Far Fetched Fables

First Story: “A Night in the Tropics” by Jeffrey Ford

The first bar I ever went to was The Tropics. It was and still is situated between the grocery store and the bank along Higbee Lane in West Islip. I was around five or six, and my old man would take me with him when he went there to watch the Giant games on Sunday afternoon. While the men were all at the bar, drinking, talking, giving Y.A. Tittle a piece of their minds, I’d roll the balls on the pool table or sit in one of the booths in the back and color. The juke box always seemed to be playing “Somewhere, Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin while I searched for figures, the way people do with clouds, in the swirling cigar and cigarette smoke.

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including fantasy, science fiction and mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humour, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner. He lives in southern New Jersey and teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County. He has also taught at the summer Clarion Workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers in Michigan. He has contributed stories, essays and interviews to various magazines and e-magazines including MSS, Puerto Del Sol, Northwest Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Argosy, Event Horizon, Infinity Plus, Black Gate and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

You can see more at http://www.well-builtcity.com/

Second story: “The Blue Magnolia” by Tony Ballantyne

Bogart stands before the bar, Hepburn is serving drinks. Cary Grant sits in a chair nearby.

“You’ve got to choose.” says Grant, his eyes hard.

“I can’t! Not now!” says Hepburn, shaking her head in despair. Bogart lifts the shot glass to his lips and knocks his whisky back in one. You can tell by his stance that he resigned himself to this moment long ago. He pulls back his sleeve as if to look at his watch, but his eyes never leave Hepburn’s. Hepburn’s dark, wide eyes, filling with tears.

“Hell. Is that the time?” he murmurs. “I’ve got to catch my plane.”

He turns to leave.

Tony Ballantyne is the author of the Penrose and Recursion series of novels as well as many acclaimed short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies around the world. He has been nominated for the BSFA and Philip K Dick awards. His latest novel, Dream London, was published in October 2013 and was described by the Financial Times as “… as strange and unclassifiable a novel as it’s possible to imagine, and a marvelous achievement.”
Tony is currently working on the follow up, Dream Paris, due to be published in September 2015. Due to popular demand, he has also recently begun working on a series of short stories set in the Recursion universe. You can find his website at www.tonyballantyne.com.

Third story: “Tomorrow Tea” by Laurel Winter

Anzy woke me. “Try this,” she said, putting a cup to my mouth just as I exhaled a dream breath. Too hot, but my mouth barely noticed. Summer, I tasted. Being young. One of the wild cousins of mint. Sun filtered through green leaves.

“Oh, yes,” I said, gulping down as much as I could before she took the cup away. She never let me have a whole cup of any tea. Just tastes, so I would never be satisfied. A good taster is never satisfied.

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. You can visit her blog at laurelwinter.blogspot.com

About the Narrators:

Pete Nixon is a full time mailman, father, and husband. He edited, produced, and (partially) narrated “Green Eggs And Horror”, which is a horror short story anthology inspired by Dr. Seuss stories that can be found at GreenEggsAndHorror.com

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.

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: “The New Deal” by Trent Jamieson

“You hear about the new Deal?” Jacobi asked, crouching down by the nearest body on the flat corrugated iron roof. 

Ulmer shrugged. “Just rumours, nothing definite. Last one wasn’t so good. These two aren’t going to benefit.” 

He took a step back from the bodies, careful to stay on the line of nails marking the beam beneath, the roof was rusty; it creaked with his movement. 

Jacobi grinned and brushed flies from his cracked lips. “These blokes been dead a while.”

SF writer and Silent Motion Picture Actor, Trent Jamieson should be 111 years old, but is only 41 on account of TEMPORAL RADIATION.

He lives in Brisbane with his wife, Diana, where he wrote the Death Works Trilogy published by Orbit Books. He is the author of the Death Works Series. They’re about Death – you know, the Grim Reaper – and they’re set in Brisbane.  Death Works 4, The Memory of Death was published by Momentum in February 2014.

He has also just finished a Steampunkish secondary world fantasy duology for Angry Robot Books. The books, Roil and  Night’s Engines both are now available. If you like the steam, and the punk, you might like `em.

He is currently working on the novel Day Boy, slated for publication with Text Publishing in 2015 (if he doesn’t screw up this draft).

When not writing, he works at The Avid Reader Bookshop in West End- the best indie bookshop in the world (he’s not biased or anything). You can find out more at http://www.trentjamieson.com/

Second story: “Disillusions” by Mike Resnick and Lawrence Schimel

They were gathered in the Great Hall when Edward looked up with an expectant smile on his face. An instant later it started raining toads inside the castle.

