Happy New Year, Supernatural Undergrounders

Pohutakawa, the NZ 'Christmas tree'

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A major trope of epic fantasy (which is what I'm currently writing with the Wall of Night series) is the "road trip": aka "a farm boy (or gal) goes on a journey" during the course of which they will likely encounter lovable animal (or robot, or supernatural) companions and acquire sidekicks (the "band of brothers" -- or sisters!)

The road trip is also a major feature of the Christmas - New Year period in real life -- and part of the Fantastic Road Trip is that one should visit previously unknown terrain and climes.

So I thought I'd marry the real and the fantastic traditions for you today with some a few photos from my Christmas-New Year road trip -- which I suspect will be new terrain for many, even those who have seen the Lord of the Rings films.

The clime is certainly different, since Christmas / New Year falls in summer here, although if the terrain is sufficiently elevated, snow may still be seen.

Now for those pictures:

The magical Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park

The awesome power of the Huka Falls, near Lake Taupo:

A vista toward Lake Taupo, the source of the Huka Falls:

Not my car, alas!

Here be snow, still: Mt Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park:

I think if there is one message I take from these photos it's that nature generally and national parks in particular rock -- something to be both celebrated and cherished in 2017 and beyond.

---

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) was published this year.
Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we

Happy Holiday Season

Christmas Night by Juli Snowwhite

From All of us at Supernatrual Underground, wishing you a wonderful Holiday Season.

The Bells

Hear the sledges with the bells--- Silver Bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle,tinkle,tinkle, In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells, bells,---
From the jingling and tinkling of the bells.

- Edgar Allan Poe -

Have a wonderful weekend!
xxx

Writer's Agony and Ecstasy

Hi Everyone!

I shared a version of this earlier on AvaSykes.com and wanted to bring it here too.

The good news is, I've finished another novel!

The other news is, finishing it dropped me into a well of grief.

It's happened so regularly, this emotional plummet after achievement, a kind of post-completion depression, I decided to do a little research.

Turns out, it's a thing.

The ecstasy

It started out on Cloud 9. The first draft of a new work, a YA Paranormal, was complete, working title: The Cloud Forest. Here's the guff.

Fifteen-year-old Bri Arias survives a car accident but isn’t regaining consciousness. While her body lays comatose, her spirit roams the shaded world between waking and dreaming, life and death. In a parallel version, one where the accident never happened, Bri has the worst summer possible. Her archaeologist mother recruits Bri, and her year 10 Earth Science class, for a dig in the Andes Mountains. Touched by a shamanic spell, Bri becomes a ‘carrier’, a host to souls in transition, and most of them are not human. In one world, Bri is hospitalized and treated for schizophrenia; in another, she discovers a threat to the fabric of life-after-death. The only question is, can she wake up in time to save them both.

Christian Schloe

Then came the agony

They say the Hero's Journey is a metaphor for life. The stages, twelve or so  depending on who you read, correspond to the psychological steps taken every time we step out the door, start a project, job, relationship, degree, oil change, you name it. The process looks awesome on paper. A guide.

Encouragement.

Full Circle.

But it's not always that neat, especially at the end if the circle breaks and you spiral into the depths the 13th lost underworld.

Here's how it's supposed to go:

Step 12 - Return With The Elixir

"This is the final stage of the Hero's journey in which [the hero] returns home to the Ordinary World .... [They] will have grown as a person, learned many things, faced many terrible dangers and even death but now look forward to the start of a new life. - Dan Bronzite

Yeah, sure. Good, on paper.

But no.

Before any looking forward to new wonders of life, there is the part where you hit the pavement, face first.

The agony after the ecstasy of creative accomplishment.

You write the book, paint the picture, score the film, edit the video, choreograph the dance ... It took you a week, or a month, or two years. You give it your last tweak, mission accomplished and on comes the fanfare! Triumphant Muses! 

Ticker-tape parade!

So good on paper.

And maybe it happens like that, for some, but for me it's grief, utter and complete.

Back in the "real world," elixir in hand, and I want to curl up in some dark hollow and die.

Not so uncommon to feel that way

Sure enough, it happens to other writers.

The strangest thing about finishing a book is the incredible sense of loss -- and yes, a bit of depression - when it's over. - Jungle Red Writers on Post Book Depression

Evolutionary advantages

The Cloud Forest

Apparently there's an evolutionary advantage to depression, and a plethora of scientific studies on the relationship between it and creative expression.

 ... the creative person, who spends his or her time ruminating on thoughts is likely to suffer from major depression. From an evolutionary standpoint, depression, while seemingly a hindrance to a healthy and happy life, is really a balancing act that helps us focus on the areas where we need to improve most. - Creative Something

If you look deeper at the hero's journey, it is actually there, in the "refusal to return."

Step 12b Refusal to Return

The full round, the norm of the mono-myth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds. But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even Gautama Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have died while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the un-aging Goddess of Immortal Being. -The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

For me, it's not so much a fall into darkness but divine homesickness, leaving the table of the gods behind. Leaving the world behind. It lasts a day or two, then slowly wears off, like a bad dream fading away.

