Better hit ’em on they ansible
Four weeks ago it was unconscionably hot. Remember? The heat dome squatting over the Pacific Northwest, and temperatures inside our shaded breezy house rivaling the usual outer bounds of high temperature outside for a day late in June. —When our internal temperature finally dropped below 80°, I could once more turn on my elderly Mac without fearing it would melt, and open up the file to see how far I’d got. (I do have other ways to write, but when it’s 110° outside and only twenty degrees cooler within, one would much rather lie on a bed without thinking rather than strive, diligently, to unstick oneself from one’s ways.) So I opened up the file to see I was only just barely quite halfway through the first draft of no. 38: the barker had only just started his (completely rewritten) spiel. —That was four weeks ago.
Since then: the gates have opened; we’ve been exploring the centerpiece of the whole dam’ thing (which didn’t snap into focus almost until I was upon it) (and then there’s the whole new character it turns out I didn’t need, who I have to go back and unwrite, sorry Nick)—but: but. I still haven’t gotten to Gun Street. I’m not sure no. 38 will be done in time to appear in August. I think I’m gonna miss the deadline. (Whoosh.)
No. 38, “ – Ekumen ain’t everything – ”, lines up if you like with the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana, Old Mister Scratch his own dam’ self: dark sides and shadow selves, forbidden thoughts released, the ties that bind made manifest to be tested and indulged: when snowballs don’t stand a chance, as we prepare to take our leave of the realm of fucking around, and our first steps into the world of finding out. —Perhaps that’s why picking my way through’s been so infuriatingly slow?
Sure. Let’s blame that.
Structurally speaking, this is the last of the wind-up installments: the next, no. 39, sits in the very middle of this volume, the apex of its rising action: decisions will be made, positions staked, irrevocable actions taken, perhaps even a blow or two to be struck. And then the four falling, unwinding installments, echoing and reverberating, and the final climactic novelette, no. 44, that will end the volume and the season. (Should I have tagged this with a spoiler warning? Do you feel spoiled? Apologies.) —Maybe that also has something to do with it.
If you follow the Pixelfed, you’ve already seen the cover reveal: a photo taken in the middle of the Tilikum Crossing, which the kid once said is like the sort of bridge they have in Pokémon cities. It won’t, insofar as I know, appear in the novelette itself. —Go, then, and prepare thyself for the Dog Days. They’re a-comin’.
—posted 1215 days ago
(Originally posted on the Patreon.)
