Far Fetched Fables

Flash Fiction: “An Episode Below” by Mel Staten

Her bare feet lightly touch down on the bed of coals, moving forward. They should stop in heated agony, but onwards they move despite burning soles as she counts steps toward blistering burns.

How oddly beautiful it is, a lake made of flames, so different from usual cool waters, so different from what she was used to but no less serene. Her feet move forward, toward the heat, not backwards away from it, and the flames lick the inky blackness all around them. Never had she imagined it would be like this, so oddly calming in all the oblivion.

Mel Staten is a storyteller born and raised in Massachusetts who peddles her art for a living. This story, which first appeared at Every Day Fiction on October 22, 2015, is her first short story publication. Armed with a degree in Studio Art, she accepts freelance work through her website melstaten.com, and is in the process of editing her first novel. She currently resides in Natick with her partner and three remarkably fluffy mammals. You can find her on Twitter: @melanixies.

“An Episode Below” originally appeared at Every Day Fiction on October 22, 2015.

Main Story: “The Magnificent Roadside Attraction” by Jack William Finley

Ancient ’Dora sat rocking in her chair by the window of DORA’s Emporium of Wonders and Mysteries and watched the trio of strangers approach: Shunned even in hell, they straggled along the sulfur yellow trail of Route 666.

One was Judas Iscariot, his hanging tree dragging behind him; the rope biting into the flesh of his throat; his thirty pieces of silver hung around his neck, making every step an agony. Beside him shuffled Pontius Pilate, his hands forever covered in blood no water could wash away; his soul forever tormented by ‘what ifs’ and ‘might have beens: if only he had known; if only he could go back, change things, make things right…. The third was Salome, daughter of Herodias, the head of John the Baptist hanging from her neck, endlessly preaching the ways of salvation and redemption eternally denied to the three of them. She traveled with those other two for they were the only ones who would have her.

’Dora studied them as they came down the road toward her, oblivious to all the tacky, ratty tourist crap that littered both sides of the infamous Route 666. Her own shop was perhaps the sturdiest and most welcoming, being made of whitewashed stone, but even it was tired and worn after all these long centuries. The biblical outcasts trudged onward, ever closer. She could see by their expressions they were overcome with hopelessness and despair, remarkable even in hell.

Jack William Finley has delivered pizza, stocked various shelves worked as an actor, a photographer, a stunt man, a short order cook, washed cars professionally, helped build computer hard drives, driven a forklift, and been a small arms repairman for the U.S. Army. He is a proud graduate of the Borderland Press Writers Boot Camp, which he enthusiastically recommends to anyone serious about writing stories for money, or just wants to be a lot better at it. He has lived in Indiana, California, Arizona, and Germany, and now he writes stories he hopes will entertain people. His fiction is available through Amazon.

“The Miraculous Roadside Attraction”, written by Jack William Finley; copyright (c) 2011, Janet Morris. Permission, Perseid Press.

About the Narrators:

Heidi Hotz is a voiceover artist with a range of personalities who has been in the industry for more than 10 years, and has worked on TV commercials, radio, documentaries, audio fiction, and narration in general. She resides online at HeidiHotz.com.

Eric Luke is the screenwriter of the Joe Dante film Explorers, which is currently in development as a remake, the comic books Ghost and Wonder Woman, and wrote and directed the Not Quite Human films for Disney TV. His current project, Interference, a meta horror audiobook about an audiobook… that kills, is now available on Audible.com.

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Flash Fiction: “The Alchemist’s Wife” by Melody Marie Sage

Melody Marie Sage’s writing has recently appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Quaint Magazine, The Conium Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2014 Scott Imes Award and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. To view more of her work, including a portfolio of her visual art, please visit melodysage.com.

Main Story: “Love is the Spell That Casts Out Fear” by Desirina Boskovich

(Originally published in The Way of the Wizard.)

Long ago, far away, in another time, and another place.

In this world, there lives a wizard.

She is old, but not that old.

She is young, but not that young.

The wizard lives alone in a tiny house at the forest’s edge. To the north are the tangled woods, home to unlikely zoological and botanical specimens the wizard has spent several lifetimes cataloging; she plans to spend several more. To the south lies the city: Perta Perdida, the City of Lost Girls.

