I started this writer-in-residence deal with excitement. I expected some pretty cool stories from the writers who volunteered. But what I never expected—what I should have known but didn’t—was that this project would grow to take on a true life, an aesthetic entirely its own and built around the bones of this never-was Ancient City.

This has amazed me beyond all capacity to be amazed. This has floored and astounded me. This has made me love writers, and writing, more than even ever ever ever before. This has made this project easily the most rewarding I’ve ever been involved with.

I am so grateful to all the writers who devoted their time and creative energies to this collaboration, and who stuffed the skin of this city with straw and gold and paper and lead and crystal and sand and dirt and blood. Thank you all and thank you especially to Steve Himmer, for allowing us to build this work of pure imagination on his wonderful literary journal.

Tonight and tomorrow and for a while anyway, The Ancient City exists for you. Enjoy it, take from it, be rewarded by the site of humanity slashed up and sown up, by people in the world just like always, like ever. Like us.