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.

The Wildcraft Drones mentioned in Bright Green Futures
Susan Kaye Quinn has been writing solarpunk herself for years and doing a lot of work to build community and surface other authors in our genre. She’s great, and she recently plugged my new book in her blog. Thanks, Susan! You can read it here.

And also! The Bright Green Futures anthology that I have two stories in is free for award nominations season (HINT) until April 5, more info here!

Interview with Renan Bernardo
Renan is another author of solarpunk and other things, and he’s actually connected to the last two items as well, which would be a huge coincidence except we’re kind of huge mutual fans?? And solarpunk is still an incredibly niche genre?? Anyway he’s lovely and he interviewed me about my work in his newsletter. You can read it here.

The first blurbs for The Wildcraft Drones are in!
I starting sending out advance reader copies a couple weeks ago, and every time a blurb comes back it’s very exciting, and I send it to my publisher, and then I put it in a spreadsheet because that’s how I roll. And now I get to share them with you! In order of first name because that’s how they happened to be ordered in my spreadsheet:

"T.K. Rex’s gentle prose is dense with sly humor, sharp metaphor, and an abiding love for the natural world. These stories challenge us by showing us the logical conclusion of late-stage capitalism – spiraling natural disasters, a mushrooming police state – but they also show the endless promise of resistance and hope, of love and lust, of rewilding and regrowth. These characters – both human and adorable drone – will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading (and re-reading) this visionary book."

— Cynthia Gómez, author of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories

“Creating together a good Anthropocene is going to take persistence, resilience, wit, tolerance, love, and technology. These exciting stories combine all these values, and give us a much-needed vision of how things could turn out well, despite the many dangers we are facing. They gave me hope and made me laugh— what a great mix!”

— Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future

"The Wildcraft Drones presents a fascinating future: hopeful, flawed, and ever-changing as characters continually fight for something better. Rare as morel mushrooms, sweet as acorn bread, and unexpected as BBQ-flavored crickets, it will provoke you to imagine new possibilities and find their seeds in roadside blackberries."

— Ruthanna Emrys, author of A Half-Built Garden

“T. K. Rex’s tales of climate refugees, sentient drones, and multispecies networks pull no punches about the hardships to come, yet leave me feeling hopeful and inspired all the same. Essential reading for the Anthropocene.”

— Sarena Ulibarri, author of Another Life

Recommended read: The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride
I just finished reading the debut novel by my Futurescapes 2019 classmate Jasmin Kirkbride, and it’s so lovely, and philosophical, and probably solarpunk?? It’s about fixing things. And I really enjoy that. There’s time travel and Ancient Greek gay boys and sisterhood. You should order it from your local independent bookstore (always with everything) but the publisher’s website also works.

ALSO I got the beautiful hardcover at a very good bookstore in Ft. Myers that you should absolutely check out in the unlikely scenario that you find yourself in Southwest Florida. They are called Blinking Owl Books, and they sell queer stuff and yarn and do events, and if you’ve ever been to a queer bookstore in a red state, you might know how I felt walking into this place, like I could breathe for the first time days. Next time I’m out there I’m definitely going back.

That’s all for now, thank you for reading, hope to see you at Happy Endings on March 10th! Don’t forget to make time for walks with friends.

T. K. Rex

P.S. If you would like to review The Wildcraft Drones it’s on NetGalley, or I can send you an ARC. Just lmk.