Black Gate

The Kickstarter campaign for Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastic Stories in a Sustainable World is now live!

What is this, you ask? Well, let me explain the history. Solarpunk is an emerging subgenre that focuses on sustainable energy, and many believe the rest of the world has a head start on the solarpunk movement. This anthology, being funded by the Kickstarter, was originally published in Brazil, in Portuguese, and is known internationally as one of the earliest examples of solarpunk. World Weaver Press wants to bring it to the northern hemisphere and the English language.

I sat down with Sarena Ulibarri, the editor in chief of World Weaver Press, for an interview that explores who she is, what World Weaver Press publishes, and a brief history of solarpunk and this anthology.

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Patrick Swenson has been a major figure in speculative fiction for decades, first as the editor of Talebones, and now as the editor in chief of Fairwood Press. Many still remember his semi-pro magazine as the market to send to if you had a story that fit nowhere, but was nevertheless amazing. He has an eye for such things.

Nowadays, getting published by Fairwoods requires more than a good agent or query letter. It is by invitation only, and to be invited, one has to be on Patrick’s radar, and to be on Patrick’s radar, one has to be excellent.

He isn’t just an editor and publisher, though. He’s a writer as well, and his career is both exciting to watch, and an excellent snapshot of modern day publishing. His first book, The Ultra-Thin Man, was published by Tor, but when they passed on the second book, The Ultra Big Sleep, he elected to publish it himself.

Patrick explained this to me while I was standing at his table during the mass signing at Mile-Hi Con. There on the table were both books, and no one who saw them would have been able to say which was self published and which was published by Tor. The quality of their covers and bindings were identical.

On top of all this, Patrick also runs the Rainforest Writer’s Retreat twice a year. This retreat is where:

Writers gather at a location of minimized outside interference or influence, ready to spend an intensive four or five days on their own work, with others involved in the same who were present for support and interactive development of written creative work as art, craft, and science. Balanced against this is a schedule of events aimed at supporting this process, with the number of retreat guests and attendees kept to a limit.

Held in a resort village on the Olympia Penninsula, it’s an opportunity unlike any other to give an added boost to one’s writing career.

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As many of you know, my alter-ego is E.M. Tippetts, an indie chick-lit author. This means I do my best to stay on top of the indie publishing scene. Most people think of the English speaking markets when it comes to indie publishing, but Germany actually had more market penetration early on by the self-published set. Up to half of the Amazon.de top 100 were indie at any given time in 2012 (as opposed to a quarter on Amazon.com). One such success story is Emily Bold, who I had the privilege of meeting online via my German translator.

When he suggested I try cross-marketing with her, I first looked up the one book of hers that was available in English at the time, The Curse, and was dismayed to see it was paranormal romance. This is not my favorite genre, but I downloaded it and began to read…

…and finished it about a day and a half later. It was that good. Forget everything you thought you knew about paranormal romance. Payton, the male lead, was cursed with immortality along with the rest of his clan hundreds of years ago, and has been in emotional stasis ever since. Not everyone in the clan considers this a curse; what could be better than living for eternity and never again feeling any form of pain?

Enter Samantha, an American exchange student who has no idea about her ancient, Scottish bloodline, nor the prophecy that she alone can fulfill.

Because of the wealth of background research in this series, and Emily posting on Twitter that she sometimes finds herself swearing in Gaelic without even thinking about it, I assumed Emily was a historian. But no, detailed background research is just another of her many talents.

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