“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

The big news on the book front is a review in Publishers Weekly, which had this to say (among other good things):

“Full of hard-won hope and bittersweet joy, this is climate fiction with heart.”

And here’s a little taste of this very lovely review from Mia V. Moss in Stardust Dispatch:

“Usually I read short story collections in little portions over time; a story on the train, a story before bed, a story on a lazy weekend, you get the idea. Star-friends, I could not put The Wildcraft Drones down and read the whole thing cover to cover over the span of a couple days.”

Blurbs, proofreading and everything else are also done, and the final layout is on its way. This is my first book! It’s so crazy and weird and exciting! Thank you for being on the journey with me, although I can’t promise we won’t be lost in the woods by the end of it. (In fact, I can promise woods.)

The best place to buy my book (and almost all books)

I get asked this a lot now. And there is a link. However, links are not the only way. (As many who have tried patty sausages will know.) The best possible way to purchase a book is to go to your local independent bookstore and order it. While you’re there, tell them they should carry it. The reasons are this:

1. I’m a bookseller and it’s the best job, and I want all the other booksellers to keep their wonderful jobs, so you should shop at bookstores.

2. I love bookstores. You probably also love bookstores. Everyone loves bookstores. Support your local bookstore so it doesn’t close.

3. Going to a place in person, if you can, is good and fun.

4. Telling a human being about a book will result in another human being knowing about the book. Word of mouth, as the marketing people say. Other people at the bookstore might even overhear you mention the book. Especially if you ask for it loudly.

5. Anyplace a physical book shows up, people see the cover, and then it becomes familiar, and familiarity usually makes people more likely to buy things.

6. If a bookseller receives more than one request for a book, they are more likely to order the book for the bookstore’s inventory. So you might even tell a friend to order it from the same store. (All other benefits in the list will be doubled as well!)

7. If a bookstore decides to stock the book because you ordered it/told them to, then other people who go to the bookstore will see it, and then also maybe buy it.

8. Because everyone loves bookstores, seeing a book at one gives the book an extra little positive association, like a little mini celebrity endorsement, that makes people think it’s probably at least not terrible.

9. You might meet your new best friend at the bookstore. I’m just saying, this happens sometimes.

10. Please support your local independent bookstore.

All that said, I also now have a bookshop.org affiliate page, so…

…here’s the link for that. It includes lots of anthologies and journals I have short stories in that aren’t free or easy to read online. (But to my knowledge they CAN and SHOULD all be ordered in person at your local independent bookstore. See above.) _{(don’t fucking shop at a m a z o n)}

Next Event: SF Climate Week reading & panel in San Francisco

The next Stir is April 22 at Cafe Suspiro (1246 Folsom Street) in San Francisco. I co-host this seasonal reading series with Josh Wilson (editor of The Fabulist), and as part of the SF Climate Week lineup, we have four local authors who write climate fiction, climate journalism, and solarpunk. More info on the Luma signup page, which we don’t usually do, but because this one is on the SF Climate Week Calendar it gets to be fancy.

Currently Reading: Kalyna the Cutthroat by Elijah Kinsch Spector

I picked this book up the moment it came out because I loved Kalyna the Soothsayer, and it was marketed as a direct sequel. Not just the title — every blurb on it is about its predecessor. So when I got into it and the main character wasn’t Kalyna, I was too distracted wondering when Kalyna was going to show up to appreciate the book for what it was. Months later, I’m finally remedying that, and I’m so glad I gave it another chance. While Kalyna does show up after a few chapters and quickly becomes a force of nature in the plot, this book’s protagonist charmed me right away on my second attempt. His name is Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells, and he’s a queer scholar doing research far from home, who suddenly finds himself at odds with villagers he thought were friends when his people’s citizenship is revoked for reasons unknown. Now a stateless refugee, he has to hire a sellsword to get him into friendlier territory. There were many ways to tell the story of that journey, and it easily could have been a relentlessly grim slog, but Elijah Kinch Spector does it with the same level of wit, charm, detail and humor that made me fall in love with Kalyna in the first book. Radiant won me over the moment he stopped at a bar to flirt with a handsome patron until his sapphic butch companion drags him away for his own safety.

The politics are nuanced and fascinating, and I’ll withhold analysis on them until I’ve finished reading, but they continue the first book’s focus on the everyday people impacted by events much bigger than them, while still making those responsible well within reach of justice, which I find especially satisfying in secondary world fantasy stories. I think this book probably stands on its own, but there are a lot of spoilers for the first one in it, so if you’ve been thinking about reading Kalyna the Soothsayer, I wouldn’t skip it. You can order Kalyna the Cutthroat from Bookshop.org or in person at your local independent bookstore (see above).

That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

T. K.