Excerpt Book IV – Part III Elena Delange is back in London. What happens next, she did not see coming. The room freezes. Every eye flicks to my silk blouse, where delicate streaks of gold crawl down from my breasts, catching the overhead light. “You must be kidding me,” I snap. “Of all the moments,…
Tag: the chronicles of a memory cartographer
The Holographer’s Atlas
Richard Costa Blanca, 2012 Coffee with Irmy and Hans, the neighbours. Stroopwafels, Dutch television, the particular furniture of people who brought their country with them intact. I was comfortable in that atmosphere the way you’re comfortable in a language you grew up in but no longer speak every day. The doorbell announced a bridge friend…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Daan de Vylder ’98. Eight months back in the country where I was born. Not the coast—no bridges, no coffeehouses, no salt on the windows. A border village instead. Meadows, woods, a low sky that made everything feel provisional. I was in a one bar- town. For men. Jan had redone his backyard in honour…
The Holographer’s Atlas
Jan ’98 The coast I knew turned green. The disco drum turned to doves. I put my bikini in a drawer and borrowed a fur coat. I learned the village map like a religion. My sunny frontline apartment became a big old house from before the war. Empty rooms make loud ghosts. My daughter stopped…
The Holographer’s Atlas
B. Z. Projan Anima ’94 I heard him before I saw him. Not him, exactly—his acceleration, the particular growl of his engine. In a chorus of scooters, with the occasional Harley and Ducati, his Honda cut through differently—lighter, but still roaring as if it carried his spirit inside it. The blue handkerchief at his throat…
The Memory Cartographer – Book X – Order Magic
Another sneak peek The Line That Did Not Move Three men. Maybe four. Poorly disciplined — the kind who expect sleeping villages and easy work. They had good intelligence and bad instincts. They knew about the fund, the women, the maps. They knew a foreign woman with money was somewhere inside the compound. They thought…
The Memory Cartographer – Book X – Order Magic
First pages sneak peek Every Girl Born Knowing Years ago I wrote a column about a Global Birth Right Fund. The idea was simple and radical in equal measure: every girl born anywhere on earth enters the world with an economic right. A fund, seeded by women with money who were tired of reading about…
The Memory Cartographer – Book X – Order Magic
Another peek “Mr… Karimi, is it?” the deputy said, mispronouncing his name in a way that sounded practised. Karim smiled politely. “Close enough.” “We hear you’ve been very… helpful,” the cousin added. His suit fit a little too well not to have come from Budapest. “Showing people how to use our new toy.” “Our president’s…
The Memory Cartographer – Book X – Order Magic
Order Magic lives somewhere around Book 10 in The COMC Files. You’re not supposed to be here yet, but I’m bad at waiting—so here’s a harmless little scene of Karim annoying Hungarian bureaucracy without giving the real spoilers away. Chapter I – Érkezés Order Magic is the power of structure, stability, and cosmic law: the…
The Memory Cartographer
Still Here. Still Writing. The formatting is ongoing — yes, still. Books I through III are moving through the pipeline and will reach you properly bound and sequenced. In the meantime the Atlas stories continue, because some things don’t wait for production schedules. And because you’ve been patient, here is something new. A first look…
The Memory Cartographer 