CHRONICLES archives the successive newsletters.
Well, it's out! DRACONIS, from Templar Publishing, has arrived. I spent a busy few hours signing several boxes of them (thanks to the very kind person who did the unwrapping and re-wrapping, otherwise I'd still be at it) and they are all ready to go. The Weta Cave has...
DRAGONS, DRAGONSÂ EVERYWHERE There are times when you blithely take on a job thinking that it's just a matter of doing it, forgetting that with the day job, any extra work is, well, really a whole lot more than you planned. However, when it's done, and when the 5 or 6...
Ohakune, 6 a.m., all energies bent on filling up gas tanks (unleaded) and stomachs (flat white and long black). As always, I find myself entranced by the seamy neon underside of the wee hours of civilization: fitful tube lights, amateur signage (Eat. Food. All Day.)...
The nature of light and the light of nature. More than just a not-terribly ambitious play on words, it's become a bit of a philosophy of late. Or rather, a bit of a philosophy of not being late. You have to get out early to get the best light. It all comes down to an...
December 2012. Back from a quick trip to London, and quite by chance, I opened a book. It's not a book I open often, and when I do, it's usually somewhere in the middle. (It’s a precious book, and the binding needs careful hands.) This time, the book opened to the...
Dear X, I am sorry to have been so much out of touch these last few years; working in a fantasy universe in a country which is already quite fantastical to many people, perched as it is on the lower rim of the Antipodes, it is hard to keep up with life as I used to...
Well, I'm back. I confess that everything caught up with me, and what I had planned as a short break from newsletters turned into a rather longer one. Work continues unabated, and given that I have been doing a little moonlighting as well, finding enough hours in the...
There is something about stories... their eternal appeal, their ability to transport, to enlighten, to convey conviction and pose questions. Myth is story in one of its purest forms. About myth so much has been said it would take years to read it all, and there is so...
Thanks to all the fans who lined the red carpet, many of them there since the early morning just to get a spot. Their...
Or Perspective is Really All About Where You Stand The timeless tale of Don Quixote is a voyage within a voyage. Like all journeys, the spiritual and physical are interwoven, entwined, inextricable. Misadventures, detours, predicaments; all with such a noble heart...
It’s always an agreeable thought to have a newsletter done well in advance, even if the text that follows was written for something else entirely. There’s a lot more to The Hobbit than meets the eye, and it is impossible to remain several years in the company of...
A few months ago, I began an ambitious newsletter about landscape. Landscape and story, or perhaps memory, or even myth, since the three are branches of the same tree. Naturally, I didn’t get as far as I wished, in fact, not very far at all. As usual, ambition is all...