Category: About my writing

I’ve written a bunch of stuff, some things I’m happy with and some I’m not.  The last two things I published here (“The Vegetable Liberation Squad” in four parts and “Teaching Vignette #43”) were short pieces of work that I posted whole.  The next things I plan to publish here are bits and pieces of my writing, stuff either too long to put all of it here or something I started and never finished.

“Way Beyond Deep–As It Starts” is the beginning of a novella that I wrote but haven’t tried to publish.  It’s a satirical story of a hippy commune deep in Maine which is dealing with an apocalyptic future.

“A Transition Into the Far Future” is the very beginning of the second part of a two part novel I worked on for quite a while that I called A Very, Very Long Transition. The first part of the story takes place in 2018 (before the pandemic).  This second part takes place four hundred and fifty years after that.  I am also planning to post a section from the end of the novel about a regional council meeting which I simply entitle, “The Regional Council Meeting”.

The last thing in this batch of stuff is going to be the opening to something that I started and didn’t get very far with–mostly because I keep realizing what I really want to do is write with others, maybe for publication or maybe just for our own edification and/or amusement.  I did like this opening, however (I was studying worldbuilding and thought of the scrolled opening to Star Wars: A New Hope) and I’m posting it as “Malcontents Among the Freeman, the Opening”.

Again, what I really want to do is write with other folk.  I think these pieces show both my range and my limitations.  I can write and have lots of ideas, I think I do decent plotting and dialogue, but I have difficulty with vivid descriptions and especially with deep characterization (probably because I’m not a very deep person).  I’m also really good at editing and would love to work with someone who overwrites, someone with lots of ideas and great characters that might have some difficulty containing what they write. 

My interest is in writing about possible positive futures, especially what I’m calling “Joyful Woke Postindustrial Solarpunk”–that is, optimistic visions of the future, which are DEI and DIT (DEIDIT!): Diverse, Egalitarian, and Inclusive, where we Do It Together.  I’m particularly interested in stories where we don’t use a lot of new inventions or new ideas, and don’t use a lot of energy,  working collectively with what we have now, and probably scaling it down a bit.

So, if I’m trying to envision a collective future, I think the best way to do that is collectively.  Want to join me? Write to me at moonraven222 at gmail dot com and tell me about your dreams for the future.

“The Vegetable Liberation Squad” and “Teaching Vignette #43” are far from the only stories that I’ve written. They’re not even representative of my writing. But these are the shortest stories that I’ve written that are representative of the kind of future that I want to depict, what I’m now calling “Joyful Woke Postindustrial Solarpunk”. (By “Woke” I mean I’m leaning into picturing a society that is Diverse, Egalitarian, and Inclusive.)

In the future I plan to publish some fragments of longer or uncompleted things that I’ve written which also point in this direction. For now I am going to return to more reviews of books and stories about positive possible futures–or at least creating positive situations even in very difficult circumstances.

Finally, I want to say again that I’m looking for potential collaborators. I am trying to envision some very collective, cooperative, and communal futures and I really want to model that by developing stories that are created together. If this interests you, please contact me at moonraven222 at gmail dot com. I’m excited about co-creating futures with other like-minded folks.

I enjoy writing and I want to write a bunch of what I’m calling “Joyful Woke Post-Industrial Solarpunk”. (By “woke” I mean writing stories that are Diverse Egalitarian and Inclusive.) If you are interested in writing something with me (or you think you know someone who might be) please contact me at moonraven222 at gmail dot com.

I’ve written some things already and plan to publish them here next.

“The Vegetable Liberation Squad” is my attempt at a solarpunk heist story. I submitted it to Solarpunk Magazine but it wasn’t accepted. It’s a long story and I plan to post it here in four installments.

After that I plan to post “Teaching Vignette #43”. I realized I hadn’t seen many solarpunk stories about health care so I tried to imagine what health care might look like in a postindustrial world where they’ve transitioned with ease.

Here’s some examples of the style of stories that I’d really like to write in the future.

The best examples:

Naomi Kritzer, “The Year Without Sunshine”

Danielle Arostegui, “A Merger in Corn Country”, in Bright Green Futures 2024

Andrea Hairston, Archangels of Funk

Some other examples:

from Serena Ulibarri (ed), Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers

Julia K Patt, “Caught Root”

Holly Schofield, “Call of the Wold”

Commando Jugendstil and Tales from the EV Studio, “Midsummer Night’s Heist”

from Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland (eds), Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation 

T X Watson, “The Boston Hearth Project”

Maura Lydon, “The Herbalist”

from Susan Kaye Quinn (ed), Bright Green Futures 2024

Renan Bernardo, “The Doglady and the Rainstorm”

Ana Sun, “Coriander”

from Susan Kaye Quinn, Halfway to Better

“Planting the Shell-Bones”

from Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro (ed), Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World 

Antonio Luiz M. C. Costa, “Once upon a Time in a World” 

from Christoph Ruprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, Sarena Ulibarri (eds), Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures

N. R. M. Roshak, “By the Light of the Stars” 

Kate V. Bui, “Deer, Tiger, and Witch” 

D A Xiaolin Spires,  “The Exuberant Vitality of Hatchling Habitats”

Timothy Yam, “Untamed” 

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia

John Michael Greer, Retrotopia

I’ve also been very influenced by some parts of:

Aldous Huxley, Island

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time

Ursula K Leguin, The Dispossessed

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia Emerging

Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing

Starhawk, The City of Refuge

Cory Doctorow, Walkaway

Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause

Ruthanna Emrys, A Half-Built Garden