The girls of Perta Perdida call the wizard Hanna D’Forrest, when they think of her at all. She’s charged with their protection. Whether this responsibility is one for which she volunteered, or one forced upon her, they no longer remember. Neither does she. Time moves differently here, languid as a summer stream. A place of refuge, this city was built to elude change. If they could trap this world like a leaf in amber, they would. But in the absence of that kind of magic, they settle for slowed clocks. They cling to their world as tightly as they can.

Still, occasionally time gets tangled, and change slips through the loops in the knots. Dangers force their way in through the cracks.

A wizard’s job is to untangle time, to retie the ropes. And to fight the danger they’re facing now.

Desirina Boskovich’s short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle, Drabblecast, and anthologies such as The Way of the Wizard, Aliens: Recent Encounters, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Her nonfiction pieces on music, literature, and culture have appeared in Lightspeed, Weird Fiction Review, the Huffington Post, Wonderbook, and The Steampunk Bible. She is also the editor of It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction (Cheeky Frawg, 2013), and together with Jeff VanderMeer, co-author of The Steampunk User’s Manual (Abrams Image, 2014). Find her online at desirinaboskovich.com.

About the Narrators:

Catherine Logan had many years of training in theatre and voice in her youth — then many years of teaching acting, drama, writing, and English literature as a grownup. She has taken plenty of workshops and has studio experience in narration, commercial, and animation voiceover work. Catherine is now involved in a second career which takes her back to her first love. Find her online at catherineloganvoice.com.

Heidi Hotz is not just another voice. She’s a voiceover artist with a range of personalities that varies from mom to the business corporate, to the friendly girl next door. She has been in the industry for more than 10 years, and has worked on TV commercials, radio, documentaries, audio fiction, and narration in general. Her website is HeidiHotz.com.

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Flash Fiction: “The Judges” by Andrew Kozma

Andrew Kozma is from Yorktown, Virginia, and currently “lives” in Houston, Texas. He is a graduate of George Washington University, with an M.F.A. from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. He writes most everything creative, though currently focuses on Young Adult science fiction and fantasy novels. His work has been or will be published by Drabblecast, Daily Science Fiction, Albedo One, and Stupefying Stories. You can find him online here.

“The Judges” first appeared at Daily Science Fiction on September 14, 2015.

Main Story: “Honeymoon” by Adam Browne

Bob Rally wasn’t crazy about the band. It wasn’t their music that bothered him — a light dinner-jazz so inoffensive you didn’t even hear it after a while — nor was it the musicians themselves, who were standard-issue in every way.

Bob’s problem was with the drum kit.

It was biological. The bass drum was fitted with a big transgenic heart, the percussionist adjusting the beat by feathering hormone and adrenal flow.

And Bob, who had been employed as a waiter for the evening, didn’t like it. He gave it a wide berth whenever he had to serve the table near the stage. He was always aware of the heart beating away, its loping cadence infusing the general conversation. Creepy. Like being back in the womb, he shuddered. All he wanted was to finish his shift, hit the strip, and score. Dope, a trip, something — the specifics didn’t matter. As always, Bob Rally was ready to party. Unfortunately, for the next few hours, he was stuck here, at someone else’s party.

The dinner was served on the veranda of a sprawling mansion modelled after the antebellum architecture of the American South. The other waiters moved easily about its latticed expanses, filling glasses and dispensing war-pills to sixty crisp and shining suitors, the sons of the sons of the men who had wrested the planet from the native Jovians. Breeding showed in their sharp eyes, whipcord muscles, and proud carriage. They sat square-shouldered in their refurbished military uniforms, everything dress-right-dress, chatting easily — unperturbed that soon they would be trying to kill one another.

Adam Browne lives in Melbourne, Australia. His story “Neverland Blues” originally appeared in 2008 in Dreaming Again: Thirty-Five New Stories Celebrating the Wild Side of Australian Fiction, and won the 2009 Chronos Award for Best Short Fiction. His first novel, Pyrotechnicon: Being a True Account of the Further Adventures of Cyrano de Bergerac among the States and Empires of the Stars, by Himself (Dec’d), was published by Coeur de Lion in 2012, and is still available as a print-on-demand illustrated hardcover. His collection of short stories, Other Stories and Other Stories, was published by Satalyte in 2014, and is available as an audio book. His website can be found at adambrowne.blogspot.com.au.

