Rachel A. Rosen 📚💙🪐

@darkerthanvanta.bsky.social

2043 Followers 1698 Following

Purveyor of bleak climate fantasy and, apparently, cookbooks. Newsletter at https://nightbeatseu.ca/newsletter/. https://rachelarosen.carrd.co/ to find me all over the internet. Order my newest book, Blight, here: https://books2read.com/u/mYVl9P

A screenshot of the Wikipedia page for "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury. Plot summary A nuclear catastrophe leaves the city of Allendale, California, entirely desolate. However, within one miraculously preserved house, the daily routine continues – automatic systems within the home prepare breakfast, clean the house, make beds, wash dishes, and address the former residents without any knowledge of their current state as burnt silhouettes on one of the walls. The AI system of the house chimes the date by saying, "Today is August 4, 2026".
A black cat sitting on a kitchen floor while I dangle a bean next to her that is much longer than she is.
Juliette Binoche in her youth, a white woman with short black hair and dark eyes. Everything in the photo is blue except her face. God she's pretty.
A design with bright fluorescent tentacles on a blue background with some kind of orange spongey thing in the middle.
Bill from Doctor Who. She's a light skinned Black woman with a ribbon in her Afro, wearing one of those cool silk jackets with embroidery on it and a striped shirt. There's a TARDIS in the background.
A black square image with contrasting red text and an image of a open book, taken end-on, with the pages splayed open so it looks as though someone is flipping through them. Red maple leaf images are arranged to look like they are spilling out of the book. Text in the top left corner reads: “Something BIG is happening! FictionFest.ca”
Tricon Halifax Schedule. Rachel A. Rosen, with a picture of my face. Author of Cascade and Blight, co-author of the Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don't Die, co-host of the Wizards and Spaceships podcast. Sat. May 16 9:30 am: A Marxist Analysis of the Writing Industry, the Maritime Room, the Westin, Sunday May 17 11 am De-Industrialization of the Frontier: Proletariat Themes in Science Fiction, 11 am in room 204, NSCAD Marginal Road Campus. Tricon's socials are at the bottom.
Author panel, reading, & Q&A: Speculative Fiction and the Right Against Fascism. Thursday, April 23 - 7 pm, St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church, 103 Bellevue Ave. Su J Sokol (author of Invisible Line and Five Points on an Invisible Line) and Rachel A. Rosen (author of Cascade and Blight), moderated by Megan Kinch. Canada Council and The Writers' Union of Canada information is at the bottom. The aesthetic is trippy retro with a bike and tentacles.
Cascade and Blight by Rachel A. Rosen on a shelf along with a vulture skull, a postcard from Fort McMurray, a Patrice Abel election pin, and a Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion badge that says "fascism shall be destroyed." Everything is in teal, blue, and orange/red tones. Very aesthetic.
Rachel A. Rosen 2025 Award Eligibility. Blight (The Sleep of Reason Book 2), novel, What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire's Yacht (Antifa Lit Journal Vol 1), short story, Wizards & Spaceships, podcast/fancast. The entire thing is a scrapbook aesthetic with bats and moths.
Rachel A. Rosen 2025 Award Eligibility. Blight (The Sleep of Reason Book 2), novel, What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire's Yacht (Antifa Lit Journal Vol 1), short story, Wizards & Spaceships, podcast/fancast. The entire thing is a scrapbook aesthetic with bats and moths.
Rachel A. Rosen 2025 Award Eligibility. Blight (The Sleep of Reason Book 2), novel, What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire's Yacht (Antifa Lit Journal Vol 1), short story, Wizards & Spaceships, podcast/fancast. The entire thing is a scrapbook aesthetic with bats and moths.
A screenshot from the Below the Root game. It's 8 bit but beautifully rendered, showing a giant tree with purple vines creeping up the base, and a little hut on the top branch. The player's avatar, in white, is jumping between broken brances.
Changelog, collected fiction. Toronto book launch! Saturday, December 13 1-3 PM @ Little Ghosts. Shows two robots against a post apocalyptic background.
2025 Rachel A Rosen Award Eligiblity. Blight (The Sleep of Reason Book 2), Novel, What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionare's Yacht?, Antifa Lit Journal Vol. 1, Short story. There is a cute black cat looking beseechingly at you with an arrow posted towards her that says "gratuitous cat for visibility." A stack of books are in the background of an obvious canva template.
a close up of a white woman in a black shirt with a red octopus necklace.
