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Home after many weeks and a final Glimmerglass reading-and-signing event at The Doylestown Bookshop, plus a romp through Henry Chapman Mercer's Fonthill castle! Thanks to my generous Doylestown hosts, David and Karin Svahn. Here's a snip from the somnium or dream-vision passage in the book:

In a sunbeam, the angel's tree glittered, bare and silver. Going to it, she found glistening leaves stuck to the surface of Glimmerglass and pods that stood erect on the branches like golden torches. On peering into the ice, she made out a snake knotted around the bole and a ball of fur snuggled below. She sank through, drawing herself onto the other side of the lake by a tangle of silver roots. Far off, she glimpsed a skater in a black cloak, bowed against the wind as he pulled a child's heavily loaded sleigh.

As she walked in the labyrinth by the lake, a needle slipped from her gown, making an infinitesimally small ping! as the eye widened to let her in. She glimpsed a path of splinters and droplets of water before threading the eye of the needle and sliding head first into the plush midnight fabric of sleep.

Jacket and title page art above by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Design by Mary-Frances Glover Burt for Mercer.