Gently brush the dust.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a people in possession of a suddenly and drastically foreclosed future, must be in want of powerful distractions. So when I tell you that diving headlong into a deep re-build of the ebook editions has led me to discover a solution to the breaking non-breaking space problem, that has bedeviled me lo these many years, you should understand that it is still possible for tiny sparks of light to glimmer in this darkness, and go and cherish your own.
(The breaking non-breaking space problem: one might have noticed in the text that those moments of cæsura and interruption that might ordinarily be marked by an em-dash [—] are instead marked by the trio of space–en-dash–space [ – ], a practice picked up from Dean Allen back in the day. Said trio must nonetheless travel as a unit, easily enough done in the fixed and rigorous typesetting of a static printed copy—but when the text is fluid, in all the many variable containers it might find itself in the electronic world, a website, an ebook [a desk-top monitor, a tablet, a phone]—well. An intemperate line-break, or paragraph-end, could result in a dangled punctuate, an interruption interrupted, due to the spaces between the text, and the dash. —Luckily, HTML has a code for that: , or   : the non-breaking space, just the thing for when you don’t want those awkward ends and breaks. Except—
(Except: it seems that, in the rendering engines that run within pretty much all of the current browsers and ebook readers, some interaction between dashes and quotation marks ends up breaking the non-breaking space, so that even if the code says—
run all the way across town to find out what the hell you wanted and – ”<p>
(—it’ll end up nonetheless rendered as this, if margins squeeze it so:
(You may have seen these dangled quotation marks from time to time over the years, here on the website, or in one of the ebooks, snagging the eye, an obvious mistake autonomically generated, but no less distracting, disrupting, disappointing; the failure of rendering engines to properly account for this particular use case not enough to drive me to change my typographical habits. —But! But: wrap each en-dash in its own span, with a margin to the left, or to both sides, as needed, a margin just wide enough to match the width of a space in the font you’re using, .2 of an em, or .3, thereabouts, and voila! There’s no longer, in the code, any space at all to be broken, no matter the rendering engine’s preconceptions, but, to the eye, the en-dash is properly nestled and set, and never a niggling dangle, no matter the shape of the container into which the fluid text’s flowed.)
—Thus, some slight measure of blissful satisfaction. But: it is slight, and passing, and only in the ebooks, at the moment. Making the same changes to the website is a rather more involved undertaking. A distraction, one might say. Quite powerful. Mighty, even.
And yet but also, let’s face it: the design and structure hereabouts, the shape of this particular container, it’s largely unchanged since it was first put up, some (peers closely at the calendar) quite some time ago, and forty-four novelettes is a load a bit unwieldy for a box built to hold but a dozen or two. And the doughty CMS is several generations out of date. And the provider’s reached the point in their enshittification arc where they raise rates willy-nill, I’m paying twice what I did just five years ago, and I’m not getting anywhere near double the value in return, I must say. —And so: I’m casting about for a new provider, and shortly, within the month, I think, I’ll be moving, shutting things down, rebuilding, reinventing, reloading, reintroducing—there will be some interruption of service, I’m saying, a cæsura, one might say, for a space, a span of time, but then, afterwards, oh my. But then.
(I know, I know: this is just procrastination, you’re telling yourself, busywork to distract from the necessary work of plotting and planning and writing the volumes to come, you’d say, but oh, oh my, just think: how even more powerful a distraction from everything else it will be—it already is—to figure out what happens next, then write it down to be read—)
—posted 9 days ago
Bouncing newborn books.
It’s the fourth Tuesday in October, the 22nd of the month, and —or Betty Martin is out in the world now, reified in paper and cardboard—
—and available for purchase in paper from Bookshop or the river; or available electronically from Smashwords or (alert your local library) Overdrive; or, in either form, from anywhere in the world that has access to Ingram’s catalog, go, hunt! —Or you could as always just buy direct from the publisher.
I need to set up a new photoshoot for all four books, don’t I.
