Far Fetched Fables

Flash Fiction: “Dark, Beautiful Force” by Jessica May Lin

I met you the summer I was nineteen. You were a shadow on the wall, tall and intimidating in a way I could never be, and you were all that stood between my first supervillain and me.

You grinned and leapt down in your black domino mask and high-top sneakers, before I even stepped past the mouth of the alley.

I hated you, because you knocked the villain out before I could, and smirked at me over the popped collar of your leather jacket as you handcuffed him.

They printed our pictures in the newspaper side by side. You, in your leather and your sneakers. Me, in my thigh-high boots and red latex skirt. The new superstars on the block.
But I was jealous and told our mentors that your superhero name made me think of candy bars, your costume of freeze-dried bats.
We kept running into each other.

Jessica May Lin is a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she lives with a giant stuffed sushi and spends absurd hours of the night writing. She also pole dances (the acrobatic variety). Jessica graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop 2012, and her fiction also will appear in Nature. More details can be found at jessicamaylin.com.

Main Story: “Canadian Blood Diamonds” by Kristi Charish

Kristi Charish is the author of Owl and the Japanese Circus (Simon and Schuster Canada/Pocket Books), an urban fantasy about a modern-day “Indiana Jane” who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world. She writes what she loves; adventure heavy stories featuring strong, savvy female protagonists, pop culture, and the occasional RPG fantasy game thrown in the mix. The second installment,Owl and the City of Angels, is scheduled for release in January 2016. Her second urban fantasy series, Kincaid Strange (Random House Canada), about a voodoo practitioner living in Seattle, is scheduled for release mid 2016.

Kristi is also a scientist with a BSc and MSc  in Molecular Biology and Biochemistryfrom Simon Fraser University, and a PhD in Zoology from the University of British Columbia. Her specialties are genetics, cell biology, and molecular biology, all of which she draws upon in her writing. She is represented by Carolyn Forde at Westwood Creative Artists.

About the Narrators:

Sarah Frederickson was born in Oregon in the United States, and was raised in beautiful Minnesota. At a young age she realized her passion for musical performance and the creative arts. Sarah spent most of her childhood singing and acting – both onstage and off – and affecting various accents for fun.

She soon found herself competing in local, state and national forensics competitions (that’s competitive speaking). Her experience and awards landed her a forensics scholarship to Bethel University in St.Paul Minnesota, where she continued to compete as well as train other speakers at the collegiate level. Sarah graduated with a degree in Music business and Audio Production. Shortly after graduation she traveled to Australia for a one-year holiday. During that time she became smitten with an Australian man who asked her to stay, and four years later the couple live and work in Australia, going on adventures, writing music and reading stories to their cat.

[D’oh! Due to the chaos of completing this week’s episode, we inadvertently failed to properly credit Sarah for reading “Dark, Beautiful Force”. in this week’s recording. We regret the error.]

Nikolle Doolin is a writer and a voice actor. Her fiction, poetry, and plays have been published and performed; and her voice has appeared in various mediums, including a number of popular and award-winning podcasts. Nikolle has narrated horror, fantasy, crime, and science fiction for Tales to Terrify, The NoSleep Podcast, StarShipSofa, and Crime City Central. You can also listen to Nikolle narrate classic literature in her podcast Audio Literature Odyssey. To learn more about Nikolle, visit her website at nikolledoolin.com.

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Main Story: “Clockwork Fairies” by Cat Rambo

Mary the Irish girl let me in when I knocked at the door in my Sunday best, smelling of incense and evening fog. Gaslight flickered over the narrow hall. The mahogany banister’s curve gleamed with beeswax polish, and a rosewood hat rack and umbrella stand squatted to my left.

I nodded to Mary, taking off my top hat. Snuff and baking butter mingled with my own pomade to battle the smell of steel and sulfur from below.

“Don’t be startled, Mr. Claude, sir.”

Before I could speak, a whir of creatures surrounded me.

At first I thought them hummingbirds or large dragonflies. One hung poised before my eyes in a flutter of metallic skin and isinglass wings. Delicate gears spun in the wrist of a pinioned hand holding a needle-sharp sword. Desiree had created another marvel, bee-winged, glittering like tinsel. Who would have dreamed such things, let alone made them real? Only Desiree.

Mary chattered, “They’re hers. They won’t harm ye. Only burglars and the like.”

