Posted 4419 days ago.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the epic.

One can say the epic is a profoundly political kind of poem, if we take political as it is derived from the Greek polis, city, and thus is concerned with the way men live in community. But we mistake this political preoccupation if we regard epic only as celebrating creation and hymning the order and goodly government of things. Epic does sing of order, but out of necessity as much as delight; for epic is profoundly aware of the forces that destroy, of the disease and savage loneliness within man that renders so much of his human effort futile. The Iliad, after all, ends with the imminent destruction of a city; the festive Odyssey culminates with a vast feast hall littered with dead bodies. And the Æneid begins with Troy in flames and ends with another city conquered, as, in the name of fatherhood and civilization, Æneas becomes another Achilles, and brutal Turnus another Hector, killed before a conquered town. Paradise Lost, for all the hopes and promises of redemption, ends with the solitary pair wandering past flaming swords, exiled from the garden that was a perfect earthly image of God’s city. The great civilizing passage of the son to fatherhood, of the individual to an institution, cannot be accomplished without pain and loss. “For nothing can be sole or whole,” says Yeats, “that has not been rent.”

—A. Bartlett Giamatti, Play of Double Senses:
Spenser’s F‐‐rie Queene

Posted 4450 days ago.

P to the R.

Supersticery Press is pleased to announce the impending publication of The Dazzle of Day, volume 2 of City of Roses, the acclaimed webserial by Kip Manley.

The Dazzle of Day will collect chapters 12 – 22, 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, on Tuesday, December 10th, 2013, from all major online retailers, as well as stores within and around Portland, and directly from the publisher.

The Web Fiction Guide says it’s “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.”

Review copies of The Dazzle of Day will be made available toward the end of October, as production work on the volume is completed. The publication date 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 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 4480 days ago.

In seemely good array.

Saturday morning, much too early, I wrote the last few words of the chapter, then printed the whole thing out and spent the first hour or so of the Zine Symposium stapling and folding copies of no. 20. So it’s done; it’s fixed, bar a comma or two, or a misspelling corrected when nobody’s looking. A tin-eared turn of phrase re-tuned, perhaps, the slightest shift in mood, in tense—I really need to stop fussing. The important point: “Sun” will see its online première here on Monday, Sept. 2nd, and run M–W–F through Friday, Sept. 13th. I trust I’ll see you then?

And until then, I’ll be cranking away, turning the 17,000 words I wrote in the month of July into what must pass for no. 21, “Gallowglas,” and then go about finishing up the finale. —The plan, again: to release the whole mess as book and ebook, in or about November, and then to run the last two chapters here in December or so. —The actual dates for said events to have been fixed, I hope, by the time no. 20 runs here. I’ll need to add a marketer’s hat to the haberdashery on my head.

Until then, then, I’ll be revising, and you’ll be waiting: a nothing time, an empty time, a three-in-the-morning moment stretched out over the course of a few weeks. —Here, have a picture of what it looks like when all twenty chapbooks are laid out on a table:

If you click through, you can see some snaps of a four-year-old, running up and down an aisle with a fake rose.

Posted 4537 days ago.

That majesty, to keep decorum.

I didn’t write a word yesterday. Thursday. —Actually, I wrote two words: “The hill—”

I just deleted them.

We’re off to a good start?

I finished the (first) draft of No. 21, “Gallowglas,” on Wednesday night, which mostly consisted of writing out what I’d spent Monday and Tuesday not writing out, and then sitting back, and then sitting up again to close the file (and thinking, as any writer can’t help but do at moments like this, of the horribly ambiguous gesture Richard Dreyfuss makes at the end of Stand By Me—were we supposed to understand he was supposed to be shutting down the computer itself, when he merely shut off the monitor? Were we supposed to understand he hadn’t saved his file, that his gesture was destructive, purgative, restorative? Or had he just, y’know, shut off his damn monitor?)—and I let out a breath it felt like I’d been holding for, well, far too damn long.

