A Threshold Moment: Seeking a Publisher for Parable of the Rosebush

We are living through a strange contradiction.

On one hand, the world feels like it’s unraveling—politically, ecologically, morally.

On the other, our collective attention is fragmented into noise, outrage cycles, and endless distraction.

For a long time, I’ve been asking myself a simple but uncomfortable question:

What does it mean to bring serious, paradigm-shifting work into the world at a moment like this?

Over the past weeks, I’ve come to a clear decision.

I’m going to actively seek a publisher for Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z and the larger Geotribe 2030 Anthology.

Not because I believe publishers are gatekeepers of truth.

But because this work deserves to travel outside the algorithm, into places where it can be read slowly, discussed deeply, and held seriously.

That feels like a small but meaningful act of resistance.

There’s a quiet symmetry here: as the story itself crosses a threshold into Act 2, so does the work in the world.

Parable of the Rosebush is speculative fiction, but it isn’t escapist.

It doesn’t offer dystopian despair or techno-savior fantasies.

Instead, it asks a quieter, more dangerous question:

What if humanity isn’t broken — only growing in broken conditions?

The book uses a simple metaphor:

When a rosebush fails, we blame the plant.

But the real causes lie in depleted soil, hostile conditions, and systems that were never designed for life to flourish.

The same may be true of us.

This story explores the space between within-the-system thinking and the terrifying possibility that the system itself may be the problem — a theme many of you will recognize from this Substack and from the larger Geotribe inquiry.

As part of this process, I’ve drafted a formal publisher pitch.

I’m sharing it here—not for validation, but as a way of inviting you into the actual work of bringing this book into the world.

Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z

(Geotribe 2030 Anthology, Book Three)

Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z is a work of speculative fiction set at the edge of the present moment, beginning in 2024, as the dominant economic and political paradigm begins to visibly fracture—while no shared alternative has yet taken root.

Drawing from the lineage of Octavia Butler’s Parable series, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and more recent speculative transitions such as Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, the story follows a young protagonist navigating a fractured society caught between “within-the-system” thinking and the unsettling realization that the systems themselves were always provisional.

At the heart of the novel is a living metaphor first put forth by Bellamy in 1888: humanity as a rosebush. When a rosebush fails, we often blame the plant—its weakness, its defects—rather than the depleted soil, broken trellis, or hostile conditions surrounding it. The novel extends this insight to civilization itself, suggesting that human behavior cannot be meaningfully transformed without transforming the underlying structures that shape incentives, relationships, and imagination.

Unlike conventional dystopian fiction, Parable of the Rosebush refuses both despair and techno-utopian fantasy. Instead, it explores a post-capitalist, post-monetary horizon through grounded characters, lived experience, and emergent forms of cooperation. The book introduces Geotribalism—a speculative framework in which humanity begins to recognize itself as a single, planetary tribe, capable of coordination beyond markets, money, and hierarchical control, through consciously chosen, anti-rivalrous forms of cooperation.

The novel is both intimate and systemic: a character-driven narrative that doubles as a cultural thought experiment. It speaks directly to readers who sense that “There Is No Alternative” is a story we’ve inherited rather than a truth, and who are searching for new myths equal to the scale of the metacrisis we face.

Framing the narrative are the protagonist’s journal entries, which trace humanity’s passage through a decisive phase shift—from the destabilization of familiar systems in 2024 toward the deliberate emergence of a Geotribal paradigm by 2030. These reflections are neither neutral nor cautionary. They articulate a conscious evolutionary direction, naming the anti-rivalrous criteria and post-monetary transformations required for humanity to survive and mature as a planetary species. This temporal arc gives the Geotribe 2030 Anthology its name, situating the novel not as a dystopian warning, but as an act of future-making.

Note on Process

Parable of the Rosebush is being released in serialized form on Substack as part of a deliberate experiment in writing alongside living history. While the story is carefully architected and guided by a clear narrative arc, its final form remains responsive to the rapidly changing cultural, ecological, and political conditions it explores.

This approach allows the novel to remain grounded in real-time world conditions while still being shaped toward a cohesive, publishable whole.

I’m sharing this moment because I don’t believe paradigm shifts happen in isolation.

Some of you may:

• Know editors, agents, or publishers aligned with this kind of work

• Have experience navigating the publishing world

• Simply want to help amplify work that feels necessary right now

If any of that is true for you, I’m listening.

And if you’ve been reading along and wondering how to support this work in a tangible way: paid subscriptions directly help create the space for this next phase—not just this book, but the larger Geotribe inquiry behind it.

Alongside this publishing journey, I’m paying attention to what wants to form beyond the book.

The Geotribe Learning Commons is beginning to take shape as a shared space for people who don’t just consume ideas—but want to help them take root in the world.

Nothing is fully defined yet.

That’s intentional.

For now, this is simply an invitation to walk together through a threshold moment.