City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and union meetings are beseiged by ghost bicycles.
France commissioned the original statue in 1870 after losing the Franco-Prussian War, a glittering likeness of its patron saint to boost morale. It sits outside the luxe Hotel Regina in Paris’s first arrondissement, framed by the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre. Nancy, France; Melbourne, Australia; and New Orleans and Philadelphia all have their own copies made from sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet’s original molds. Though Portland’s souvenir may have the quirk of being the trickiest to access, protected on its humble, grassy loop de loop by an unrelenting swirl of traffic.
But I think that with that lack of world building interest, we also have a loss of the technologies we produce as queer people to be with each other. A thing that I was really concerned with in writing this book was making sure that there was a subcultural aspect to the queerness here. Which necessarily pairs with there being queerphobia in this world. If you have a queer normative world, which—that’s a huge thing in itself. But if you have a world where at the very least same gender attraction is not policed, and is sort of normative in this space, and there’s no pushback at all, then you have no reason to make a subculture.
Since the renovations hereabouts, we’ve been re-running the novelettes from the start on the usual Monday–Wednesday–Friday schedule, and as we speak the tenth novelette, “Surveilling,” is just about done; the eleventh, “Rounds,” will begin appearing next week, and—well. There are eleven novelettes per volume.
“Such a nothing time,” says Becker, “three in the morning.” He snaps the little phone shut and lays it carefully in the worn leather shoe on the floor by a discarded pair of jeans and a big plaid empty shirt. “You stay up till one, sure,” he says, sitting up in the dimly greenish streak of light from the louvered windows lining one long wall of the narrow room. “Two, even, you can go back to sleep for three or four hours. That’s like a full cycle. Enough to keep you going.” His knees tenting the crazed tangle of quilts and blankets and sheets. He scratches the dark hair scattered sparsely across his chest. “Four o’clock, you can give up, get up, go make some coffee.” Folding his hands behind his head. “But what the fuck can you do with three in the goddamn morning?”
Pyrocles his head laid on one arm folded like a wing eyes closed smiles sleepily beneath his crookedly drooping mustaches. “You can keep everyone else around you awake.”
Becker shifts on his side, looking down at Pyrocles. “It’s not insomnia,” he says. “It’s not misery loving company. I just don’t want to miss any of this.”
“I know,” says Pyrocles.
“Just a glorious bit of writing, I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
“—over the top, long winded, unnecessary, grossly elaborate and just bloated beyond all proportion.”
