Folie à hirsute.
You have more likely than not seen this—
—which some have likened to this—
—or maybe you’re thinking of this—
—but me, I was suddenly, implacably flung back to this—
—so. Anyway. —I’m not sure where I fall on the charts—Fantasy Garibaldi, I suppose, but more effusive; anyway. I’m not choosing to think about what I’d have to do to properly fit a respirator. Yet.
In the reign of good Queen Dick.
Speaking of indulging me, I almost forgot to mention—
It’s new book day! Being the almost entirely arbitrary date selected for making the ebook of Vol. 3 of City of Roses available to the general public. (Almost entirely: I didn’t finish the Foreword ’til Monday, so.) —You can buy it from Smashwords, or any of the fine ebook purveyors Smashwords supplies, which maybe might include Amazon, I guess, oh, wait, no, the book has to have sold two thousand dollars’ worth through Smashwords, first. —Ah, I’m not bothering with the Borg so much anymore anyway; it’s not like this is about selling, ha ha, books, so. (If it were, I doubt I would’ve gone with “a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic” as my logline, which replaces “gonzo noirish prose,” and I expect you all to update your marketing kits accordingly.)
Or! You could buy them directly from me. I might not respond immediately, but certainly within an hour or three, and I get to keep more of the money, so it’s a win-win insofar as that goes.
Also! Available in Spanish, though not from me. (I think I mentioned these already.)
And there’s always the Patreon. (I don’t have a SoundCloud. That I know of.) —Anyway. Ha ha! New book day!
Cartographic spoiler.
If you’ll indulge me a moment:
“Portland,” says Ysabel, spreading marmalade on her toast, “is divided into four fifths.”
“Four,” says Jo. “Not five?”
“Four,” says Ysabel. Leaning over her plate she takes a bite of toast, careful of her sleeveless peach silk top. “There’s Northwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast.” Her finger taps four vague quarters on the purple tabletop between her plate and Jo’s coffee cup.
“What about North?”
“What about it?”
“It’s a whole chunk of town,” says Jo, leaning back. The jukebox under the giant plaster crucifix on the back wall is singing about how you’re all grown up, and you don’t care anymore, and you hate all the people you used to adore. “Isn’t it one of the fifths?”
“There’s no one there.”
“There’s nobody in North Portland.”
“But few of any sort,” says Ysabel, shaking pepper on her omelet, “and none of name.”
“Okay,” says Jo. Stirring her coffee. “But it’s still there. It’s still a part of Portland. It’s still a fifth.”
“If you wish to be finicky, you might also note that there’s no one technically ‘in’ downtown, either,” says Ysabel, cutting a neat triangle from the corner of her omelet. “Or Old Town. So you might speak of six fifths. Or seven. But.” She forks it up, chews, swallows. “I’m trying to keep things simple.”
I always was inordinately happy with that wee early riff on Ireland’s four cóiceda (even if the Shakespeare’s a little on-the-nose). (They’re eating in the Roxy, by the way. I’m serious about being firmly set in Portland.) —So I was anyway initially dismayed to learn that the City of Roses is adding its first new cóiced since 1931:
I mean, “Portland is divided into five sextants” just doesn’t have the same swing, you know? And we’re going to lose the leading zero addresses in inner Southwest, which is one of those charmingly slapdash municipal solutions that seemed brilliant in the moment but now confuse the hell out of underpaid DoorDashers and Amazon delivery drones.
But it’s not like I’m rewriting the riff, and I’m not so concerned with rigorous historical accuracy—I mean, the grand struggle between Good and Evil hinges on whether or not to demolish a ramp that was torn down in 1999. (Oops. Evil wins. Sorry.) —And it’s certainly suggestive, this sudden new neighborhood, carving as it does the Pinabel’s waterfront condominiums and all that other economic development out of the heart of old Southwest. So something’s going to happen in the political situation of my fictional little kingdom—hence the spoiler warning above—only, I’m not yet sure just what that thing will be.
But I have some ideas.
It is easier to clean the kitchen if you keep the kitchen clean
is one of those astringently parsimonious bromides that isn’t worth the wisdom it reveals, but I can’t help but think it applies to the problem with bringing back blogs. I couldn’t begin to tell you why I’ve suddenly resumed a former, blistering pace, but I can say that hiatuses be damned, this blog, this long story; short pier, is now old enough to vote in most American elections. Go on, then; have a haggis—
“—que combina Realismo Mágico con Prosa Gonzo Noir—”
Oh, God, it’s been a good long while since I properly waxed utopian about art, and the internet, and what the internet does to art, and making art, making the making of it more possible, and making it available to anyone anywhere anytime anyhow, and if nobody was going to get filthy Stephen King rich anymore, well, how many were under the old paradigm, come on, we are all ’zinesters now, famous for fifteen people, hooray. (Link to youthfully mawkish manifesto thankfully removed.) —I mean, who saw the pivot to video coming? The rise of streaming? Back in those heady early days, we’re talking season four of Halt and Catch Fire, who could possibly have thought the World Wide Web Consortium would write DRM into the very backbone of the internet?
