BEST WISHES FOR 2010

Or A Thought or Two for the New Year

After an eventful and really quite busy year, no newsletter for year’s end, just a thought or two.

THE WOOD OF LOST STORIES

ROB HOLDSTOCK, 1948 - 2009

Two weeks ago, Robert Holdstock died from an E. coli infection, in just over ten days. We were following his progress daily, when on the 27th, his condition, which had been improving or optimistically stable, suddenly worsened. He died at 4 a.m. on November 29th. He was 61 years old.

You can easily find all the details of Rob’s career and books on Wikipedia, so I won’t bore you with that here, and homages will abound, as they do, but I’d like to add a few thoughts.

A FEW LINES ON MAKING LINES

« Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. »
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Over the last few months, I have filled a coffee cup halfway to the brim with pencil stubs and it suddenly occured to me that while I happily take brand-new pencils and sharpen and otherwise sketch and draw them down to next to nothing, I knew nothing about the origins of such a wonderful and simple instrument and what one does with it.

HORSESHOES FOR SLEIPNIR

Or Extra Legs and Many Meanings

Have recently been doing quite a lot of reading on the solemn subject of death.

DRAWING THE LINE SOMEWHERE

Or Why a Drawing is Never Really Done

“We’re going to do a book,” my editor said. “Got anything planned for next week?”

LOSING WORLDS AND WRITING BOOKS

About Worlds, How They Become Lost and Occasionally Found

Quite a while ago, I agreed to illustrate a history book.

SOMETHING NEW

Or Where I Try out a Neologism

Had a long chat with my editor the other day, and we agreed to do something a little different.

OF SIRENS AND SEA NYMPHS

Or of Passions Perilous and the Mythopoeic Nature of Water

Every now and then, it is with gratitude and delight that I can announce a guest writer for this newsletter. (Not only does this spare me the temptation born of desperation of posting some dog’s breakfast riddled with spelling errors and ill-made phrases at the eleventh hour, but that writers and friends and colleagues who take their writing seriously be willing to share it here enchants me to no end.)

YÐ

Or of the Most Serious Business of Watching Moving Billows of Water,  Musings on the Weight of Words, a Paragraph or Two on Unsupported Transit, News Regarding Resin & Bronze and Even a Bit About a Book Trailer

I’m no man of the sea, rather (to steal a line from famous French maritime photographer Philippe Plisson) a man of the edge of the sea.

PAINTING OUT LOUD

Or a Certain Conflation of Sound and Vision

The other day I was busily painting away, with my iPod plugged into my ears, when I realized that something was wrong.

SNAKES AND TOWERS

Or an Oriental Tale of Mélusina

When I opened the curtains of the 25th-story hotel room in Hangzhou in the early morning and looked out, I really did wonder where I was.

THE VIEW FROM OUTER SPACE

Or A Walk Along a Wall

When I was a kid, I remember being told (and of course believing, since adults repeated it with great conviction) that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made structure that could be seen from space. Now, I was going to see it from rather closer up.

NIGHT FLIGHT TO CHINA

Followed by A Day Out in Beijing

When I finally made my way out Exit B at the Beijing Airport, I was hoping there would be somebody with my name on a sign.

OF HUMAN BONDING

Or Why Art is the Key to the Survival of Humankind

Every now and then, I have the honour (and the pleasure, as it offers me a fortnight’s reprieve) to have a guest writer for the space of a newsletter.

Amanda Hemingway is a fantasy writer who is also known as Jan Siegel, and a few other names besides.
In her own words:
“Looking for more information on fantasy novelist Jan Siegel? Want to know the low-down on the comic mind behind the novels of Jemma Harvey? Or whether or not Amanda Hemingway is any relation to Ernest? You’ve come to the right place, because these are all pen names of Amanda Hemingway (except Ernest). Amanda lives in a county town near the south coast of England, eats, sleeps, rides horses and writes novels.”

I discovered Amanda’s work a decade or so ago. Alan Lee had done the cover artwork for first of a trilogy called “Prospero’s Children” while he was living in New Zealand - working evenings and weekends, and when Tome II came along the following year, he didn’t feel he could manage it. So, the commissioning editor at HarperCollins called me up and asked if I could work in Alan’s inimitable style. It was the first time I’d been asked to do a fake Alan Lee, so of course I promptly turned it down. The editor came back, and I turned it down again (but a little less promptly this time). I accepted on the third try, and am very glad I did.
The borders and frames Alan did remain the same. (They took me ages to figure out and reproduce, since they had been tinkered about with to make them fit the spine width.) Armed with a layout from the editor, I filled in the blank bits, trying my best to do, if not a fake Lee, at least something in the same spirit.
My only regret: standing in front of the “Alan Lee Originals” drawer in HarperCollins’ London offices and upon being asked if I’d like to borrow Alan’s original for reference, I foolishly replying (stupid me!!!) “No, a colour photocopy would do just fine.” What WAS I thinking? it could be on my wall now…

Amanda has a new book coming out soon, so is immersed in rewrites, corrections and proofing, but somehow found the time and kindly dashed off a text. (In her own words: “Any excuse to pontificate.”)

JUST WHAT IS IT ABOUT DRAGONS?

Or A Few Existential Thoughts On Creatures That Don’t Exist (and Something About Vampires Too)

Last October, I was asked if I would write a foreword for a book on… dragons. Having just had Forging Dragons publish at about the same time, they were still very fresh in my mind. Small world. Full of dragons.

JUST WHAT IS IT ABOUT DRAGONS?

They seem to be everywhere, their ubiquity matched only by their variety. No other creature speads such colossal wings or drags its scaly belly across the mythical lands of so many cultures over the aeons. They span the spectrum from devilry to divinity, from blackest evil to boundless good. They come in all configurations, they speak, or they make our minds reel with the power of their thoughts, they squat athwart hoards of treasure untold. They are story. They are dragons.

But just what is it about dragons ?

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Welcome to the NEWS section. Newsletters appear, weather permitting, once a month. Subjects vary, but only according to whim and circumstance. CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters, OUT & ABOUT announces events and public appearances.

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