I just sent back the first round of edits for The Wildcraft Drones, and I’m returning to my work-in-progress sci-fi novella, with a goal of querying again before summer. Lots more happening, here’s some highlights:

New Solarpunk Story: “The Flowers Where 580 Used To Be”

“I remember decades ago when this used to be 580, perching my plastic tuatara Korra on the edge of the backseat window, peering past the traffic with her at the sparkling bay. In high school, it was earsplitting demolition, then bare dirt my first year of college. I don’t know what brought me down here after I dropped out, maybe I was drawn to the vacant land because that’s what I felt like, empty and waiting for something new. Even stepping on the field with my own feet, touching its contaminated soil as I planted those first seeds with Marco’s crew, the place itself meant nothing—until you showed up in your dad’s red Ford Prakasha three days into planting...” (4000 words) Read the rest for free at Tractor Beam.

Hey there. So I finally switched this newsletter over to Buttondown, which is sort of like Substack but without the…Substack. Charlie Jane Anders has been using it for awhile for her newsletter and recommending it pretty highly, so I’ve been wanting to give it a try. The biggest change on your end is probably that you can link and share this newsletter now, and maybe the formatting is a little fancier. I’m also feeling more confident about adding images without getting shunted over to spam. We’ll see how it goes! If you have feedback, or just want to say hi, you can still email me at [email protected].

In other news, while I wait for edits on THE WILDCRAFT DRONES (my debut collection coming out next year!), I’m thrilled to announce a new story you can read right now, and two new stories in the solarpunk anthology BRIGHT GREEN FUTURES.

New story: “The Rings of Ferocina”

“Fifteen years. I count them by converting Standard to Gregorian badly while my feet move forward without me. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen another human and here’s one at the Stones on Ferocina underneath the glowing rings and stars, swirling a red gourd-bottle while he stares into the bonfire like a human would, like any human would, with the flames flickering across his brown and bearded face. He looks up and he sees me and that must be the same expression that I had a moment earlier: is that a human? No way…” Read the rest at Factor Four Magazine. (1000 words)