—But! Volume four is the conclusion of the second season, which means in addition to that new book, there’s also the ebook omnibus of season two, comprising all twenty-two novelettes from volumes three and four, if you’d rather scoop them up in one go. Also available ditto (electronically, at least; it’s rather a bit too large to trust to paper).
So, go! Celebrate the epic! We’re halfway done. Miles yet to go, but stop a moment, look about: isn’t the view tremendous?
—posted 30 days ago
Mark your calendars.
PORTLAND, July 9th — Supersticery Press is pleased to announce the impending publication of —or Betty Martin, volume 4 of City of Roses, the acclaimed urban fantasy webserial by Kip Manley.
—or Betty Martin will collect chapters 34 – 44, completing the story begun in volume 3, In the Reign of Good Queen Dick, published in 2020. —or Betty Martin will be available as an ebook for all software and devices, as well as a handsomely designed paperback, on Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024, from all major online retailers, as well as stores within and around Portland, and directly from the publisher.
Bookslut called the overall epic an “entire, swirling, beautiful mess.” The Web Fiction Guide said it’s “utterly captivating” and “brilliant.” The Guardian said “City of Roses is an absorbing read that many fantasy fans will enjoy immensely,” and the Oregonian called it “just another Portland story.”
Review copies of —or Betty Martin will be made available toward the end of August, as production work on the volume is completed. An omnibus ebook containing the 22 chapters of season two, Spring; Summer, will also be made available. After a brief hiatus, the serial will resume; the next two volumes, also consisting of 11 chapters each, will be titled The Greene Chapel, and Eleleu Ie.
Please address any questions to the author and publisher, Kip Manley, at kipmanley@yahoo.com. (Kip Manley was, some time ago, a senior editor and staff writer for Portland’s late, lamented Anodyne magazine. He currently lives in Portland with the celebrated cartoonist Jenn Manley Lee and the generally astounding Taran Jack. Mostly he just wanders about the city looking for cool places to stage sword fights.)
—posted 135 days ago
Comrades!
You might’ve noticed a new logo hereabouts:
It’s now possible to support City of Roses through Comradery, a collectively owned, democratically run platform for supporting creative endeavors. In its basic, day-to-day operation, it’s not unlike Patreon, and I’ve set up the tiers and rewards at Comradery to be identical to what’s been running at Patreon.
But: unlike Patreon, Comradery isn’t subject to the whims of venture capital or private equity; there’ll be no ill-advised and undesired experiments with NFTs or AI, unless the collective of creators wants them, which, I mean, well. —I’ve got no plans at the moment to discontinue the Patreon, so there’s no need at all if you’re currently supporting the city there (and thank you very much!) to switch over. But, as with any large corporate platform on the internets of the roaring ’20s, it’s not a question of if Patreon will enshittify, but when. I’m glad to have another basket for the eggs.
So poke around Comradery, check out the other projects in the collective (which include some friends of the city), sign up to become a supporter, if you’re so moved. And happy June! We should be seeing the 44th novelette quite soon…
—posted 173 days ago
Now we just have to get down.
Work proceeds apace on the 44th novelette, “That was the river – ”, which will wrap up vol. 4, which, being wrapped up, will in turn bring an end to Season Two. Since four seasons are planned for the work (plus an epilogue), that means we’re at the halfway point, just about. When you’re climbing a mountain, the halfway point is the peak. Unless you’re planning a long quick drop, there’s just as much work left to do, getting down.
