Hi from Chicago! It’s my first time here, and also my first time attending the Nebula conference in person. I’m spending a few extra days with friends, and loving all the little neighborhoods, the lake, the Field Museum, the cardinals, the summer rain, the street bunnies hopping around after dark, and the fireflies (!!!!) that came out just on one block last night at twilight. It’s been a much-needed break from my very busy book launch schedule, before the next wave of events in July.

I’m still processing the fact that The Wildcraft Drones finally exists in the real world as an actual book, and people are reading it. Charlie Jane Anders loved it. It’s all so much. Luckily/overwhelmingly, there’s plenty of distractions, like…

Announcing my second book: The Cursed Blade of Wek

It’s May and that means it’s finally here: The Wildcraft Drones is officially on shelves THIS MONTH. Of course, publication is nonlinear, pre-orders have already started shipping, and I’ll be signing books on the 17th at SF in SF as well as the official launch party on the 21st, and a slew of events after. In fact, I’m going to do my future self a favor and list them all now, so I don’t have to remember to do a newsletter in June. You’re welcome, future self.

May 17
SF in SF
3–5pm at San Francisco Public Library Main Branch
100 Larkin Street, 3rd Floor, Hormel LGBTQIA Center San Francisco

May 21
The Wildcraft Drones launch party
4-7pm at Cafe Suspiro
1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco

May 26
The Racket
7pm at The Sycamore
2140 Mission St, San Francisco

“Like a Skeleton in Desert Sand”

My latest short story, “Like a Skeleton in Desert Sand,” is now free to read in Tractor Beam’s fifth issue: Underground. I love the way their team puts so much craft into the presentation of each story, hiring talented human artists and designers to build a beautiful experience for each story. If you don’t check out the issue for me, do it for Shingai Kagunda’s story, “Mycelium Memory Makes a Monster.”

Reviews for The Wildcraft Drones are coming in

Sometimes there is so much to get done, and everything is overwhelming, and you just have to keep doing. But also making time to go to the park or whatever and, like, shower. And send out your newsletter because you want people to know about all the stuff even though you’re pretty sure you’re forgetting like ten things and can’t think of anything very clever or profound to frame it with, so it ends up just being a list, basically. We can’t all be Sam J. Miller, okay??

Reading March 10
My next reading is March 10 with Happy Endings at the Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco. I’ll be reading something from my forthcoming collection The Wildcraft Drones. 7:30 to 10.

Roses & Wildflowers: The Solarpunk Issue
I was invited to guest edit the new solarpunk issue of Roses & Wildflowers, which is a new small journal doing some very ambitious work to include human-created art and music, as well as mythopoetic fiction, in every issue. Check out the table of contents.

So I wrote some near future science fiction and then the near future got nearer, and nearer, lurking through the kitchen on sickle claws, and now it’s looming over us like a monstrous anachronism with dripping fangs and all I have is this little book about trees and tentacle robots, and you know what’s so wild? Is how many people who gave me feedback on these stories told me that the future I invented was “grim” and “bleak” when I thought it was optimistic???? And I’m over here now cringing at how painfully, unrealistically hopeful some of it seems. Publishing takes a long time. There’s still room for the future I made up in The Wildcraft Drones, but the gaps feel noticeable already and the book isn’t even out until May. My publisher tells me we need optimistic visions of the future more than ever. She’s been right about everything else so far, so I have to believe her. I know I need them, and I’m glad I wrote this one when I did, because the stuff I’m writing now is very different. There’s still hope in my new stuff, I can’t write anything but hope, writing itself is hope, but it hurts more.

Book tour

Hope is building things. Community especially. So some of the hardest (for me) but most worthwhile endeavors on my plate this year are not writing, but events. I’ve been planning a small book tour but also it’s an excuse to get out of my routine and see friends. I have a full (growing) event list on my website, and I’ll share them here too as they come up. Big ones confirmed so far include Bay Area Book Fest, WorldCon, the Nebulas, and World Fantasy Con.

Stir: Rainy Season — January 22 in San Francisco

You can now preorder The Wildcraft Drones!

Stelliform Press published the pre-order page for my debut solarpunk collection this morning, and I’m so excited to share it with you!