City of Roses
Reattaching the wonder-generating mechanisms of fantasy to the City of Portland since 2006.
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Reattaching the wonder-generating mechanisms of fantasy to the City of Portland since 2006.
My name is Kip Manley; I'm a writer living here in Portland, Oregon, where I labor away at a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, a modern fantasy epic doled out in coffee-break installments.
City of Roses is—well, I've tried summing it up over the years, fielding taglines that reach for the intriguingly oblique (“The ten thousand things, the one true only”) and the wryly self-deprecating (“The city of Portland, only with more sword fights”). —It's about what happens when Jo Maguire, a highly strung, underemployed telemarketer, meets Ysabel, a princess of unspecified pedigree—but it's also about ghost bicycles, retired river-gods, boar-hunts in shopping malls, secret struggles over cities that might never were—but it's also about Violence, and Power, and Romance, about genrejumps and genderfuck and hearts broken cleanly and otherwise, and that moment when the bass and all the drums except maybe a handclap drop out of the bridge and you're left hanging from an aching thread of melody waiting almost dreading the moment when the beat comes back—and also, yes, the occasional bit of swordplay.
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Posted by Kip Manley on May 02, 2026
Posted by Kip Manley on Jan 02, 2026
Posted by Kip Manley on Nov 19, 2025
Volumes, yes, but first: paper copies have gone out finally, now that the enveloping situation has been rectified. (And this time I was told I didn’t need a customs form. They keep going back and forth.) —Anyway.Volumes: well. Now that nos. 45 and 46 are done and out in the world, a numb... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Nov 13, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Nov 13, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Nov 09, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Oct 14, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Oct 01, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Sep 01, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Aug 24, 2025
Where it all began:On force:Point of view:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Jul 16, 2025
It’s International Zine Month! Difficult prose: On the Spear Cuts Through Water:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Jun 29, 2025
The arc of Joan of Arc:Building worlds with subcultures:Ceci n’est pas any cover art:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on May 27, 2025
Worldbuilding as tactic:A better look at the beast:On sale this week!... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on May 22, 2025
A small one, anyway. —In honor of the fact that the re-runs are nearly up to the end of volume one, welp: paperbacks of “Wake up…” (bought through me) are only twelve dollars for the next week, and ebooks of “Wake up…” are only three. More details.
Posted by Kip Manley on Apr 15, 2025
The art to be found in the making of the art:Leaving maybe enough room to decide for itself if yes:And, on a Meal of Thorns on Lud-in-the-Mist:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Mar 30, 2025
From the flashpoint of that recent coziness discourse: Empson on (some aspects of) (some versions of) the pastoral: And, a bit more Empson blogging:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Mar 17, 2025
An update on progress: Nabokov, and Eddison: Wizards vs. Lesbians on Delany, with Cameron Reed:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Feb 28, 2025
Robert Alter on Vladimir Nabokov:An unexpected (possible) connection: And we've just wrapped up the fourth novelette in re-runs—get the first five in a pay-what-you-want ebook edition, available from itch: ... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Feb 11, 2025
Egress, on page-hugging:Nat Harrington, on Celticity:And, the epic is eligible to be nominated for a Best Series Hugo:... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Feb 01, 2025
Adam Roberts on worldbuilding in Hell: M. John Harrison on Katherine Mansfield: Re-runs of the epic have got through nos. 1 and 2; number 3 starts next week: (But there's a pay-what-you-want ebook at itch with the first five novelettes, if folks are interested.)... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Feb 01, 2025
Posted by Kip Manley on Jan 18, 2025
A few items of note, over the course of the last little while. There's Vajra Chandrasekera on allegory:Patricia Lockwood on mysticism:And Rich Puchalsky went and wrote a brief disquisition on “owr”:Work continues, but I’ll save deeper thoughts on that for the first of the month.... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Dec 08, 2024
One of those milestones, thirteen years after publication—if I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere! —Wait, that didn't rhyme. Let me try again.
Posted by Kip Manley on Nov 22, 2024
Posted by Kip Manley on Oct 11, 2024
Posted by Kip Manley on Aug 01, 2024
We're in the interstitial, liminal time, which normally is what I like the best, the little uncertainties of the crepuscule, when you can just about not tell the black thread from the white, but words fail on thresholds like this, unable to determine which way to go, or where, and one's left with a ... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Jul 21, 2024
Posted by Kip Manley on Jul 16, 2024
Posted by Kip Manley on Jul 01, 2024
Posted by Kip Manley on Jun 01, 2024
The first draft is on track to finish up this month, which means we’ll more than likely see the 44th novelette, the end of the fourth volume, the finale of season two, taking its bow in July. So I'll not say much more than that, at the moment, and get back to it—except to note one more p... Continue reading
Posted by Kip Manley on Apr 16, 2024
Let’s do this!No. 43 is appearing pretty much a full year after no. 41, and all I have to say about that at the moment is no. 44 is actually on track and taking shape, though it’s not a shape I’d been expecting. I swerved into a moment inspired by a moment from Eddison—one of... Continue reading