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Here’s some art about Semiosis — a reader shared these sketches with me, and I love them. Thank you, Storm! I asked her to say a little about herself:

My name is Storm Munk-Hind. I live in Denmark and study psychology at the university of Aarhus (Denmark). I’m also an artist. I usually do gallery-type art and specialize in portraits of people, but my other passion is making up and drawing strange animals! That’s why Semiosis really sparked my imagination and I just had to do some sketches!

While reading Semiosis, I did the following sketches of: glassmakers, eagles and lions.

Part of my interest in drawing strange animals stems from my interest in anatomy, and that all animals look the way they do for a reason. I imagined that if I had seen the Pax-animals myself, how would I try to describe them visually? How would I map their anatomy? What do they look like from the front, the side and in action?

I was especially interested in Glassmaker anatomy because it struck me as so otherworldly, and because they use tools and wear clothes.

Once I had designed the basic body-plan, I was asking myself: how do you play a flute when you have 2 elbows? How do you dance and drum? What kind of clothes does it make sense to wear if your body is Glassmaker-shaped? Asking these questions and at the same time using the book as a guideline, I made these drawings. It was so much fun!

For the eagles, I had in mind that they are intelligent predators. Therefore, I gave them big eyes facing forward and hand-like claws for easily manipulating objects. I made the terrible beak shaped like 3 hooks and with backward-pointing teeth in the underjaw — designed for tearing and for the eagle to latch on to prey, being hard to shake off once it gets a good bite.

I imagined the lions looking friendly and strong, with big eyes on the side of the head like a horse (for eagle-detection!). I imagined this kind of funny/cute body plan with the arms being a lot shorter than the legs, resulting in rabbit-like movements (I have kept many pet rabbits and find them very adorable). And a strong tail for balancing jumps. I gave them a long snout for reaching/digging for roots as well as flat, strong teeth for chewing plants.

If you want to see more of my other art-projects, I share some things on my Instagram: artist_storm_m

Pip Paris was kind enough to invite me to her podcast to talk about my favorite subject: the wonder and wisdom of plants.

Pip Talk, a podcast on Anchor, hosted by Epiphany Paris (Pip):

“Interviews featuring rebels, visionaries, mystics, outliers, change-makers, and people I find interesting. I aim to expose my audience to a wide variety of ways to look at life. Today, we are talking with Sue Burke. Sue’s next science fiction novels are Dual Memory, coming in May 2023, and Usurpation in May 2024. She has also written the novels Semiosis, Interference, and Immunity Index, along with short stories, poems, and essays.”

In the first week of August, I served as an instructor at the 2022 Speculative Fiction Novel-In-Progress Bookcamp and Writing Retreat, held near West Bend, Wisconsin.

As part of the fun, the novelists could write a short creative work about the retreat and compete for the prize of a coffee mug filled with candy bars. This is the winner — by Karey Lea Perkins, Assistant Professor of English, South Carolina State University, who is working on a novel set in a utopia with dark, dangerous secrets.

The day before she wrote this, a thunderstorm knocked out the electricity at the retreat center, so my afternoon class was held in the dark. Karey cast Hollywood stars as the characters; I am flattered to be portrayed by Diane Keaton.

The Storm

By Karey Lea Perkins

It was a dark and stormy afternoon. The thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and rain smashed. Golf-ball-sized hail soon followed, and the trees felled the power lines. The failing lights plunged us into darkness and, even worse, if you can possibly imagine it … the wifi was gone.

Our fearless and humble director, Bob Newhart, and our steady, wise co-director, Susan Sarandon, vowed the mission would continue, weather be damned. Our session instructor, Diane Keaton, a mere silhouette outlined in the dark, murky, gray room, led us, her authors, huddled together, hoisting iPhone flashlights or seeking nearby windows for slivers of light to see the words on the handout.

Behind the instructor, an innocuous philodendron lay quietly in the dark, tucked away in the back corner on the floor — as it always had. Through an opened window, a flash of lightning illuminated it, and a few rain droplets landed on the plant, which stirred.

As we authors intently concentrated, heads down, on our assignment, the lush, verdant green philodendron began creeping. And creeping. And creeping. It took ten minutes to stealthily traverse the twenty feet to its target, enough time to sneak past the distracted humans’ observation. Suddenly, instantaneously, the tentacles wrapped around Keaton’s waist and clamped her mouth, immobilizing her and rendering her silent.

“Bwahahahaha!! My name is Phil Dendron, and Stevland is my friend! You’ll never write about him again! Prepare to die!”

Frightened and shocked, some of us froze and some screamed. Others tried to lunge for the plant to save Keaton. Before they could reach her, our other instructor, Bruce Willis, jumped on the table and yelled, “Unbind her! Unbind her I say!” He then reached into his back pocket for his magic ancient and powerful collapsible sword, which he never left home without. From across the room, his giant bejeweled sword reached the plant’s elongated stems behind Keaton and instantly slashed through them, severing them from their potted roots.

