In this episode, I chat with Author BrightFlame about her new witchy solarpunk novel and how the mundane and the supernatural are both entangled with the climate crisis.
Text Transcript:
Susan Kaye Quinn
Hello friends! Welcome to Bright Green Futures, Episode 19: Witchy Solarpunk with Author BrightFlame
I'm your host, Susan Kaye Quinn, and we're here to lift up stories about a more sustainable and just world and talk about the struggle to get there. Today we’re going to talk with BrightFlame, who I’ve been aware of through solarpunk circles for some time, but I only recently read her humans-speak-with-trees story, Thank Geo, in the Solarpunk Creatures anthology, and I just finished her new witchy solarpunk novel, The Working, which we’re going to discuss today. Hello, BrightFlame, welcome to the pod!
BrightFlame
Hi, Susan. Thank you so much for having me on and creating this very important podcast. Important for the world.
Susan Kaye Quinn
It's such a pleasure, and it's so nice to meet you face-to-face, voice-to-voice, finally after being in each other's circles for a while. It's one of the great pleasures for me of the podcast that I get to do that, invite people on and then I get to know them a little better. And I'm excited for our listeners to learn more about you. So let me get to your biography first and then we'll dive into your book, your new book that you've got out.
You've got quite the biography. By the way, with that new book, there's an absolutely gorgeous cover that people are gonna have to check out. Go see this beautiful cover that captures the interweaving of the eco-themes and the pagan spirituality of the novel just really well.
BrightFlame
I love the cover. I'm thrilled that the publisher put it together. We had Sleepy Fox Studio, Kelly York from there, create the cover and work with me to nail it. And she did.
Susan Kaye Quinn
That's so good to hear. I love human art out there, supporting human artists, but also just, you know, sometimes it's hit or miss when you have a publisher and you're not in control necessarily. You definitely scored with that one. I think it just hits it out of the park. So, okay, let me read your bio so people know who you are and then we will get into it.
BrightFlame writes, teaches, and makes magic toward a just, regenerating world. Her debut novel The Working just came out, launching in July 2024: A modern coven must thwart a looming eco-cataclysm and find the key to the bright future we need. Her short fiction is featured in Solarpunk Creatures, Bioluminescent, and Solarpunk Magazine. She’s known for her teaching in the worldwide pagan community and co-founded the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University. She lives on Lenape territory with a human, a forest, a labyrinth, the Fey, bees, turtles, fungi, rocks, and many other nonhumans.
I love that. I feel like that bio just gives folks a feel for what they can expect in your book. It's all so very integrated, all your works, fiction, nonfiction, teaching, practicing. You even mention in the acknowledgments that a long ago ancestor, which is represented in one of the characters in the book, came to you in a vision and told you to write the book, which is so great.
So let's start there. You do all kinds of cool things in this novel, but I'd love to hear about that vision if you're willing to share. Did the idea for the book get delivered to you in the vision or was it more like an encouragement to pursue the idea or some idea that you already had that you were working on or how did that go down?
BrightFlame
Well, it came in many parts. Part one: students of mine, witchcraft students from early on, asked me to write a nonfiction book with my flavor of the craft. But I most enjoy fiction, and I don't usually pick up a nonfiction book. I love a novel I can sink my teeth into. So there was that. So I set myself the task of filling a void. There hadn't been many or any novels that had real witchcraft, the kind that I practice anyway, embedded. So in my head, it was kind of a book of shadows of some sort. We call it a grimoire, that someone who was interested in witchcraft could pick up the novel and hopefully have an enjoyable read, but also decipher some of the ways that real witches work and learn from that. But meanwhile, one of my ancient foremothers came through and offered various teachings and then eventually told me: get these out to the world. And they kept showing me some book or novel or something like that. And I had goddesses that I worked with who also offered teaching. And while they weren't hounding me the way this particular foremother and group of ancestors did, they would always affirm: Yes, this would be good to get out to the world. Like some things that came through to me would be good to get out to the world. Other things, no, they're private.
So those are just two threads of how the book came to be. And I'll mention here that in my tradition, many, many traditions trance journeying is part of the way that we work. It's part of the way we access information. It's part of the way we connect with our guides and our ancestors and other realms and the gods. So trance journeying is a real thing, even as incorporated in my book.
Susan Kaye Quinn
As I'm listening to you describe that experience and that coming to deciding to create the work and manifest the work in the world so our people can access it, it really just sounds very resonant with what readers are going to find in the book itself, like how the characters work with their craft and just sort of the whole lore or world building, if you put it in fiction terms, of how this works or how people exist in this culture/religion/experience, just how they are in the world. And I find that fascinating.