About the Narrators:

Seth Williams is a reader, sailor, and retail banker, in that order, who lives on the south coast of Massachusetts. Not a writer but a lover of genre fiction and the spoken word. He can be contacted at theboojum.org.

Geoffrey Welchman writes, produces, and voices The Reigning Lunatic podcast, a medieval sitcom. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. You can find him online at geoffreywelchman.com.

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Flash Fiction: “Remembering the Dragon” by Aidan Doyle

Do you remember me? I was once a great adventurer, journeying to distant lands, exploring lost ruins and chronicling momentous events. Now I’m trapped in a decaying ruin. If I show any weakness, my fellow prisoners will try to take everything from me.

“You’re sitting in my chair, Henry. I reserved it because it has a view of the driveway and I want to know when my family arrives.”

It was the anniversary of your mother’s death yesterday. Alice used to get annoyed when I told my stories, but now they’re all I have left. Most of my captors assume that because I’m old I must be stupid and torture me with cruel games.

“Residents are reminded that bingo starts at two o’clock.”

Aidan Doyle is an Australian writer and computer programmer. He has visited more than 90 countries and his experiences include teaching English in Japan, interviewing ninjas in Bolivia and going ten-pin bowling in North Korea. His stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Fireside.

His website is at aidandoyle.net.

“Remembering the Dragon” first appeared at Every Day Fiction on September 16, 2015.

Main Story: “The Potter’s Daughter” by Martha Wells

The potter’s daughter sat in the late afternoon sun outside the stone cottage, making clay figures and setting them out to dry on the flat slate doorstep. A gentle summer breeze stirred the oak and ash leaves and the dirty grey kerchief around her dirty blond hair.

Someone was coming up the path.

She could hear that he was without horse, cart, or company, and as he came toward her through the trees she saw that he was tall, with dark curly hair and a beard, with a pack and a leather case slung over one shoulder. He was unarmed, and dressed in a blue woolen doublet, faded and threadbare, brown breeches and brown top boots. The broad-brimmed hat he wore had seen better days, but the feathers in it were gaily colored. Brief disappointment colored her expression; she could tell already he wasn’t her quarry.

Boots crunched on the pebbles in the yard, then his shadow fell over her and he said, “Good day. Is this the way to Riversee?”

She continued shaping the wet clay, not looking up at him. “Just follow this road to the ford.”

“Thank you, my lady Kade.”

Now she did look up at him, in astonishment. Part of the astonishment was at herself, that she could still be so taken by surprise. She dropped the clay and stood, drawing a spell from the air.

Martha Wells has written well over a dozen fantasy novels, including the Books of the Raksura series (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, The Siren Depths, Stories of the Raksura Vol. I, Stories of the Raksura Vol. II), The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, and the nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasies, short stories, and non-fiction. She has had stories in Black Gate, Realms of Fantasy, Stargate Magazine, Lightspeed, and in the anthologies Elemental, Tales of the Emerald Serpent, The Other Half of the Sky, and The Gods of Lovecraft. She has also written the media-tie-ins Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, and Star Wars: Razor’s Edge. Her new book in the Raksura series, The Edge of Worlds, will be out in April 2016.

You can find her online at marthawells.com.

About the Narrators:

Eric Luke is the screenwriter of the Joe Dante film Explorers, which is currently in development as a remake, has written the comic books Ghost and Wonder Woman, and wrote and directed the Not Quite Human films for Disney TV. His current project Interference, a meta horror audiobook about an audiobook… that kills, is now available on Audible.com. For further information on creative projects go to Quillhammer.com.

Diane Sieverson has been involved in the SF Poetry Scene (yes, it’s a thing) since 2010, is a staff blogger for Amazing Stories Magazine, and is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She contributes the audio feature Poetry Planet to StarShip Sofa, and narrates stories for it and Tales to Terrify. The best place to find her is on the web because she tends to pick up and move to another country at the drop of a hat. She and her family currently reside in Germany.

You can find her online at divadiane.eu.