The last time I was finishing a season (let’s not look too closely at how many days ago it was), I was, in addition to being concerned with sales, and marketing (ah, well), thinking also about what was to come. What’s to come: work on the paperback and ebook collections of vol. 4, work on the new edition of all four volumes to date (more on which soon), and then, well, work on vols. 5 and 6. Work, work, work. —But let’s take a moment, to map the route, plot the descent, point to where it is we intend to end up. The shape, then, of what’s been done, and what’s to come:
Season One
Autumn into Winter
Vol. 1: “Wake up…”
Prolegomenon – Fidessa – Zoobombing – a-Hunting – Freeway – Anvil – Gin-soaked – Beauty – Giust – Surveilling – Rounds
Vol. 2: The Dazzle of Day
Innocency – Changeling – Mayhem – Frail– Plenty – Deliverance – Dazzle – Moon – Sun – Gallowglas – Maiestie
Season Two
Spring; Summer
Vol. 3: In the Reign of Good Queen Dick
the thin ice – vilissima & infima – two sweetest passions – only borders lie – tends to crumble – Hands of an Angry – shiver & headache – on pretending that – marble sends regards – only to sit – carnival was ringing
Vol. 4: —or Betty Martin
up and stand. – many Christian eyes – so powerfully strong – and ‘thirsty wilds’ – Ekumen ain’t everything – Beautiful, we are – dirty white noise – arms—legs—heaven – sun, dust, shadow – the Five Points – That was the river
Season Three
Summer
Vol. 5: The Greene Chapel
Vol. 6: Eleleu Ie
Season Four
Winter, and then Spring
Vol. 7: Restoration
Vol. 8: Bottom’s Dream
•
and an Epilogue:
a Dinner of Fish in Manzanita
And there we have it. Let’s go.
—posted 184 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
Another secret of magic.
When I was writing the book and trying to build a framework for how magic might operate, I found myself thinking about how often magic feels like a metaphor for access to a lot of money. Money and power. I don’t love this idea—that magic functions as a kind of credit card—but you can’t get rid of it.
—posted 248 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of worldbuilding.
“That is wisdom,” said Barganax. “That is truth.” He settled himself on the stone of the balcony that was warm yet after a day of unclouded sun, and, sitting there against the sky, said: “Our talk hath wandered somewhat beside my purpose, which concerned the making of worlds. Were I to tell you I saw one such devised and created, under my nose, a month ago, at supper-table, would you credit that?”
Doctor Vandermast paused. “As coming from your grace, known to me for a man of keen judgement and not given to profane jesting, I should unpartially examine it.”
“I have not told you I saw it. The more I consider of it, the less know I whether I truly beheld that marvel or ’twere but legerdemain.”
“If it pleased your grace open it to me more at large—”
“Better not. I have indeed almost clean forgotten it, save the circumstances. But this I will tell you, that I seemed, when ’twas over, to have lived myself (and yet something more than myself: mixed of myself and his serene highness my Father, and, in the mixture, may be a less than him and something less too than me, as impurer; like as orange-colour hath not the pureness of red neither of yellow, being compound of both)—in that mixed self, I seemed to have lived a life-time in that world. Well,” he said, after a moment: “I sucked its orange. But a cheap frippery of a world it was, take it for all in all: made tolerable, as I bethink me now, but by rumours and fore-savourings of this. And I seemed, besides, to have looked on from without, while untold ages passed there: first the mere ball of incandescence: then the cooling: the millennial ages through which a kind of life was brewing, in enormous wastefulness and painfulness and ever-growing interweaving of tangle, until human kind began there: slow generations, ever changing and never (on the whole) bettering, of human kind, such as we be. Ay, and I was stood by, viewing it thus from withoutward, even at the golden moment for which that defaced, gelded, exiled creation, so like the real world, yet so unlike, had from its first beginnings waited and thirsted: its dissolution. And that was when she, to pleasure whose chanceable idle soon-changed fantasy it was made, took from the braided blackness of her hair a pin starred with anachite diamonds, and as idly with it touched the bubble. And at that prick—puff! ’twas gone: nought left but the little wet mark on the table to witness it ever existed.”
—posted 255 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of seeing it all so clearly in your head.
Barganax smiled: shook his head. “Your artist creates not. Say I paint your grace a picture: make you a poem: that is not create. I but find, choose, set in order.”
“Yet we say God created the world? Is that wrong then?” She looked from father to son. “How came the world, then?”
There fell a silence: in the midst of it, the Vicar with his teeth cracking of a lobster’s claw. Amalie looked on the King, within hand’s-reach upon her left. She said, as resolving her own question: “I suppose it lay in glory in His mind.”