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 150-plus fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. She is the current vicepresident of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers or America. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see kittywumpus.net.

Flash Fiction: “When Robot Mermaids Attack” by Oliver Buckram

When robot mermaids attack, you should flee. Go inland.

When robot mermaids attack, don’t pause to wonder why they’re attacking. Don’t stand on the beach gawking, orange Popsicle melting in your hand, as the ocean roils with metal fins. Don’t ask who made the robot mermaids and why do they have stainless steel fangs and why are they decapitating that lifeguard? Just run.

Oliver Buckram, Ph.D., lives in the Boston area where (under an assumed name) he teaches social science to undergraduates. His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), among other places.

Find out more about him at oliverbuckram.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.

Chris Mack is an enigmatic actor, voice artist, acting coach, father, and a New Yorker-turned-Parisienne. His credits include the animated feature Persepolis and the best-selling videogame Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. Find out more at chrismack.net.

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Flash Fiction: “Dream Logic” by Barbara A. Barnett

Keith touches a hand to his nose, and I’m not sure what surprises him more: the blood my left hook drew, or the fact that his boxing gloves have suddenly disappeared.

“How did you–“

I slug Keith again. Keith doesn’t get dream logic, which is why he shouldn’t be narco-boxing. But it’s the latest fad so he just has to get on board with it, a badge of cool to add to his generically perfect looks and the girlfriend he cheats on and that big fat promotion because he’s got leadership potential, while I’m just bossy and shrill.

Barbara A. Barnett is a writer, musician, librarian, Odyssey Writing Workshop alum, coffee addict, wine lover, bad movie mocker, and all-around geek. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Shimmer, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Fantasy Magazine, Black Static, and Wilde Stories 2011: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction. Barbara lives with her husband in southern New Jersey and has been known to frequently burst into song.

You can find her online at www.babarnett.com, or babbling as a member of the Star-Dusted Sirens writing group at stardustedsirens.wordpress.com.

Main Story: “The Title of This Story” by Stephanie Campisi

In Downtown, between the hypodermic fringes of Sitter Park, where the junkies walk a prickly carpet of needle-tipped glass and crumpled foil, and the painful gloom of the domed Helltricks complex that pollutes the Skendgrotian skyline with its void reflective windows and vast wooden landing platforms, lay a sickle-shaped swathe of religion and spirituality, and similar things long-illicit. A trickle of residences and warehouses and gutted ex-churches, hammered together as one with irrationally-added cement facades, drooping and spiking in architectural curlicues and messes of starved ivy that drank the moisture from the porous walls.

Stephanie Campisi is an author of the strange and wondrous. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies worldwide. She tweets at @readinasitting and keeps a poetry journal at poetdeploriate.tumblr.com.

About the Narrators:

Gareth Stack is a writer and performer who creates comedy series and documentaries for Irish radio. He has been published in Analogue Music Magazine, This Is Not Where I Belong, In Transit, Piranha! Magazine, Explore Magazine, Blue Ireland, and Albedo One. You can find him on the web at garethstack.com, and on twitter @Garethstack.

Tim Maroney has an endless fascination with ideas, and invention; the things that keep life spicy and interesting! He believes everyone’s got a tale to tell and enjoys “Talking Story!”. He enjoys playing music, mostly on guitar. He’s even been the opening act for a ten-band rock concert. Learning new things, like podcasting, excites him. He’s been on four of the seven continents and has seen some of the wonders of our Earth. While in the Navy he earned the rare and coveted dual Snake Plisskin Award: He escaped from New York and LA, same as Snake (though these were two of the five submarines he served on). Not too bad for a guy from a small town in North-Central Florida!

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First Story: “Infinity Syrup” by Laurel Winter

Fay was Zen shopping, something she had learned when she worked swing shift in card assembly at IBM. The effort of plugging six components into the right holes on four hundred cards had always left her too tired to think.

Too tired to think, but too wired to sleep. So she usually stopped at a twenty-four-hour grocery on her way home and let her hands do the shopping for her. Hands reaching mindlessly, plucking items off the shelves. And she was always surprised to find — when she got home and unpacked the paper bags — that she had exactly what she needed.

Odd combinations, perhaps. Who would have paired avocado and Kashi, kippered herring and strawberries? But the four basic food groups were always represented. No unappealing leftovers, tastebuds tantalized in wonderful ways.