But though I may not so much talk the talk these days, I do still walk it: everything here is free, of course, because, I mean, my God, it’s a blog, but so is everything at the city: I mean, I’ll sell you a ’zine, charging a bit of money to cover not the story, but the printing and the collating, the folding and the stapling and the postage, and I’ll sell you an ebook if you like, but the whole thing from the get-go’s been available for free, because. —Not entirely free, mind: copyright is claimed, but the rights reserved are limited, as defined by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license, which means: so long as you say where you got it, and don’t use it for any commercial purpose, and let anyone else do the same with whatever it is you make of it—you can make of it whatever you want.
Such as, for instance, a translation.
David (Artifacs) from Spain has gone and taken advantage of this to do precisely that, translating the whole thing into Cervantes’ mother tongue, offering up to the panhispanic community Ciudad de las Rosas: “Despierta…” and El Fugor del Día and, coming next month, En el Reino de la Buena Reina Dick. And it’s a decidedly odd feeling, knowing “my” words are out there now in a language I can’t read, in sentences I can barely even begin to fumble through before reaching for a dictionary—
Cuando suena el teléfono, las arrugadas mantas se sacuden y retuercen y escupen una mano. La mano busca a ciegas, encuentra el despertador y le da al botón de «Snooze». El teléfono vuelve a sonar. Aparece una cabeza, parpadeando, aturdida. El cabello es rubio recortado cerca del cráneo, con un par de mechones largos aquí y allá, teñidos de negro, lacios. El teléfono vuelve a sonar. Ella se echa sobre él, medio cayendo del futón, agarra el auricular. “Qué”, grita.
(Note: just because I do freely offer up some rights doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be open to selling some others, should a streaming netlet desperate for content want to talk about pivoting to video. Call me. I’ll drum up some people to talk to your people.)
Adventures in Ego-surfing.
“When Pier 1 rocketed to popularity in the ’80s and ’90s, and again after the 2008 financial crisis, its competitive advantage was that it provided a combination of fashionable but affordable furniture and unique and charming home décor items that were difficult to find elsewhere. Pier 1 goods were higher quality than lower-priced competitors, but more affordable than designer brands. That moat has disappeared over the past decade as the market noted the popularity of such items and began mass-producing them for far cheaper. Long story short, Pier 1’s economic moat has disappeared, and its profitability has gone along with it.” —Margaret Moran
Retrospectacular!
It’s that time of year, when those of us still in the blogging game tell you what we did with the previous three-hundred-sixty-five, much as many of us working the fantastika mines tell you which of what we’ve done is eligible for this award, or that. —But most of what I’ve done this past year has been over at the city, finishing the third volume; writing the thirty-third chapter. The blogging here’s been slight.
But it’s also that time of the decade, isn’t it? —Accepting for the moment that one can at once aver that decades don’t begin on the downbeat of the zero,
Let’s see: I made an opaquely definitive statement on URBAN FANTASY, that I later repurposed as a guest-post in a marketing push for vol. 2 (I have some strange ideas on marketing); I solved in one stroke both income inequality and global warming; I defined the most important social media trend of the decade (which promptly dissipated); I engaged in some criticism, like this, about Frozen, or this, about, um, Frank Herbert, and Reza Negarestani, or this, which is about just about everything, and had a DVD’s worth of cut scenes; and also I used the supreme cinematic accomplishment of 2008 to explain the Cluthian triskele; and also I had some things to say about publishing (mass-market, and self-); a friendly comment from an international correspondent led to a momentary spark of reason; I walked away from Twitter, which was supposed to lead to more blogging (I mean, it did, but not as much as maybe I’d thought, and also, see above); and, but, before I did, I turned some off-hand twitterings to things I rather liked, on novel-shaped objects, and galactic civilizations.
Also, I sold maybe the only story I’m going to sell, and—even though I got started before 2012, or even before the beginning of the decade, still: I published all three books in the past ten years; I wrote a goddamn trilogy. —So there’s that.
What I tell you three times is true.
The thirty-third installment’s been released: the eleventh (and final) chapter of the third volume, which means: I’ve done it. I’ve gone and written a trilogy.
And there’s work yet to be done and technical difficulties to overcome and I have to re-remember all the stuff about marketing and distributing book-shaped objects but for the moment I get to sit here on this deserted bit of beach as the tossing storm growls away over the horizon and take a deep breath and enjoy the silence, before I start vaguely to worry about what happens next. (An aftermath, yes, I do enjoy a good aftermath, but then what? And what then?)
—I guess I’d thought a Snark would have more meat on it?
A moment of your time.
Over at the city, the thirty-second novelette is appearing this week, and next; the penultimate chapter of the current volume, the third, which we’re calling In the Reign of Good Queen Dick.
And I know what you’re thinking: Kip, thirty-two novelettes—that’s a lot! —But you count it all up, it’s only 484,470 words, in toto, so far: considerably less than two Songs of Ice and Fire. (It’s also just over one Lord of the Rings; 44% of a Harry Potter; 15% of a Wheel of Time, or a Malazan Cycle, though it’s 50% of a Marq’ssan; 28% of a House of Niccolò; and 210% of a Valley of the Nest of Spiders.)