One of the things that we have talked about previously on the pod is the concept of the long body, which—I don't know why it took me a minute to figure this out, connect it to what you're describing as an experience of connecting with your ancestors—and it's sort of a larger scope too, because you have like the goddesses in there and other elements and things. But the concept of the long body, if you haven't heard of it before, is the idea that we exist in this moment in time in our body right now. And our long body is like… our body still existed a few minutes ago, a few hours, a few years ago. And so that's the long body. And then you go back far enough, there are two other people that created your body. So it's a sense of embodiment existing in a fourth dimension of time and back through generations and connecting to ancestors. And then you can go forward with it because you're, you know, trying to be a good ancestor for your descendants. And so I think that that concept works really well with what you're describing, like just how the embodiment of your characters and people and real witches in real life experience the world. We're gonna talk about that more later because I'm super into the embodied part of this.
But before that we need to like tell our listeners a little bit more about what's going on with the book. So this book has so much going on at once. There are five witches each with their own lives trying to come together to form a cohesive coven. Each of them coming into their witchy powers. And the reader through that is discovering all the details of how they practice their craft. There's a pipeline running through the property of one of them threatening her beloved forest. So there's the eco-themes coming in, but the climate is really like practically a character in the novel showing up with lots of storms and other ways that I won't go into because I don't want to spoil things.
But before we get to the magical aspects of the story, let's talk about the mundane part. So there's this fight against the pipeline. And these characters are just like living through the Anthropocene. There's a storm, a flood, a power outage, all the things that are just becoming part of normal life now. And while the witches are all certainly like earth connected through their craft, they're also just like five women with jobs and lives and not necessarily eco-activists, at least to start out with. So tell me more about how you decided these five women, these characters, were the witches that you wanted to tell your story through.
BrightFlame
That's a lot. That's a lot there. Should I say they told me? That's one part of the answer. I always knew I would have five, probably women, so I'm writing in the world that I know, be the part of this coven, or be the coven who I was writing about.
In part, five because there's five elements in mine and many other spiritual practices. But also because they form a pentacle when they're working together, a five-pointed star. In earlier drafts of this novel, I had a lot of pentacle work incorporated, like how they would lie head to head and form a pentacle and run energy around. But that's actually not in the final version. So I knew there would be five and I asked, who are you? Who wants to be part of this book? And I began to imagine or get these five very distinct women coming through. I got to know them as one does when you especially write a long form story and one that took years to write. I don't think I want to even tell you how many years ago I began writing this. So I got to know them really well and they existed outside of me. And I would say, tell me your story.
The gist of the story that came early on was, there would be some ancients who come through and tell this coven that we have a cataclysm ahead of us in our modern world, like right in front of us. And that maybe this group can help turn that around, find a way to fight it. But these ancestors wanted to speak with anyone they could reach in the future. So that was kind of a premise. So I knew about, okay, looming cataclysm and something we all surely feel living in this world now, you know, what we could face and in the very near future.
By the way, one of my editing friends who helped me with very early drafts, then told me how prescient I was because some of the things that are in those drafts are really what's up now. But anyway, I would say: I didn't know the answer. I didn't know… How do you fight all the ills of the world, the harm being done to the earth? How do you avert what's going to happen with this climate crisis? You know, let alone the other social ills of the world. I didn't know the answer. So the book is the coven struggle to find the answer along with the ancients. And I would ask them, I would ask my five main characters, now what? Tell me your story. So they would tell me that, you they would tell me their own stories of their lives and their backstories and now what do we do?
Susan Kaye Quinn
That is one of the brilliant parts of the structure of how you've tackled this story, because that is the big question, right? Like, what do we do about this giant problem? Each of us feels really small and that sort of thing. Here you've got five characters and you do rotate through the five POVs, which is really nice to see. I like seeing more of that out there where we're getting multiple points of view and it's not just like the lone hero. The coven really is an enttity, like a collective that these women are forming, or trying to. And so they each have their own approaches and their own challenges. And I think that just like really grounds it, which is a term that is used a lot in the book, grounding. But I think that's something that's important for climate fiction in general, to ground into our lived experience through this, because we're all living through the Anthropocene and we all struggle with those things. So that was really good to see. I like that.
