the Newis Glad:

Summer is icumen in.

Well, sort of: even as the season out there wanes, and pumpkin spices ever so slightly begin to waft, we’re on the verge of launching the third season of the epic: Summer. —The first draft of no. 46 should be done this month, which means revisions and finalizations of no. 45 might begin this month, as well; I am confident if not certain that it will be released in October: the first novelette in vol. 5, The Greene Chapel; the beginning of, well, Summer.

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.

the most Recent installment:

the Jingle of the Bell

The jingle of the bell over the door, and the whole crowd filling that front room turns, green work shirts and blue, brown coveralls, uniforms in black and taupe and white, breast-pocket insignia and badges and nameplates, here and there a plain white T-shirt, or dark blue, and styrofoam cups in every hand, and they’re staring at him in his grimy sweatshirt, the hood of it up, his hands in the pockets of it, the door propped open against his shoulder, and the street behind him filling with morning light.

“Come in if you’re coming,” says Gordon, stood behind the counter laden with almost-empty donut boxes and a couple of platters and a box of coffee. Christian steps inside, the door closing behind him, and shakes off his hood. “You already got the window fixed,” he says.

“You here to kick another hole in it?” And then, “Hold up, hold up,” as a muttering murmuring unrest sweeps through them, “let him be, let him be.”

Christian looks warily about them all, shifting and looking away from him, a sip here, a cough there, and then a woman in blue coveralls, her hair under a kerchief, lays a hand on the arm of the man beside her and steps back, gently urging him back with her, and across from her a burly little man in a boilersuit steps back, and yanks the elbow of the much taller man beside him, until an aisle is cleared through that small front room, and chest swelling with one great breath and both hands still in his pockets Christian steps along it up to the counter, and then with some effort tugs from the pockets a shoe that he sets down by a platter still holding a handful of pinwheel sandwiches. It’s a simple, well-made shoe, of shining oxblood leather, closed with a single monk strap.