Kip Manley's Blog, page 19

Now we just have to get down

Work proceeds apace on the 44th novelette, “That was the river – ”, which will wrap up vol. 4, which, being wrapped up, will in turn bring an end to Season Two. Since four seasons are planned for the work (plus an epilogue), that means we’re at the halfway point, just about. When you’re climbing a mountain, the halfway point is the peak. Unless you’re planning a long quick drop, there’s just as much work left to do, getting down.

The last time I was finishing a season (let’s not look too closely at how many days ago it was), I was, in addition to being concerned with sales, and marketing (ah, well), thinking also about what was to come. What’s to come: work on the paperback and ebook collections of vol. 4, work on the new edition of all four volumes to date (more on which soon), and then, well, work on vols. 5 and 6. Work, work, work. —But let’s take a moment, to map the route, plot the descent, point to where it is we intend to end up. The shape, then, of what’s been done, and what’s to come:

Season One
Autumn into Winter

Vol. 1: “Wake up…”
Prolegomenon – Fidessa – Zoobombing – a-Hunting – Freeway – Anvil – Gin-soaked – Beauty – Giust – Surveilling – Rounds

Vol. 2: The Dazzle of Day
Innocency – Changeling – Mayhem – Frail– Plenty – Deliverance – Dazzle – Moon – Sun – Gallowglas – Maiestie

Season Two
Spring; Summer

Vol. 3: In the Reign of Good Queen Dick
the thin ice – vilissima & infima – two sweetest passions – only borders lie – tends to crumble – Hands of an Angry – shiver & headache – on pretending that – marble sends regards – only to sit – carnival was ringing

Vol. 4: —or Betty Martin
up and stand. – many Christian eyes – so powerfully strong – and ‘thirsty wilds’ – Ekumen ain’t everything – Beautiful, we are – dirty white noise – arms—legs—heaven – sun, dust, shadow – the Five Points – That was the river

Season Three
Summer

Vol. 5: The Greene Chapel
Vol. 6: Eleleu Ie

Season Four
Winter, and then Spring

Vol. 7: Restoration
Vol. 8: Bottom’s Dream

•

and an Epilogue:
a Dinner of Fish in Manzanita

And there we have it. Let’s go.

No. 43: the Five Points (Closing)

the Sound of water Falling – where She is, and what She is to Do

No. 43: the Five Points (Act IV)

again, Sunset – preparing his Doses – number Ten – what Kind of Ghost

No. 43: the Five Points (Act III)

Notice: Illegal Campsite – Breaking fast – coffee, Hot – a Moment passes

No. 43: the Five Points (Act II)

the Splintered wrack Below – administrative Matters – Hippocrepis comosa – Rabbit stew

No. 43: the Five Points (Act I)

an Apron of dirt – into the Grotto – don’t Ask

No. 43: the Five Points (Opening)

clattering Buttons

No. 43: “ – the Five Points – ”

Telling the turn from the wheel. Jo finds what she thought she wanted, and Becker thinks he’s found what he needs.

clattering Buttons – an Apron of dirt – into the Grotto – don’t Ask – the Splintered wrack Below – administrative Matters – Hippocrepis comosa – Rabbit stew – Notice: Illegal Campsite – Breaking fast – coffee, Hot – a Moment passes – again, Sunset – preparing his Doses – number Ten – what Kind of Ghost – the Sound of water Falling – where She is, and what She is to Do

Things to keep in mind (Another secret of magic)

“The magical economy isn’t meritocratic.”

Things to keep in mind (The secret of worldbuilding)

“That is wisdom,” said Barganax. “That is truth.” He settled himself on the stone of the balcony that was warm yet after a day of unclouded sun, and, sitting there against the sky, said: “Our talk hath wandered somewhat beside my purpose, which concerned the making of worlds. Were I to tell you I saw one such devised and created, under my nose, a month ago, at supper-table, would you credit that?”

Doctor Vandermast paused. “As coming from your grace, known to me for a man of keen judgement and not given to profane jesting, I should unpartially examine it.”

“I have not told you I saw it. The more I consider of it, the less know I whether I truly beheld that marvel or ’twere but legerdemain.”

“If it pleased your grace open it to me more at large—”

“Better not. I have indeed almost clean forgotten it, save the circumstances. But this I will tell you, that I seemed, when ’twas over, to have lived myself (and yet something more than myself: mixed of myself and his serene highness my Father, and, in the mixture, may be a less than him and something less too than me, as impurer; like as orange-colour hath not the pureness of red neither of yellow, being compound of both)—in that mixed self, I seemed to have lived a life-time in that world. Well,” he said, after a moment: “I sucked its orange. But a cheap frippery of a world it was, take it for all in all: made tolerable, as I bethink me now, but by rumours and fore-savourings of this. And I seemed, besides, to have looked on from without, while untold ages passed there: first the mere ball of incandescence: then the cooling: the millennial ages through which a kind of life was brewing, in enormous wastefulness and painfulness and ever-growing interweaving of tangle, until human kind began there: slow generations, ever changing and never (on the whole) bettering, of human kind, such as we be. Ay, and I was stood by, viewing it thus from withoutward, even at the golden moment for which that defaced, gelded, exiled creation, so like the real world, yet so unlike, had from its first beginnings waited and thirsted: its dissolution. And that was when she, to pleasure whose chanceable idle soon-changed fantasy it was made, took from the braided blackness of her hair a pin starred with anachite diamonds, and as idly with it touched the bubble. And at that prick—puff! ’twas gone: nought left but the little wet mark on the table to witness it ever existed.”

—E.R. Eddison