And so, even when she worked her way from swing shift to first and from manufacturing to management, she still practiced Zen shopping. Like now. Totally absorbed in the moment.

Laurel Winter grew up in the mountains of Montana and attended a one-room country grade school with 12 to 25 students in grades 1 through 8. She then went 30 miles one way on the bus to Absarokee High School, where there were 33 in her graduating class. Since then she’s acquired an eclectic education, including credits in English, physics, and psychology from Montana State and numerous writing and art classes. A number of high school literature textbooks contain “egg horror poem” and she’s hoping her novel Growing Wings gets a baby sister this year. Her current passion is playing poker. Her first novel, Growing WIngs, was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award for children’s fantasy and she’s won back-to-back Rhysling and Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Awards for best poem, a World Fantasy Award for best Novella (“Sky Eyes”), and the 2003 McKnight Artist Fellowship for children’s fiction.

Second Story: “The Isle of Women” by Jacqueline Carey

We are nameless in the stories told by men.

Even the Lady, my gracious Lady, who wore her beauty as lightly as a garment of the finest-combed wool, on whose shoulders the mysteries perched like twin doves. It is no wonder they hailed her as Queen, although it was not what she was. For that, there is no word. Lady, we called her. But she had a name, too, although it was seldom spoken aloud. In the stories they told afterward, none of us have names.

I saw them first, from the ramparts. I saw their hide-bound curragh riding the green swell of the waves, a curragh so vast it might have been a small whale, making its way to our shores. Truly, it was a mighty vessel to hold such men; seventeen, bold and fearless, and boldest of all was their leader, Máel Dúin.

Jacqueline Carey is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Kushiel’s Legacy series of historical fantasy novels and The Sundering epic fantasy duology.

An avid reader, Jacqueline began writing fiction as a hobby in high school. After receiving B.A. degrees in psychology and English literature from Lake Forest College, she took part in a work exchange program and spent six months working in a bookstore in London. While living abroad, the desire to write professionally emerged as a driving passion. Upon returning she embarked in earnest on a writing career, which came to fruition a decade later. During this time she worked at the art center of an area college, gaining a strong background in the visual arts. Jacqueline enjoys doing research on a wide variety of arcane topics, and an affinity for travel has taken her from Finland to Egypt to date.

She currently lives in west Michigan, where she is a member of the oldest Mardi Gras krewe in the state. Although often asked by inquiring fans, she does not, in fact, have any tattoos.

You can find out more about her at jacquelinecarey.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…

Sarah Frederickson was born in Oregon in the United States, and was raised in beautiful Minnesota. At a young age she realized her passion for musical performance and the creative arts. Sarah spent most of her childhood singing and acting – both onstage and off – and affecting various accents for fun.

She soon found herself competing in local, state and national forensics competitions (that’s competitive speaking). Her experience and awards landed her a forensics scholarship to Bethel University in St.Paul Minnesota, where she continued to compete as well as train other speakers at the collegiate level. Sarah graduated with a degree in Music business and Audio Production. Shortly after graduation she traveled to Australia for a one-year holiday. During that time she became smitten with an Australian man who asked her to stay, and four years later the couple live and work in Australia, going on adventures, writing music and reading stories to their cat.

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Flash Fiction: “The Hum of Refuge” by Anna Ilona Mussmann

On her couch in an apartment at the top of a building that used to be a lingerie factory, Skye Hindley tried to capture the soul of nature. She wrote, sketched in charcoal and once (in a black fit) crafted faerie dolls. She had not found her niche. A loser boyfriend told her that she didn’t have the artistic vision of a walrus, but that was during their break-up, after she said his novel must have been written by a drunken redneck.

Anna Ilona Mussmann loves folktales, Jane Austen, the Oxford comma, and dark chocolate. She blogs at annailonamussmann.blogspot.com.

Main Story: “Sinking Among the Lilies” by Cory Skerry

I studied the village of Keyward from the packed gravel by the water. Judging by the skulls roped to the pylons in the estuary, the people here knew how to take care of themselves. But even if there was no fight to be had, perhaps the townsfolk would be interested in the one and only book I had to sell.

I peered at one of the skulls as I passed. It had been there long enough to have lost the lower jaw and most of the teeth; mussels the size of my thumbnails had attached themselves to the sides like bristling purple sideburns.