Can*Con Oct. 17-19 2025. Ottawa's Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Literature Convention. Rachel A Rosen. Sat., Oct. 18 2:30 pm: Book Signing: Newbridge Room. Sat., Oct. 19 5:30 pm: Blight launch: Founders Room. Sun., Oct. 19, 11:30 pm: One Ring to Bind Them: Writing Metaphor Network (Presentations). All weekend: Alternate Reality News Service Table Vendors room. Little author photo and images of the Blight cover.
Can*Con logo with a C that looks like Saturn.
How Do You Write When the World Is Falling Apart? Monique Cuillerier, Genevieve Clovis, SJ Groenewegen, Ash Kreider, Rachel A. Rosen. Rainbow Space Magic. October 4–5. RainbowSpaceMagic.org. Logo: A fountain pen draws a circle around the rainbow-colored letters RSM, ending in a little flying dragon and a ringed planet. Background: A starry sky with a rainbow.
Aurora Award first time nominee pin, which is silver and has a maple leaf cut out.
A collection of badge ribbons from Worldcon. There are too many to list but highlights include I like miss, rude litter box, and I petted a sugar glider.
A panel with 5 people, all of whom are amazing.
CSFFA x wizards & spaceships room party thursday august 14 at 8 pm in room 3211 at the Sheraton Grande.
A rack of books with mine (Cascade and Blight) at the bottom.
Maya, a young Tamil woman with long black hair and dark glasses, wearing a green hoodie, baggy pants, and oversized boots. She's sitting on a bench in a dead mall. There's graffiti behind her that technically reads Mac Paps 4 Ever but it's obscured by her head. There's a rubber duck in front of her hand, from which vague strandes of glowing green magic are eminating.
Blight by Rachel A. Rosen featuring giant bone tentacles coming out of the ocean to surround a tiny sub with a glowing light. It's the Sleep of Reason Book 2. There's a blurb from Robert J. Sawyer that says "Rachel A. Rosen is a superb prose stylist and an incisive social commentator...Look for this one on the award ballots."
me speaking at Glad Day Bookshop. I am a short white woman with teal hair in a battle jacket. You can see some of the audience behind me.
The Green Sky trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder: Below the Root, And All Between, and Until the Celebration. The most 70s fantasy covers you've ever seen. The first shows two light-haired, white children flying among birds. The second shows a hooded child with slightly darker skin (she should be Black but like I said, 70s fantasy conventions) holding a rabbit in front of a dense city with a root system above it. The third shows the darker skinned child talking with a lighter skinned child among a bunch of giant mushrooms.
Robert's Rules of Order but it's a pulp cover with all kinds of crazy hypermasculinity going on. The caption reads "The house WILL rise. Order is what separates men from beasts...and he's here to bring it!"
Two versions of Blight by Rachel A. Rosen, one on ebook, one on paperback. Both feature bone tentacles and a tiny sub that's a light in the darkness.
Alice, a fluffy black cat, with a copy of Blight by Rachel A. Rosen and a patch that says Mackenzie-Papineau battalion, fascism shall be destroyed.
Sabot, a fluffy black cat with green eyes, sits attentively by a copy of Blight by Rachel A. Rosen and a Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion badge that reads "Fascism Shall Be Destroyed."
Jonah (a medium-skinned man with short dark hair) and Ian (a pale/grey man) kissing in the darkness with a progress pride flag overlay. The text reads “What the fuck is wrong with you, b’y?” “Thought you were dead under a pile of rubble, asshole. Again.” “And you chose to celebrate this by gnawing my face off? Where’d you even learn to kiss, the Franklin Expedition?”
Jonah (a medium-skinned man with short dark hair) and Ian (a pale/grey man) kissing in the darkness with a progress pride flag overlay. The text reads “What the fuck is wrong with you, b’y?” “Thought you were dead under a pile of rubble, asshole. Again.” “And you chose to celebrate this by gnawing my face off? Where’d you even learn to kiss, the Franklin Expedition?”
Ian, who is tall, middle-aged, and entirely grey, with glowing red eyes and a glowing red labyrinth on his chest, facing Maya, a young Tamil woman with a ponytail and glasses. The text reads: "I didn't ask you for time," Maya told him. "I never asked to be saved." And definitely not to be another sacrifice, like Ian had been, lighting herself on fire to serve as a torch for an ungrateful nation. "And yet," Ian said, "Here we both are. You're not gonna like what you find." "When do I ever?"