As the guests began screaming, Edward waved his hand, and suddenly the rug itself became a thousand mouths, each gobbling up one or more toads. But as the last of the toads were eaten, the mouths became insatiable, and started gnawing upon the furniture.

Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction.
He is the winner of 5 Hugo Awards (from a record 36 nominations), plus a Nebula and other major awards in the USA, France, Spain, Poland, Catalonia, Croatia and Japan. Mike is the author of 75 novels, close to 300 stories, and 3 screenplays. He has edited 41 anthologies, and is currently the editor of Galaxy’s Edge magazine.  His site is at www.mikeresnick.com

Lawrence Schimel writes in both Spanish and English and has published over 100 books as author or anthologist, including FAIRY TALES FOR WRITERS (A midsummer Night’s Press), TAROT FANTASTIC (DAW), SOUTHERN BLOOD: VAMPIRE STORES FROM THE AMERICAN SOUTH (Cumberland House), THE DRAG QUEEN OF ELFLAND (Circlet), etc.
He lives in Madrid, Spain, where he works as a Spanish-to-English translator.

About the Narrators:

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.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: “Lost Arts” by Stephen Dedman

Tao’s was the only office on Hathor. It was a conventional flexiroom bisected by a temporary wall; the smaller chamber served as an ante-room, mainly in case the mayor was asleep when unexpected visitors arrived. Many of her neighbors had chambers that were similar, but they called them studios or studies or libraries or galleries.

Being mayor of Hathor wasn’t normally a demanding job, as the more routine details were handled by her Turing-tested secretary Aidan. Tao’s role was mostly oversight, and dealing with those inhabitants who wanted to speak to a fellow human.

Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, Foreign Bodies, and Shadowrun: A Fistful of Data, and more than 120 short stories published in an eclectic range of magazines and anthologies and reprinted in his collections The Lady of Situations and Never Seen by Waking Eyes. For a full bibliography, go to his webpage www.stephendedman.com

Second Story: “Nor Iron Bars a Cage” by Deborah J. Ross

Tax collection day dawned clear and bright over the walled city of Ghillensa. Farmers arrived even as the first light softened the ancient battlements; wooden gates swung open to admit a procession of ox-carts creaking under late summer’s bounty, sacks of wheat and barley, tubs of pale-gold butter, sheaves of clover-grass to keep cattle fat over the winter, bushels of carrots and cabbages, kegs of country-ale. A market had set up in the shadow of the gray-walled Affliction Tower where it was said kings had gone in and never seen the sun again, until their ghosts wandered the endless corridors, so confused they did not know they had died. Others said there were no ghosts, only the endless, weary sighs of common criminals.

Deborah J. Ross writes and edits fantasy and science fiction. She’s a former SFWA Secretary and member of Book View Café. Her short fiction has appeared in F & SF, Asimov’s, Star Wars: Tales From Jabba’s Palace, Realms of Fantasy, Sword & Sorceress, and various other anthologies and magazines. Her most recent books include the Darkover novel, The Children of Kings (with Marion Zimmer Bradley); Lambda Literary Award Finalist Collaborators, an occupation-and-resistance story with a gender-fluid alien race (as Deborah Wheeler); and The Seven-Petaled Shield, an epic fantasy trilogy.

About the Narrators:

Geoffrey Welchman is a voice actor, writer, and producer who lives in Baltimore, Maryland (USA). You can learn more at www.geoffreywelchman.com

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…..

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: “A Ring of Green Fire” by Sean McMullen

“As I was travelling through Westbury forest, I met with a man with a ring of green fire around his penis,” Avenzoar’s visitor said casually.

            The poet-physician looked up at his friend and stroked his beard, then gazed wistfully across to the partially built minaret of Caliph al-Mansur’s huge mosque.

            “Such a wonder,” sighed Avenzoar, then turned to his visitor and raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you did not bring him here for this poor physician and poet turned bureaucrat to examine?”

            His friend glanced away, and seemed troubled. “Alas, it was not possible.”