Cory Skerry lives in a hundred-year-old house with a menagerie that includes a bonafide dragon. He spends his time painting what he shouldn’t, writing about impossible things, and metaphorically treasure hunting. When he dies, he would like science to put his brain into a giant octopus body, with which he promises to be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. Pinky swear.

More of his nonsense can be found at plunderpuss.net/skerry.

About the Narrators:

Heidi Hotz is not just another voice. She’s a voiceover artists 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.

You can find her online at LinkedIn.

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.

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Flash Fiction: “Older, Wiser, Time Traveler” by M. Bennardo

First off, step one — commit a crime of passion.

You shouldn’t plan this, obviously. In fact, you can’t plan this. The defining characteristic of a crime of passion is precisely that it’s unplanned. Oh sure, there are tendencies. There are indications. A crime of passion doesn’t have to be a surprise–it just has to be unplanned.

In addition to Daily Science Fiction, M. Bennardo’s stories have also appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and others. He is co-editor of the Machine of Death series of anthologies. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people anywhere can find him online at www.mbennardo.com.

Main Story: “Loose in the Wires” by John D. Brown

John D. Brown is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. He currently lives with his wife and four daughters in the hinterlands of Utah where one encounters much fresh air, many good-hearted ranchers, and the occasional wolf.

You can find him online at www.johndbrown.com.

About the Narrators:

Rish Outfield is a writer, actor, and podcaster that can be heard as host of The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, which presents genre stories with a full cast. He also performs audiobooks for Audible, and occasionally becomes a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.

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 available free on iTunes and at Quillhammer.com.

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Story: “Spirit Brother” by Pamela Sargent

The flat land below him was white, the color of purity and luck. Jamukha flew in the form of an eagle, feeling the wind under his wings. The steppe and mountains had also been covered by snow on the day he had first met Temujin, the companion and comrade in arms who had later become his greatest enemy.

But all of that had happened when he was a boy, years ago, in the world of the living.

Pamela Sargent has won the Nebula and Locus Awards and was honored in 2012 with the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award, given for lifetime contributions to science fiction and fantasy scholarship. Her many novels include Venus of Dreams, The Shore of Women, The Golden Space, The Sudden Star, and The Alien Upstairs.

About Ruler of the Sky, Sargent’s historical novel of Genghis Khan, told largely from the points of view of women, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has commented: “Scholarly without ever seeming pedantic, the book is fascinating from cover to cover and does admirable justice to a man who might very well be called history’s single most important character.” The Washington Post has called Sargent “one of the genre’s best writers,” and Michael Moorcock has said of her work: “If you have not read Pamela Sargent, then you should make it your business to do so at once. She is in many ways a pioneer, both as a novelist and as a short story writer. . . . She is one of the best.”

Sargent is the editor of the Women of Wonder anthologies, the first collections of science fiction by women. Her novel Climb the Wind, set in the United States after the Civil War, was a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and her novel Earthseed has been optioned by Paramount Pictures. Melissa Rosenberg, the scriptwriter for all five Twilight films, is set to write and produce the movie through her company Tall Girls Productions.

Her next novel, Season of the Cats, will be published in 2015 by Wildside Press.

Her personal website is www.pamelasargent.com.

Visit her Open Road Media page at www.openroadmedia.com/pamela-sargent

her SF Gateway page at www.sfgateway.com/authors/s/sargent-pamela/

and her page at Tor/Macmillan at us.macmillan.com/author/pamelasargent

About the Narrator:

Pete Nixon is a full-time programmer and full-time student. He is the editor and producer for Green Eggs and Horror, a Dr. Seuss-inspired short story anthology. He narrates and writes in his spare time, because he doesn’t believe in normal hobbies.

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First Story: “Requiem for a Druid” by Alex Shvartsman

My job that morning was to banish a demon, but I was determined to finish my cup of coffee first.

I sipped my java in front of Demetrios’ warehouse in Sunset Park, enjoying the panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and the New York harbor. Next to me, Demetrios was shaking like a leaf.

“What in the world are you thinking, Conrad?” Demetrios spoke in his typical rapid­fire fashion. “You’re just going to go in there, alone, to face this infernal thing? Without any help or backup from others at the Watch? Without even a priest? This is all kinds of crazy.”

“I can handle it.” I said, trying to project casual confidence. “You did ask for this to be resolved quickly, and it’s not like I haven’t dealt with an occasional demon before.”

Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. More than 60 of his short stories have appeared in Nature, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other venues. He’s the winner of the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction. He edits Unidentified Funny Objects, an annual anthology of humorous SF/F. His short story collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma, was released on February 1st and is available at amazon.com. It appears on FFF courtesy of Alex, editors Kate Bernheimer and Carmen Giménez Smith, and publisher Penguin Books.

You can find him online at alexshvartsman.com.

Second Story: “Snow White, Rose Red” by Lydia Millet

I met the girls and instantly liked the girls. Of course I liked the girls. A girl is better than a feast.

This was before the arrest, before the indictment and the media stories.

The girls were sisters, as you may know, and lived, during the summer, in one of those upstate mansions built by the robber barons who made their fortunes off railroads and steel and unfair business practices. It was in the Lower Peaks of the Adirondacks—the southern part with glassy lakes and green slopes and white-spotted fawns. The girls, who were innocent in the glut of their wealth because they’d never known anything else, called their summer house “the cottage” to distinguish it from “the apartment,” which was a ten-thousand-square-foot penthouse on Fifth Avenue near Washington Square Park.

Their father was in real estate, but no one ever saw him. Correction: from time to time we caught sight of him briefly, the girls and I, getting in or out of a long gleaming car. Once, from the woods, I spotted him walking down to the dock in a pale-gray suit, his phone held to his ear.

He looked like a groom doll on a wedding cake. I wanted to tear his legs off.

Lydia Millet is the author of 13 works of fiction, most recently Mermaids in Paradise (2014), a satire about a couple honeymooning in the Caribbean who discover strange creatures in a coral reef. Her previous books include the novel Magnificence (2012), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle and Los Angeles Times book awards; My Happy Life (2002), which won the PEN-USA fiction award; and a story collection called Love in Infant Monkeys that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in the Arizona desert and works at the Center for Biological Diversity.

You can find her online at www.lydiamillet.net.

About the Narrators:

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.

James Silverstein s a budding author and role-playing game designer, with credits from the 7th Sea and Stargate RPG lines. He’s working on the upcoming ‘Cairn’ RPG, as well as a series of stories about a 1940s private eye in a city of the undead. James feels that there are always more amazing stories that need to be told, and he writes, narrates, and runs games to share them with the world. He loves speculative fiction, noir detective tales, and pulp fantasy, and is honored to be a returning reader in the District of Wonders.

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First Story: “Castor on Troubled Waters” by Rhys Hughes

He’s almost fifty years of age, Castor Jenkins is, which for a stereotypical Welshman must be reckoned venerable, if not ancient. Not that he takes kindly to being considered a stereotype. He likes to point out that real Welshmen don’t live exclusively on a diet of beer and chips, nor do they avoid exercise, work and responsibility every waking minute of the day; the fact he does those things is a mark of his uniqueness and it’s just a coincidence that the cliché and his individualism are the same.

Rhys Hughes was born in 1966 and began writing from an early age. His first short story was published in 1991 and his first book, the now legendary *Worming the Harpy*, followed four years later. Since then he has published more than thirty books and his work has been translated into ten languages and he is currently one of the most prolific and successful authors in Wales. Mostly known for absurdist works, his range in fact encompasses styles as diverse as gothic, experimental, science fiction, magic realism, fantasy and realism. His main ambition is to complete a grand sequence of exactly one thousand linked short stories, a project he has been working on for more than two decades. Each story is a standalone piece as well as a cog in the grand machine. He is finally three-quarters of the way through this opus.

His blog can be found at rhysaurus.blogspot.co.uk.

Second Story: “Lure” by Paul Collins

The metaverse had become a minefield.

The dossier in my hands made me want to puke. I popped a dozen ‘ludes’, the kind that fool you into thinking everything’s okay. The main question before me was whether or not it’s permissible by law to kill an avatar ─ a digital manifestation ─ and if not, can perpetrators be tried for murder.

Paul Collins has written more than 140 books and 140 short stories. He is best known for The Quentaris Chronicles (The Spell of Undoing is book #1 in the new series), which he co-edits with Michael Pryor; The Jelindel Chronicles; The Earthborn Wars; and The World of Grrym trilogy in collaboration with Danny Willis. Paul’s latest series is The Warlock’s Child in collaboration with Sean McMullen. (The Burning Sea is book #1.) He is also the publisher at Ford Street Publishing.
Paul has been short-listed for many awards and won the Aurealis, William Atheling, and the inaugural Peter McNamara awards. He received the A Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in Australian science fiction.

