Blog posts

Writing Eco-Fiction That Feels Alive

In many stories, nature is little more than scenery. A forest gives the characters somewhere to walk. A river adds beauty to the landscape. A storm creates atmosphere. A mountain range sits impressively in the distance while the real story unfolds somewhere else. There is nothing wrong with scenery. Stories need places to happen, but eco-fiction asks for something deeper. In this genre, the natural world is a character, driving the plot forward. Forests, rivers, weather, animals, Read more

By opaltree, ago

The Strangest Invasions Begin in the Mind

Alien invasion stories often begin with a dramatic spectacle: light splits the sky, a fleet of horrifying ships appears above the city, emergency response teams speed through the streets, governments panic, crowds run, buildings fall, and so on. There is power in that kind of story. It gives us the shock of arrival, the thrill of resistance, the terror of facing something vast and visibly other. But I find it boring and predictable. I prefer the Read more

By opaltree, ago

How to Use Visual Art to Build a Solarpunk Story World

Sometimes an image gives you a world before you know the plot. You may not know who lives there yet, what has gone wrong, or whose life is about to be disrupted, but you can feel the tension of change about to happen. The clue might be a certain kind of light, a curve of architecture, a path across water, a plant growing where a machine might have been, or a distant figure. The image Read more

By opaltree, ago

Creative Tools for Therapists, Coaches & Wellbeing Practitioners | Creative Spirit

Creativity is often treated as something that belongs to artists, writers, musicians, and makers. But many of the processes involved in creativity are also familiar territory for therapists, coaches and wellbeing practitioners who help people reflect, grow, build confidence, explore identity, and move through periods of feeling stuck. Questions such as What is getting in my way? What do I really want? What would I try if I were less afraid of failure? What helps me Read more

By opaltree, ago

The Penultimate Weird World of 2026

The strange world of The Lumenkin: A Story of Alien Arrival and Ecological Awakening contains luminous forests, hidden fae realms and an alien encounter unlike any you have read before. The Story & Art Bundle contains the complete eBook, the original artworks that inspired it, and the newly expanded Illustrated Guide to the Lumen Event. Enter the world of The Lumenkin here. And stay tuned for the last blast of 2026 — The Far Room: A Story Read more

By opaltree, ago

Ancient Myths Retold

Old myths keep calling me back because they never feel finished. We inherit them as though they are fixed objects: Persephone was abducted. Medusa was a monster. Gaia was Mother Earth. Erebus belonged to darkness and Hemera to daylight. The stories arrive already interpreted for us, their characters assigned their roles thousands of years before we encounter them. Yet whenever I return to those myths, I find myself wondering what might exist just outside the Read more

By opaltree, ago

Which Weird World Is Yours?

A free illustrated reader’s guide to my strange fiction I have never been very good at staying inside one fictional box. Sometimes I write about ancient gods and forgotten women. Sometimes about magical forests, sentient rivers or visitors from somewhere beyond Earth. At other times I find myself wondering what artificial intelligence might dream about, what happens when reality begins to soften around the edges, or whether the thing doing the observing might also be observing Read more

By opaltree, ago

10 Reasons ‘Creative Spirit’ Might Be for You

Creativity can be one of the most rewarding parts of our lives, but it does not always arrive easily.  Sometimes we have plenty of ideas but struggle to act on them. Sometimes confidence gets in the way. At other times, creativity becomes squeezed between work, responsibilities, expectations, and the endless noise of everyday life. Creative Spirit is a self-paced audiovisual creativity course that brings together creativity, reflection, meditation, and wellbeing. Rather than focusing simply on Read more

By opaltree, ago

How strange fairy-alien artworks, photonic intelligence and the hidden networks beneath a forest became “The Lumenkin”

Microscopic spores made from crystalline structures and photons drift silently into the atmosphere. They fall with the Northern Lights, enter the forests, and bond with the vast mycelial networks beneath the surface of the Earth. The forest begins to change. Trees glow softly in the darkness. Mycelial networks carry strange new signals. Animals begin responding to patterns they could never perceive before. Somewhere in that hidden realm that humans cannot see, a fae healer named Lirien Read more

By opaltree, ago

Who Controls the Future? Inside ‘The Gaia Machine’

I wrote Captive as a dare. As a long-time author of nonfiction, a colleague dared me to write a short story, in the genre of science fiction, and enter it into a competition. I had some time on my hands, so I thought ‘yeah, okay’. I figured I had watched enough sci-fi TV shows and films, and read more novels in the genre than I could count. Surely that would give me an advantage. I Read more

By opaltree, ago