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Story: “The Halfwyrd’s Burden” by Richard Ford

Around early autumn the border trail west out of Valdor was windy as a nobleman’s trap and cold as a devil’s heart. It was two hundred leagues of forested inclines and boggy descents, with bears and wolves and worse lying in wait to fill their bellies before the long, hard weeks of winter set in. Sometimes there wasn’t even a path to see, and anyone who didn’t know the way would be lost quicker than a priest in a whorehouse. It was hard land, untamed by cities or farms, and it was a rare kind of man had any business making a trade in a place so remote, when the rain pissed down like it was trying to drown you, and the wind howled and roared till it frayed your wits.

A rare kind of man indeed would make his business in such a place.

But then Oban Halfwyrd was one of the rarest.

“The Halfwyrd’s Burden” originally appeared in Grimdark Magazine #4.

Richard Ford originally comes from Leeds in the United Kingdom, but now resides in the sunny Cotswold countryside. His first novel, Kultus, was published by Solaris Books in 2011. Herald of the Storm, book one in the Steelhaven Trilogy was published in 2013, followed by The Shattered Crown in 2014. The concluding volume, Lord of Ashes, was released in May 2015.

About the Narrator:

Mark “The Encaffeinated One” Kilfoil loves fiction, so much so that he’s written some (such as the Parsec-nominated Tainted Roses), read quite a lot (a library of over a thousand half-read books and growing), and now narrates it (sometimes actually recorded for others). He’s found that volunteering for a dozen years in radio was a decent way to get a full-time job as a Program Director at a community radio station in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, but not such a great way to finish his thesis, so he stopped at a Masters in Computer Science. He can be heard frequently on CHSRfm.ca, and two of his shows regularly appear as podcasts, and can be found at encaffeinated.ca and theweirdshow.com. He likes cats enough to pet them but not enough to own one, and computers enough to own several but pet none of them. He will someday write a million words, but at this rate, that will require life extension, so he eagerly awaits the ability to upload into a computer, if that hasn’t already happened and this is all only a simulation.

About the Artist:

This month’s cover art is Fairies Land by Sara Ambrosini. Her passion for digital art started in 2007. She had been a professional ballet dancer for many years and when she stopped, she felt the need to find a new way to express herself. Fractals have always been her first love when it comes to making art, her images are bright and colorful, they speak of joy and the sweet things in life. She also accepts commissions.

You can find her online at artofsaretta.weebly.com.

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Story: “A Deeper Echo” by David Jón Fuller

The smoky-grey dire wolf loped between darkened hulks of wooden box-cars on the sprawling CPR train yards of Winnipeg. The early June air was already warm and the sun had yet to rise. Warehouse doors clanged open at the looming Canadian Pacific station.

The wolf came to an abrupt halt, sniffing the air. The scent of human body odor grew stronger through the heady mix of diesel and tar stench. A faint smell of pines tinged with oil lingered beneath.

The wolf’s stocky shoulders were as tall as the tops of the massive, grimy wheels, and he knew what would come next: a hostile shout, warning off strangers; or worse, a cry of alarm at the sight of a wolf the size of a bear. He’d been shot at enough in the war. Best to hurry, then. Thomas Greyeyes shivered his thick fur to adjust the army-issue satchel that hung beneath his torso.

“A Deeper Echo” was originally published in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History from Crossed Genres Publications.

David Jón Fuller was born and raised in Winnipeg, but he has also lived in Edmonton and Iceland. He works a copy editor for the Winnipeg Free Press and writes short fiction. His work has also appeared in Kneeling in the Silver Light: Stories From the Great War (Alchemy Press, 2014), which featured a prequel story to “A Deeper Echo”, as well as Accessing the Future (The Future Fire Publications, 2015) and Tesseracts 18: Wrestling With Gods (Hades Publications, 2014).

You can find him online at davidjonfuller.com.

About the Narrator:

Martin Reyto is an educator, writer, and musician. He has worked in an eclectic variety of fields, including 18 years as a technical writer and software developer, 16 years as a teacher of creative writing, computer science, and business communication, and shorter stints as a symphony musician and audiobook narrator. He has published short fiction and two collections of his poetry.