But you do actually have a ton of more spiritual and fantasy elements. So I like how you mix the mundane and the spiritual, or as you call it, the astral plane. So we literally have this almost like dual screen where we've got the mundane and the astral like side by side happening, and in the story, and the climate crisis exists in both of those things, which is really interesting. And we spend a lot of time on that astral plane, which has a lot of power, both in the story and in the women's lives. But as a storyteller, I really like how you're able to work symbolically there. I think that's very cool. So tell me more about manifesting the climate crisis as both a literal thing that's happening in the real world and as a psychic thing that has its own power. So where did you draw the inspiration for the imagery that you use there?
BrightFlame
Well, first of all, the astral is real for people in all different traditions. Some people view it different ways. We all have different schemas we put on the world, like whether it's a totally separate realm from the one we call the mundane world or whether there's a big overlap or not. And even directionally, some people view it as I'm going down to the astral and some up to the astral and some just it's here, it's a step to the side. But it is very real and archetypes can exist or do exist on the astral. So there we get into symbolics a bit. But anything that's in what we call our consensed upon, or not, reality, the jointly held reality that we live in, in the so-called real world, right, has an aspect of it on the astral. So there are parts of and roots of the climate crisis on the astral. There's parts of and roots of all the things that harm the Earth on the astral and that harm the humans and the other beings of the Earth are in the astral. Also, the astral is a place of energy at all possibilities. So really anything can be created on the astral and influence this real world. So there's that.
And the work that I have in the book that takes place on the astral really resonates with how we practice magical activism in my tradition. I don't want to give too much away of what the coven actually does on the astral or what they see down there. But when you can, for instance, see what the roots of something look like on the astral, you have a better chance of working both energetically and just real mundane action to change that thing.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, no, it works on a lot of levels. Like even if you're not pagan or believing in the literalness of something like the astral plane, there's just so many levels at which you can take it as an analogy and say, yeah, but we're all feeling this. What are we feeling? It's sort of a group connection, a group ideology, all the stories that we tell each other about how things work and what the roots are of the problems that we have. That matters. I mean, that's a huge part of why I even started the pod, saying we need better stories to tell us how, not even just how to solve the problem, but how to approach it, how to live through it, how to feel about it, how to feel about the roots of it. And what does that give us in terms of direction for action? So all of that is storytelling, whether it's something that you believe is literally happening at a different plane of existence, or if it's just happening in your mind or as a collective experience. There are a lot of ways to access it, but I really like how you tied that together and a very literal demonstration of the power of that other form of understanding. You know what I'm saying? You just did a really great job in the book of that. And I think the readers will appreciate that as they go through. They don't need to know how the solution ends up to understand, to appreciate the process of how all of that is working together.
BrightFlame
Well, thank you for representing that back to me. People can't see I'm shaking my head. Yes, yes, you got it.
Susan Kaye Quinn
And I expect that different people are going to have different reactions, of course, to books. That's just how stories work. And I came into this book not knowing a lot about pagan practices, despite having a few friends who probably identify as witches. I just have not really found myself getting into the details of that. And when I was reading the book, I was like, I'm not really sure. How much of this is real witch stuff? How much is storytelling? It was very undefined for me when I was experiencing the book. And I think that's totally okay. So readers, when you're going into this, it's totally okay to have that be your experience as you're reading the novel. And BrightFlame does, at the end, give you some insights. There's a little acknowledgement section where you can read and be enlightened a little bit about what you just experienced. And I'm going to leave that for the reader to experience because I think that's actually part of the process.
But that being said, what this novel really feels like to me is eco-fiction fantasy, maybe even like urban fantasy, where it has that melding of real life and supernatural, but it's even more grounded than your normal urban fantasy where you have like, you know, vampires running the bar or something in Seattle. Like there's that duality that urban fiction plays with or urban fantasy, sorry, plays with a lot where it's grounded in reality, but it also has this other layer, the supernatural layer. This is even more grounded because culturally it's real, like witches are real, pagans are real. In the modern world, there is real discrimination. There is real bigotry against them, which we also see in the book. But I think that fantasy feel is great. And I think that will draw people in who might not normally think solarpunk is what they're interested in, but they really love urban fantasy. So they might be like drawn in by that. And then they, you know, end up reading a solarpunk novel. Good for you! So was that intentional, that fantasy feel? Or is that sort of just my interpretation of it, not being super knowledgeable about paganism from the outset.