Now it’s time to write out the—is it a spoiler to say it’s an epilogue? This is, after all, first and foremost a television show, and I was reading somewhere about how ever since the Sopranos everybody’s been tying up their seasonal arcs in a blow-out in the penultimate episode, and using the last one before the break not as a cliff-hanger, but as a breath-catch after the plunge averted, the stock-taking after a loss sustained. But I got my initial splash of it from the fourth season of Buffy, which is anyway where I first started thinking about the structures of long-form episodic storytelling, and anyway had it reinforced by the Wire, which played that card with a flourish every time, and it has nothing to do with whether these folks stole it from those folks or who had the idea first, it has to do with the fact that there’s love yet for the epilogue, and not enough of them in the world.

That hill, then. —Oh, there’s a hill, and a flickering, winding line, but not of candles, and anyway that’s not where it’ll start. I just figured out this morning where it’ll start, is the thing. I’ve still got a list of all the things it’ll be impossible to fit, but that’s the sort of problem I can deal with. Knowing where to start, which word to put down, and which word comes after that—that was the problem. For about 24 hours or so, there.

If you’re following along at home, then: I’ve written 32,064 words of what was only thus far supposed to’ve been about 30,000; there’s still 15,000 to write, and only a day over two weeks left to write them in; a thousand words a day, here on out, if it’s to be done by then.

It’ll be close, I guess? —So far, over the course of the Write-a-Thon, I’ve written 16,345 words: an average of 630 words a day, for more than three weeks running, now. 32,066 words since March 31. (I’m counting “That hill” in the total since it was there, yesterday, even if it’s gone today.) That’s the longest sustained blast of—productivity? creativity? —The longest string of one word after another, anyway, that I can recall maintaining since this thing began.

So there’s that, then, for endings. They have a momentum. —Even if it’s hard, sometimes, catching your breath again, after you finally let that big one out.

Posted 4560 days ago.

Clarionet.

So “Sun” is done, or drafted, anyway, and ordinarily I’d be polishing, revising, editing before prepping it to post (ordinarily, let’s be honest, I’d’ve written about half by the time the announced publication date rolled around, and be scrambling to finish what I could and not be too terribly late about it), but: I’ve got to keep the larger goal in mind. 12, of the 45, of the 90, are done; 15,000 written, and 30,000 yet to go. —And if I manage to maintain a pace of oh, about 700 words a day (697.7, to be precise), I’ll be done (done!) on or about August 2nd.

And then to the polishing, the revising, the editing, the prepping to publish, the marketing blast, the review copies, the reformatting of the ebooks and the paper books, the relisting on all the various websites, the release—oh, you get the idea.

I’ve never been to Clarion, West or otherwise; I’ve never even tried to go. For one thing, it’s got a definite short story focus, and while I’ve got short(er) stories in me, I’ve no doubt, I’m really more of a Donald Rumsfeld type: go massive, sweep it all up, things related and not—how else will you ever find those unutterably elusive uknown knowns? —Was there another thing? —Probably.

But! Clarion is a Thing Without Which; any mechanism that takes people out of the world for six weeks or so and sends them back different is—well, actually, there’s a lot of such mechanisms that produce soldiers, and cultists, and thousand-yard stares, but this one transmits and inculcates the manners and mores of the phantastick as it’s currently spoke, here and now, which—I mean, it’s not like I don’t have beefs with this manner, or that more, but, you know, you can’t flip a table unless there’s a table there in the first place—

I think we’re starting to see my limitations as a marketer. (—Anything that gets Elizabeth Hand and Neil Gaiman and Samuel Delany in a room to drop some little science is, well. Better by far than not.)

The point: each year, to raise money (art, education, priorities, you know), Clarion West invites writers to “shadow” the workshop by setting writing goals and working to meet them, and inviting everyone—you, in fact—to sponsor any of those writers, or a group of writers, or all of them, by pledging donations to Clarion West. —A Write-a-Thon, in other words, running from this coming Sunday, June 23rd through Friday, August 2nd. And I’ll be participating this year, so you should visualize me having come to your door and rung the bell and now I’m holding out a clipboard and asking you to sign up to sponsor me, because, you see, if, during the course of the Write-a-Thon, I can maintain a pace of oh, about 700 words a day from June 23rd through August 2nd—

—I’ll be done.

