A Great Review for Emergency Weather + Two Books I Really Enjoyed Reading

A good review is always nice to get, and especially when it’s unexpected. That’s why I was so pleased to see this review of Emergency Weather by Alyson Baker, and especially to see the praise she had for the plotting:

The plotting of Emergency Weather is brilliant. Allie’s harrowing attempt to reach Dunedin Airport, and Stephanie and Miranda’s nightmare tramping trip prepare the reader for what lies ahead. The three main characters weave around each other in passing before eventually ending up in the same place – a memorial service held after a climate catastrophe. The death toll is 43: “a good number for action: large enough to be shocking, small enough that the people killed could be distinguished in the public mind, could be seen as individuals rather than statistics.”

That is what Emergency Weather is about: how can people be motivated to act?

Want to buy a copy of Emergency Weather? Try your local independent bookstore or order direct from The Cuba Press!

PS: If your local library doesn’t stock it, please recommend it to them!



Two Books I Really Enjoyed

Light Keeping by Adrienne Jansen

Light Keeping is an understated novel of quiet power. Set against the ruthless cost-cutting that led to the replacement of lighthouse keepers with automation, it follows a family of lighthouse keepers as they navigate both personal tragedy and institutional indifference, with the latest generation trying to escape the long shadow of the past.

Adrienne Jansen does a great job of intertwining the personal upheavals of her protagonists’ lives with the vagaries of coastline, sea and weather. The boundary between land and sea on which the lonely lighthouse stands is blurred by both disaster and hope, as Jess and Robert struggle to keep the light in view.

Remains To Be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa, edited by Lee Murray

Remains To be Told is a very strong anthology of dark fantasy stories and poems from Aotearoa – and I’m not just saying that because one of my poems is including in this anthology! Editor Lee Murray has pulled together a group of authors known for their horror and dark fantasy work, including Neil Gaiman, and others better known for work outside the field, most notably Owen Marshall.

Many of the stories focus to be found in rural Aotearoa – this anthology shows that “New Zealand Gothic” is alive and well, yet it also has a strong and welcome focus on indigenous stories and indigenous mythology. If you want to experience what lies under the surface of the tourist promotional photos and Instagram influencers’ images of unspoiled nature and carefully curated tourism images, this is the anthology for you.

Fabricating Fiction, Climate Crime, and a Guiding Star

First blog of the year … yes, I know it’s a bit late, but I have news of upcoming events for my new novel Emergency Weather plus awards news!

Fabricating Fiction: Wellington novelists on the fiction they create from the facts

Tīhema Baker (Turncoat), Tim Jones (Emergency Weather), Jennifer Lane (Miracle) and Kate Mahony (Secrets of the Land) will talk with publisher and novelist Mary McCallum about the politics, events and life experiences that inform their novels and how they shaped them into compelling narratives. Novelists bring your questions!

Friday 19 April 5.30-7pm
Undercurrent, 118 Tory Street
Drinks and nibbles

Climate Crime at #MysteryInTheLibrary

The Ngaio Marsh Awards, in association with Hutt City Libraries, invites booklovers to a thrilling event featuring four Kiwi novelists.

Past finalist Helen Vivienne Fletcher is joined by award-winning poet and climate change author Tim Jones, and debut novelists Kate Mahony and Carolyn Swindell for a criminally good conversation about creating memorable characters, the importance of setting, and exploring real-life issues through fictional tales.

WHEN: Wednesday 1 May 2024
WHERE: War Memorial Library, 2 Queens Drive, Lower Hutt
WHEN: 6.15 for a 6.30pm panel discussion

“Guiding Star” shortlisted for an Australasian poetry award

My poem “Guiding Star”, which was published in the excellent anthology Remains To Be Told: Dark Tales from Aotearoa, edited by Lee Murray, has been shortlisted in the Poetry category for the Australasian Shadows Award – all the details are at https://australasianhorror.com/australian-shadows-awards/. Congratulations to all the nominees!

“Guiding Star” is having a good start to 2024, as it’s also been nominated for the 2024 Rhysling Awards: http://www.sfpoetry.com/ra/rhyscand.html

Emergency Weather: A Storm Warning

Tuesday 12 December 2023 dawned a fine summer’s day in Wellington. But in mid-afternoon, the weather changed. A southerly front raced up the country, bringing very strong winds, heavy rain and hail to Wellington and the Hutt. 

I was sitting at my desk, and I felt and saw the change: the temperature dropped abruptly, and sunshine was abruptly replaced by cascading rain. It was all over within 90 minutes, and despite over 20 mm of rain falling at our place within a few minutes, we got off fairly lightly.

But friends I’ve talked to since weren’t so lucky. One was inside a mall that rapidly flooded; another had part of their roof torn off their house – one of a number of buildings in the Hutt that suffered serious damage.

Author Andy Southall captures it well in his Goodreads review of my novel Emergency Weather:

“A day after finishing this book, a sudden and savage storm struck Wellington. At 2.50pm the sun was shining on what seemed to be a pleasant summer day. Ten minutes later the sky turned black, violent winds blew out windows, hail was smashing into the deck and sheets of water poured from the gutters. And that was in a less extreme part of the storm’s path. Elsewhere it was much, much worse.”

and this Radio New Zealand report gives the bigger picture.

My novel Emergency Weather begins and ends with storms – the first causes death and damage from north to south, while the second and stronger storm zeroes in on Wellington. Wellington has always been prone to storms, but climate change is loading the dice, making it more likely that when storms come, they will be damaging and destructive.

