“The Highlands: Where the people are wild, and the trees are wind-buckled, and there are lochs which mirror the sky.” Susan Fletcher, author of The Highland Witch

Travels

Morgan and I went on an adventure. We went to the Scottish Highlands to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. From Inverness to the Cairngorms, and even to the North Sea near Aberdeen, we traipsed, hiked, played, rested, and peaced out. We visited castle ruins and restored castles, hiked down a beach, around a loch, and to a waterfall. We ate at beautiful old mansions and drank red wine on an old inn’s patio that overlooked snow-covered mountains in the distance and gently swaying trees, azaleas, and yellow honeysuckles.

The trip was mostly paid for by Morgan’s work anniversary gift. Having a week off refreshed my spirit and livelihood. We came back to cold weather, including frost, but then summer-like spring began. I planted a garden and added new heather to the meadow.

That explains another late newsletter, but I don’t feel that I need to put one out every month anymore.

World ecofiction spotlight

Thanks to Marissa van Uden, creator of Violet Lichen Books, the sister imprint of Apex Book Company, for talking with me about her editorial background as well as the dark & weird speculative ecofiction that her imprint publishes. One is the ECO series, which publishes The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction. ECO24 is out, and ECO25 is coming this November.

Featuring works by rising stars and established names, this anthology is an exploration of humanity’s deep relationships with other species and of our communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world—all told through the lens of the fantastic.

The Rewilding our Stories Discord book club just began to read ECO24, and it’s not too late to jump in.

Flashback

Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars was published in 2012, around the time I was dreaming up the concept of Dragonfly.eco (coming up on its 13th anniversary in August). A few years later I read Heller’s book and loved it, and though I didn’t do a complete interview with Peter, I did email him and got some of his thoughts about the novel. About writing it, he said:

I believe climate change and the Sixth Great Mass Extinction—which we are in the middle of, and which has been caused by us—are the stories of our time. I think about them all the time. So, when I sat down to write my first novel, they had to inform the writing and the story.

The Dog Stars is now being made into a movie that comes out August 28 this year. Directed by Ridley Scott, with the screenplay by Mark L. Smith, the movie stars Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, and Guy Pearce.

The Dog Stars is about a guy named Hig and his dog who live on an abandoned airstrip. He is haunted by memories of his wife and unborn child. He also has a friendship with a neighbor named Bangley. Other characters include a group of Mennonites nearby and a father and daughter living “at the point of no return.” This apocalyptic novel has a conversational style, making the reader feel right at home. Hig is likeable, and the reader probably will root for his continued survival, and potential romance, in a climate-changed world where many species are gone and an epidemic (“The Blood”) has wiped most people off the face of the Earth. Zoom in to Hig and his world, and you get a glimpse of Heller’s concerns for our own planet.

Films of the month

Ecofiction doesn’t need to be set on Earth. The earliest stories define its ongoing composite subgenre characteristics, including fantasy, science fiction, weird and new weird, solar- and other punks, climate and anthropocene fictions, futurisms, and much more. That’s why I am going to include a few movies about extraterrestrial life forms in this film spotlight. We went to see Disclosure Day today, and yesterday I watched the original Independence Day and its Resurgence sequel.

In all three films, the idea of alien life forms draw humans together and stop them from warring with each other. In the Independence Day series, people rise to fight against destructive alien forces set out to mine our planet’s resources. In the sequel, a friendly virtual intelligence joins humans to save the world from the harvesters once again.

Since Discosure Day is brand new, I want to be careful with spoilers. But I felt that the movie exposed more human folly: we are doing a fine job of excessively extracting our own natural resources, we allow money and greed to appointment corrupt leadership, and we’re good at inventing untruths and covering up real truths. So maybe we are not the most intelligent life forms around?

Resources

• Rewilding Our Stories: A Discord community where you can find resources, reading, and writing fun in fiction that relates strongly to nature and environment

• Reddit: Rewilding our Stories. A new subreddit that needs your voice and a new moderator.

• Book recommendations: a growing list of recs

• Eco/climate genres: They’re all over the place, and here’s an expanding compendium

• Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews

• List of ecologically focused games

• List of eco/climate films and documentaries

• Eco-fiction links and resources

• Book database: Database of over 1,100 book posts at Dragonfly.eco

• Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults

• Indie Corner: The occasional highlight of authors who publish independently

• World Eco-fiction Series: Climate Change and Beyond: This series travels the planet exploring fictional stories close to natural landscapes and wildlife, often with environmental concerns.

• Artists & Climate Change. This site is no longer being updated but still has a wealth of info. I was a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.