Sean McMullen lives in Melbourne, Australia, but has been published mostly in the USA and Europe. He has had twenty books and eighty stories published, has won fifteen awards, and was runner up for Best Novelette in the 2011 Hugo Awards. His writing is often steampunk in theme and his breakthrough novel, Souls in the Great Machine, featured a future Australia ruled by a caste of psychopathic librarians using a human powered computer and internet. His most recent publications are ebook collections from Reanimus Press: Ghosts of Engines Past (steampunk), and Colours of the Soul (SF and fantasy). Sean works with large scientific computers in his day job, has a PhD in medieval fantasy literature, and is a karate instructor at the Melbourne University club. Before he began writing he was a professional actor and singer, and he can be heard reading some of his own stories at http://www.seanmcmullen.net.au/news.htm

Second story: “Rules to Win the Game” by Matthew Burnside

“It’s a hard world for little things”
—The Night of the Hunter

The Game began around the time we discovered monsters were real. Theo, our eldest brother, started it the day he came into the center of the living room and declared he was no longer Theo but The Noir. Of course, none of us had any idea what it meant but we would learn in the coming weeks that it involved him wearing a long musty trench coat two sizes too big (it smelled like a bingo parlor), and a crushed hat with a feather gliding out of the top that would catch the kitchen light and shiver silvery, like a fish leaping out of water tickled by the sun.

Matthew is author of four chapbooks: Escapologies (Red Bird), Infinity’s Jukebox (Passenger Side Books), Book of If&Ever (Red Bird), and the forthcoming Ritual Hauntings (Patasola Press). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, kill author, PANK, Gargoyle, Pear Noir!, NAP, and others. He attends the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he teaches and studies fiction. He is currently hard at work on a YA series. He was born and is originally from Texas. He’s really into Choose Your Own Adventure books and have set out to collect them all. One of his favorite books ever is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. He loves stories with a sense of irresolution; he finds them more true to life. He has a half dachshund half chihuahua named Tinna (short for tintinnabulation) and currently lives in Iowa with his girlfriend, Heather, where he teaches Creative Writing and New Media. He’s fascinated by internet culture and anything interactive when it comes to literature. Visit www.MatthewBurnsideisawriter.tumblr.com for more info.

Flash Fiction: “Cloud Eating” by Tricia Glock

Tricia hides behind her writing the way a film star hides behind the camera – it should work, but it doesn’t.  She has family and pets, but doesn’t think it relevant to mention them.  She hopes you enjoy the story.

About the Narrators:

Colin Clews is a musician and writer, living in the UK. He loves music, reading and movies. Although he’s British, he grew up in Africa and still hasn’t managed to do anything cooler than that – despite studying philosophy and learning to play electric guitar.

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 10 band rock concert. Learning new things, like podcasting, excites him. He’s been on 4 of the 7 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 they were 2 of the 5 submarines he served on. Not too bad for a guy from a small town in North-Central Florida!

Nicola Seaton-Clark is well-known to all fans of Far-Fetched Fables.  If not, simply look back through our archives to read about her, or go to the Staff page and try there.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WARNING: This week’s story, “Snowball’s Chance”, contains graphic language and a strong Scottish accent.

First Story: 

“An Accounting” by Brian Evenson

I have been ordered to write an honest accounting of how I became a Midwestern Jesus and the subsequent disastrous events thereby accruing, events for which I am, I am willing to admit, at least partly to blame. I know of no simpler way than to simply begin.

Brian Evenson is the author of twelve books of fiction, most recently the novel Immobility and the story collection Windeye (2012). His novel Last Days (2009) won the American Library Association’s Award for Best Horror Novel. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. His short story collection The Wavering Knife won the IHG Award. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. For more info, see http://www.brianevenson.com/.

Second story:

“Snowball’s Chance” by Charles Stross

The louring sky, half past pregnant with a caul of snow, pressed down on Davy’s head like a hangover. He glanced up once, shivered, then pushed through the doorway into the Deid Nurse and the smog of fag fumes within.

His sometime conspirator Tam the Tailer was already at the bar. “Awright, Davy?”

Davy drew a deep breath, his glasses steaming up the instant he stepped through the heavy blackout curtain, so that the disreputable pub was shrouded in a halo of icy iridescence that concealed its flaws.

Charles Stross, 49, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella, he has won numerous other awards and been translated into at least 12 other languages. Visit http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/faq.html for more.

About the Narrators:

When he is not traveling across the US looking for the finest BBQ, Sam Walter spends his time learning all about the latest and greatest in the world of craft beer. He hosts the West Lot Pirates podcast which focuses on college sports, primarily college football. He lives in Chicago with his wife and their adorable cat.