BrightFlame
It was intentional because I want my book to be not just speaking to witches or eco-activists. I wanted it to go out more mainstream, and I sure hope it will. That was part of what my ancestors said about get the book out to the world. Because I write to change the world in my own little way as best I can. You know, and inspire others to do that. So I always knew it would be probably considered contemporary fantasy. Like you said, urban fantasy, that moniker invokes vampires and fake witches and werewolves and such, which my book is not at all. So I, you know, I don't want people to pick it up and say, this isn’t urban fantasy. But I actually call it fabulist. You have to put down the codes of what genre your book falls in by these standardized codes. And there is not one for fabulism. There's one for magical realism, but that's really reserved for Latinx writers who are writing revolutionary works from their own lived experience. I purposely have said to my publisher and others, I don't want to tag it as magical realism. But fabulism is for those of us who are white and writing works that some might consider fantasy, but really it's real world with just some things exaggerated or twisted or, you know, one or two fantastical elements. So I'm fine with it being called fantasy, contemporary fantasy. Matter of fact, I compare my book to N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became, which has a very similar kind of a thing there. It's a diverse crew of people coming together to thwart this entity that's trying to take over, in this case, New York City. And while her book isn't as much about climate, it's more about fighting capitalism and gentrification and white supremacy, my book has elements of that or is tangential to that, but it's more centered in fighting the climate crisis.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Right, which, I mean, we can say the climate crisis and capitalism are two separate things, but are they? No, not really.
BrightFlame
No, no.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I mean, they're intimately connected, and one is the embodiment of the other, vice versa, or however directionality that goes. By the way, I hope I didn't misspeak with saying it was urban fantasy. I'm not as super educated as you are about the term of fabulist, for example, I wasn't super aware of that. But I looked at that and I said, you know, the people who like urban fantasy, I think they will like this. Even if it doesn't classify as that genre, I think the people who are into that kind of thing would cross over really easily. So hopefully it will pull in some people.
BrightFlame
That's actually good to hear.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I think so. It just pings a lot of the same things that I think those readers enjoy. They want to have, you know, higher stakes. They want to have supernatural stuff. They want to have a sense of a larger thing than just what our mundane lives are, as much as those are interesting. So, yeah, I think it really does ping on all those different levels for people.
One of the great and very consistent parts of the story is this embodied way of knowing that pervades the witch's practices. So everything centers on the body, on grounding, connecting, reaching out from there. And it's not just mental, there's some very embodied physical actions that they take, like breathing and moving, even opening windows and clinging cowbells. And we talk a lot on the pod about renegotiating a relationship with nature and how that's going to be key to addressing climate change. And how there will need to be like different ways to access that for different folks. Different people are going to have different belief systems that they bring in or just different ways of being in the world because we're all coming from different cultures, different viewpoints. So for some, Indigenous perspectives about connecting to nature are super resonant and they really connect with that. Right now, in fact, I'm co-writing a paper that talks about how science is giving us more information about our deep embodied connections to the biosphere. And that gives another access point for people that will work for some—that works for me actually in a big way. I really liked this recent book I've talked about on the pod called The Light Eaters that really just puts some concrete details in how we are physically, literally connected to the world. And that opens it up for me. So tell me more about the embodied connection that paganism has to the earth and how that's a way to access a connection to nature for people who practice paganism, but even perhaps for those who do not.
BrightFlame
Well, first of all, let me say I look forward to reading your essay. I'm working on something a little similar, though maybe not bringing in the science that you're talking about. I look forward to it. I love incorporating science into my work. I also want to say I don't speak for all pagans. My tradition, the reclaiming tradition of witchcraft, is very much an embodied spiritual tradition. For me and many in my tradition, my whole body is my tool. My whole body is my way of sensing and shaping energy. Often we'll take, as I said, trance journeys, but grounding is a very important practice where we are connecting with the energies of the earth, like physically connecting, and energies of the stars. And our energetic bodies extend out from our physical bodies, like way far out. And not everybody can sense that. But it's how we have effect in the world, and it's how we interconnect with all the other living beings of the world. Yes, anybody can work in a somatic or embodied way, something I highly recommend. It's, first of all, just very healthy for our human bodies to work that way. And it opens up access to know and relate with our Earth kin in a big way. I don't want to say all pagans work that way in an embodied practice. And there are different forms of ways of doing that. And I'm not Indigenous. And I know many Indigenous peoples live in an embodied way. They live interconnected with the Earth in ways that have come down from ancestors for even millennia close to the Earth.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, I feel like the body is such a great portal for almost anyone because we all have bodies of various kinds and shapes and sizes and experiences in the world. But for the same reason that meditation and mindfulness is essentially an embodied experience, even though it's this weird thing where you're like: it's a mindful thing, like it's in the word, that it's in your mind, but in reality, it's in your body. So it's like a tool that we all have. We all have that body sitting there and that is one of the ways that we can know stuff. I feel like the stumbling block is very much what we're doing with our minds. Like how to quiet that, what stories we tell ourselves, whether it's about our belief systems or about our practices or about our deep cultural understanding of how the world is. You know, there's just a lot of different ways that we can access that, but it all kind of runs through the body. So that was just really interesting to me to sort of experience secondhand through the characters as they're living their practices, right? And how does that feel like? What does that look like? In a way you're embodying that in the novel, right? Because you're showing us and you go through it. Like a lot of times that's so integral to what they're doing in the story that it becomes something that as a reader, you're like, okay, I kind of feel like I understand this in a way that if you had just told me what it was, I wouldn't necessarily have gotten it, but because... again, the thing, the power of fiction, right, is you've lived through it with these characters and in five different ways, because you got your five different characters and really sort of secondhand experienced it. And that's a really cool aspect.