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Flash Fiction: “Bless This House” by Beth Cato

Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in a lair west of Phoenix, Arizona. She shares the household with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham. She’s the author of The Clockwork Dagger (a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel) and The Clockwork Crown from Harper Voyager. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter via @BethCato.

“Bless This House” first appeared at Daily Science Fiction on October 12, 2010.

Main Story: “Well Will Not Be Undersold!” by Seanan McGuire

“Dan?”  Nimh looked around the employee break room, allowing her eyes to skirt past the slack-faced stockroom workers sitting slumped in their gray plastic chairs. Their cheery green and yellow vests were painfully bright against the industrial beige walls and floor. Not for the first time, Nimh made a note to talk to the store manager about getting some decorations in. Maybe a few cheery posters with kittens and motivational slogans ($4.99, home décor). Those always sold well, so people obviously liked them.

None of the dead-eyed employees were Dan. Only two of them were even male. With a sunny smile and a wave for everyone (stay positive; positivity enhances profitability), Nimh chirped, “Have a fantastic shopping day, everybody!” and turned to leave the room while the workers were still trying to formulate their response. It was always best to leave a situation on a high note.

Seanan McGuire is the author of a whole bunch of things, both under her name and the name “Mira Grant”. She used to try to list all those things in her bios, but has dismissed that as a fool’s errand, and now suggests checking the bibliography on her website for the list of things. It’s a very nice list. Seanan lives in a potentially haunted farmhouse in Northern California, along with her vast collections of comic books and creepy dolls, and her two abnormally large blue Maine Coon cats, which regularly startle house guests by being the size of cocker spaniels. When not writing, Seanan enjoys travel, Disney Parks, and lurking in the local corn maze and scaring anyone who happens to wander by. Keep up with her at seananmcguire.com, or on Twitter as @seananmcguire. She’s a little odd, and she doesn’t sleep much, but she’s mostly friendly.

About the Narrators:

Catherine Logan had many years of training in theatre and voice in her youth, and then many years of teaching acting, drama, writing, and English literature as a grown-up. She has taken plenty of workshops and has studio experience in narration, commercial and animation voiceover work. Catherine is now involved in a second career which takes her back to her first love.

Nicola Seaton-Clark lives in the wilds of (almost) Eastern Europe with her long-suffering husband, phenomenal children and a grumpy cat. Trained as an actress and singer, she has worked in entertainment for over 20 years and currently splits her time between writing speculative fiction, helping her husband run their voice-over company, Offstimme, and voicing everything from commercials and documentaries to public transport announcements. She also hosts this podcast…

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Flash Fiction: “Innumerate” by Laurence Raphael Brothers

The sorcerer stands in the center of a magic circle, a conservative gray business suit showing under his white ritual mantle, the traditional rod of blasting in his hand. I’m off to the side, in the triangle of summoning.“Come not in that form! I adjure thee. In the holy name of–“

Okay, so maybe the roiling nest of cobras was a bit over the top. But I hate this slow, grainy material world. These sorcerers think we’ve got nothing better to do than wait on them.

“Hold on,” I say. “How’s this?” Now I’m a rotating polyhedron, Kepler’s stella octangula. I didn’t mind it when Johannes summoned me. At least he knew his geometry and orbital mechanics.

“Not in that form, either,” says the sorcerer.

I’d roll my eyes if I had them. Maybe if they’d tell me up front what form they wanted, I wouldn’t have to go through this every time. I try again.

Laurence Raphael Brothers has worked in R&D at such firms as Bell Communications Research and Google. His stories have appeared in the Sockdolager and Daily Science Fiction. Follow him on Twitter @lbrothers. The S.E.5a on his Twitter profile page is in honor of his first novel, a WWI-era fantasy currently seeking representation.

“Innumerate” first appeared at Daily Science Fiction on July 18, 2015.

Main Story: “The Damsel in the Garden” by Pauline J. Alama

The dragon was bad enough, but when I’d cut off the last of its heads, I still had the bridge before me. And that was worse than a herd of dragons.

