This has led the Kalnat to believe themselves vastly superior, and entitled to take what they want from the nomads.
Mor’anh and his sister Nai are priest and priestess of the Alnei tribe, and when they are two of those who go to pay tribute Nai is seen by one of the Kalnat nobles and forcibly taken back to the city as a sexual slave to the young noble, this despite the fact that even under his own laws he is not entitled to do so and she is the ‘Luck’ of her tribe. Mor’anh subsequently meets her, is captured, beaten, and escapes with the aid of his sister’s friend, the young half-sister of Nai’s owner, and who who later finds sanctuary with the tribe, telling Mor’anh that her brother murdered Nai’s baby.
The story continues with the slow growing disillusionment of Mor’anh over the tribe’s relationship with the city folk, his inheriting the leadership of his tribe when the Kalnat murder his father, and his decision that the tribe will refuse to pay tribute ever again.
The nobles of Malde decide to punish the nomads, but they have overestimated their own fighting abilities, and the books ends with the destruction of Malde’s army and of the city, Nai escapes the burning city to return to her lover, her brother, and her tribe.
There are a number of threads in this work, it is by no means a simple straight-line tale. I find it a pity that Chant never did more than the three books in this fantasy series, the background is a richly realised world, with fascinating people and a really wide capacity for a number of books to be set within it.
Chant’s third in this series appeared five years later. When Voiha Wakes, won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1984.
Chant’s other major work is The High Kings (1983), illustrated by George Sharp, designed by David Larkin and edited by Ian and Betty Ballantine. It is a reference work on the King Arthur legends and the Matter of Britain incorporating retellings of the legends. The High Kings, took second place in the Locus Poll Award, won the 1984 World Fantasy Special Award for Professional Work and was also a nominee of the Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book.
Joy Chant has also written numerous articles on fantasy fiction.
Bibliography
Fantasy novels
House of Kendreth series
Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970)
The Grey Mane of Morning (1977)
When Voiha Wakes (1983)
The High Kings (1983, George Allen & Unwin) (with, Ian and Betty Ballantine, George Sharp and David Larkin, in collaboration), rev. ed. (1989, George Allen & Unwin)
Nonfiction
Fantasy and Allegory in Literature for Young Readers (1971)
Short stories (known)
“The Coming of the Starborn” (1983)
Printer Down
I’ve been rushing to print and send out my Christmas cards and latest letters to overseas friends this past couple of weeks. Got all of the letters to UK/USA written, started printing, last two letters to go – and the printer stopped. Won’t repeat what I said! I called in the technician, who considered the printer and said that in his opinion it was kaput. I should buy a new one. But, I wailed, this printer was purchased new, had used only the half-size toner cartridge that it came with, and was on the first full one, was supposed to last through that and a second, and… tough. When they quit they quit, and he didn’t – ah – recommend ‘Brother’ printers. So if I manage to find time while I’m in the city tomorrow, I’ll buy his recommendation, a new Canon laser printer. But I’m not at all pleased that my printer died after so little use. And no, because I don’t use it in bulk, just in a steady trickle, it’s out of warranty. But I still feel hard done by.
Still Selling
I was delighted to receive a cheque recently, not a really large amount, but reasonable. It’s the last six months worth of royalties on sales of The Key Of The Keplian. And I’m delighted because that book first appeared from Warner Aspect in 1995. So after 16 years it’s still selling. Not just available, but readers actually continue to buy copies and that’s great.
Have you noticed?
How any time the media or friends start hammering on about something – it’s the opposite that usually happens? Back in 2004 a few spots of the country were getting mildly dry. That caught the media’s attention and they started. A drought was on the way! Just another week of no rain and we’d all be in desperate straits! NZ was about to dry up and either burn down or blow away! And so on and so on. We didn’t do any of that. What happened was that it started to rain – and rain – and rain. And the next thing was the media were all out in oilskins knee-deep in water and reporting the floods.
So when my friend had her hay paddock cut for baleage the other day and said to me that all they needed now was some good rain to bring the grass on…I winced. We’d had a reasonable month of precipitation to date. 107ml by my rain gauge. A nice balance between last year’s 83ml for October and 2001’s 118 ml for October. And sure enough, it started raining and kept raining, a steady mix of drizzle and brief heavy showers. I think that it may have stopped as of this morning, but the amount we got has been sufficient to bring the month’s total up to a rather high 163mls, or 6 and a half inches. With over 2 inches of that (56ml) falling over the past five days since the paddock was cut. Not quite enough for floods – so long as no one else stands around suggesting that we could do with more rain.
But it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t work to pay the media to mutter darkly about droughts any time we actually need rain…
Just Caught the Tide
The other week I glanced at a list I have and saw that unless I got two stories away I’d miss having them in their anthologies. So I saved the letter I was writing and moved on smartly to emailing the stories. One advantage of leaving things until the last moment is that you often get a really fast reply and I have. My story CURSED ARE THEY has been accepted by Strange Mysteries 4, (out early January) and VALENTINE’S DAY NIGHT will appear in Valentine, (out in early March.) So that’s a good start to the Christmas season.
Why do people keep telling me how convenient computers are?
I mean, in many ways they are, but they also seem to know more ways to drive you crazy than anything else. This afternoon I wanted to send an email to a friend. I hurled it into the aether, and it came back like a boomerang on speed. According to her ISP my ISP is all kinds of undesirable. Something that, as irritating as they can also be at times, I don’t believe. I tried again – then again – and it was bounced each time. Eventually I got on to her website and left a message – about that and the original query too. But despite her ISP’s claims, I doubt that mine indulges in spam, abuse, mopery and dopery in the spaceways or spitting on sidewalks. It’ll just be one of those weird electronic things that – every so often – leave me wishing that the days of my nice simple word processor would return.
Bull in a – paddock
9 November 2011
My neighbour has done me the favour of grazing about twenty of his cows/calves/bulls in my (largest and) overgrown paddock, with them arriving last night. I don’t have quite enough livestock to keep down the massive spring growth, don’t want to buy more for just that, and having all those tons of beef wandering by his cat park is certainly amusing Thunder who’s out there pop-eyed with interest. Me too. I went out this morning to check the water level in their trough, discovered it needed filling, and started the hose, only to find an inquisitive bovine leaning over my shoulder. I gave him a pat and a shove. “Go lean elsewhere, you hefalump.” He did, and as he wandered away, I realized I’d just been very casual with a large bull. As they say, God looks after fools, drunks, and little children – and writers it appears.