And something I think that people who are at all curious about paganism, your flavor of paganism, which… I haven't really asked you and maybe I should do that before we get to our final round because we got a tiny bit of time. You said that you have this reclaimed tradition and I don't know if I'm using the right words there but like what is specifically different about that tradition versus other traditions?
BrightFlame
Well, we actually call it the reclaiming tradition. And there's all different stories, like some of the founders, who includes Starhawk, who many people know of, because she's written so many books, including The Spiral Dance, which is kind of a foundational book for people looking at ecstatic witchcraft and how to practice it.
The reclaiming tradition is an ecstatic, ecofeminist, aspirationally anti-racist, anti-homophobic -transphobic, anti-ableist, we strive for all that stuff, tradition. And it's a non-hierarchical tradition as well, which is not common to all different pagan or even witchcraft traditions. So the reclaiming tradition is very experimental through the years that we step into mystery. We embrace mystery and let whatever comes through, messages, teachings, senses, feelings, guide us.
We work with energy organically. Starhawk has this acronym: she's written about EIEIO for what reclaiming practice means. It's one of the E's in the ensemble, ecstatic, inspirational. The O is organic. I forget what some of the others are off the top of my head, but you all can look it up. Yeah, I even have that on my website, BrightFlame.com about reclaiming.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I will link that up and put links in the show notes for people so they can see it.
BrightFlame
But yeah, we're just one little tradition. We're global. We are global, which I love because I get to interact with witches from all different continents. And we have what we call witch camps in many places around the globe. They're week-long intensives, which is a lot of ways we pass along teachings and rituals and share magic together.
Susan Kaye Quinn
That sounds like a great constellation of ideologies or belief systems or approaches. I love that word ecstatic because it brings to mind things like mysticism. There's even a Catholic mysticism tradition. There's a tradition in naturalists where they have this sort sense of awe of being in nature that kind of speaks to that sort of larger ecstatic experience. There's a whole thing now where people are very into psychedelics as a portal to that sort of mystical ecstatic experience. So I think that it speaks to a real fundamental part of how humans operate and seek. They seek out that experience in many different ways. So I think this will make people curious about your tradition and go look it up. We will definitely provide links for people that want to learn more.
All right, so I think we're getting close to the end. I want to make sure we leave time to go through our rapid round of three questions. So first, what hopeful climate fiction have you read recently that you would recommend?
BrightFlame
I would definitely lift Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo. I just, I love that collection of stories. After climate catastrophe for the most part, the various characters come together to find ways to keep on going and creating new tech, interacting with the world they find themselves in to move forward. And in some cases, in some of the stories, to bring nature back, the way we think of nature. And they all express radical hope, the kind of hope that creates together.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yes, we are big fans of Renan here on the pod and I've had him on the pod and he's a wonderful writer and a wonderful person. And I'm ecstatic to use that word that he is creating these stories because he's just really very good at it and we need more of that.
So, okay, moving on. Now this question I should just throw away because, I mean, you just wrote an entire book about this question. But I'm gonna ask it anyway, just pro-forma for the format of the pod. What do you do to stay grounded and hopeful in our precarious and fast changing world?
BrightFlame
You're right, I did just write a book about that. So read The Working. It really is about grounding. In grounding, meaning sending our roots down into the earth below and relaxing into that delicious energy that's our birthright. It's the vitality that feeds us. And it really helps us relax. It helps us shed stress. The Earth's very generous in this way that we could dump crap off of ourselves, like just slough it off, and the Earth will transform it into just energy.
