Publication day for Glimmerglass!

Comments and images

Full front quote:
I cannot recommend an author more 
than Marly Youmans, whose fantastic prose 
is absolutely gorgeous and haunting.
--Sébastien Doubinsky

Glimmerglass (Mercer, 9/2014),

Links: indies (search), online venues, and Mercer.

SIN: 0881464910 ISBN-13: 978-0881464917

Interior/exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

a novelist

Glimmerglass is a series of mirrors and panes that splinter and soften to let you fall deeper into the heart of myth and artistic desire. A resonant, beautiful exploration of fragile hopes and the courage that comes from resisting their trampling by others.   

        --Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts, Black Juice, and others; winner of World Fantasy and Printz awards

an editor

You might not even know what you are seeking, but once inside the pages of Glimmerglass, you’ll find exactly what you need: “a cup of music, a hill of sea.” In the Republic of Letters, Marly Youmans is our Magician in Chief.   

       --John Wilson, Editor, Books and Culture

Clive Hicks-Jenkins sketch for Glimmerglass

a poet

I know of no writers other than Marly Youmans who has the genius to combine the spine-tingling suspense of Gothic storytelling with the immense charm, grace, glamour, realism, and simplicity of Hawthorne. Glimmerglass does more than shimmer and grip; it entertains and hypnotizes. Youmans, one of the biggest secrets of contemporary American fiction, writes with freshness and beauty. Whether she’s writing historical fiction or fantasy, her characters leave one breathless. Her ability to describe a person, a place, or the psychological underpinnings of a plot or individual, ranks with the great novelists, the highest literature. A tale of love and intrigue, mystery and pathology, Glimmerglass’ appeal is the warmth and charge of a tale told round a fire fused by Hitchcockian anxiety, empathy, and relief. Nature, architecture, dread, thrill, sexual dilemma, and murder echo against Youmans’ gorgeous prose and terrifying romance, which glides like a serpent―without a single extraneous or boring word. Youmans is my favorite storyteller. I come back to her as if to a holy well.

       --Jeffery Beam, award-winning poet

         of The Broken Flower, Gospel Earth, and many more books

Marly YoumansGLIMMERGLASSSee On

pre-pub review

 This stylish contemporary variation on the Bluebeard legend from Youmans (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage) serves up an appealing blend of myth, mystery, and magic... 

       --Publishers Weekly July 2014

JACKET COPY 

Perhaps it was a sense of estrangement from the everyday that drew Cynthia Sorrel to the village of Cooper Patent. The failed painter was lured by the gate house with its seven doors, the lake with its tower, and the magical air of a place that couldn’t quite decide whether it was fictional, mythic, or real. The gate house should have been a first clue that she was on a journey, and soon she begins to glimpse and then to pursue a figure in the woods near her house, convinced she has seen the Muse.  

As she reclaims her calling as a painter and moves deeper into the uncanny world of Cooper Patent, Cynthia is finds herself at the heart of a labyrinth of mystery. She will have to navigate its dream depths and secrets, brilliant or dark, locked behind a door that opens into the earth.  

Sébastien Doubinsky writes, “I cannot recommend an author more than Marly Youmans, whose fantastic prose is absolutely gorgeous and haunting.” Now this “best-kept secret among contemporary American writers” (Books and Culture) has scaled the tree of books and plucked twigs of gothic romance, ghost tale, medieval dream vision, and belated coming-of-age story, with a leaf or two from the novel of manners and fantasy. The transformed result,Glimmerglass, is a gift to literature like no other.

A step on the way...
On August 13th, the book arrived at the warehouse.
Prefer buying direct from the publisher?
"Call us and place an order, or order online 
(20% off discount code: Facebook). 
Toll free 1-866-895-1472 or locally 478-301-2880."

from "Letter from the Editor," 

Books and Culture Magazine, August 27, 2014

Speaking of superb novels, let me recommend two others that will be appearing not too long after you receive this issue. In September, Knopf will publish Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which imagines the aftermath of a global pandemic of unprecedented ferocity. We follow a wandering troupe as they make their circuit in the upper Midwest, stopping at tiny settlements to perform Shakespeare and play music. In the same month, Mercer University Press will publish Marly Youmans' Glimmerglass, set in Cooper country in New York State, a book in which the fantastic and the quotidian are cunningly interlaced. These two novels have very little in common except for the quality of their imagination—but that is more than enough to make them kin.

A sample of the profuse interior decoration 
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

A Clive-sketch for Glimmerglass!

A step on the way to the final jacket--soon the spine lettering 
would shrink a little, and other minor tinkering would happen.

And a larger version here.

detail of the jacket by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
book design by Burt and Burt
Mercer University Press, September 2014

A detail from the cover art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Mercer makes a postcard...

Lady Word of Mouth 

thanks you for noting the book's 

first day in the world.

Antique printer's flower
with harp to sing and wings to soar...

Upcoming events here

Travels + Glimmerglass

Chapter decoration for Glimmerglass.
Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Posts may be a bit slim for a while, so please ramble around on the site, or click on the tabs above to go to book pages. Bookwise, next up is Glimmerglass on September 1st, now in pre-order. Click on the image below for a closer look. See prior posts for more commentary.

Glimmerglass is a series of mirrors and panes that splinter and soften to let you fall deeper into the heart of myth and artistic desire. A resonant, beautiful exploration of fragile hopes and the courage that comes from resisting their trampling by others. --Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts, Black Juice, and other novels, winner of World Fantasy and Printz awards 

You might not even know what you are seeking, but once inside the pages of Glimmerglass, you'll find exactly what you need: 'a cup of music, a hill of sea.' In the Republic of Letters, Marly Youmans is our Magician in Chief. --John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture

CLICK the image for a readable version

I'm heading off to the Antioch Workshops to meet with poetry and fiction writers, and leaving family members to fend for themselves... I expect they'll do just fine, and the calico bites ankles if pet dinners are forgotten, so that's convenient. On the way I'll have the fun of seeing painter Lynn Digby and her husband, the inimitable Paul Digby, who has written music and made videos for my poems but seems quite capable of doing anything he likes in the way of the arts. I expect he'll dance next. And in Yellow Springs, I shall have the pleasure of staying with the family of writers Rebecca Kuder and Robert Wexler, so a good time should be had.

Little minotaur...

The Glimmerglass News

Clive is busy transforming the world of Glimmerglass.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins + Glimmerglass

If you'd like to see how the cover is progressing, go here. That's the second peep at what Clive is doing with Glimmerglass, forthcoming from Mercer in 2014.

Me + Glimmerglass

The book has been sitting at the publisher's for a very long time, waiting its turn. And so I decided to tweak it once more and have promised to give it right back. So that is what I am doing, along with many other things that keep stopping me. But it'll be back in...

Others + Glimmerglass

As two people asked to read the book in manuscript, I asked them for blurbs. So that's poet Jeffery Beam and editor John Wilson. And I've also asked Margo Lanagan. Three just might be enough... I'll be posting them soon. Clive has already posted most of Jeffery's long comments here.

And other books

If you like the looks of this early progress, please take a look at some of the other books Clive and I have worked on. Most recently, that means two poetry books--Thaliad from Phoenicia and The Foliate Head from Stanza Press (UK.) The Throne of Psyche (Mercer) also has a Clive cover, as a detail from one of his paintings is the jacket and cover image. And as we set out with a new book, I don't want to forget my other recent paper children, particularly these three and the novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, also from Mercer (The Ferrol Sams Award; Silver Award, ForeWord Book of the Year Awards.) Please click on the tabs above for more information.