Barganax seemed to pause upon his mother”s words. “And yet, so lying,” he said, “is not a world yet. To be that, it must lie outside. Nor it cannot, surely, lie whole in his mind afore it be first laid also outside. So here’s need to create, afore e’er you think of a world.” He paused: looked at Fiorinda. “And even a God,” he said, “cannot create beauty: can but discover.”
—posted 320 days ago
Duoteny.
The momentum, I think, is picking up; enough solutions have presented themselves that I have the feel in my hand again, I know the shapes of the scenes to come, and can begin to plot out the logistics to make them come about, and having that sort of work for the one part of the brain to chew on makes it easier for the other part to delight in dialogue. No promises but soon, but. Soon.
And then there’ll only be one to go. —If you hold any truck at all with a classical five-act structure, well, here we almost are, at the highest turning point of the whole megillah, the crisis that usually crashes in the third act (we only had the budget and the time for four seasons, we’re making do), and after this only the downslope of the falling action, faster, much faster, until they never let us out ten blocks later, and the catastrophe (whether eu-, or mal-), and (of course) the epilegomenon, and a dinner of fish. —That this peak may well seem muted, dulled, deflated when we get to it: well. I should maybe not spoil things with anticipatory defenses. Let’s get there, first, and see what we might see.
But: as we climb for just a little further, look: the next cover.
—posted 335 days ago
A forest, drowning.
“Beneath our feet,” he says, “there is a forest. Nearly four hundred trees sunk in the cold mud, bearing up the weight of this end of the bridge.” He looks back to her, over his shoulder. “Stripped of leaves,” he says. “Shorn of branches. She may have granted you an office, Gallowglas, and charged you with a duty, but she is no more the Queen, nor has been, for many months.”
There’s a feeling, a notion, a risk that you take, when you’re writing about a specific place, which is when you mention something that exists in that place at the time you’re writing, and it’s there, and it’s fixed, and you go on, writing more, perhaps, but time’s passing, as it does, and as it does that something changes. Write enough, often enough, and mention enough specific things, and you’ll end up unable to escape this notion that your pen is cursed, that to write something into what you write, to take notice of it and try to fix it in this way, is to doom it. —Mention the Danmoore Hotel in the background of a long walk home; it’s demolished to make way for a church’s parking garage. Carefully site a camp out by the airport based on satellite photos and on-foot reconnaissance; the threatened development suddenly finds a buyer and sets to laying out and walling up its 157,185 square feet. Set a scene in the downtown Meier & Frank; the brand’s bought out by Macy’s, the building’s gutted, turned into a hotel, and a minimalist Japanese retailer sets up shop on the ground floor. Mary’s Club wasn’t gutted by a fire, but it did have to hustle across the street to what’s effectively another part of town, and the Wesson brothers drive through a famously confusing intersection that doesn’t exist anymore. Shadow Unit shoots its television pilot in a food cart pod that’s now just another luxury high-rise. And that drowned forest beneath the Burnside Bridge?
When the bridge was first built in 1926, the two piers in the river were placed on 380 tree trunks, driven into the mud. They’ve held up remarkably well. But in an earthquake, the soil could liquefy and make the trunks fall over like pick-up sticks. The trunks will be replaced by several 10-foot-diameter concrete, steel-reinforced columns sunk into bedrock.
One more metaphor unmoored, and onward marches heedless time. —And yes, yes, there’s all the stuff gets mentioned that doesn’t change, or fade, or die, but not yet whispers the notion, and sure, there’s all the stuff that’s dead and gone that you never even thought to write down in your little story, but somehow, whispers the notion, that’s worse, don’t you see? Who will care, now, if you ever do manage to figure out how and why and when to work in a magical night at La Luna? —And there’s even the fact that you can work this curse against itself, tear down the Goat Blocks as if they’d never been, undo a suspiciously timed fire, let a grocers’ warehouse live at least a few years longer, give John Varley’s apartment to some other writer, unroll a lawn on the roof of it, but it’s all in the end just words, only words, I mean, words.
Such a terrible, awful notion. Unwanted. Unsought. And yet.
—posted 358 days ago