Over a burning river, the only footholds were hovering sword blades spaced so far apart, and so unevenly, that a mountain goat could have lost its footing. To make it a bit more interesting, the fire below the bridge had an annoying habit of spurting up at intervals perfectly timed to set one’s nerves off-key. Crossing it would be like a caper with death. Luckily, I’d learned capering from the jongleurs who sometimes stopped at my father’s hall along the way to more illustrious castles. I fancied I might have a better chance on the Bridge of Blades and Flame than a knight whose chivalric training had been more regular.

I considered leaving my armor and sword on the bank; they’d weigh me down as I leapt, and if I were really unlucky, they might get hot as branding irons. But I dared not trust that the Bridge of Blades and Flame was the last layer of deviltry wound around the Garden of Delights. Whatever bloodthirsty strategist had placed the dragon on the bank of the icy torrent, and the gulf of flame just beyond the dragon, might set a hungry lion or an assassin on the other side of the bridge. I kept my armor on. Muttering a quick prayer — God guard fools! — I leapt to the first blade-thin foothold, just missing the first jet of flame.

Pauline J. Alama, once a medieval scholar, escaped the ivory tower to an enchanted land called New Jersey. Her novel The Eye of Night (Bantam Spectra, 2002) was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. The heroine of “The Damsel in the Garden” will return in “Liars’ Tournament” in Sword & Sorceress 30, and if you want a glimpse of the Damsel in middle age check out “No Tale for Troubadours”, first published in Realms of Fantasy and currently available online in Fantasy Scroll Magazine #7.

A full list of her publications is available here.

“The Damsel in the Garden” was originally published in Sword and Sorceress XXVIII, edited by Elisabeth Waters (Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, 2013).

About the Narrators:

Nikolle Doolin is a writer and a voice actor. Her fiction, poetry, and plays have been published and presented; and her voice has appeared in various media. Nikolle has performed numerous narrations for a number of popular and award-winning podcasts, such as The NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify, and Far-Fetched Fables. She also narrates classic literature by the likes of Austen, Poe, James, and more in her own podcast, Audio Literature Odyssey.

To learn more about Nikolle, visit her website at nikolledoolin.com.

Katherine Inskip weighs galaxies for a living, and builds worlds in her spare time. She is addicted to chocolate and Japanese logic puzzles.

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Novel excerpt: An Apprentice to Elves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

Even as a grown woman of fifteen, Alfgyfa never stopped thinking about the wolves she had encountered as a child. Sometimes she tried to speak to them, stretching out into the pack-sense as far as she could. Once she thought she caught a whisper of mice-under-snow; sometimes she was sure she caught the trailing edge of the wild konigenwolf’s thoughts. But if they heard her, they never answered. And even as a grown woman of fifteen, Alfgyfa did not give over her visits to the trellwarrens. At first, Tin’s warnings and the almost-fate of the dog wolf had cowed her for a while. But Alfgyfa was not much-cowable by nature. And once discovered, the lure of those tunnels and their slick, shaped, twisted stone like the boles of ancient trees was beyond her power to resist. She’d seen stone worked like this before, though it hadn’t had this twisting sense of otherness, of being a little dislocated in space between what her eyes told her and what her hands — or feet — felt.

Elizabeth Bear was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. You can visit her online at elizabethbear.com.

Sarah Monette is the acclaimed author of Mélusine and The Virtue as well as award-nominated short fiction. Her most recent fantasy novel – written under the pseudonym Katherine Addison – The Goblin Emperor, won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. You can visit her online at sarahmonette.com.

Together, they are the authors of A Companion to Wolves, The Tempering of Men, and An Apprentice to Elves, the third book in their Iskryne series, currently available on Amazon.com.

Second Story: “The Jacaranda Wife” by Angela Slatter

Angela Slatter has won five Aurealis Awards, one British Fantasy Award, been a finalist for the Norma K. Hemming Award, and a finalist the World Fantasy Award twice (for Sourdough and Bitterwood). Her short stories have appeared in numerous  Australian, UK, and US Best Of anthologies.

Angela has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006, and in 2013 she was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships. Her novellas, Of Sorrow and Such (from Tor.com), and Ripper (in the Stephen Jones anthology Horrorology, from Jo Fletcher Books) were released in October 2015, and her urban fantasy novel, Vigil, will be released by Jo Fletcher Books in 2016, and the sequel, Corpselight, in 2017.

