City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and river gods retire to comfortably shabby apartments.
The first of these aims will result in his being “kissed” or praised by the reading public and his courtly audience, but at the same time can only result from being “kissed” or touched by critical contact. If the poet remains unnoticed by criticism (“vnkisste”) he will always remain obscure (“vncouthe”) in the twin senses of unheard-of but also invisible, unavailable to the consciousness of his potential readers. The one who can provide him not only with fame but, at one level, his very existence, is the already knowledgeable EK.
Actually, having gone back to volume 5 already, I’ve finished the first draft of no. 47, and I’m a couple-thousand deep in the first draft of no. 48, which means I’m back again in volume 6, but today, today we’re doing the cover reveal for no. 47, which is in volume 5—thus, the title.
Anyway: the cover for no. 47, June 29th:
Want to make carnitas without all the fat? Bolognese without the wait? Why? Why when there are so many pork dishes that are not confited, so many Italian pasta sauces that don’t require hours of simmering. If “that” is to be avoided for whatever reason, it feels like a failure of the imagination to stay stuck on “this.” We, editors and readers alike, are all drinking the same very contemporary, very American flavor of Kool-Aid, keeping up the charade that we can have everything we want and nothing that we don’t, even as our lives feel harder and tighter.
the water brown and oily sunlight-frothed, sluiced into the bucket by a current slow and strong. Twang of the rope as she pulls it hand over hand up through the pulley, wobbling, sloshing, white plastic striated with hard use. Wrapping the rope about one hand, letting go with the other, leaning out over the drop to grasp the bucket’s handle, balancing rope, pulley, bucket, herself, she shifts, hauls, releases a screech of the pulley the bucket slopping in through the window.
Leaned against the weight of it she makes her way past a wall of silent grandfather clocks out into a broad dim showroom broken up in niches and nooks by arrangements of furniture, settees and love seats, end tables, coffee tables, rugs laid showily atop the dull grey carpet, a phalanx of loungers, a couple chaises longues. Her red shoes, black jeans, dark hoodie. A row of freestanding fireplaces, red brick and white and yellow and grey stone, white tile, smoked glass, gleaming chrome, but every hearth is cold. At the end a wide white plaster mantel, elaborately molded, and four or five mounds of blankets and pillows laid out before it.
Long windows at the front of the showroom glazed with sunlight, and another line of fireplaces there, faced out toward the empty street. She sets the bucket down before a pot-bellied stove at the end, with a ramshackle sheet-metal chimney run up and back to a hole punched in the wall. Dry wood stacked beside it, split and neatly trimmed. Protecting her hand with the cuff of her hoodie she levers the door open, eyes the glowing embers, stuffs in a log, and another.
The water in the bucket brown, but slicked with hints of rainbow.
“Our reviewers loved the world-building and well-drawn characters.”
