I have my first publication out in Solarpunk Magazine!

I submitted it for their May 2022 Microfiction Contest, which was themed “Solarpunk in Asia and the Pacific Islands.” I drafted it while traveling, fresh off finishing Alex G. Pacman’s Filipino Ghost Stories, and I wanted to mix ghost stories with the solarpunk aesthetic and a healthy dose of diaspora mango angst. Read it here!

Something neat I learned while writing this: constructed wetland is made to clean water and one way that it filters is with microorganisms that live amongst the roots of plants in the water. they can turn nitrates (ex. from fertilizer/agricultural pollution) into nitrogen ☁️ Somehow I thought that the plants themselves would be doing a lot more. (And they do filter out big solids it seems.) (source)

Recently I’ve been really interested in solarpunk and utopian stories; given The Times they’re especially soothing. I’ve been reading a lot of them, trying to understand how to bring tension and “stakes” to utopian scenarios. One that I enjoyed recently is Lynne Peskoe-Yang’s Superbloom (Metaphorosis Magazine); I loved the imagery of this mossy (in my mind) ocean luminescing in pulses, the escalation, and (spoilers) the punch of hope and connection at the end between K and D that this seemingly apocalyptic mass affords.