Emergency Weather cover at Petone beach

My novel is set against the context of a government in which (some) Ministers are at least trying to do the right thing. But the recent election, which Labour lost by a combination of its own timidity and many voters’ desire for something different, has brought to power a government including climate deniers, environmental vandals, and worshippers at the altar of the car. If climate change is on their agenda at all, it’s well below culture wars.

But physical reality doesn’t care about ideology. So long as we keep loading the climate dice by burning fossil fuels and forcing cows to produce milk, piss nitrates and burp methane, the storms and the fires and the flooding will get worse. If we stop, the climate will have a chance to recover. No amount of denialism changes that.

(Excuse me, Tim! It’s just before Christmas and you’re supposed to be encouraging people to buy your book!)

Err … buy my book if you’re looking for a good summer read – it’s not all, or even mostly, doom and gloom! – and have a great holiday! Here’s to lots of good reading, and good organising for change, in 2024.

Emergency Weather: Successfully Launched, Well Reviewed, and More to Come!

Successfully Launched

Mandy Hager launches Emergency Weather
Mandy Hager launches Emergency Weather. Photo: Stephen Olsen

I was nervous heading into the launch of Emergency Weather. Unity is a great place for a launch, but it looks very empty if no-one comes – and there were other launches, as well as election meetings, on in downtown Wellington at the same time.

I needn’t have worried! Around 100 lovely people came to the launch, we sold plenty of books and I had a great time. It was good to see old friends, new friends, and people I’d never seen before!

Kate from Unity Books introduced the launch, then we heard from Paul from The Cuba Press and Cadence from the Whitireia Publishing programme before the book was launched by author Mandy Hager, whose speech really moved me. Then it was time for me to speak, read the very beginning of the novel, and sign lots of copies! If you missed the launch, the YouTube video is available or you can read Stephen Olsen’s report: https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=155655 (he also took the photo above).

If you didn’t make the launch but would like to get on trend and buy a copy of Emergency Weather, it’s available:

* At Unity Books and Good Books in Wellington, and other independent bookshops nationwide, including UBS in Dunedin – if it’s not available from your nearest independent bookshop or Paper Plus, please ask them to order it in.

* Directly from The Cuba Press: https://thecubapress.nz/shop/emergency-weather/

* From Wheelers: https://www.wheelers.co.nz/books/9781988595726-emergency-weather/

* Through the new NZ BookHub site, launched three days after my book!

Tim Jones signs a copy of Emergency Weather
Tim Jones signs a copy of Emergency Weather (photo: Kate, Unity Books)

Well Reviewed

It’s also been good – and again, a testament to the hard work of The Cuba Press and Whitireia Publishing – to see reviews of Emergency Weather appearing. Online reviews:

Radio New Zealand: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018910488/book-critic-catherine-roberston

Kete: https://www.ketebooks.co.nz/all-book-reviews/emergency-weather-jones

Aotearoa Review of Books: https://www.nzreviewofbooks.com/emergency-weather-by-tim-jones/

You can help a lot by adding the book to your Goodreads library and rating or reviewing it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198972056-emergency-weather

More to Come

It’s not quite the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, but here are some upcoming Wellington events I’m involved in that you’re warmly invited to attend:

Unity Books Panel, Wednesday 18 October, 12.30-1.30pm: “Talking Up a Storm: The Making of Emergency Weather”: https://www.facebook.com/events/288705720676072/ (Facebook event link). Find out how a novel is written, edited, published and marketed.

Verb Wellington event, 11 November, 3-5pm – this one is for Remains to be Told, but I might weave in a mention or two of Emergency Weather as well.

Emergency Weather update and all about anthologies! 

Emergency Weather Update

My new climate fiction novel Emergency Weather is being launched this Wednesday, 4 October! I’d love to see you at the launch – 6pm at Unity Books Wellington: https://www.facebook.com/events/667791528368999

Emergency Weather is already appearing in bookshops. In Wellington, it’s been spotted in Unity (see below) and Good Books. If your local bookshop doesn’t have it, please ask them to order it in. In case they need it, the ISBN is 978-1-98-859572-6.

The book’s also available online from The Cuba Press shop: https://thecubapress.nz/shop/emergency-weather/

Neil Johnstone of Wellington City Libraries interviewed me about EW – see the interview:

and read the blog: https://www.wcl.govt.nz/blog/index.php/2023/09/29/interview-emergency-weather-author-tim-jones/

The Herald’s Canvas magazine published my article about climate fiction and climate reality – it’s firewalled, but also available in the print edition. More coverage to come!

If you read Emergency Weather and like it, please leave a review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198972056-emergency-weather

All About Anthologies

Not really all about anthologies, but about two of them:

The Penguin New Zealand Anthology: 50 stories for 50 years in Aotearoa

I’m very pleased that Penguin Books selected my story “The New Neighbours” from my second short story collection, Transported, to represent 2008 in this anthology, which is on sale from 3 October.

Remains To Be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa

This anthology of dark NZ fiction and poetry includes my poem “Guiding Star”. Its New Zealand launch is at Wellington’s Verb Festival on 11 November and I’m looking forward to taking part, with many of the other Wellington-region authors represented. Come along if you can!

Invitation to the launch of my new novel Emergency Weather

You are officially invited to the launch of my new climate fiction novel Emergency Weather – and here’s a look at the cover!

Emergency Weather launch invitation and cover image

The launch will take place on Wednesday 4 October at Unity Books Wellington, 57 Willis St, from 6pm – please encourage your friends to come along too!

Here is the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/667791528368999

Please sign up for this if you use Facebook, as it helps us know numbers attending.

Emergency Weather will be available from all good bookshops from 2 October – and also through https://thecubapress.nz/shop/