Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the out-of-doors.
This principle, it seems to me, is the ceaseless action of secluding oneself. Imagination about travel corresponds in Verne to an exploration of closure, and the compatibility between Verne and childhood does not stem from a banal mystique of adventure, but on the contrary from a common delight in the finite, which one also finds in children’s passion for huts and tents: to enclose oneself and to settle, such is the existential dream of childhood and of Verne. The archetype of this dream is this almost perfect novel: L’Ile mystérieuse, in which the manchild re-invents the world, fills it, closes it, shuts himself up in it, and crowns this encyclopædic effort with the bourgeois posture of appropriation: slippers, pipe and fireside, while outside the storm, that is, the infinite, rages in vain.
—posted 3829 days ago
Portland, divided into four fifths.
If you, Dear Reader, are not yourself intimately acquainted with the geography of the City of Roses, and find yourself occasionally wondering which went where when, yr. correspondent might direct you to a map of sorts, that easily fits most hands.
—posted 3859 days ago
Where were we?
- Marfisa, once the Axe, had finally broken with her brother, the Axehandle;
- Luys, the Mason, had been sent by his occasional lover the Duke to find Jo;
- now, the two of them have met under the tree in Pioneer Square (where they’d fought a duel just weeks before).
- (Luys had been wearing a mysterious mask at the time, the mask worn by the swordsman Vincent Erne, when he’d been Huntsman to the Court.)
- —The Duke then went on to challenge the Axehandle and the Guisarme, Banker to the Court;
- That done, he went in a snit to sit the Throne, and only his (mostly) ex Jessie to witness his apotheosis.
- His other ex, Orlando, the Mooncalfe, had won the keeping of the Bride by defeating Jo in a duel;
- the Mooncalfe then went on to murther the Shootist and the Gammer, all to take away the Bride he’d already won;
- but Ysabel, terrified she might be broken, appalled she might not be, fled from the Mooncalfe…
- …only to meet a lugubrious, grey-faced man, who hailed her as the Queen.
- (Jo, meanwhile, who’d found the Huntsman’s mask, went on to trade a briefcase full of porn for a gun,
- (and Messrs. Keightlinger and Charlock went somewhere—else?—and brought back something—else?)
- Then, it started to snow.
Now!
- Marfisa, Luys, and Orlando have asked their questions of the witch, Miss Cheney;
- Ysabel, having run from the Mooncalfe, runs to Messrs. Charlock and Keightlinger, and their employer, Mr. Leir;
- Jo finally figures out what it was Miss Cheney had told her, and goes to see Becker, the right one, second;
- and she fires the gun she bought, even as Mr. Charlock—Mr. Leir?—looses what he’d found;
- and Ysabel, Bride of the King Come Back, Queen of the Court of Roses, is suddenly gone from a rather different world—
That’s, I guess, where we were.
Beginning Monday: City of Roses no. 21, “Gallowglas.”
—posted 3877 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
Another secret of magic.
The magic in any particular story will do what it will do, regardless of what it ought to do. Sometimes I like a magic that brings order and redistributes resources in almost exactly the same way money does, and sometimes I like a chaotic magic that’s reminiscent of another effect of money… (If we’re going to look at power dynamics within fiction at least let’s keep an eye on all sources of power!) So it all depends.
—posted 3916 days ago
That first brontolithic beat.
Fes over at the Webfiction World has gone and read aloud Act II of “Prolegomenon”—the party scene—so, if you ever wondered what it all would sound like…
—posted 3922 days ago
No less than a kingdom.
Have some books. “Wake up…” collects chapters 1 – 11; The Dazzle of Day collects chapters 12 – 22; the first season omnibus, Autumn into Winter, collects all 22 in one handy ebook—so you should get the two, or the one, but not all three, unless you’re feeling especially generous. —You can buy copies through Amazon, or Smashwords, or Payhip, or (of course) me; you can add them to your Goodreads or LibraryThing shelves; you might, if you need a little more convincing, read some reviews and interviews first.
No. 21, “Gallowglas,” will see its free online premiére on Monday, April 21st, with no. 22, “Maiestie,” to follow. Until then, you’ll need to secure a copy of The Dazzle of Day or the omnibus (or the paper chapbooks, of course) to read them. —And after that? Well. Whatever comes next is after that.
—posted 3929 days ago
The state of the City.
It is done; it has been done. It is, more to the point, available for preorder over at Smashwords, and of course direct from the source. (I’d offer up the Amazon link for Kindle and paperback editions, but it seems Amazon doesn’t bother to offer preorder capabilities to self-publishers.)
