the Newis Glad:

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—

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of point of view.

This is a good place to discuss point of view in The Emperor of Gladness. Perhaps it is dry, technical, and petty, but point of view matters a great deal to me as a reader. Point of view describes the organizing intelligence of a story. It controls the time signature, the outlay of information, the mode of telling, the mediation of backstory, the integration of event and description into experience, which itself compounds into meaning. Point of view isn’t just first, second, or third person. It’s also verb tense. It’s whether something is experiential or summarized. It’s whether or not a story is retrospective. Whether it’s told focalized through this character or that other character. It controls what feels right in a story versus what feels extraneous or improper.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of sitting bolt upright in that straight-backed chair.

Many readers of The Night Land, and more still who give up on the book, gag on its prose; The Night Land is a famously “difficult read.” For The Night Land, Hodgson devised an eccentric, faux seventeenth- or eighteenth-century style, convoluted and orotund, which even Lovecraft found “grotesque and absurd.” A few critics have supported Hodgson’s stylistic choice (Greer Gilman in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Nigel Brown in “An Apology for the Linguistic Architecture of The Night Land”), but Murphy mounts an innovative defense. He asks us to see the difficulty of reading as an intrinsic element of weird fiction, a twinning of the reader’s efforts with those of the characters’—

the most Recent installment:

“Take care”– the Safety of the Space– this is Their plan–

“Take care,” says the woman in the mirror, and he lifts the razor from his lathered cheek. “I realize,” he says, “you people get a lot of mileage out of pretending you never have time for the niceties?” Dipping the razor in foam-swirled water. “Whatever you’re up to being too important. But, I mean, really– a closed bathroom door. Is nothing sacred?”

A shrug of her pearly shoulders. “Your majesty is alone, here.” Her voice rich, her lips painted brown, her large eyes smiling. “Well,” says Lymond, tilting his chin, “I’m headed down to a crowded audience in a minute. Make it quick.”

“This briefing is a courtesy,” she says, hands clasped behind her back. “You are advised of an operation currently underway in your city, to secure an item of paramount importance to global security; you’re assured that every effort will be made to secure said item with the minimum necessary disruption.”

Lymond takes up a towel to blot scraps of lather from his face. “If minimum disruption’s risen to the level of informing the mark, I’d guess a couple strands of haywire’ve already popped loose.” Leaning back against the sink, folding his arms, his dressing gown printed with antique travel postcards.

“Our agent in the field abruptly resigned. We’ve had to adjust our approach.”

“And, presto: you’ve got a false flag, to drape over any further cock-ups. Neat.” Clapping his hands, a hollow pop in these close quarters. “Tell me, which corner of the alphabet soup are you? FBI, CIA? DEA? FDA?” Her eyes still smile, her hands still clasped behind her back. “Okay,” he says. “All right. I at least get to know what the item is. Courtesy surely extends so far?”