Kenny Park is a video editor by trade, but having trained and worked as an actor, director and writer, he maintains it’s all just storytelling. He’s been involved with Starship Sofa since the early days of Tony and Ciaron, filming their interview with the legendary Michael Moorcock in Paris, and he still does narrations and wee video intros when Tony can pin him down.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: 

“The Teashop” by Zoran Zivkovic

Miss Greta was delighted to see a teashop across the street from the entrance to the railway station. The train she’d arrived on had been a quarter of an hour late, but the train she was meant to take for the rest of her trip had left on time. The next possible train wouldn’t leave for around two-and-a-half hours. She could have spent that time reading in the waiting room, but that didn’t seem very appealing.

Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master’s degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school. In 2007, Živković was made a professor in the Faculty of Philology at his alma mater, the University of Belgrade, where he now teaches Creative Writing. The author of twenty books of fiction and eight books of nonfiction, Živković continues to push the boundaries of the strange and surreal. His writing belongs to the middle European fantastika tradition, and shares much in common with such masters as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka and Stanislaw Lem.  Visit http://www.zoranzivkovic.com/ for more details.

Second story:

“Bamboozled” by Kelley Armstrong

“Are you sure she can do it?” the boy asked Nate as he watered their trio of horses.

Lily was standing right beside him and had both a name and ears. But she knew the boy—Will—wasn’t trying to be rude; he was simply like most of the young men they recruited: rarely set foot off his family homestead, rarely seen womenfolk other than his momma and sisters.

And frontier mommas and sisters did not look like Lily.

Even now, as Will talked about her, he couldn’t look her way—as if merely to glimpse her might damn his mortal soul. Lily could point out that his soul ought to be a lot more worried about the thieving that was coming, but to a boy like Will, that was part of life. Pretty girls with painted faces were not.

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series, the Darkest Powers young adult urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return. Link to her website is http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/

Narrators:

Tina Connolly and Natalie Ross

Tina Connolly lives with her family in Portland, Oregon. Her first fantasy novel, Ironskin (Tor 2012), was nominated for a Nebula, and the sequel Copperehead is now out from Tor. Her story “Flash Bang Remember”, co-written with Caroline M. Yoachim, appeared on StarShipSofa earlier this year. She frequently narrates for Podcastle and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, runs the Parsec-winning flash fiction podcast Toasted Cake (toastedcake.com), and her website is tinaconnolly.com.

Earphones Award winner Natalie Ross is a native Texan. She has been a stage actor for over 20 years, and is the author of the children’s play Cat Tales: Thoughts from the Family Feline. She has narrated many audiobooks, including romances, thrillers, science fiction and young adult fiction. She currently resides in the Midwest with her husband, two sons and four cats.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: 

“Commando Bats” by Sherwood Smith

When I was young, aging women were interchangeable. Ugly, slow, annoying with their unwanted opinions. It seemed impossible that I’d ever be one. The first proof that the universe has a sense of humor? I’m half of one.

Sherwood Smith began writing novels about another world when she was eight, and began sending laboriously typed novels out to publishers when she was thirteen. When nothing had sold by the time she was twenty, she figured she needed to learn something about writing, and so went to college, lived in Europe, came back to get a double BA in German and History, did graduate work in history, worked in Hollywood, got married, started a family and became a teacher. When she tried again to sell in her mid-thirties, her first project was one of those old teenage books, Wren to the Rescue, which sold to Jane Yolen Books and came out in 1990. She lives in Southern California with her family. She is an active member of Book View Cafe, a writers’ consortium.  Visit http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/about-book-view-cafe/  or http://www.sherwoodsmith.net for more information.

Second story:

“Medusa” by Michael Cadnum

Sharp-eyed Athena passed among us in those days.

From shore to hilltop, little was lost on her. She was quick to spot someone attempting an unwise deed, a youth walking along the rim of a well–showing off to a maiden–or a young woman flirting with a grinning brigand just arrived on a wine ship from Samos.

Michael Cadnum is the author of thirty-five books, including the National Book Award finalist The Book of the Lion and his most recent novel Seize the Storm.  He lives in Albany, California.  Visit www.michaelcadnum.com for more details.

Narrators:

Summer Brooks and Nicola Seaton-Clark

Summer enjoys putting her scifi media geek skills to good use in booking guests for Slice of SciFi, as well as using her extensive tech skills to make sure all of the geek entertainment found on the Slice of SciFi family of websites keeps humming along. She is an avid reader and writer of scifi, fantasy and thrillers, with a handful of publishing and voiceover credits to her name. Her dream is to someday write and produce a TV series or miniseries adaptation of her
favorite yet highly-underrated story series. Summer spent many years as a Unix sysadmin and competing in amateur full contact kickboxing tournaments before moving into entertainment media production and WordPress website design. These days, she maintains the Slice of SciFi websites, and co-hosts and produces several other shows, including The Babylon Podcast and Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas, and does voiceover and narrations for StarShipSofa and Crime City Central
among others. Next on her agenda is writing an urban fantasy epic, and B-movie monster extravaganza.  Check out her websites http://www.kickassmysticninjas.com/ , http://www.babylonpodcast.com/ and http://www.sliceofscifi.com/ for more!

