Happy New Year – & Looking Forward To A Heroic 2022!

.
Happy New Year!

So great to be checking in with you on the very first day of 2022—I'm hoping for a great year!

New horizons for 2022

Here on Supernatural Underground (SU) that means more books, more writing and blogging, and—I hope!—more good times together. :-)

Over the past few years, inspired by my friend and fellow SU author Amanda Arista, I've been selecting a blogging theme for each year. So 2019 was the Year of Romance in Fantasy and in 2020 I checked in on Fantasy Worldbuilding.

Romance in Fantasy :-)

This past year my theme was Magic Systems in Fantasy. And yep, you're absolutely right: "fantasy"—from magic realism through paranormal urban, fairytale retellings, and swords-and-sorcery, all the way to epic high fantasy—is the unifying thread between each year.

The title will already have given you a hint, but this year my theme is Heroes, chiefly as they appear in fantasy books, although sometimes I may not be able to resist their small and large-screen spinoffs, or contemporary fantasy's antecedents in myth and legend, folklore and fairytale...

Heroes: Black Panther

One of the reasons for choosing this theme is because the fantasy series I'm currently writing, The Wall Of Night, is also known as "heroic fantasy", as well as "epic" and/or "high" fantasy. So the whole question of what makes a hero is very much in my wheelhouse—and of course I'm always on the lookout for heroes that spin my reading and genre-loving wheels.

Heroes: Warrior Nun

As always in these themed series, the examples used will very much be my personal favorites or those that have particularly captured my interest. I won't be attempting any exhaustive review of the genre. That would be a truly herculean task and a tad beyond my SU blogging powers. ;-)

 

Heroes: Mulan

Just in case you're wondering, too, I aim to use "heroes" in a non-gender specific way, i.e. the focus is on characters I believe rock the concept, irrespective of whether they're male, female, nonbinary, and/or nonhuman.

Heroes: Non Human

So roll on February 1, when in the spirit of the great David Bowie song we shall be heroes together, if just for that one day—and every first of the month thereafter! ;-)

In the meantime, have a great new year celebration and an even better January, and do keep taking care amid these Covid times.

~*~

About The Author:

Helen Lowe is an award-winning novelist, poet, and lover of story. With four books published to date, she is currently completing the final instalment in The Wall Of Night series.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.