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ABOUT MEA Weird Life
MK Riley worked hard to gain a strange education. She majored in 19th century literature before selling her car to buy a camera and joining the US Peace Corps. Having learned to speak Thai, love teaching, and politely eat whatever was handed to her, she took her camera on the road, traveling through SE Asia, India, Europe and the US. She volunteered for Mother Teresa at Shishu Bhavan, trekked the Himalayas, kayak-camped through France, bike-camped the eastern seaboard, and car-camped across the US, before settling down to run the Sound to Sea Environmental Education Program on the Outer Banks for 12 years.
Nowadays, MK lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with her husband, Clay, and their sons Liam and Finn. She enjoys kayaking slowly, cross-country skiing even more slowly, and hiking phenomenally slowly while taking photographs that make something real look imagined. |
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AN ILLUSTRATED NARRATIVE
Notes from the Alt-Verse*
Is NOTES FROM THE ALT-VERSE* the book version of a silent movie where all the stars are flowers?
Or is it Alice in Wonderland where all the characters are plants?
Or maybe it’s a floricultural “The Far Side meets Humans of New York”?
The answer to all the above is yes. But, just as dissecting a butterfly fails to fully explain a butterfly, NOTES FROM THE ALT-VERSE* is more than a sum of these parts. Using bizarre macro photographs of perfectly normal plants, it takes the reader on an extraordinary adventure through our very ordinary world, connecting with those of us who are exhausted and over-stressed during this time of uncivil words and bad news.
The story follows The Ordinary Girl as she wanders off the beaten path to meet the alt-verse (where plants became sentient instead of people, but everything else remained the same) where it lives—in our back yards, our gardens, our scrubby roadside verges, and wild places everywhere. She learns important seasonal lessons while dancing with the Leviathan of Spring at The Wild Flower Rumpus, whispering late night secrets to the Ghosts of Summer, and helping to avert a crisis for Phenologia, Queen of the Seasons before The Autumnal Masked Wild Flower Ball.
The whimsical narrative acts as a literary and visual tonic that helps readers see the world anew and commit to the radical act of paying attention. It will be appreciated by photographers, by nature lovers, and during this time where the angriest people have the loudest megaphones, by everyone who is wanting to walk a little gentler and to look a little deeper— at weedy meadows gone to seed and wilted flowers in the cracks of sidewalks and scraggly potted plants in roof top gardens—to find the small graces in the achingly beautiful world hidden in plain view all around us.
Or is it Alice in Wonderland where all the characters are plants?
Or maybe it’s a floricultural “The Far Side meets Humans of New York”?
The answer to all the above is yes. But, just as dissecting a butterfly fails to fully explain a butterfly, NOTES FROM THE ALT-VERSE* is more than a sum of these parts. Using bizarre macro photographs of perfectly normal plants, it takes the reader on an extraordinary adventure through our very ordinary world, connecting with those of us who are exhausted and over-stressed during this time of uncivil words and bad news.
The story follows The Ordinary Girl as she wanders off the beaten path to meet the alt-verse (where plants became sentient instead of people, but everything else remained the same) where it lives—in our back yards, our gardens, our scrubby roadside verges, and wild places everywhere. She learns important seasonal lessons while dancing with the Leviathan of Spring at The Wild Flower Rumpus, whispering late night secrets to the Ghosts of Summer, and helping to avert a crisis for Phenologia, Queen of the Seasons before The Autumnal Masked Wild Flower Ball.
The whimsical narrative acts as a literary and visual tonic that helps readers see the world anew and commit to the radical act of paying attention. It will be appreciated by photographers, by nature lovers, and during this time where the angriest people have the loudest megaphones, by everyone who is wanting to walk a little gentler and to look a little deeper— at weedy meadows gone to seed and wilted flowers in the cracks of sidewalks and scraggly potted plants in roof top gardens—to find the small graces in the achingly beautiful world hidden in plain view all around us.
Princess Buttersprout takes The Ordinary Girl on a Tour
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Queen Phenologia needs Help with a Crisis
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A PHOTO ESSAY
Strange in Nature: A Fictional Autobiography
Everyone has at some point in their life felt strange, unaccepted, or unacceptable. We grow up in a miasma of social anxiety, learning to hide our discomfort and conform to others’ expectations—but at what cost?
STRANGE IN NATURE is a photo-essay that stands as a rebuttal to our current divisive age. The recognition of every person's equality and dignity—irrespective of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or beliefs—has never felt less assured. Yet even now, what unites us runs far deeper than what divides us. Biodiversity makes the natural world stronger; it could do the same for our society, once we learn to accept and appreciate each other’s differences.
By turns poignant and comical, STRANGE IN NATURE is meant both for parents to read to their children and for adults to read to their inner child. It will also resonate with today’s teens who are testing their inner weird against the tiny box society uses to contain them. It will be appreciated by photographers, nature lovers, and everyone who is afraid that 2020 has sucked all the beauty out of the world. It’s still here. You just have to learn how to look for it.
Everyone is strange. And that’s okay. Our strangeness is our strength, and our differences should be celebrated instead of concealed.
STRANGE IN NATURE is a photo-essay that stands as a rebuttal to our current divisive age. The recognition of every person's equality and dignity—irrespective of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or beliefs—has never felt less assured. Yet even now, what unites us runs far deeper than what divides us. Biodiversity makes the natural world stronger; it could do the same for our society, once we learn to accept and appreciate each other’s differences.
By turns poignant and comical, STRANGE IN NATURE is meant both for parents to read to their children and for adults to read to their inner child. It will also resonate with today’s teens who are testing their inner weird against the tiny box society uses to contain them. It will be appreciated by photographers, nature lovers, and everyone who is afraid that 2020 has sucked all the beauty out of the world. It’s still here. You just have to learn how to look for it.
Everyone is strange. And that’s okay. Our strangeness is our strength, and our differences should be celebrated instead of concealed.
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A NOVEL
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
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What if the apocalypse doesn’t arrive with four horsemen and a hail of frogs? What if it slips in sideways, unnoticed on the back of a billion bad decisions? What if it has started already?
Astrobiologist Dr. LeeCee Schofield should be ecstatic when she finds evidence of a new species deep below the Antarctic ice. Instead, as her research progresses, she has to decide whether she is losing her mind or uncovering impossible truths. And losing her mind might be simpler as her discoveries are terrifying: Not only are we not alone in the cosmos, we are not alone in our own bodies. The alien other we have looked for is not out there but in us, and resembles nothing so much as the “soul.” And it is dying, suffering a kind of colony collapse that threatens to take our humanity with it. |
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A NOVEL
The Odd Shelf
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Lois is an outgoing librarian in a small southern town who hates to travel and has worked hard to have a spectacularly normal life. But the arctic dreams she’s pushed herself to ignore are starting to push back. Jack has long left normal behind, along with his sensible job researching memory in mice. He’s in a professional free fall, following the images in his head to the Arctic ... and, ultimately, to Lois.
As Lois and Jack’s stories spiral into each other, Alex and Lena MacDonald's parallel tale is told in haunting flashback as an epistolary romance. The strength of their connection is dragging their ancestors through snow and ice to uncover the truth: Sometimes who we are is less important than who we were, and who we were stays with us—ghosts in our machine—encoded in our DNA. |
John Wilson Carmichael - 1847
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