the Newis Glad:

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.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of force.

Perhaps all men, by the very act of being born, are destined to suffer violence; yet this is a truth to which circumstance shuts men’s eyes. The strong are, as a matter of fact, never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but neither is aware of this. They have in common a refusal to believe that they both belong to the same species: the weak see no relation between themselves and the strong, and vice versa. The man who is the possessor of force seems to walk through a non-resistant element; in the human substance that surrounds him nothing has the power to interpose, between the impulse and the act, the tiny interval that is reflection.

Where there is no room for reflection, there is none either for justice or prudence. Hence we see men in arms behaving harshly and madly. We see their sword bury itself in the breast of a disarmed enemy who is in the very act of pleading at their knees. We see them triumph over a dying man by describing to him the outrages his corpse will endure. We see Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan boys on the funeral pyre of Patroclus as naturally as we cut flowers for a grave.

Newport News.

Work proceeds apace: I have reached the part of the draft of the 46th novelette where I can loop back to finish the unfinished draft of the 45th novelette, and when that’s done I can skip ahead to what of the 46th novelette follows immediately thereafter to write that down and then, finally, settle back to finish what’s left of them both. And then? Revision, and polish, and cut to fit, and to press; and then, the third season will finally have begun.

Meanwhile: might I draw your attention to an avenue of support, for the city? There’s Patreon, for those who favor the tried and true, more commercial end of the market, but also Comradery, for the scrappy upstart end—

the most Recent installment:

“Oh”– how Does she Ever– blood & water, Lilies, glass– the Point of dreams–

“Oh,” says Jo, and then, “that can’t be right.”

“Holed up in St. Johns, with Chad and his dad. I was up there a couple weeks, sleeping in the damn, the dang basement.” Christian takes a drag from the cigarette and holds it out to her. “I’m supposed to be quitting,” she says as she takes it. “He got ten years. No way he’s out so soon.”

“Good behavior,” says Christian, and Jo snorts smoke. “Danny fucking Moody?”

Christian takes the cigarette back. “Maybe he broke out. Maybe five-oh’s closing in. Hard target search!” Another drag. He offers it to her, but she shakes her head, “It would’ve been in the news,” she says.

He lets the butt drop, grinds it into the mud. “Film at eleven.”

“The hell you were doing up there, anyway,” says Jo. Looking away down the unpaved alley, crowded by garage doors, high back fences, drifts of green grass up to the knee. “Two fucking weeks? The hell, Christian? You walk away from me, you walk away from everything I was gonna do for you, you walk away and you fucking go to the goddamn Dread fucking Paladin?”

Christian turns away. The gate behind them, leaning drunkenly from a single hinge. “Say what you like, the XO still runs the gutters. And for a racist motherfucker, he never stiffs me on what I bank with him?” Tucking his hands up under his bulky pullover, winding and unwinding. “I was gonna sleep up under the Marquam, but then he went and told me Moody’s back,” his elbows pulled in tight, “so I went elsewhere.”