Whimsical Windmill
Here’s hoping my machine heals quick!
Material Reality
While working on this newsletter I tipped over a glass of water in such a way that the liquid spilled over my keyboard and sloshed into my laptop’s power ports. Other than some sticky typing, everything seems functional——except the battery, which is now being difficult about charging. As a result, however, I’m rolling out a slightly abbreviated edition this week. Here’s hoping my machine heals quick!
An Evening of Sci-Fi, Cli-Fi and Poli-Sci
On Wednesday, May 25 I’m doing an online conversation with my friends and fellow near-future SF writers, Malka Older (author of Infomocracy and more), Christopher Brown (Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture, Failed State), and Eliot Peper (his latest, Reap3r, comes out this week). It should be a great time! Starts at 8pmEDT/5pmPDT. Click the button!
Places I’ll Be
Flagstaff, May 31 (Tuesday @ 6pm AZ), Bright Side Bookshop
St. Louis, June 16 (Thursday @ 7pm CDT), Left Bank Books
St. Louis, June 18 (Saturday @ 2pm CDT), The Book House
Gilbert, AZ, August 6 (Saturday), Barnes & Noble
Press Clips, Reviews, Interviews, Etc.
My friend Julian Bleecker had me on the Near Future Laboratory Podcast to talk about futures thinking and post-normal fiction. NFL is a great community, and Julian is legit one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met. Take a listen, and if you do please leave the podcast a rating/review!
The Clarion Ghost Class fundraiser is coming to a close, having raised a very generous sum to support our now weeks-away collective journey to San Diego. Recently I had an exchange about my work with my wonderful classmate Mary Thaler, which we put on the Indigogo page. Check it out in the updates, and many thanks if you supported!
Art Collection: Whimsical Windmill
I picked up this lovely, benignly surrealist sketch in Trinidad, Cuba, back in 2015. It was a fantastic trip over the winter holidays, including a visit to the sleepy town of Remedios, which throws the most spectacular Christmas Eve parade/party/light show perhaps on the planet (certainly the most spectacular per capita). Cuba is a wonderful place with a hard, fascinating history of suffering repression and aggression at the hands of the United States. And to my younger American eyes, the lounging people, colorful old cars, and utter lack of public advertising did give the landscape a slightly dreamlike quality. So when I saw this piece at an artist collective’s gallery in Trinidad’s main square, I decided to take it home as a souvenir to remember the experience.
ICYMI: “May Day”
Last newsletter I sent out one of my favorite unpublished stories, “May Day”——an unusual take on the classic time loop tale. If you missed it, here’s a little snippet:
“Look, they’ve got some good points,” Rex said, trying to show Ito a Rejector meme on his phone. “‘Hell is other people.’ When I agreed to come in here, it was to get away from having to deal with motherfuckers, you know? Now it’s fuckin’ crowded as shit!”
“To be fair, there are the same number of people around as before,” Ito said. “It’s just that now they remember the things you say and do.”
“Right? It sucks! Look at this one. ‘Every supposed new freedom in the loop is matched by a new kind of unfreedom.’ That’s deep.”
Ito brushed Rex off that day, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Buy My Book!
Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures is out now! Buying a copy or telling others about the book is one of the best ways you can support me and my writing. And if you read it/like it, please do leave a rating and/or review on Amazon or Goodreads or any other platform——it helps a lot.