I’ll be at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in Asheville, North Carolina this weekend, tabling for Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.

Strangers has a whole bunch of new stuff up this week, including the audiobook of The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion. (Which should be available through audiobook apps soon, it just takes awhile to propagate through the system). I’m working on the audiobooks of books 2 and 3 of the Danielle Cain series too.

There are also two backpatches available now. One is Uliksi, from the Danielle Cain books, with art by Robin Savage. The other is the backpatch I wear on my own vest, inspired by my history research, a quote by Willem Arondeus, the gay antifascist who burned Nazi records and with his last letter to the world said “let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” And finally, there are Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness hoodies now, by popular demand.

I’ll be doing fewer events this fall and winter because I’ve got a lot of writing to do. But hopefully that means I’ll have some more announcements about new work soon.

In Praise of Autumn and Ritual

“You know that you’ve died when things around you stop dying.”
—Elías Contreras, from The Uncomfortable Dead

The leaves weren’t really sure what they should be doing this year, but they’ve started to turn and fall at last—even though the weather is holding warm. I would call it unseasonable, the weather, but “unseasonable” is a sort of meaningless term these days. The seasons will bring what they will bring, no matter what we presume they should.

The best game in the world, if you ask my dog, is “leaf kick.” The game is simple: I kick leaves, and Rintrah leaps into the air to catch them. Every morning on our walk, I’m worn out from kicking before he’s worn out from jumping and running. Adaptations of the game include “creek water kick” and “snow kick,” which probably don’t require further explanation.

As the days grow shorter, we stop taking the sun so much for granted. It’s natural, as leaves and light both die back for the year, that we think about the death around us and the death that awaits us—and you will not be shocked to know that I find solace and beauty in that. It’s death, all around us, that brings ...