On (or after) February 25th, then, you’ll finally get to learn what happens next, for a value of “next” limited to those events which are depicted in nos. 21 and 22 of City of Roses. (Unless, of course, you’ve ordered paper copies of those chapbooks, in which case, check the mail.) —Don’t ask about the stock market, lottery tickets, or sportsball scores; prophesy’s a delicate business at best.
While you’re waiting, you can add Vol. 2 over on Goodreads, or talk it up hither, or yon. Beginning in April, let’s say Monday, April 21st, “Gallowglas” and then “Maiestie” will begin their serialization here, to round out the web-based, freely available collection. —Meanwhile, I’ll be over on the couch with a pile of books and madly scribbled scraps of paper, trying to figure out what happens in the next next.
(Oh, also? I’ll be at Readercon this year, for pretty much sure and certain. Further on which when more is known.)
—posted 3959 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
Further secrets of the epic.
Often we grow impatient with epic poems. Too long, we feel—all those irrelevant interruptions, those additions, conventions, invocations, interpolations, those stories and speeches, catalog and dull history. But these are all part of the journey, the reader’s journey on his long way around. For just as there are epic poets, involved in the task of creating, and just as there are epic heroes, who labor to create, so also are there epic readers. And all of those digressions and history and stretches of catalog, all those elements of the poem which image the vastness and variety of the real world, allow the epic poet to involve the epic reader in the meaning of the poem, which is the immense difficulty of getting there and the driving necessity to go.
—posted 3967 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of how, and why.
The passage goes on into another paragraph, crescendoing with a sunrise, the whole revealing the city with the shock of the familiar made new.
And that is ultimately the answer. Fantasy tropes may fade, become familiar and tired, lose their power. Perhaps someday fantasy, itself, will do the same. But the classic cycle of myth and religion, which fantasy has taken on over and over again, isn’t one of life and then death, but of life, death, and rebirth. Familiarity is a question of context: what is your world made of? As our world shifts, what is new becomes old and what is old becomes new. The elements may be the same, but the magic is in the combination.
—posted 3978 days ago
Here the cup, and there the lip,
And somewhere in betwixt, the slip.
Supersticery Press is proud to announce a delay in the impending publication of The Dazzle of Day, volume 2 of City of Roses, the acclaimed web serial by Kip Manley.
Kip Manley, director of marketing for Supersticery Press, says it’s disappointing to everyone who was looking forward to this release to have to hold off for at least a week.
“We all realize as an industry that the best product we can deliver to the consumers is the better, and the better the product the more money the writer will get for the product. So it’s a win-win for everybody if we just wait and only publish the best possible product,” Manley said.
“I did try to make it crystal fucking clear that a fixed release date without even a completed, edited draft, was criminally bonkers,” said Kip Manley, art director for Supersticery Press, when asked for comment. “I can turn around a fucking ebook pretty fucking quick at this point, but the paperback overhaul’s gonna take time to say the least, and that’s not even factoring in the goddamn ARCs that should’ve been hitting the bricks a month ago at this point. And we still haven’t got even an actual finished first draft in the can! You gotta talk to the fucking writer about that. I mean damn.”
All attempts to date at contacting Kip Manley, director of content generation for Supersticery Press, have been met with incoherent screams and ominous thumps and shattering noises of unknown provenance.
The Web Fiction Guide says City of Roses is “utterly captivating” and “brilliant.” The Guardian says “City of Roses is an absorbing read that many fantasy fans will enjoy immensely,” and the Oregonian has called it “just another Portland story.” Fans everywhere are assumed to be united in their desire to see the damn thing published already, dammit.
The Dazzle of Day will collect chapters 12 – 22 of City of Roses, completing the story begun in volume 1, “Wake up…”, published in 2011. The Dazzle of Day will be available as an ebook for all software and devices, as well as a handsomely designed paperback, at some point after Tuesday, December 17th, 2013, from all major online retailers, as well as stores within and around Portland, and directly from the publisher. Review copies will be made available as soon as they exist.
The publication date, yet to be determined, will also see a release of a new edition of volume 1, “Wake up…”, and a change in the pricing of ebooks and paperbacks (yet to be finalized). An omnibus ebook containing all 22 chapters will also be published. After a brief hiatus, the serial will resume; the next two volumes, also consisting of 11 chapters each, will be titled In the Reign of Good Queen Dick, and —or Betty Martin.
Please address any questions to the publisher of Supersticery Press, Kip Manley, at kipmanley@yahoo.com.
—posted 4009 days ago
