09/07/2026
The extended edition of Salt & Seeds is doing really well with 4.8 out of 5 on Amazon reviews 🙂
Not every future has to be bleak. Salt & Seeds is a story of adaptation through connection rather than conflict: of citizen scientists, community spirit, and the slow, radical work of refusing to look away. Climate fiction with its feet in the mud and its eyes on the horizon. A hopeful novel for an unfinished world.
When Salt & Seeds was first published, I hoped it would offer an alternative to the endless stream of dystopian climate fiction. A solarpunk story where adaptation through connection could be every bit as compelling as survival through conflict.
Salt & Seeds began as a short story in a workshop for the Grokkist Network. It soon grew into a first-edition novel published by Grokkist Press as a conversation starter. It has continued to evolve through public dialogue, action research, field recordings, photography, sketches, and conversations with readers, scientists, and activists. It has sparked conversations at book festivals, libraries, youth centres, writing groups and sustainability events. It has travelled thousands of miles with me on a European Book Trek, become the subject of talks and blog posts, and inspired further research through walking the Yorkshire coast. Like the living systems it celebrates, the project has continued to grow. This second edition reflects that journey. Stories, like ecosystems, evolve through relationship.
Now it has become an extended edition published by Grokkist Press.
The heart of the story remains the same, but the world around it has become richer, deeper and more nuanced.
Among the changes are:
Numerous editorial improvements, corrections and refinements throughout.
A future map of Whitby at the back of the book.
New scenes exploring genetic modification, digital identity, artificial intelligence, surveillance and corporate power.
Original illustrated chapter headings inspired by the plants, wildlife, and coastal details that shaped the story.
A redesigned Wild Margin (sailing vessel) with real-world design improvements that pace the current trajectory of that technology.
Expanded conversations around denial, migration and resistance.
New material developing a worker’s strike and its consequences.
Additional character moments, including Mae and Vega’s relationship deepening.
A more nuanced political landscape alongside the ecological one.
This isn’t simply a revised novel. It’s part of my wider creative practice for my MA.
The paperback and ebook are doing well, and a hardback edition will be following shortly. https://books2read.com/salt-and-seeds
If you know anyone who already owns the physical first edition, they can send me a selfie holding their copy, and I’ll happily send a link for them to get the new ebook for free from the publisher.