So it’s not that much, in the scheme of things. You could probably get all caught up before I’m done posting this one.
36 pages; color cover; three staples, each.
Ah, the glamorous life of a self-publisher.
(Not pictured: the large spoon; the saddle stapler; the overnight pressing under a stack of books; the 6"x9" manila envelopes; the Patreon mailing list; the trip to the post office—)
What a week, huh?
When you go to wearily crack a “Lemon, it’s Wednesday” riff and realize it’s only Tuesday.
Help desk.
So there I am having gotten up at half-past four as one does on a holiday and I’m doing the usual thing where I’ve turned on the kettle and ground the coffee and fed the cats that woke me, and I’ve fired up the laptop and the Scrivener and the wireless headphones, and I’ve lit a candle and drawn a card, and shuffle’s hit on DJ Spooky’s Ghost World mix, that he did for the Africa Pavilion at the Venice Biennale a while back, so that’s what’s in my ears as I head back into the pre-dawn kitchen to plunge the French press and pour the coffee into the thermos, and when I turn around to get myself a cup there’s the Spouse, all unexpected, in her buffalo plaid pyjamas, a cup of her own in her hands, and I jump half out of my skin and make what she later told me was a “very small sound, for you” and anyway, ever since that, my wireless headphones lost their Bluetooth connection and can’t get it back, so is there, like, an easy fix? —Thanking you in advance.
Domesticity, with cats.
(That would be the redoubtable Beezel above, Fennec below, known also as Gentleman Marmalade, and the Spouse embroidering in the midst.)
It’s getting odd out there.
“Kip Manley Is a well-known author, some of his books are a fascination for readers like in the City of Roses Season One: Autumn Into Winter book, this is one of the most wanted Kip Manley author readers around the world.” —I’m not gonna link the source, for obvious reasons. Here, go read that Max Read article instead.
Bhat kachang.
“First put on the peas, and when half boiled, add the bacon. When the peas are well boiled, throw in the rice, which must first be washed and gravelled. When the rice has been boiling half an hour, take the pot off the fire and put it on coals to steam, as in boiling rice alone.” —Worked out pretty well, so far, 2019, but this year, this is the year I’m gonna remember to properly source my rice and beans ahead of time.
2018’s over, if you want it.
Ha ha ha, what a year! What did I do, what did I do: burned Twitter to the ground, fucked off Tumblr, dumped Chrome and backed slowly away from the rest of Google, I never trusted Facebook or cottoned to Instagram, so what’s left? Linkedin? Good God, has anyone ever successfully extricated themselves from that?
—So now I get to sit here and wonder why, with all this time I’ve managed to free for myself, I somehow managed to not write a novelette all year.
Let’s see, what were we up to: lost a cat, gained a cat, stepped from third grade to fourth grade, went freelance, started burning more candles, and I went and found myself a job, and I’ve all of a sudden learned what it means to give a shit about what you do, and maybe that’s what’s become of some of that free time?
Maybe. —Anyway, I’m almost done with no. 32. I’m still blogging here (I liked this one; this one was fun). —I’ll probably keep waking up at four in the morning to feed the cats and light a candle and see what I can accomplish by setting one letter down after another while it’s quiet. Further bulletins, etc.
A new world.
So the ten-year-old is getting into D&D, so I went and made a world for her.
(It gets easier, as you get older, making worlds. —I merely filed incriminating details off of this, and added a sprinkling of these. —Voila!)
Of course, almost all of this will never be seen; it’s all just airy atmosphere. Ambience. From the notices sent forth to candidates:
No Dwarves! No Elves! No Half-Anything! —Otherwise, whichever Bob you like might be your uncle. —You’re newly minted adventurers headed for the city known variously as Ossrond, Othronn, Ethrynn, Ndu Kemen, Sunso, or, most formally, as Nueämbar—a fantastical outpost of the Elven Empire (the Fedhir Nation), anchor of commerce and urbanity on the great green Coast of Flies (the Gnat Palastor)—and site of the Elves’ great and terrible defeat of the Dwarves, mumblety-mumble years ago. —It’s the darkening days of autumn, and great huracanoe-storms are building out in the Circled Sea to herald winter with tree-lashing rains. Fisherfolk, merchants, coffee-farmers and tea-distillers, brontosaurus-herders, mountebanks and mendicants, the landless houseless peoples all along the Coast of Flies are streaming to the fabled groves of Nueämbar and the vasty caverns within—or rather, the fabled caverns, and the vasty groves within—for shelter in the coming cold wet wind-tossed season. And you are there, among the raucous hordes! —If you’d like a glimpse of this wondrous city before we arrive, look up images of the Son Doong cave system, and imagine a dozen Rivendells tucked here and there, like kudzu creeping into Khazad-dûm.
So: pants-seated night-flown Adventure in dragon-adjacent dungeons! —Further bulletins as events (and the dice) warrant.
