Author Archives: Barbara Howe

The Goblin Emperor

Posted on 28 March 2020 by Barbara Howe

With New Zealand in lockdown while the pandemic rages and our Prime Minister reminding us to be kind to one another, it seems appropriate to turn to hopepunk. What is hopepunk? I’m quoting here from a longer post by Alexandra … Continue reading →

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The Night Circus

Posted on 13 March 2020 by Barbara Howe

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards… It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. London, October 1873. The flamboyant illusionist Prospero the Enchanter proposes a contest to his … Continue reading →

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The Murderbot Diaries

Posted on 28 February 2020 by Barbara Howe

If I were to make a movie of All Systems Red by Martha Wells, I would open with this voiceover: I murdered 57 humans. And then I went rogue. Murderbot, as the part-organic android security unit (SecUnit) privately calls itself, … Continue reading →

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2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Posted on 21 February 2020 by Barbara Howe

Are you aware of the Sir Julius Vogel awards? Sir Julius Vogel was a prominent early immigrant to New Zealand. Besides being New Zealand’s Premier in the 1870s, he wrote New Zealand’s first science fiction novel, published in 1889. The … Continue reading →

Posted in New Zealand | 2 Comments

From a Shadow Grave

Posted on 14 February 2020 by Barbara Howe

Seventeen-year-old Phyllis Symons was murdered in 1931, struck on the head and then buried alive in fill from the excavation of Wellington’s Mount Victoria tunnel*. That historical fact is the springboard for From a Shadow Grave, by New Zealand author … Continue reading →

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Snow Falling on Cedars

Posted on 1 February 2020 by Barbara Howe

The time: December 1954. The place: a courtroom in a small town on an island in Puget Sound. Kabuo Miaymoto, the American-born son of Japanese immigrants, is on trial for the murder of Carl Heine, an American of European descent. … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteries | Leave a comment

Rose in Bloom

Posted on 17 January 2020 by Barbara Howe

The flurry of news articles about the latest movie adaptation of Luisa May Alcott’s Little Women prompted me to pull one of her less well-known novels off my bookshelf. I’ve read Little Women and its sequels, Little Men and Jo’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Chick Lit, Children's Fiction | 2 Comments

The End of a Long Journey is in Sight

Posted on 5 January 2020 by Barbara Howe

The end of my nearly ten-year trek through Frankland—the setting of the Reforging series—is finally in sight. I wrote the first scene in the first book, The Locksmith, in October 2010. The first scenes of the fifth and final book … Continue reading →

Posted in A Writer's Life | 2 Comments

2019 Recap

Posted on 20 December 2019 by Barbara Howe

The Icelandic custom of exchanging books on Christmas Eve, and spending the rest of the evening reading and eating chocolate, sounds to me like a great tradition. My family knows they’ll be getting books from me—I generally do at least … Continue reading →

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Cloud Atlas

Posted on 8 December 2019 by Barbara Howe

The most notable feature of David Mitchell’s award-winning—and challenging—novel Cloud Atlas is the book’s structure. Made up of six loosely-connected novellas, each in a radically different style and time period, this novel nests the six stories like Russian dolls. The … Continue reading →

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