On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology
Publishing on September 30, 2025
Print ISBN: 979-8-9991000-3-0; eBook ISBN: 979-8-9991000-4-7
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Our world is changing dramatically before our eyes.
Increased average global temperatures have wreaked havoc on ecosystems, economies, and people’s lives. Fires rage. Flood waters rise. Storms and heat waves are occurring out-of-season and are becoming increasingly more dangerous and more frequent.
Neighborhoods are being destroyed. People are losing their lives and livelihoods. Still, some politicians, some pundits, and some corporate oligarchs continue to deny reality and refuse to take responsibility and necessary action to mitigate this existential crisis.
Those who did the least to cause this crisis will suffer the most from its consequences.
In On Fire and Under Water, the new crime fiction anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press, we explore the intersection of climate change and crime, through the lens of fifteen short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers. Edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at RHP Press, the stories contained within this anthology peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour.
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say flood. In On Fire and Under Water, you get both.
“Raw, brutal, tender, tragic—these are fifteen stories of people smashed flat by the Invisible Fist, people flailing and fighting against the huge and hidden violence at the center of our world. This is crime fiction that matters, crime fiction that is ready to face what comes next.” — Jordan Harper, author of She Rides Shotgun and Everybody Knows
Contributors:
CURTIS IPPOLITO (Guest Editor; IG: @curtis_sd) is an Anthony Award-winning, and Macavity Award- and Derringer Award-nominated writer. He is the author of the crime novel Burying the Newspaper Man. Additionally, his short stories have appeared in numerous prominent publications, as well as being featured in several anthologies. He lives in San Diego and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and serves as vice-president for the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime.
C.W. BLACKWELL (IG: @cw_blackwell_writer) is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His short stories have appeared with Down and Out Books, Mystery Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Tough Magazine, Reckon Review, and Rock and a Hard Place Press. He is a two-time Derringer Award winner and five-time nominee. He was included on the Distinguished Author list in the 2024 Best American Mystery and Suspense collection. His crime fiction novella Hard Mountain Clay was published in January 2023 from Shotgun Honey Books. His debut crime fiction collection Whatever Kills the Pain was released by Rock and a Hard Place Press in July 2025.
MARY THORSON (IG: @mfranzen88) lives and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her MFA from Pacific University in Oregon. Her stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Reckon Review, Cotton Xenomorph, Milwaukee Noir, Worcester Review, Rock and a Hard Place, and Tough, among others. Her short story, "Book of Ruth," was included in Best American Mystery & Suspense 2024, edited by Steph Cha and S.A. Cosby. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, a Derringer, and a Pushcart Prize. She is represented by Lori Galvin at Aevitas Creative Management. Her debut short story collection, A Woman’s Guide to True Crime, will be released in early 2026 from Rock and a Hard Place Press.
ZAKARIAH JOHNSON (Threads: @pteratorn) plucks banjos and pens thrillers, horror, and mysteries on the banks of the Piscataqua. He's the author of the ecoterrorism murder mystery Mink: Skinning Time in Wisconsin and the short-story collection Egg on Her Face, which includes tales of environmental catastrophes and homicidal trees.
PUJA GUHA (IG: @authorpujaguha) is the author of seven novels and four published short stories. She grew up and has worked all over the world, something she channels into her writing, with settings from New York to Madagascar to Iran. So far, she has traveled to over 60 countries, each of which she hopes to someday include in one of her stories or novels. Her spy thriller series The Ahriman Legacy is an Amazon bestseller, and she has been featured on TV and media, including Fox 5, Reader’s Digest, and the London Post.
COLIN BRIGHTWELL (IG: @cbwizzy) is a Kansas City native. His fiction has appeared in Reckon Review, BULL, Guilty Crime Story Magazine, Dark Yonder, Starlite Pulp, and Rock and a Hard Place. His debut collection, Nothing Good Ever Happens in a Flyover State, is available through Cowboy Jamboree Press. He currently teaches middle school English outside Kansas City.
