the Newis Glad:

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of vampirism, among other things.

Certainly there is no future for the genre except as a metaphor within some other work. By now the whole complex of ideas has passed so into the general culture that it is conceivable in art only as lyric imagery or as affectionate reminiscence. In fact, the vampire tradition has hardly been used in lyric verse—I can only remember one poem in Fantasy and Science Fiction. I always thought Italian directors would do very well with vampires as cultural symbols for the rotten rich—many of the traditions about the vampire are close to the atmosphere of films like La Notte or La Dolce Vita.

Summer is icumen in.

Well, sort of: even as the season out there wanes, and pumpkin spices ever so slightly begin to waft, we’re on the verge of launching the third season of the epic: Summer. —The first draft of no. 46 should be done this month, which means revisions and finalizations of no. 45 might begin this month, as well; I am confident if not certain that it will be released in October: the first novelette in vol. 5, The Greene Chapel; the beginning of, well, Summer.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of forebears.

In the September 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, there is a review column written by the science fiction author, editor, and critic Algirdas Jonas “Algis” Budrys. Budrys offers a brief summary of the “tried and true elements” of urban fantasy:

the desuetudinous old rooming house and its counterculturish residents, the bit of old wilderness rising atop its mysterious hill in the midst of the city, and the strangely haunted, bookish protagonist who gradually realizes the horrible history of the place where he lives.

the most Recent installment:

falling– if Even this

falling slumping shoulder fetching up she jolts awake, she blinks. Out there lights flash, red and red over a line of parked cars, a pickup truck, a minivan luridly purple in that light. She sits up, and a rough grey blanket slips away. There in her lap her hand, bare, and in her hand a hand, Ysabel’s hand, Ysabel wrapped in a rough grey blanket and Jo’s black hooded jacket. “Hey,” says Jo, softly.

Stirring Ysabel smiles before she opens her eyes. Squeezes Jo’s squeezing hand. “Hey,” she says, sitting up, leaning over, tipping together the two of them, shoulder to shoulder, wine-red hair spangled with gold against glossy black curls streaked, here and there, with white.

Red lights still flash. The ambulance is parked at an angle in the lot, right up by the long single-storey line of motel units. Jo drops out the back of it, black boots heavy splashing a runnel of melting snow, her shirtwaist dress, black and grey, white and pink, arms pulled in tight for warmth, tugging a glove onto her hand, grey and fingerless, wrapping the velcro about her wrist. Looking up at the blue-black sky, featureless in the glare of worklights. Over there at the back of the lot, by the corner of the detached set of motel units, a reddish brown car, a black stripe along its side, the driver’s door open, a man sitting there, his feet on the pavement, and a woman leaning against the trunk of it, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, her wild hair yellow-white. “How is she,” she says, as Jo slowly approaches.

“Sleeping,” says Jo. “You should–” but Marfisa shakes her head, lifts her chin, a gesture back toward the main building of the motel. “He’s in there,” she says.