Anthropocene Stories

"Beneath Light's Pollution" offers a profound meditation on Earth's intimate understanding of light pollution's creeping influence. Through the Earth's own voice, the narrative unveils the gradual encroachment of artificial light, transforming the night from a sanctuary of stars into a canvas of obscured wonder. With intellectual elegance and vivid imagery, the story delves into the ecological and psychological toll of this luminous invasion, highlighting Earth's timeless wisdom and yearning for balance. It is a call to awaken, to peel back the veil, and to reconnect with the untouched beauty of the cosmos.

In a vineyard cloaked in exploitation and rot, the animals once seen as livestock and novelty awaken into organizers, saboteurs, and quiet insurgents. Narrated by a watchful California coyote who lives in the margins, this story follows a covert revolution in Temecula Valley-led not by humans, but by those trampled by their greed. As ecosystem collapse accelerates and power shifts from hooves to paws to wings, rebellion ferments beneath the vines. But liberation, once seized, demands more than victory-it requires memory, transformation, and refusal to become what was overthrown.

Twelve year old, telepathic, animal communicator Luki Sloan's parents are detective-scientists with World Endangered Animal Police Protection (WEAPP). Stationed in Wales, Alaska, her parents patrol the Bering Strait to protect the seasonal marine migration that bottlenecks there. One day they go out to catch animal traffickers of the Red Dragon gang, and never return. Missing and presumed dead, Luki's Inupiaq "grandparents" encourage her to activate Tuk, an android to help her cope with the loss of her parents. Tuk hatches a plan to catch White Wolf, leader of the Red Dragons. With Tuk and her pet arctic fox, Mig, Luki goes around the world to collect endangereds that she locates with her "mindsight." Posing as traffickers with the animals they've collected, Luki and Tuk plan to gain access to White Wolf's superyacht. But it's not quite as easy as they think.

When people reincarnate they expect to be a hero or have a purpose that is meant to save people. They may be using magic and such, but... What about reincarnating to a modern world. Anthony was a normal person. He never believed in supernatural things. Wanted to save his planet but not really doing much about it. He gets killed when a bookshelf fell on his head. He talked with a celestial force, the celestial force hired him as "The Corrector". He would go around in new universes and seeking out different races that are exploiting their resources so much that the planet is literally calling out for help. He would correct the Anthropocene people.

When Anne, an empty nester and newly single, goes to Peru, she falls head over heels for her glamorous shaman. But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Anne starts to suspect an affluent journalist she met on the trip has a dark secret. Can she get back to her old life in time?

What do nomads have in common with graffiti artists, hackers and electronic music DJs? What does your clothes have to do with the balance of political power. If you answered, "The Apocalypse!" you'd be correct. The Digital Nomad Manifesto is a poem as much as a call to advance culture through kindness. Our technology is shifting, from written word to image-driven touch screens, and the shift in communications is changing our brains, the organization of our society. The (R)evolution is inside us, and it is growing with every click and drag.

COMPLETED. COLLECTION ONE. --- Animals that learned to wonder. Predators that learned to dream. An invasive species that learned to ask why. Human beings are strange creatures. Animals that became self-aware. Predators capable of poetry. A species intelligent enough to reshape an entire planet and perhaps destroy it. This collection of interconnected free verse poems explores consciousness, religion, evolution, climate change, mortality, and humanity's place in an indifferent universe through the eyes of humans, stars, and distant observers. From the birth of self-awareness to the silence that follows our disappearance, these poems ask a simple question: What does it mean to exist, knowing that nothing lasts forever? Because maybe we were never meant to last. Maybe we were simply the animals that learned to wonder. --- Copyright © 2026 by Laila J. Baxter All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews or educational discussion. This is a work of personal expression. Ideas, perspectives, and themes reflect the author's creative voice.