At the party, after I had slapped her—even then she did not offer anything personal. All she did was wave back those who would have otherwise taken me away. She waved back the onrush of beads from her flesh necklace. They retreated, gleaming and muttering.

“What is it you really want, Janice?” she said, smiling. “Would you like the past back? Would you like to be successful again? Would you prefer you weren’t a washed-up has-been with so few prospects she had to agree to help out with a party for an artist she used to agent?”

I had an answer, but it wasn’t what Sabon expected. No, it was far more than Sabon expected.

But I should probably start over, even here, and step back into the role of brittle chronicler of that which I would have liked to influence …

Dry facts, as dry facts will, have mushroomed and moistened in recent years, along with the popularity of her books, so that now I can enter any bookstore or library and discover information about her childhood—inspiration, education, perversions, diversions, etc.

Her books, their titles like curses—The Inflammation of Aan Tribal Wars, The Limited Influence of Gray Caps Upon Ambergris, A Revisionist History of the City—parrot each other when opened to the biographical note, with selective information added to the end of successive notes like the accretion of silt in the Moth River Delta. Why, I happen to have a couple of her books right here. Imagine that.

The notes from her third book, Reflections on Ambergris History, and her latest, Confessions of a Revisionist: The Collected Essays of Mary Sabon, differ only by degree. I have combined them below for ease of dissection.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Sabon has lived in Ambergris for her entire life. During the War of the Houses, she received her history degree from the Blythe Academy, where her teachers included author Duncan Shriek. (1) Sabon has written 16 (2) books over her distinguished twenty-year (3) career, including The Role of Chance in the History of the Southern Cities; Trillian as Reformer: The Influence of Pig Cartels on Ambergrisian History; (4) Magical Ambergris: The Legacy of Manzikert IX; Nature Studies with My Father; The Gray Caps’ Role in Modern Literature: The Dilemma of Dradin, in Love; (5) and Cinsorium: Rethinking the Myth of the Gray Caps. (6) At 47, (7) Sabon remains (8) the most vital and beloved of Ambergris’s many historians, shedding light on history and her fellow historians alike. (9) Her early interest in nature studies no doubt arises from her parents David Sabon and Rebecca Verden-Sabon, the former a noted naturalist best known for having coined the term “Nativism,” and the latter a gifted nature illustrator. (10)

Perhaps my annotations can be of help regarding this reeling litany of Mary’s accomplishments: