Lorraine Wilson Returns to Luna Novella 2027!
We are delighted to announce the return of Lorraine Wilson with the hopepunk story A Lake of Small Fires, # 28 of the Award Winning Luna Novella series!
Lorraine's debut novel, This Is Our Undoing, marked the beginning of her journey with Luna Press. This was followed by The Way the Light Bends, the novella The Last to Drown, and the short story Mhairi Aird, in Nova Scotia 2. She is now recognised as one of the most talented voices of modern SFF.
A Lake of Small Fires will be released in February 2027.
About the story:
In a future Himalayas, a house boat community on a dying lake gathers for a feast.
Seven people with seven stories of migration, fire, fury, grief and survival; all have come through a burning world to find each other here on their ramshackle island. As the long day passes, their stories intertwine to create one simple message to the eighth person at the feast.
Mr Kindness walked away from his own bloody past to drown in the lake, Araminta used her forest fire wings to escape an iron cage, The Dhobi buried everyone she loved then crowned herself an underworld queen, Daisy Felsham fled a cult on a folktale and was saved by Ah Min Than’s sharp, sharp knives; and Corazon crossed a continent before she was ten, holding onto nothing but a story and her sister’s hand.
As the sun sets and the fires are lit across the water, the lake is full of ghosts and reflected mountains. Everyone here is lost, but everyone here might just be found.
Lorraine on the novella:
I have been describing A Lake of Small Fires as Station 11 meets A Thousand and One Nights, which is a slightly peculiar (and ambitious!) combination, but hopefully captures something of its vibes of sad hopepunk, found family, and storytelling. This book is, at heart, about the stories we choose to tell, and how they shape us both as individuals and communities. It’s about finding hope and tenderness in a hard world, and the long road (literally) to belonging. It’s also about two sisters, and their fierce, indomitable love for one another.
It actually started life as a short story, but that 2,500 words was not doing what I wanted it to, and was also chock full of characters I really wanted to spend more time with. So I decided to expand it to a novella, and in the process challenge myself to write a story with a rather unusual structure where we have one overarching character’s narration, and within that, several other characters taking over the narrative in turn. There is a Very Significant Thematic reason for this braided cyclic structure, which is quite possibly so subtle no one will ever spot it! But it also serves to let us hear each of the story’s characters tell their own story, which was immense fun for me as they’re all so different and damaged and wonderful in their own ways.
This wee book is full of my grief at the climate crisis and also my faith in, and hope for, the communities we build. It’s also full of bookish easter eggs, so have fun with that! I am delighted to be returning to the Luna Novella series with this book, and cannot wait for readers to meet Esperanza and her people.
Cover of Lorraine's works at Luna: Daniele Serra Cover of Lorraine's works at Luna: Jay Johnstone Cover of Lorraine's works at Luna Jay Johnstone
About Lorraine Wilson:
A conservation scientist and third culture Scot, Lorraine lives by the sea writing stories influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has a PhD from the University of St. Andrews and is the author of several books, most recently the connected science fantasies We Are All Ghosts In The Forest and The Salt Oracle. Winner of two British Fantasy Awards and the Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, her books have also been finalists for the Arthur C. Clarke, BSFA, BFA, Kavya and Saltire Awards. Lorraine has been stalked by wolves, caught the bubonic plague, and befriended pythons, but she now sticks to herding cats.
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