He has black belts in both ju jitsu and taekwondo – this experience can be seen in The Jelindel Chronicles and The Maximus Black Files.

He can be found online at www.paulcollins.com.au, www.quentaris.com, and www.fordstreetpublishing.com.

Third Story: “A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead” by Richard Harland

‘The things I have seen!’ he croaked ‘You must hear everything, everything.’

He went off into a fit of coughing, as dry as sandpaper. In the short time I knew him, Gordon Sturman could never utter more than a few sentences without that cough rising up in his throat. Yet he was desperate to tell his experiences to an English-speaking listener. I think he expected me to envy his tourist marvels.

Richard Harland lives south of Sydney near Wollongong, between green escarpment and golden beaches, with wife Aileen and cat Habibi. He migrated to Australia at the age of 22, played folk-rock music around Sydney, lectured for ten years in English at the  University of Wollongong, then finally fulfilled his oldest dream in 1997 and became a full-time author of speculative fiction. His seventeen novels have ranged across adult, YA and children’s, and across fantasy, SF, horror and steampunk. He achieved international success with his steampunk fantasy Worldshaker (2009-10), followed by the sequel Liberator. His latest novel, Song of the Slums, is a gaslight romance variant of steampunk, and is based on an  alternate history premise “What if they’d invented rock ‘n’ roll way back in the middle of the Victorian Age?”.

Richard’s short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines in Australia, US, Canada, and France. His story “A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead” was published in Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again anthology and re-published in David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best Fantasy #9 from Tor (US). Richard has collected six Aurealis Awards for novels and short stories, the A. Bertram Chandler Award in Australia, and the prestigious Tam-Tam Je Bouquine award in France.

His author website is at www.richardharland.net. He has also put up free 145-page guide to writing speculative fiction at www.writingtips.com.au.

About the Narrators:

Alex Weinle (@alexweinle) writes short fiction for magazines and podcasts. His anthology of shock-comedic-tragic stories, The Decapaphiliac, is available now and his science fiction novel Border is currently in editing. 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.

With a background in theater and an English degree that didn’t lead to teaching or full-time novel writing, Kim Mintz turned to the persuasive arts known as sales and heard multiple clients say: “You have a great voice. I would listen to you all day!” Finally, she decided to marry these skills together and enter the world of professional voice acting. Employing a wide range of voices and expressions in commercial and narrative work, she contributed to the financial, travel, and health insurance industries, utilizing clear, direct articulation. She is currently expanding her repertoire with audio book passages by exhibiting a range of emotions, including warm, sultry, cheerful, sarcastic, and many others. She is also working on scripts with her writing partner for animated projects to which she hopes to give a voice.

For more information, please visit her website at kimmintzvoiceactor.com.

Josh Roseman (not the trombonist; the other one) lives in Georgia (the state, not the country). His writing has appeared in Asimov’s, Escape Pod, and the Crossed Genres anthology Fat Girl in a Strange Land. His fiction has been reprinted by the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine and StarShipSofa, and his voice has been heard on two Escape Artists and all five District of Wonders podcasts. He is a 2013 graduate of the Taos Toolbox writing workshop. When not writing, he mostly complains about the fact that he’s not writing.

Find Josh online at roseplusman.com, or on twitter @listener42.

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This week’s story: “Forever” by Tim Lebbon

On Dana’Man the cold bit hard, ice informed thought, frost froze dreams of freedom, and duty and supplication were the way. On Dana’Man there was preparation for a war long in coming, with no sign of its beginning yet in sight. On Dana’Man – island of the damned, natural home only to glaciers and snow demons and the ice people – life was hard, but death was harder. The mages needed every man and woman for their army; death was unpardonable.

Tim Lebbon is a New York Times-bestselling horror and fantasy writer from South Wales. He’s had over thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. His most recent releases include the apocalyptic Coldbrook (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year), Alien: Out of the Shadows, Into the Void: Dawn of the Jedi (Star Wars), and the Toxic City trilogy from Pyr in the USA. Future novels include The Silence (Titan UK/USA), the Relics trilogy also from Titan, and the thriller The Hunt. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Awards.

About the Narrator:

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.

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