A creepy corpse covered in fungal growths, facing an exhausted looking woman beneath a red light. The text reads: "The bodies sang as she passed them by, not just from their mouths but from the rustling of their limbs against the growths on the wall, the bubbling of something liquid under their flesh."
propaganda-style poster of a woman singing in front of a partial Red Ensign flag. The text reads "See Lucy Fletcher, the songbird of the Dominion. National Arts Centre, November 15."
Alice, a fluffy black cat, looks skeptically at a copy of Blight (The Sleep of Reason #2) by Rachel A. Rosen.
Cascade and Blight by Rachel A. Rosen, pictured on a bookshelf with a vulture skull, a postcard from Fort McMurray, an election pin for Patrice Abel, and a Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion badge that reads "fascism shall be destroyed."
A bookshelf with cascade and blight by Rachel A Rosen, a vulture skull, a postcard from Fort McMurray, an election pin for Patrice Abel, and a Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion badge.
Patches for the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, based on the original design. There’s a raised red fist in front of a black star in front of a teal maple leaf. At the bottom it says “Fascism shall be destroyed.”
the Celestial Seasonings bear sitting on a green chair with a red hat. There's a radio in the background and tea with I guess crumpets in the foreground. Also, Celestial Seasonings is a really awful cult.
Dark grey sign with the following engraved text: "This place is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger."
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince as a high fantasy novel. The caption reads "It is far safer to be feared than loved." The image is a very dark skinned man in a golden crown with horns and the Eye of Sauron in the middle. He is wearing a red robe and surrounded by a wreath of bare branches.
Sabot, a black cat with green eyes and a clipped ear, sitting in a box.
Alice, a fluffy black cat with green eyes, sticking her giant paw on a laptop keyboard. She looks like she's fed up.
The Sad Bastard Cookbook. We're expecting. Two blocks of ramen, one regular sized, one tiny.
A chibi drawing of Ian, who is a redheaded middle-aged man in a tie, about to snort a labyrinth made of cocaine. He's thinking "This is a great idea." It is not, in fact, a great idea.
Blight by Rachel A. Rosen (The Sleep of Reason Book 2). Giant bone tentacles surround a sub in the middle of a turbulent ocean. Metal AF.
Cascade by Rachel A. Rosen (The Sleep Of Reason Book 1). Dark, brooding cover with the Canadian Parliament buildings, sacred geometry, and a quote by Peter Watts: "A near-perfect blend of implacable horror, gallows humour, and ecological apocalypse."
A chaotic scene of the Festival of Lights in Kensington Market. Surrounded by various performers in costumes and animal masks and illuminated by both lanterns and magic, the three main characters, Maya (mid-20s, female, Tamil, wearing thick black glasses), Ian (late-40s male, white, very thin and in black-and-white), and Jonah (mid-40s, Métis, at the lead of the group urging the rest of them on) are moving through the crowd.
Francisco de Goya's "Witches Sabbath." Well, one of them. A bunch of people, including a woman holding a skeletal baby and another woman holding a regular baby, are sitting in a circle around a red-eyed goat with leaves in its hair. Honestly they look like they're having a pretty good time, except for a third baby, who is a skeleton lying on the ground, and a string of babies on a stick. There's a crescent moon and bats in the sky. The goat is maybe the world's most friendly Baphomet.
"What's something crazy we should work on?" My answer: "Find 10 BIPOC artists on Tumblr who are doing amazing work. Instead of stealing their stuff, pay their rent and medical costs for life."
Midjourney's questionnaire, which shows a wonky-handed person wearing sunglasses. The question is "What would get you to use the website more?" My answer is: "If it were styled like 2000s-era Geocities and also didn't drain a small lake every time I wanted pictures of sexy Garfield." There's a next button underneath it.
A black and white photo of me, a middle aged punkish white lady, in front of a grim government defence building.
Me selling my books. I’m a white woman in black with a black mask. Turns out I have a lot of books.
Alice, a fluffy black cat, is sitting on my arm preventing me from writing on my laptop. She looks very content. There's also a Yeti mic in the background because why should I get to podcast either?
It's like a dragon??? wolf? thing with many eyes and teeth. The background reads pickle, repeatedly. It is eating a pickle, which is glowing and sparkling, and looks to be really psyched about it. I would be too. I fuckin love pickles.
A black and white photo with a double exposure showing a mask, a skull, and some sunflowers.
A black cat with yellow-green eyes on a bookshelf. I have great taste in books. Sorry about the Neil Gaiman; I honestly don't know what to do about that.