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 number of elements of this new season, Summer, the third season of the epic, might well be coming into focus. —Head over to Chapbooks, and scroll down to the brand new section where the third season chapbooks will be collected, and you’ll notice that no. 45 is the first installment of vol. 5, the Greene Chapel—but that no. 46 is the first installment of vol. 6, Eleleu Ie.
(I did mention somewhere, that the structure of this third season would be the most complex, by far; that third movements of symphonies are, typically, dance movements: bursts of energy, and, yes, joy, after the more contemplative seconds.)
Summer will lean into the geographic separation of our protagonists, Jo and Ysabel, that ended Spring; Summer. Each novelette will focus particularly on the one, or the other, on Newport, or Portland, but there will be an epistolary component, as well, as they write letters to each other over the course of the season. (Thus, my peculiar difficulties in being unable to finish no. 45 until I’d written enough of no. 46 to have a feel for the letter Ysabel would send to be read in no. 45.) —The season will alternate (mostly), but when all is said and done, the subsequent volumes will collect the novelettes particular to the one, or the other: thus, the Green Chapel is Jo’s volume, and Eleleu Ie is Ysabel’s.
So! Something to look forward to. Meanwhile, I’ll keep chipping away at no. 47. Not sure what it will be called, just yet. Might be June 28th. I still need to figure out when Ysabel will have started to write the next letter.