Before the authors could breathe a sigh of relief, Phil Dendron, like a wolf spider, multiplied into ten or twenty more leafy rope-like tentacles, now independent from their roots and far stronger, wrapping completely around Keaton so only her eyes showed. Having their chosen victim safely imprisoned, the nefarious tendrils now groped for the rest of us, approaching us slowly but surely. Some of us ran; some threw notebooks or laptops at it. Undeterred, the monstrous plant crept and crept and crept and began wrapping around each of us.

As one of the larger tentacles reached me, I grabbed its stem and tore off its leaves, to no avail. I hit it with my iPad, and it only laughed. In a last desperate attempt, I threw my glass of Pinot Grigio at it, which drizzled and dripped down its stem. The plant suddenly halted, and within seconds, started turning brown and withering, dropping off of me.

“I’m wilting! I’m wilting!” cried Phil.

I yelled out to the two or three of my compatriots who were still free, not yet strangled by the plant, “There’s more Pinot Grigio in my room! Go get it!” We ran and grabbed it, then ran throughout the building, searching for all the wine we could possibly find. We doused the vines trapping Keaton and all the other ensnared authors, watching the tentacles collapse to the floor into skinny brown weeds, and then flooded Phil’s roots with that miraculous elixir, so he could never creep again.

Moral of the story: In Vino Vita!

Second moral: Always have a glass of wine around; it may save your ass one day.

Learn more about these trees at Candide gardening.

A neighbor is away on an extended family visit, and she asked me to take care of her plants while she’s gone. She seems to think I’m doing it just to be nice. I think I’m doing it because I get to have more plants. I have them only temporarily, true, but look at these beauties! These quiet guests are content with a sunny window and weekly watering, and they add color and delight to my home. They’re very welcome.

I’m interviewed in the latest issue of Panel Magazine in an article called “Lessons from the Future.” Published in Budapest, Panel is a magazine of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and the arts produced in Central and Eastern Europe and originally written in English or translated into English.

Half the proceeds from Issue #9 will go to help Ukrainian people currently residing in Hungary. You can order an electronic copy here.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview by editor Jennifer Walker:

Question: Clones play a key role in Immunity Index … Were you drawn to clones to explore the concept of what it meant to be human, as a device to show what happens when a group becomes  dehumanized, or was it something else you were curious to explore?

Answer: I know some human clones. We all do. Identical twins are clones. Most of my houseplants are clones, too. When you take a cutting and grow a new plant from it, that’s a clone. And yet, the simple, natural, common state of being a clone has been associated with evil. Other natural states like being trans-gender are actively being dehumanized right now. This is another political choice, and who’s making those decisions and why? As I said, anger seeped into my novel.

I’ll be participating (virtually) in the 2022 Current Research in Speculative Fiction Conference held June 30 and July 1 at the University of Liverpool.

The annual conference is designed to promote the research of speculative fiction, media and technologies. It aims to shine a spotlight on the research of postgraduates and early career researchers working at the overlap of speculative fiction, theories and cultures.

For CRSF’s 11th year, this hybrid event “seeks to generate interdisciplinary discussions of communication within speculative fiction, breaching boundaries of communication and how forms of communication and kinship manifest themselves within textual and visual cultures in the present-day.”

I’ll appear in a roundtable on Friday, July 1, at 3 p.m. BST, on “Communicating the Other” with hosts Jonathan Thornton and David Tierney, and special guests Chana Porta, Vandana Singh, Aliya Whitle, and Sue Burke.

Other panels and keynotes include “Building the Other,” “Gender,” “Uplift Fiction and Listening to the Other,” and “Degrees of Distance from Consensus Reality.”

Sign up here. Registration closes June 24.

If you’re in Chicago, come to the preview reading Tuesday, June 14, 7 p.m., at Fado Irish Pub and Restaurant, 100 W. Grand Ave., near the Magnificent Mile downtown! More information here: Ludlow Charlington @ GFS 6/14/22 | Facebook

Each year, the City of Chicago Animal Care and Control gets thousands of unwanted animals. Some are pets whose owners can no longer keep them, some are strays, and a few are evidence animals in court cases. Most of these pets are looking for homes, and all of them need care.

That’s what Friends of Chicago Animal Care and Control does: its members help Chicago’s neediest animals.

At Ludlow Charlingtons Coffee Shop in Chicago, eleven ornate portraits of contemporary dogs dressed in historical costumes hang on the walls. As a fundraiser for FCACC, nineteen writers, mostly from Chicago, have donated work to an anthology based on those portraits.

In all, thirty-four stories, poems, and plays tell about guarding kids, dealing with queens and kings, captaining a pirate ship, and creating a fashion trend. They span the globe and historical eras. I wrote a sonnet about Dog Six.

You can buy the Ludlow Charlington’s Doghouse starting June 14 for only $5.99:

Roses have prickles,

violets do not,

inside has icicles,

outside is hot.

Chris Helzer, The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Science in Nebraska, wants to convince you that prairies are interesting and important, even though there aren’t any trees.

Read his entreaty here: Tribulations of a Prairie Evangelist.