L. Timmel Duchamp reports that the last volume of her Marq’ssan Cycle, Stretto, has arrived from the printer. She writes “I feel as though I ought to be celebrating, ought to have finally, after more than twenty years, a sense of closure. And yet, instead I’m experiencing the same flatness I always feel a day or two after I’ve finished writing a novel. The feeling is too complicated to articulate easily.” She goes on to wonder why “elation lies in the writing process itself—especially as I’m beginning a novel? I suppose that elation lies in the magic of possibility, the magic of stepping into a new world, never before explored. Finishing means closing the door on that world, so that all future exploration will be strictly private, inside one’s own head.”
After such deep ruminations, she comments that publisher Acqueduct Press is offering the book at a special pre-release price of $15 (the official release date is 1 July).
For those unfamiliar with the work, she offers this brief description: “Stretto, the grand finale of the Marq’ssan Cycle, weaves together the major threads of the Marq’ssan story and encourages readers, as Joan Haran says, ‘to write beyond the ending.’ The novel, like the series as a whole, inquires Whose world is it? and shows several possible ways of answering the question through the respective perceptions and perspectives of the novel’s five viewpoint characters: Alexandra Sedgewick, heir to the Sedgewick estate; Anne Hawthorne, Security operative; Hazel Bell, subversive activist; Celia Espin, human rights lawyer; and Emily Madden, star pupil of the maverick Marq’ssan, Astrea l Betut san Imu. As always, never predictable, never finished, the consequences of all that has gone before continues to play out.”
The previous volumes in the series include: Alanya to Alanya, Renegade, Tsunami, and Blood in the Fruit.