Helen Lowe

"I Tell Tales" Yep, I'm a novelist, poet, & lover of story. Author of the award-winning "Thornspell" (Knopf) & "The Wall Of Night" series (Voyager,US; Orbit,UK)

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

If not here, y'all can find me on my blog. That's "...on Anything, Really" for those who don't know😉

https://t.co/OqK7Es3pfO

Plus m'website: https://t.co/nABgUmxNRA

Just #books & #writing #fantasy -- specifically #TheWallOfNight series right now.🙃

[Rod Emmerson @rodemmerson]

Jools Topp - thank you for the laughs and the legacy. In today’s NZ Herald for today’s memorial service.

[KimFalconer @KimFalconer]

New on the @superntrlUnderg - the next post in #fictionpredictions! Robots becoming sentient; humans becoming synthetic. Can you see the irony? Author #tanithlee wrote about peptides long before they were made. https://t.co/NmmolJZlrM #fantasy #precognition #writingcommunity

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Yep, I do #heroines -- & #epicfantasy😎

[Superntrl Undrground @superntrlUnderg]

Yet another post of awesome at our place -- it's #Fantasy, it's #Heroines, & it's #magic in spades!

https://t.co/vA59ZEhTxx

It's also a Knight Radiant, a Herald, & a princess in exile --we love it!😎
#TheStormlightArchives #TheWallOfNight

[Superntrl Undrground @superntrlUnderg]

Future shock or our 21st century present? @KimFalconer checks in on Tanith Lee's "Silver Metal Lover."

With themes of AI & using drugs to enhance human form: https://t.co/EwqhCDOgAX

Oh yeah, it's also about #ethics -- & #SciFi & #Fantasy predicting our future.😎

[Writing & Editing @WrtrStat]

Today, I just want to thank all the writers and authors out there for continuing to write great books. We know it's a challenging time out there. - Wrtr #AmWriting ...Be Writing.

( Art/Comic By: @grantdraws.bsky.social ~ @grantdraws )
#Writing #Author #Writer

[Superntrl Undrground @superntrlUnderg]

Future shock or our 21st century present? @KimFalconer checks in on Tanith Lee's "Silver Metal Lover."

With themes of AI & using drugs to enhance human form:
https://t.co/EwqhCDOgAX

Oh yeah, it's also about #ethics -- & #SciFi & #Fantasy predicting our future.😎

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Today, I'm sharing a (somewhat wry) reflection on wrangling the #writinglife

https://t.co/W3zqo0jrhN

Content warning: ISPs & dragons may both feature
#books #readingcommunity

[Superntrl Undrground @superntrlUnderg]

Yet another post of awesome at our place -- it's #Fantasy, it's #Heroines, & it's #magic in spades!

https://t.co/vA59ZEhTxx

It's also a Knight Radiant, a Herald, & a princess in exile --we love it!😎
#TheStormlightArchives #TheWallOfNight

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

@PeterOrullian @BrandSanderson @SagaPressBooks @tbbpublishing Congrats on Launch Day!

[Peter Orullian @PeterOrullian]

LAUNCH DAY!
Songs of the Dead, my collaboration with @BrandSanderson , is OUT NOW! Check it out wherever you get your books! I’m so excited to share this journey with you all! Thank you to everyone who made this a reality! @SagaPressBooks @tbbpublishing

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

@Becs I like 'opalite' :)

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Great cover!

[Jay Kristoff News/Updates @misterkristoff]

PREPARE

[Sophia Proneikos @Pergament_F]

"A home library is a quiet gift to yourself."
Haruki Murakami

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Ha-ha🤣 I call that "Characters Behaving Badly" :D

[Sebastien de Castell @decastell]

One hazard of being an author? Characters ignore your plans! 🎭 In this chat, we explore storytelling, swashbuckling fantasy, and why the best tales start when everything goes wrong. Thanks, @TriciaC_Author!