You can find her online at angelaslatter.com.

About the Narrators:

Nicola Seaton-Clark lives in the wilds of (almost) Eastern Europe with her long-suffering husband, phenomenal children and a grumpy cat. Trained as an actress and singer, she has worked in entertainment for over 20 years and currently splits her time between writing speculative fiction, helping her husband run their voice-over company, Offstimme, and voicing everything from commercials and documentaries to public transport announcements. She also hosts this podcast…

Graeme Dunlop is a software solution architect and voice actor living in Melbourne Australia. He is the co-editor of the fantasy podcast Podcastle, and used to host the YA podcast Cast of Wonders. You can find him on Google Plus and he occasionally tweets as @kibitzer on Twitter.

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First Story: “The Wheel of Fortune” by Steph Swainston

Tuesday morning in May, bright sunshine. I came out of the shop, carrying a pole to pull the awning down. I was whistling. The shop door banged behind me and the cat fled off the step. The whole street was vibrant with the spring sun. There, sitting on the pavement and huddled against the terrace wall, was Serin. She was a pitiful sight, gin-dimmed eyes and head to foot in gutter dirt. I had last seen her Saturday, on stage at the Campion Vaudeville, and she was wearing the same dress now, a voluminous costume made of gold foil. Her reddish wings stuck out the back and bunched up against the bricks. The feathers rustled when she moved.

I knelt next to her. ‘Serin? …Are you all right?’

She shook her head and looked away. She was on the spiral downwards, that much was obvious.

(Author’s Note: This story tells of Jant’s early life when a mortal, in Hacilith city, in the year 1818.)

Steph Swainston has written tales set in the Fourlands since she was five years old. Her novels published to date are collected in The Castle Omnibus. The next book, Fair Rebel, will be published by Gollancz in 2016, and is available on Amazon. She’s halfway through the next book in the sequence, and she’s expanding this story into a novel. There are more to come…

Second Story: “Crab Apple” by Patrick Samphire

I saw her first the day I found Dad on the kitchen floor. The new girl. The wild girl.

At first I thought Dad had been drinking again. There were beer cans scattered across the floor. But the cans were still full, and I couldn’t smell alcohol.

There was something strange about the way Dad was lying. He was too still. His stick-thin arms and legs were sprawled loosely across the tiles. I thought for a moment he was dead.

He was still breathing, though, a wheezy, tight sound, as though a plastic whistle was stuck in his throat. He didn’t wake when I shook him.

I’d begun taking first aid classes at school when Dad started losing weight and coughing. There was no one else at home to help. But they had never shown us how to deal with this. I put him in the recovery position and called an ambulance.

The girl was there when I went outside to wait for the ambulance. She was squatted on our garden wall like a wild-haired monkey. She had on a dirty white T-shirt and shorts that showed scratched legs. I guessed she was about fourteen, the same age as me. Her eyes were as brown as oak and her cheeks were freckled and sunburnt. There were leaves in her tangled hair.

“What’s your name?” she said. “You, what’s your name?”

“Josh,” I said.

“Joshua,” she laughed. “Stupid name.”

She winked down at me. Her grin was as wide as her face.

Then she leapt from the wall and dashed away up the hill, her wild hair streaming behind her like a comet’s tail. I watched her disappear.

In the distance I heard the ambulance siren approaching.

Patrick Samphire drinks green tea, designs cool websites and book covers, and writes thrilling books and magical stories. His first novel, Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, will be published by Henry Holt/Macmillan in January 2016. He lives with his wife (fellow writer Stephanie Burgis), their two sons, and their border collie in Wales. To find out more, visit his website: patricksamphire.com.

About the Narrators:

Anthony Babington is a voice in the internet’s head. He looks almost, but not quite, exactly how you expect him to. He currently resides in Houston, Texas, but hastens to add that it was not his idea. He can be found on Google Plus.

Alex Weinle writes short fiction for magazines and podcasts and author of the anthology of shock-comedic-tragic stories, The Decapaphiliac, and the science fiction novel Border. A long-time Sofanaut, he has finally got up the courage to narrate. He lives in Fulbourn, England, in a cottage that consumes bulbs of unusual wattage. He can be found on Twitter as @alexweinle.

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