My first real book is officially getting published! I'll keep this space updated as we get closer to the publication date. There's four stories in it that are already published, and three of them can be read online right now:
- "Davu the Explorer and the Druid Tía Yara"
- "Squawker and Dolphin Swimming Together"
- "A Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone"
- "The Roots in the Box and the Roots in the Bones" is also in it, although currently available only in print, in the January/February 2023 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.
I'm also working on at least five more for the collection this year, so more than half the book will be new, original stories. All of them take place in the same timeline, from the near to distant future, and explore the relationship between nature, technology and humanity in a world that's doing an okay job of handling the climate crisis. That is to say, a lot better than we're doing now, but pretty far from perfect. It's an "ambiguous utopia," as LeGuin would say. Some have called the stories so far solarpunk and hopepunk, and I think those fit the overall tone of the collection, though there are definitely moments that are more punk than hope. My influences range from Cordwainer Smith to Robin Wall Kimmerer to Peter S. Beagle, so I dunno, you'll probably like it? I wrote a lot about the work that into the worldbuilding over on the Asimov's author blog in a post called Finding and Breaking Utopia.
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