Watch here: https://t.co/F1CSB0xM87

#BookTalk

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Love it: thanks for the humour.😃

[Tom Gauld @tomgauld]

My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon

[Chidiebere Ama @falyrionient]

link to the interview

https://t.co/NEfYPRyFQv

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Fun! I like. :D

[Sophia Proneikos @Pergament_F]

It is solemnly declared that Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire are seated in the Imaginary Café of Thought, where reality is merely a suggestion and the menu offers metaphysics with cream on the side.
"Monsieur Rousseau, would you not agree that today’s coffee is particularly vile?" begins Voltaire, blowing theatrically into his cup with the air of a man affronted by existence.

"The coffee is not to blame, mon ami. Society is," replies Rousseau, staring into the steam as though it were the mist of the Alps.

They sit on a terrace overlooking nothingness, discussing everything. The waiter is a former Stoic, now working for tips paid in doubts and existential guilt.

"You and your natural virtue…" sighs Voltaire. "If man is to return to his primitive state, how, for heaven’s sake, will he order a double espresso?"

Rousseau raises an eyebrow like someone who survived the Enlightenment but chose the woods over Paris.
"Espresso is a form of modern enslavement."
"And yet you drink it…"
"Yes, but I suffer consciously."

At this moment, Sartre joins the table. He orders nothing. His gaze passes through cups and croissants, straight into the void.

"God does not exist," he announces cheerfully, like one might say the sun is out or they’re out of croissants.

"But the croissant exists," Voltaire counters, ever the pragmatist.
"Which means the world is absurd," Rousseau adds, crumpling a napkin in silent protest against the cultural hegemony of sugar.

And then, like a chorus in a tragicomedy brewed with café noir, they all turn toward you - the reader, lurking behind the curtain of reality.

So? Will you choose a coffee with a splash of despair, or a croissant filled with freedom?

The waiter-poet leans in, half Seneca, half barista, and whispers:
"Hell, monsieur, is not other people. Hell is Sunday without coffee."
☕📖🪻
Good morning

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

No post at my place today because my website is down. Apparently, m'ISP is making 'improvements' & feels the website being down is acceptable collateral damage...🤔

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

@NFitzGeraldAuth Really moving, I thought.

[Helen Lowe @helenl0we]

Ursula Le Guin said that 'stories are everywhere' -- I love this one.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

People talk about John Lennon's absent father. Paul McCartney's lost mother. The wounds that shaped The Beatles are well documented.
But there is a quieter story — a story about a boy everyone had given up on, and the stepfather who refused to.
Richard Starkey grew up in the Dingle, one of Liverpool's roughest neighborhoods, in grinding poverty. His father left when he was three. By the time he was six he had nearly died from appendicitis and peritonitis. By eight he could barely read. At thirteen he was taken out of a sanatorium after two years of treatment for tuberculosis, having missed so much school that returning was pointless. He entered the workforce semi-literate, drifting between jobs he couldn't keep.
It was around this time that his mother Elsie married a painter and decorator from Essex named Harry Graves.
In a culture where stepfathers could be resentful or indifferent, Harry was something else entirely. He didn't push the fragile boy toward manual labor or shame him for the schooling he'd missed. He paid attention. He noticed that when Richard sat near a rhythm — any rhythm — something lit up in him. He had been banging on tins in the sanatorium. He was tapping on everything at home.
In December 1957, Harry Graves traveled to London, found a battered second-hand drum kit for £10, and carried it back to Liverpool by train — just to see the boy smile at Christmas.
It was a primitive thing. A snare drum, a bass drum, a cymbal made from an old bin lid. But it was enough.
Richard Starkey — who would soon rename himself Ringo Starr — began playing. First in skiffle groups. Then in rock and roll bands. Then, in August 1962, he sat down behind the drums for The Beatles and became one of the most distinctive rhythmic voices in the history of popular music.
Ringo called Harry his "step-ladder." Not stepfather. Step-ladder. Because Harry lifted him up.
Harry Graves died in August 1994. Ringo and Barbara Bach attended the funeral at Huyton Cemetery. By then, the battered £10 drum kit had long since been replaced by a lifetime of music — but the man who carried it on a train remained, to the end, one of the most important people in Ringo's life.
John Lennon wrote "Help" about feeling lost. Ringo Starr never needed to write that song.
He had Harry.