Variants run freely
Around the world.
Countries grapple with fatigue.
New waves,
Rising cases,
Straining systems,
Apathy.
The virus pushes at us.
We must push back.
Found poetry from “WHO warns covid ‘nowhere near over’ as variants spike in U.S., Europe,” The Washington Post, July 13, 2022
Happy holidays! “Invasive Species,” a short story set in my Bones of Faerie universe, is now online. It’s also FREE this month wherever ebooks are sold.
You can download a copy now from Amazon Apple Barnes and Noble Kobo or Smashwords.
![[Invasive Species: Book Cover]](https://www.simner.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/96CFF1F4-6102-4CB0-AB0C-3B140E6E8515-188x300.jpeg)
The Bones of Faerie trilogy is set in the aftermath of a catastrophic war between the human and faerie realms, one that has left behind a world filled with deadly magic: stones that glow with deadly light, trees that seek blood and bone to root in, dark forests that can swallow a person whole.
While the main trilogy is set in the Midwest, “Invasive Species” is my look at what the war with Faerie might have looked like here in the Arizona, where even without magic, the plants know how to bite. Here’s an excerpt.
I held tight to my little cousin’s hand as we walked the road through Summerhaven, scanning the broken asphalt for weeds. Alex tugged at a stray thread on his faded Cookie Monster T-shirt and scuffed his sneakers against the ground. He’d been fidgety all day, like his skin felt too tight. Maybe it was the heavy gray clouds, promising rain, but giving us only another sticky summer day.
Maybe it was that for five years—since before Alex was born—our entire lives had been lived within a couple miles of this road. Thinking about it made me want to crawl out of my skin, too.
Alex spotted a fuzzy pink thistle poking through a crack in the pavement. He reached for it. I pulled him back. “Gloves on?” I asked.
Alex looked down at his bare hands, as if he had to think about that. He pulled leather gloves out of his jean pockets, tried to put them on, and got his thumbs stuck in the finger holes. I helped him straighten them out.
“Gloves on,” he said, as if it had been his idea.
“Go for it, then.”
Alex grabbed the thistle and pulled, throwing all his four-year-old strength into the job. The stem came up in his arms, wriggling like a thorny green snake, while the fluffy bloom at the end thrashed wildly, trying to break free. I opened my leather weed-gathering bag, and Alex threw the thistle in. Once it was dead, we’d feed it to the goats and rabbits, just like all the other weeds.
“Take that, stupid plant.” Alex laughed, as if hunting down killer weeds was all in a day’s work. He’d never known a plant that was safe. He’d never known a world more than a few miles wide, either.
I knelt beside him and dug the thistle’s roots out with my knife, ignoring the strap of my quiver as it dug into my shoulder.
Sweat plastered my I Love Mount Lemmon T-shirt to my back. “Never forget the roots,” I said.
“Never forget the roots.” Alex threw them into my bag, too, grinning like a preschooler learning his ABCs. Except Alex hadn’t been to preschool, either, hadn’t learned his letters and numbers anywhere but by the fireplace with Aunt Anna and Uncle Doug.
I sighed and stood, looking at the familiar cabins that dotted the hillsides east and west of us, the snags of burned trees punctuating the earth between them. Beyond the houses, terraced fields of beans, squash, and corn moaned as they reached for the sky. Most of the town was up in those fields today, reinforcing the scorched rings of earth that surrounded the crops and kept them from marching down the hillside into town.
Five years ago, if someone had told me plants could march, I’d have told them they’d been streaming too many bad movies …
Read more! Download “Invasive Species” from Amazon Apple Barnes and Noble Kobo or Smashwords.
Because as powerful as the “I Have a Dream” speech is, many of Martin Luther King, Jr’s other words were powerful, too.
“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
— “Beyond Vietnam,” Riverside Church, New York
“For here on either side of the wall are God’s children and no man-made barrier can obliterate that fact. Whether it be East or West, men and women search for meaning, hope for fulfillment, yearn for faith in something beyond themselves, and cry desperately for love and community to support them in this pilgrim journey.”
— Sermon at St. Mary’s Church, East Berlin
“It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road … And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around … And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
— “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Memphis
“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.”
— “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
“But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.”
— “Science and Religion”
“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
— “Beyond Vietnam,” Riverside Church, New York
“Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”
— “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
“On some positions cowardice asks the question, ‘is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
— “A Proper Sense of Priorities,” Washington, DC
I thought about Rabbi Joe’s words after watching yesterday’s nationwide #JewsAgainstIce protests against the internment and abuse of immigrants and asylum-seekers in ICE detention camps, held on Tisha b’Av, a Jewish day of deep mourning.