Susan Kaye Quinn
I wanted to point out one aspect of the book that, this is not a spoiler but just an aspect of that grounding process that recurred often in the book. I liked how you had your witches experience things that they thought were grounding or empowering or whatever but like actually… not so much. And it was like, we can tell ourselves that this is helping, this is helping, this is helping. And like, it's not. And sometimes our sisters have to call us out on that and say like, no, this is actually not so much doing that. Just like evidence says, you look worse afterwards. And I like that because there's so much of what we do in the world that is a little script in our head that says, hey, this is what you do to relax. I'm going to go take a bubble bath or I'm going to go, you know, do X, Y, Z, whatever the script says. Is it? Is that really the thing that works for you? The answer for you very clearly, very obviously is your craft and your grounding that you're literally doing this all the time.
BrightFlame
Well, but wait, let me just put a big but in there. It's easier said than done because I get depressed about the state of the world and just other things. And it's really hard to get yourself to do this when you're like down or have low energy. But that's the most important time to do it. And there's also like there's a lot of things grounding, not just doing that exercise of sending your roots or your cords down into the earth and connecting. Taking a bubble bath, like you said, things that really relax and open you, even if you don't say I'm grounding, will ground you.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Yeah, and it's very personal, which is why I ask this question every time. And I always get, I get flavors of similar answers, but they're all still unique. I use the bubble bath example because for me, that works. I love taking the bubble bath and just, that brings me just down three levels. But my husband, like he would react the way a cat taking a bubble bath reacts. It would be like, I'm going to drown, get me out. So like it's the opposite of what I experienced out of that exact same action. So it is very personal and like you say, sometimes really hard to access. Even if you know like, hey, if I go take a walk in the woods, I'm going to feel better, but just can't get my shoes on right now because I'm down and life is hard or I just don't have time or access or whatever. So, you know, we have to be gentle with ourselves. Readers, listeners, be gentle with yourselves about this.
BrightFlame
And taking a walk in the woods is another really wonderful thing that I love to do when I get myself to do it. It'll always break me out of a mood. It'll always lift me.
Susan Kaye Quinn
There's a lot of power there, even if you're not believing, you know, the full pagan belief system, just like there is power that everyone pretty much universally feels when they walk into a forest. It speaks to us in a really elemental way.
All right, so loved all this. Thank you so much for talking through all of your wonderful book. So tell us now what's next for you. Are you working on another novel? Do you have any hints about that? You can tell us what it's about or what's going on?
BrightFlame
Well, I have about a dozen solarpunk stories, some of which have been published, that I've collected into what you might call a mosaic novel, a story collection that I'm trying to sell. So I'm pitching that. I love those stories. And since I wrote them way more recently than I wrote The Working, in a way, they're better written, I have to say. But they're really, I just love that world that I created, this solarpunk future I created that all the stories take place in, but different times in that future.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Is this The Threads thing that you were talking about that the Thank Geo story that's in Solarpunk Creatures that we talked about at the top of the pod, is that in that same story world?
BrightFlame
Yes. Yes, it is, the Threads I call that future society. Yeah, I have a lot of fun creating more and more stories in that future. So I'd love to get that out to the world. I'm also writing a nonfiction book on solarpunk witchcraft, something I've been creating my flavor of… it'll have a lot of experiential exercises incorporated, because that's how I work. I taught a path at a recent witch camp on solarpunk witchcraft, and it evolves as more people work with me on this. So I want to get that book out to the world. Sooner than later. And then having just put The Working out and tilting it even more into solarpunk with the latest, the final editing that I did on it. I actually have a sequel that I'm playing with in my mind, but I have these other projects. I could see where a new novel would go with that coven and others from the story.
Susan Kaye Quinn
Well, yeah, and knowing how it ends, because I just finished reading it, I would be very interested in that sequel, because that would be squarely in a solarpunk world that I would be very interested in. Plus, your nonfiction sounds like the perfect carry-on from The Working as well for people who would be curious about more, you real world, not fiction, applications of things that they read about in the novel. So that sounds great. Sounds like you're doing some fabulous stuff. I will definitely make sure we get links to all that stuff so people can find you and find all your amazing work. And thank you for being on the pod today. It's been such a pleasure.
BrightFlame
Well, same for me. Thank you so much for inviting me and for asking great questions. And I look forward to hearing people's responses.
LINKS Ep. 19: Witchy Solarpunk with Author BrightFlame
The Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft (BrightFlame’s website)
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
Thank Geo by BrightFlame (Solarpunk Creatures)
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