Only then can I begin to think of the next step, the next work, and the process begins all over again.

How about you?

Has anyone else felt this way after a creative project is completed? A goal reached? I'd love to hear about it.

***

Kim Falconer's latest release is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel. Find this novel in a store near you.

You can also learn more about Kim at AvaSykes.com, the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter and the new GoodVibeAstrology.com.

She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook. Check out her daily Astro-LOA Flash horoscopes on Facebook. 

Tis The Season -- 5 Highlights Of My 2016

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Yep, that's right! It's December (how did that happen already?!), which not only means that cash registers are jingling and the goose (or turkey, but I was being really traditional) is getting fat: it's also the Season of Lists.

Published 2016!

So getting in the spirit, I thought I'd share 5 of my highlights from 2016 (to date, since there's still a few weeks of 2016 left):

January 26: Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three, is published -- after a 4 year "slog to the finish" for me, and wait-of-saints from loyal readers. And to date the feedback has been positive, with Romantic Times calling Daughter: "a heady imaginative tale full of Lowe's haunting prose and bold characters, that builds to a startling climax that will leave readers anxious for more."

FB Group Haarth

May: The Wall Of Night series' got its own FaceBook group, fittingly titled Haarth -- it was set up by avid readers so they could discuss the story, the characters and the world. All good fun! It led to even more fun, too, with a Q&A on Twitter at #TheWallOfNight I really enjoyed interacting with The Wall Of Night readers in realtime.
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L-R: Helen; Courtney Schafer

June 5-8: Sydney -- this visit was primarily to meet up with friend and fellow SFF author, Courtney Schafer, but I also got to meet the crew at both Hachette, my Australian publisher, and Galaxy, the specialist SFF bookstore, as well as other great Aussie SFF folk.
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Also published 2016...

July 6: A Twitter Q&A with Kim Falconer -- I had a great time doing this Q&A with Kim on #thebloodinthebeginning to support the release of her paranormal, post-apocalyptic fantasy, The Blood In The Beginning which stars feisty heroine, Ava Sykes. In fact it may even have been the year of the Twitter Q&A!

September 17-18: Masterclass on "Building Fantastic Worlds" -- I got to deliver this masterclass as part of the inaugural National Writers' Forum and it
was a blast. Great to talk about something I loved with a great group of people. Even better, they seemed to enjoy it, too, with one participant providing the following feedback: 

Building Fantastic Worlds

 "My highlights were Helen Lowe’s session on Building Fantastic Worlds (utterly worth getting myself out of bed on a Sunday morning)..." (The Big Idea.)

So there you are, just a few of the highlights from my year. I'd love for you to share one or more of yours in the comments -- because it is the season. :)

---

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) was published this year.
Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we

The Guff on Supermoons

Her Only Friend the Moon by Alexander Jansson

Hi Everyone, The 'supermoon' has been getting a lot of attention this week, and since the influence of the Full Moon in Taurus is still HOT, I thought I would share a post from my AvaSykes.com site - Thoughts on Supermoons.

'Suppermoons" ... here's the guff.

Hang on. I should say, here's my guff. I don't expect everyone to agree.

There are people who swear by 'supermoons', saying the moon is larger at these times, and yeah, it looks larger, by about 14%. But heads up. It hasn't really changed size.

The appearance changes because the moon has cycles of perigee -- when it's closer to earth. (if you can call 357,000 km close).  The perigee happens 2-3 times every 14 months.

Loui Jover

Social Media gets all excited about it, claiming there is stronger astro effect raining moonbeams down on our heads. Like, get out the garlic and the holy water or something.

Me? I don’t give ‘supermoons’ a thought, basically because it's the New or Full Moon that matters astrologically (the lunations as we call them), not the proximity of the moon to earth via the ecliptic. 

I guess you could argue that because it looks bigger, it does more, but then there’s Pluto, you know? 4.28 billion km from New LA.  Not super close … but super powerful. A Pluto transit trumps a lunar one, super or otherwise, by about a million.

What a 'Supermoon' does is generate hype that doesn’t amount to any actual astrology IMHO - but that could be my North Node in Capricorn talking.

Still, it’s not grounded in ancient astrology, or astronomy, the wisdom passed down for thousands of years. It's a 'pre-new age term that popped up in the late 1970s, an easier handle for the scientific 'perigee-syzygy' (try saying that three times in a row).

It's more meaningful to look at what degree the new or full moon is in, and the sign. ie where's this mojo landing in your chart? 

The most recent SM was on the 14th of November, at 22 Taurus and will have it's 'sway' until the New Moon in Sagittarius at the end of the month. 

Thoughts? I'd love to hear your take. 

Kim Falconer's latest release is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel. Find this novel in a store near you.

You can also learn more about Kim at AvaSykes.com, the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.  