And I especially thought about them after hearing the protesters singing.
I’d gotten so used to songs of protest being either Christian or secular. I knew that the songs I grew up singing in synagogue—the songs that I still sing there, and at home as well—had things to say about survival and justice and healing the world, but those weren’t the songs that I sang while holding signs at rallies and marches and in front of my representatives’ offices.
So hearing protestors singing Oseh Shalom, or Gesher Tzar Me’od, or Hinei Ma Tov—it broke me open a little, in a good way. It said to me not just that Jews belong here, but that we’re needed, that we’re here for a reason, that have our own unique and critical role to play, a part of the larger picture where so many people are playing unique and critical roles to heal this country and this world.
I’m sharing some clips of that music—so that I can come back to them when I need to, so that I can share them, so that you can hear them too.
We are singing Hinei Ma Tov inside of the ICE detention facility in Seattle. This song celebrates unity, family, and community. In short, the very values the US immigration system has trampled on. #CloseTheCamps#AbolishICE #NeverAgainIsNow pic.twitter.com/b6VLCfZuaX
— ✡️ Never Again Action ✡️ (@NeverAgainActn) August 8, 2019
Gesher Tsar Me’od: A Very Narrow Bridge#JewsAgainstIce pic.twitter.com/nTJijNUs0h
— Eli Valley (@elivalley) August 11, 2019
#JewsAgainstICE, immigrants, and allies singing Oseh Shalom to #ShutdownICE
— Max Levy (@maxwellkayton) July 16, 2019
Join #NeverAgainIsNow: https://t.co/Hx8NTQTF3Q pic.twitter.com/FskGEZH5Ly
Jews & allies are shutting down the ICE Facility in Seattle.
— ✡️ Never Again Action ✡️ (@NeverAgainActn) August 8, 2019
Here's why: at least six children have died in custody in the past year.
We shouldn't have to recite the Mourner's Kaddish for children because of our government's own cruetly.#NeverAgainIsNow #NeverAgainParaNadie pic.twitter.com/koJTZjhxwB
Join me this Saturday, July 13, at the Pima County Public Library’s annual Megamania — a (free!) summer reading event and mini-comicon all rolled into one.
Here’s where I’ll be:
The full event runs from 1-5 down at Pima Community College’s downtown campus. Hope to see some of you there!
For a sneak peak at where I’ll be speaking this fall, check out my appearances page.
I’m reading from the new edition of Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer on Arizona Public Media’s Arizona Spotlight tomorrow (Thursday). If you’re in Southern Arizona, tune in to KUAZ at 8:30 a.m. or 6 p.m. to hear me. Or you can listen anytime, from anywhere, by visiting Arizona Spotlight’s website.
Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer is available in from Antigone Books and Mostly Books, or you can order a copy anyplace else books or ebooks are sold.
Faerie Winter has a new look—and new paperback and ebook editions! If you missed this sequel to Bones of Faerie the first time around, now is your chance to revisit Liza’s post-apocalyptic world and its treacherous, haunting magic.
Order the new Faerie Winter paperback online or from your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore (ISBN: 978-1798950708). Order the ebook edition from Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books, or wherever ebooks are sold.
Missed the first book? You can still order the first edition of Bones of Faerie from your favorite offline or online bookseller, and you can still order the ebook wherever ebooks are sold.
More about Faerie Winter
Liza is a summoner. She can draw life to herself, even from beyond the grave. And because magic works both ways, she can also drive life away. Months ago, she used her powers to banish her dangerous father and rescue her mother, lost in dreams, from the ruined land of Faerie.
Born in the wake of the war between humanity and the fey, Liza lived in a world where green things never slept, where trees sought to root in living flesh and bone. But now the forests have fallen silent, and even Liza’s power can’t call them back. Winter crops won’t grow, and the threat of starvation looms.
And deep in the dying forest a dark, malevolent will is at work. To face it, Liza will have to find within herself something more powerful than magic alone.
This sequel to Bones of Faerie will thrill both new readers and fans eager to return to Janni Lee Simner’s unique vision of a postapocalyptic world infused with magic.
“Simner paints a hauntingly exquisite portrait of a postapocalyptic world. Fans of both fantasy and dystopian fiction will devour this one.” —School Library Journal
