Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of daily planners— and of post-it notes, and of desktop calendars and graph paper, all filled in and crossed off and tossed on the heap behind my desk. Not only is it the end of the calendar year, but the world is a grand comedy of trash fires and I have a long way to go before some of mine are even tamped down, let alone extinguished. That’s the up-to-the-moment summation of my present; busy at my desk, busy around the house, busier on social media than I would have expected.
The degradation of Twitter has caused the acceleration of some plans that have floated for ages in the Limbo Dimension— refurbish the website, shock the Tumblr back to life, get the newsletter back in training, all the usual suspects. One of the things that has just been called to my attention is that apprently the “thanks for subscribing” message for this newsletter contains some typos which I’d’ve sworn I’d fixed, and I will tend to that as soon at this post is dispensed with.
I’m also going to be ditching “I will try very hard to send it out only when there is tangible news to share” and any related language, because over the past year I’ve put some thought and study into the whole “what the hell should we be doing with this stuff anyway” question, and I’ve been persuaded that timidly promising not to get in touch with readers is perhaps less than brilliant. When I subscribe to another writer’s newsletter, it’s very rarely because I don’t want to hear from them. You folks, you excellent and upstanding human beings, composed of only the finest molecules, are the absolute vanguard of earth people who want to hear from me more often. You are an all-volunteer, self-selecting elite. Y’all done this to yourselves. So I’m not going to solemnly swear to drop a line only when I’ve got something new to sell… in fact, now that I frame the question so starkly, I wonder why I ever thought that was a great notion. I genuinely don’t want to bother anyone, but from time to time I need to be a bit less Minnesotan, if only professionally.
So where is everything at, fiction-wise, at this moment? My clearest priorities are the still-untitled first Gentlemen Bastards novella and The Thorn of Emberlain, which I will discuss in the upcoming Post of Christmas Future. In a sense, everything with me fictionwise is of the future because it’s not getting published the day after tomorrow, but here’s a general stock-taking of all the things that are currently on my mind and I envision being on my mind this coming year.
A number of shorter projects have been eaten or held back by anxiety along with my big plans, and they are:
•“Kaiju Agonistes:” a long satirical/geopolitical first contact story I read an excerpt from in NYC a few years ago. I’m not sure how well this baby has survived contact with the COVID pandemic or if some of its salient points haven’t already been expressed in “Maybe Just Go Up There And Talk To It,” my story which appeared in the 2020 anthology The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Still, I poured an awful lot of work into this, and I think it contains enough solid material to be worth a salvage and an update. Most importantly, my wife would throw me off a cliff if I didn’t do so.
•“Maybe Just Go Up There And Talk To It:” Although reasonably complete in its current form, I have always thought this story could breathe better with a few thousand additional words and some more exploration of what’s happening in its world. I had to fit it within a certain space for the editor’s needs, and I don’t begrudge that at all, but the version I intend to release as a standalone ebook will be an “author’s expanded edition.”
•“Cash Poor, Temple Rich- A Tale of the Red Hats:” I have long been meaning to continue the saga of the Red Hats mercenary company, first seen in 2011 in “The Effigy Engine” in the Fearsome Journeys anthology edited once again by that prolific miscreant Jonathan Strahan. Apart from wrestling with anxiety attacks, I have been struggling with the fact that for years the term “red hat” in American politics has become synonymous with a movement that I absolutely despise. After swinging one way and then another on the subject, I have finally resolved that I am tired of ceding space to awful people, and that I was making use of the term long before they were. Therefore, Millowend and her melancholy band won’t be changing their hats, and I’ll be trying to find a home for their next chronicle in 2023.
•Queen of the Iron Sands: My original intermittently-successful anxiety mitigation project, launched in 2009, has been on hiatus for some time and needs a refurbishment of its text as well as a careful consideration of where it fits into the publishing landscape of 2023. Although my present operating condition indicates I probably should have sought pharmaceuticals rather than set myself a challenging art project all those years ago, I remain extremely fond of the art project and have every confidence, if these circumstances persist, that I can make it fly again. Also, most importantly, my wife would throw me off a cliff if I didn’t do so.
•The Theradane Cycle: Last but not least of the things I’ve been looking forward to in my short fiction is a return to the city of Theradane, where Amarelle Parathis and her crew will be forced to continue their utterly ridiculous heists on behalf of the wizard Ivovandas. I had originally vowed that I would continue the series of tales when I had figured out what Amarelle would have to steal next. Well, I did eventually figure it out, and now you can know too— here’s a section excerpted from “The Master of the Moment,” the direct sequel to “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane.” I apologize if my proofreading leaves anything to be desired, as this is most definitely a draft.