“Sun” is drafted, then, if not complete, and when I close out this file and post it I’ll turn my attention to the opening line of “Gallowglas” (a scream, I’m fairly certain). If all goes well, then, you should maybe look for no. 20, “Sun,” sometime in September? —I went with Spenser for the epigram, this time, because I really should be putting in more Spenser; I did promise, didn’t I? “The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see.” —But I’m kinda wishing I’d set it up that Ray’s pinkish-orange hair was just a wig, worn over a clean-shaven pate, and then I could’ve gone with Laurie Anderson instead? “Sun’s coming up, like a big bald head poking up over the grocery store—”

—Should I have spoiler warninged that? —I can never tell.

Posted 4589 days ago.

Journisende.

The white thread is now separate from the black, so maybe we take a brief crepuscular moment here to look about, before the day becomes too bright too see. —Of the six, then, three are done; 47 of the 90 scenes 90 have been written. And if it’s taking longer than I’d hoped, well, the view when I look outside my window this morning is utterly different than the one I saw a year ago today, for all that the city is the same. (And also for all that the view of our bank accounts is unchanged. —There’s a moral in there, somewhere, perhaps, but it’s beyond me to go looking for it.)

Here’s the thing, though, or a thing, which has occasioned this thing: the end is nigh. I’ve actually got to bring this beast in for a landing. And while there’s a certain inevitability, an ineluctable gravity to what’s lined up and waiting, there’s still this vasty gulf ’twixt cup and lip; a vasty gulf, and only three chapbooks, or forty-five thousand words.

So I need to turn off the autopilot, run through the protocols, flip lots of switches and mutter half-heard snatches of instructions into the microphone that I hope will sound terribly important, as I make damn certain I can cover all the checks the seat of my pants has been writing all this time. —Which means, to a certain extent, Radio Free Silence for a bit. I need to hunker down and write out what’s left all the way to the end before I commit; which means, to a very real extent, a delay before no. 20, “Sun,” manages to rise.

What I’m hoping, what this’ll look like, is in six months’ time or so, that’s when “Sun” begins, along with the promotional work I’ll need to be doing for vol. 2, The Dazzle of Day, which drops a month or so after that. And then after it’s been around for a month or so, nos. 21 and 22, “Gallowglas” and “Maiestie,” will then finally put in their appearances here, the one right after the other.

Which means, yes: for a brief little while, if you want to read the end of it right away, without waiting, you’ll need to get your hands on the book. —Do I feel a little awkward, holding it hostage like that? —A little, yes. Sheepish, even. But the devil’s driving, as he usually is, and this seems like a way to let him drive some sales, yes, but also and more importantly interest, attention, even conversation. A book is an Event; a finished chapter is just another finished chapter.

Or so it is to be hoped, at the present moment, questions remain to be seen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

—I’m sorry, you want to know when, exactly? —You see that “or so” up there? Much virtue in that, “or so.”

And after that? After all of that? I’ll probably sleep a bit, yes, but it’s not like I’m not sleeping now. —There’s more to come, of course; we’re just getting started! [cracks knuckles, winces at pain, essays a maniacal laugh, dissolves in coughing fit] —A re-design, for one thing, and a refit, which will take a little time, and somewhere in there I’ll start on the next bit, and then the one after that, and so on, and so forth, and they’ll make their way here, at least as long as the bees keep humming. —Let’s end on an ambiguously hopeful note, perhaps? I’ll copy out some notes I’d tell you I scribbled down on paper, except I typed them into a generic text editor instead, but here: some words that, from a long way off, might look like titles:

“Wake up…”
The Dazzle of Day
In the Reign of Good Queen Dick
Or Betty Martin
The Greene Chapel
Eleleu Ie
Restoration

No promises, mind. Subject to change. May settle during shipping. Void where prohibited.

Posted 4673 days ago.

Slowly but slowly but—

Posted 4741 days ago.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of what’s been ordained.

The idea of f--ries, I learned, probably goes back to ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and before the 19th century they weren’t pretty, tiny, winged girls who grant wishes and sprinkle magic glitter hither and thither—they were more like murderous kidnapping demons that eat babies. (The word f--ry comes from the Latin word for the Fates, i.e., supernatural creatures who decide if you will live or die.) I also learned something even cooler: f--ries, and the tales about them, are one of the oldest and most powerful secret codes that women have used to explain their lives.

—Jude Ellison Sady Doyle, “Once Upon a Time”

Posted 4748 days ago.

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