Chalk Outline

GO OFF BESTIE

WPP's seventh anthology will be titled Nature Wants You Dead, and the theme will be environmental whump! Thank you so much to @nature-wants-you-dead for lending me your blog name for the title of this anthology. (You can check out her environmental-whump filled book, Creatures From the Caldera, here!)

Environmental whump includes things such as extreme weather, natural disasters, hypo and hyperthermia, cave-ins, building collapses, animal attacks, etc. Your story doesn't necessarily have to be whumperless, but the environmental whump needs to be front and center. 

Word Count: Up to 17,500 words

For this anthology, we are looking for stories in the following categories:

Micro-fiction: 250 words or less

Flash fiction: 251-1,000 words

Short Story: 1,001-7,499 words

Novelette: 7,500-17,500 words 

Each author can submit one story per category. So for example, you can submit a short story and a micro fiction but you can’t submit two micro fictions. 

Compensation: ebook contributor’s copy, one free paperback OR $10 USD, and discounts on additional paperbacks

50% of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to charity.

Submissions Open: February 1, 2027

Submissions Close: March 7, 2027

Expected Publication Date: July 2027

The Nitty-Gritty (aka more details about submitting)

I'm happy to announce that, together with a roster of great artists, writers, and actors, I've been secretly working on a huge multimedia podcast project. And it's called:

The city of Palmyra has been cordoned off, deemed contaminated. Supposedly, everyone's been evacuated. But we know it's not true. Inside the Exclusion Zone, the Feds, shady companies and hateful militias vie for control of the city, and strange horrors straight out of nightmares lurk around every corner. Meanwhile, those who got left behind are just trying to survive and stick together in this hellscape.

This project will smuggle information out of Palmyra. Apart from the many stories found in our podcast, you'll find recovered footage and documents belonging to different factions and survivors within the city. You can now listen to episode 1 of the podcast!

You may also presave the Kickstarter so you'll be notified when it goes live in a month! We'll be using it to fund our first season and make zines! In the meantime there will be plenty of extra content and cool art coming for you! Follow us at @american-abyss for our first batch of stories! I'm so excited to show more over the coming months! Please dig in and stay tuned.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the horrors I've worked on so far:

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

errrrr not quite. they uh. got somethin goin on

Let's go girls

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.