PRISCILLA PATON (IG: @priscillapaton) grew up on a Maine dairy farm and spends time with family in the mountains of northern Maine. She lives in Wisconsin and writes the award-nominated Twin Cities Mystery series, which features feisty Deb Metzger and outdoorsy Erik Jansson. Her recent When the House Burns—sex, death, and real estate—follows Where Privacy Dies and Should Grace Fail. Her fourth, In Blind Trust, about the murder of a MedTech executive, will be out in 2026. She participates in environmental and community advocacy programs. You can read more on the web at priscillapaton.com.
CHRISTIAN EMECHETA (IG: @emechetachristian) is a writer, illustrator, and computer scientist. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many online publications and magazines such as Arts Lounge Magazine, Writefluence Anthology, 9th Edition of Chinua Achebe Poetry/Essay Anthology, Synchronized Chaos Online Journal, The Decolonial Passage, Mocking Owl Roost, and elsewhere. He writes songs when inspired by a tune or lyrics. Christian enjoys reading, watching movies, and getting lost in his imagination. He hopes to travel the world.
Raised on both a farm in north Georgia and the Caribbean island of Trinidad, RAYMOND J. BRASH (IG: @raymond.j.brash) currently resides in Denver, Colorado, where he enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction, noir, and anything that crushes multiple genres into a pulpy, edible mash. Raymond has stories published in Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Shotgun Honey, and others, and has been nominated for a Best of the Net Award.
EDWARD BARNFIELD (Bluesky: @@edbarnfield.bsky.social) is a writer and researcher living in the Middle East. His stories have appeared in Triangulation, Third Flatiron, Galley Beggar Press, The Molotov Cocktail, Tenebrous Press, Leicester Writes, Strands, Cranked Anvil, and Shooter Literary, among others.
KENDALL BRUNSON (IG: @kendallbrunson) is a crime and thriller writer from Florida. Her work has been published in Kelp Literary Journal, 100 Word Story, Fearsome Critters, and more. She's written and directed horror shorts that have played at festivals, including Final Girls Berlin Film Fest, The Loft Cinema, and Wasteland Film Festival. She earned her MFA from UC Riverside at Palm Desert and currently lives and works in Jacksonville, Florida.
MICHAEL DOWNING (Twitter / X: @KMWriter01) is a writer originally from New Jersey, now living in a small college town in Georgia. His novel, Saints of the Asphalt was released in 2025. His short stories have been featured in various publications and anthologies (some that have even been nominated for Pushcart Prizes). He is still everything New Jersey: attitude, edginess, and Bruce Springsteen . . . but not Bon Jovi. Learn more at downingfiction.com.
C.E. McKENNA (Bluesky: @ce-mckenna.bsky.social) is a writer, historian, and software engineer from Colorado. She has history theses in the libraries of Reed College and Oklahoma State, and her short stories have found awards and publication with Writing by Writers, Desperate Literature, The Offing, Cagibi, Lumina, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, and Shift. She is an MFA student at UC Riverside - Palm Desert. Though she's only been to Svalbard once, it made a deep impression.
JIM RULAND (IG: @jimvermin) is an old punk who lives by the sea. He is the author of the novels Make It Stop and Forest of Fortune and the short story collection Big Lonesome. Jim is also the LA Times-bestselling author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, which was named a best book of 2022 by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Ruland is the co-author of Do What You Want with Bad Religion and My Damage with Keith Morris. Jim is a frequent contributor to Razorcake fanzine and the LA Times. He is a veteran of the US Navy and lives in San Diego.
RICHIE NARVAEZ is the author of two novels, Hipster Death Rattle and Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, which received an Agatha Award and an Anthony Award, and two short story collections, Roachkiller & Other Stories and Noiryorican. You can learn more about his work at www.richienarvaez.com.
MEAGAN LUCAS (IG: @meaganlucasauthor) is the author of the Anthony-nominated collection Here in the Dark and the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs. Her short work can be found in: Best American Mystery and Suspense, Rock and a Hard Place, Dark Yonder, and Starlite Pulp, among others. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Reckon Review, teaches in the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-A, and is a JD Candidate at UDayton Law. She lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.