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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...

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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. Or rather, that something was not right. Or, more precisely, missing. I suddenly put my finger on it -...

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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. It’s not that the trip had been a long one, but tacking a three-hour flight at the end of a most...

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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...

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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. There is always something about getting on a plane to head off somewhere that fills me with a mix of mounting...

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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...

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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...

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Out, About & Down Under

BOOK SIGNING: SATURDAY MAY 16, 2009 I’ll be signing books at the Weta Cave in Miramar, Wellington, on May 16th, from 1 to 3 p.m. (Because I am a little lazy, I’ve just copied the text off the Weta site rather than write something of my own.) John Howe book signing at...

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The Galleon’s Wake

Or About Dreams, Chasing of. Back in the 70’s, I had a paperback book called “Into the Aether”, by Richard Lupoff. The full title was actually “Into the Aether: Being the Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and his Incredible Aether Flyer on the Moon”. Richard A....

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A Picture’s Worth of Words

Or A Most Unusual Odyssey “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Where does that saying come from anyway? Not from Confucius, but more likely from a clever American copywriter from the early 1900’s. The earliest available candidate is from the text of an instructional...

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Signing Out

Upcoming Signature Sessions With the French edition of Forging Dragons soon out, we will be organizing a few signing sessions with the Payot bookshops here in Switzerland. Tuesday April 7th: From 16h30 to 18h30 Payot la Chaux-de-Fonds 25, Av. Léopold-Robert, 2300 la...

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A Side Trip to Albaida

Or Briefly Stepping Through the Door to Silence The steps of most pilgrims are directed to holy places - physical journey coupled with metaphysical journey - or to places linked in some way to family -  following old routes and digging up old roots. Our steps tend to...

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