She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook. Check out her daily Astro-LOA Flash horoscopes on Facebook. 

This is the show that never ends, yes it goes on and on

Year of the Like: Supernatural Season 12

I had the honor of hearing Billie Piper (of Doctor Who and Penny Dreadful fame) speak about the end of Penny Dreadful, which ended rather abruptly after its third season. She said that she would rather have a show end and the character's live on in fans' heads than to have their stories drag out until they were unrecognizable from the characters they started out as.

The notion really stuck with me, as both a writer and a lover of TV. We all know book series and TV shows that should have ended ages ago, but publishers and producers just kept coming back for more. The drama gets more and more ridiculous because they are just at a loss as to what to do with these characters who they forced to change over the course of the show/series.

Even I have been asked when there are more Diaries books coming out and I have to answer, I'm not sure there will ever be. Are there more Wanderer books? YES (more to come on that). But I'm not sure I have much more to explore with Violet.

The one show that has literally stood the test of time is SUPERNATURAL. Going into its 12th season, the two main characters, Dean and Sam Winchester, are still fundamentally the same characters that they were in the first season. Dean hides behind sarcasm and really loves of his car. Sam is smart and really, really tall. They still make the right choice and they will always save their brother's life over their own.

Did it have some rough patches in the writing and story lines: Yes.

Have the characters both sacrifice themselves for each other multiple times: Yes

Have they learned that they really shouldn't lie to the other: Finally.

Has the show taken over most social media due to its catchy phrases and completely insane range of topics covered: OMG Yes.

Does it hurt that the two main characters are portrayed by the hottest boys from Texas ever: Not at all.

And yet, I still watch. I am still engaged with their fighting the forces of darkness that has escalated from a demon to the Devil, and their allies have included an angel and God himself. They have faced down banshees and leprechauns and Norse gods. They've seemingly done it all, and yet I still watch because their world is my world and there is still so much out there.

Perhaps it is their never-changing natures. The heroes are completely steadfast in their ways. Even through multiple apocalypses, deaths, resurrection, and possessions, the stories have just carved out a more defined version of the characters that we saw in episode one. They grew up, but they didn't become different people. Maybe I grew up with them. Maybe this show is part of me because I want to know that the world throws demons as you every day and with a partner and some rock salt, you can pretty much take on anything.

Perhaps it is the familiarity that keeps me coming back. Perhaps it is a formula. Perhaps it digs in deep to my monomythic brain and strokes that story structure week after week in a wonderfully predictable and yet satisfying ways.

 Or its just that Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki just keep getting better with age.  Seriously. Its supernatural.

Some season I imagine the show will end. But this is not that season. Some episode will be their last and it better have them riding out in a blaze of glory.

But until then, Thank You SUPERNATURAL for always being my go-to, familiar scare of the week so I can go out and fight the real bad guys that are out there.

Thank you for providing me with twelve years of monster stories that let me know I'm not the only person out there who likes things that go bump in the night.

Thank you for giving Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki steady face time on TV because they really are pretty and can actually act the hell out of a bro-ment.

*************************
Amanda Arista

Author
www.amandaarista.com

Portent and Fate: The Mythic Aspect of Dream in Fantasy

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Dream magic plays a relatively significant part in both Thornspell and The Wall Of Night series and one of its more important aspects is that of portent, with fulfillment locked into whether—or how—the foretold doom or destiny will play out.

This aspect of dream and fulfillment is an essential element of both the Greek and Norse myths, as well as folklore. We all recognize, after all, that if our hero or heroine is told something three times, especially by an oracle of some kind, then the foretelling is likely to prove true …

(This is not just in Fantasy, by the way. In the now-classic SFF television series, Babylon 5, I believe careful perusal will show that the captain, John Sheridan, is warned three times that, “If you go to Z’ha’dum, you will die.” Just sayin’)

Yet any exploration of dreams and their “fated” fulfillment in Fantasy also gives rise to the alternative consideration: the extent to which characters have free will. Can they, like Will Thatcher (the mourned Heath Ledger) in the film, A Knight’s Tale, change their stars?

The Greek and Norse myths would answer that question with a resounding “no”—in fact it is usually the protagonist’s endeavours to avoid his or her prophesied fate that brings about the doom.

In The Wall of Night series I keep the fate vs free will aspect open by having the prophetic dreams occur very much in the “jumbled workings” of the subconscious. There is truth in them, but they may only imperfectly reflect events that occur in the daylight world. Nothing is certain … and every action a protagonist takes acts on the dream, creating alternative possibilities of fulfillment.

In exploring the prophetic dream tradition, both through reading other writers and in my own work, I suspect that we are also talking about aspiration—the innate human desire to affect our fate and exert control over destiny. The myths, of course, would say that any such aspiration is doomed, its fulfillment stillborn before it has taken the first breath of life.

But what do you think? Do you have a view on the use of dreams and portents in contemporary Fantasy, or a favorite book or series you feel uses them well?

---

Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) was published this year.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we