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…..

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story: 

“Demons Hide Their Faces” by A.A. Attanasio

Winterset in Egypt beside the rotting canal at Sidi Bishr, with the little, ceramic hashish pipe in her freckled hand, a thin thread of palpitant smoke twisting in the air before her, the professor faced her student and informed him seriously and with hollow impersonality, “The most avid collectors of books are demons. But they want only the old texts. The oldest texts.”

The author of twenty-two novels and two story collections, A. A. Attanasio lives in Hawai’i and writes his fiction inside a volcano: Koko Crater, a botanical garden near his Honolulu home.  Visit http://www.aaattanasio.com/ for more details.

Second story:

“The Pirate’s True Love” by Seana Graham

It was a fine spring morning as the pirate sat with his true love before sailing out to sea.  She was wearing a long, purple dress, and her cheeks were red with crying.

After working for many years in an independent bookstore, Seana Graham has recently been devoting more time to various writing projects. In addition to writing several blogs of her own, she is also the book review editor for the arts and literature website Escape Into Life. Although more of a crime fiction reader than a crime fiction writer, she is happy to be considered a member of International Thriller Writers, thanks to the inclusion of her story “Gato” in a “fairytale crime” anthology called Grimm Tales. Her short stories can be found in a variety of places on the web, and links to many of them can be found on her blog Story Dump.

Narrators:

Mark Kilfoil and Fran Friel

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 them (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.

Fran Friel is a two-time Bram Stoker Award Finalist and the winner of the Black Quill Award. She enjoys life with her husband by the sea on the Central Coast of California. She also serves as full-time staff to Alice and Annie, the Cat Overlords. You can follow Fran’s latest antics at facebook, Twitter, and Fran Friel’s Yada Feast. For more info, please visit: www.franfriel.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First Story:  “To Measure the Earth” by Jedediah Berry

Spring 1890

Roel got out of bed before the fireflies had quit their nighttime signaling. He took his hat from the bedpost, strapped on his wooden right leg, and went downstairs to stoke the fire. Netta had never been able to sleep through the thudding of her husband’s leg on the steps, and the steps creaked, each one. She threw the covers aside and went to the kitchen to make their breakfast of blood sausage and buckwheat cake.

Jedediah Berry is the award-winning author of The Manual of Detection. His short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Ninth Letter, Tor.com and Chicago Review, and in anthologies including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He teaches in the Written Arts Program at Bard College.  Visit http://thirdarchive.net/ for more details.

Second story: “For the Love of Paul Bunyan” by Fritz Swanson

She was tender. Soft as a sand dune after a windstorm.  Back in the before days, she would wake up and stretch those  arms out across the sky, her left hand arched over Baffin Island, her right curled up under her jaw, her elbow casting a swaying shadow over the Jack Pine Forests of Saskatchewan.

Fritz is a contributing editor at PRINT Magazine, the nation’s oldest graphic design magazine. He teaches creative writing, essay writing, and literature at the University of Michigan. His writing has appeared in The Believer, Best American Fantasy, McSweeney’s, Mid-American Review, Esopus, and The Christian Science Monitor.  Visit http://fritzswanson.com/ to see more!

Narrators: Veronica Giguerre and Peter Cavell

Veronica “V.” Giguere is a voice artist and author whose work can be heard on a wealth of podcast fiction magazines, fullcasts, and audiobooks across genres such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, and steampunk. She is the narrator and producer, as well as one of four co-authors, of the Secret World Chronicles podcast novel series, currently in its seventh season. Along with Cedric Johnson, she has recently podcast Broken, an inner-city cyberpunk story involving boxing, medical technology, and coffee. When she isn’t bringing the voices in others’ heads to life, V. masquerades as a mild-mannered academic whose specialties include first-year student success, learning strategies, and preparing for the zombie apocalypse.  You can learn more about her and her voicing projects at http://www.voicesbyveronica.com.

Peter Cavell is a writer of speculative fiction, playwright, composer, sound-artist, and performer. He lives with his wife and son in Toronto, where he teaches musical improv at The Second City. For details on his projects and adventures, check out www.petercavell.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.