Ivovandas Lets Her Hair Down
Few people enjoy being forcibly rendered unconscious, fewer still appreciate waking up disarmed and confined, and a vanishingly small stratum of participants in such a chain of events is ever pleased to discover that the wizard Ivovandas is responsible for any of it.
“I do answer ordinary summons, you know,” groaned Amarelle, immediately recognizing the ruby-lit chamber in which she woke. She was sprawled upon a lounge and wearing her own clothes, though her weapons and assorted devices had been sifted out of the pockets. That she was still alive was ostensibly cheering, but that she was alive and within this particular house promised a great many other shoes poised to drop.
“Grudgingly at best.” Ivovandas smiled and floated irritatingly around the lounge. Only Ivovandas could float irritatingly; Amarelle could not have described precisely how it was accomplished but it was as firm a declaration of true identity as anything conceivable. Ivovandas, with her skin as white as winter starlight, her insouciance like a perfume, her gold eyes and gold hair. Once that hair had taken the form of butterflies, but today it was a thatched and threaded mass of gleaming wasps. “Our history advises the commencement of vulgar displays of dominance as early as possible to more speedily quash your habitual insubordination.”
“Ebullient charm is often mistaken for habitual—”
“Ah! Ah! What a metronome you are, my dear, how reliable, a tick-ticking mechanism for the exhalation of dissension into the local atmosphere. What an absolutely useless consistency— from a survival standpoint.” Ivovandas reached up and drew a golden file of wasps onto the ivory skin of her hand, where they seemed to pulse, the tapering cylinders of their bodies reflecting curves of scarlet light. “These can go places, Amarelle. You have places. A great many places.”
“Your point is taken, Ivovandas. I see no need for me to take their points as well. I can only assume you’ve determined that my shoulders have gone long enough without the weight of one of your suicide missions to press them down a bit.”
“I do possess information which could, if properly handled, potentially lead to the divestment of another one of my colleagues from the source of their magical power. Power which others might describe as both morally misplaced and socially undesirable.”
“And you wish me to feel motivated to properly handle this information.”
“Oh, what a gratification to contemplate!”
“Another locus to be stolen from another member of the Parliament of Theradane.”
“In as many words.”
“And relative to the wizard Jarrow, late of Prosperity Street, how powerful and how paranoid?”
“Probably more, and most certainly more.”
“I rejoice at the degree of confidence you repose in myself and my friends.” Amarelle flopped backward on the lounge, beyond all concern for how much she resembled a girl pitching a fit. “In fact, I seem to be getting my usual headache from all the rejoicing. Which of your colleagues is to receive our attention?”
“The Appreciator.”
“The Appreciator.” Amarelle righted herself like a buoy after the passing of a wave. Flopping has lost its power to amuse. “Master of the Moment. That Appreciator?”
“There is only the one. I understand you’ve had dealings with him in the past.”
“Then you understand that hearing my name isn’t likely to bring him pleasure!”
“How fortunate your mission does not ultimately require you to bring him any degree of pleasure.”
“Damn it, Ivovandas, my ability to move freely where he’s concerned is compromised. He contracted my services several times before I paid in to become a citizen of Theradane. But the last contract he offered, the item he wanted me to procure, was… grotesque.”
“Your value judgments are of no interest, Amarelle.”
“I refused that last contract. The Appreciator took the refusal very poorly.”
“Yes.” Ivovandas gazed for a moment at the line of golden wasps now circling her wrist like a faintly-vibrating bacelet. “Members of the Parliament of Theradane do that. As a rule.”
“Shit,” Amarelle sighed. “What’s the nature of his locus, then?”
“I wish I knew. I have only the most intriguing and persuasive hint that it has something to do with a dance. Some component of a dance, possibly its steps.”
“You want us to steal the steps of a dance. An unidentified dance.”
“Most likely.”
“You want us to steal the steps of an unidentified dance from the man who controls Theradane’s biggest leisure palace, a place where dancing takes place every minute of every hour of every night with hundreds of dancers spilling in and out of the proceedings completely at random!”
“That seems a reasonable conjecture, followed by a melodramatic overstatement of commonplace knowledge.”
“This is a fucking infringement upon sanity, Ivovandas!”
“Someone who looked very much like you stood in this house last year and affirmed to my face that she had once stolen the sound of the sunrise.”
“The material components alone for that caper bankrupted the city of Ansilmaron for fourteen years! They’re still pretty sore about it!”
“Well, I don’t have fourteen years,” said Ivovandas. “I’ll give you the usual terms. One year and one day. Though I’d suggest you try very hard not to take that long. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that the Appreciator will be less unwary than Jarrow was.”
What’s next?
Only one post remains for 2022.
The Post of Christmas Future.
And the future has bastards in it…
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