Far Fetched Fables

"“Princess Lily's Wedding” by Robert J. Santa(Originally published in Blood, Blade & Thruster.)"I love him, Daddy!"King Frederick breathed deeply. It had been a very long conversation with his youngest child, punctuated by much pouting and exasperated sighing and stomping of pretty feet. Frederick stood over her while she held her face in her hands and cried. He wanted to do nothing more than pout and sigh and stomp his feet. Of course, he couldn't, even in his daughter's bedroom with no one else to see.Kings had to uphold higher standards, especially with sixteen year-old daughters.Robert J. Santa has been writing speculative fiction for more than thirty years. His works have appeared in numerous online and print markets. Robert lives in Rhode Island, USA, with his beautiful wife and two, equally beautiful daughters, one of whom is named Lily. And while she is nothing like the Lily of this tale, she could be without stretching the imagination too much.“Shoe Man” by Tonya Liburd(Originally published in Expanded Horizons, July 2016.)Somewhere in downtown Toronto, a homeless black man had shoes whose soles were flapping. He refused to give them up, no matter what people said, no matter what people offered. They were the first things he ever bought in Canada, the shoes he wore to his wedding, so long ago. The wedding that was supposed to mark the beginning of a new life, a good life in Canada.A good life… they were pretty young, he had a wife, he had a daughter, he had a job… then the illness reared its head and took over. And everything spiraled out of control. No medications would make his mind whole again; the fear and confusion from his wife, the fights. The guilt over his daughter witnessing it all. When his wife died instantly from the car accident while he got barely a scratch – fortunately their daughter wasn’t with them – it was the last thing he could take, and he remembered just everything conspiring to force him out the door and leave everything behind. Well, almost. He still had his shoes.That was years ago.Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Simeon Daniel and Ray Bradbury, which may tell you a little something about her; and while she has an enviable collection of vintage dust bunnies to her credit, her passions are music (someday!) and of course, words. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling award, and her fiction has been long-listed in the 2015 Carter V. Cooper (Vanderbilt)/Exile Short Fiction Competition. Her story “The Ace of Knives” is in the anthology Postscripts to Darkness 6, and is used in Nisi Shawl’s workshops as an example of "code switching". She is the associate editor of Abyss & Apex magazine. You can find her blogging at spiderlilly.com or on Twitter as @somesillywowzer, and support her over at Patreon.com/TonyaLiburd.About the Narrators:Matt Dovey is very tall and very English and most likely drinking a cup of tea right now. He has a scar on his arm that he can't remember getting, but a terrible darkness floods his mind when he considers it. He now lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife and three children, and despite being a writer, he still hasn't found the right words to properly express the delight and joy he finds in this wonderful arrangement.His surname rhymes with "Dopey", but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. He is the Golden Pen winner for Writers of the Future Volume 32 (2016), was shortlisted for the James White Award in 2016, and has fiction out and forthcoming all over the place; you can keep up with it at mattdovey.com, or follow along on Facebook and Twitter.Cris Maycock is a Bajan Yankee who has lived in Brooklyn most of her life, a beach lover, a food lover, and a sci-fi fan who likes to think that she is both scientific and creative. Cris loves storytelling and the performance medium of audio books."

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"“By Appointment to the Throne” by Alter S. Reiss(Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #155.)Getting up early enough to open a kitchen hurts. Leaving a warm bed before second watch makes your head ache, and you can feel the chill going from the cobbles through your feet and into your soul. When it's wet on top of the cold, it's the nearest thing to hell. But once I'm there and I'm in the rhythm, it just moves. I check the carcasses as they come in, kick up a fuss if they try to give us short weight or diseased animals, and then I lift them up, bring them in, and take them apart. Hook and cleaver work for two, sometimes three hours.A lot of the Xac refugees working at the Mountain Pine are Sisori, so the hour before dawn, they'll do their prayers out in the garden. I don't mind, even though it slows us down when we need to speed up; I'd rather work with people who stop for prayers and stagger through fast days than with children glittering on juice, or gangs, or spirit.Just after the Sisori came back from morning prayers one of the dishwashers ran in, bloody and yelling.  My first thought was one of the gangs had taken a knife to him. Uncle Cestin owned the Mountain Pine and he paid protection most months, but sometimes not, and gang kids have more glitter than sense. But the washer was bloody, not bleeding, and he was yelling in Xactan about a girl named Meica.Alter S. Reiss lives in Jerusalem with his wife Naomi and their son Uriel. According to his mother, his first word was "book", which seems about right. He likes good food, bad movies, and hopes that at some point his apartment won't be under construction. He is occasionally on Twitter as @asreiss, and he has a somewhat bare-bones website at altersreiss.wordpress.com.About the Narrator:Roberto Suarez is a higher-education professional who loves all things fantasy and science fiction, comic books and board games He is the co-host and producer of A Pod of Casts: The Game of Thrones Podcast and Radio Westworld: The Westworld Podcast. You can find Roberto on the web at robertosuarez.me, or on Twitter via @PuertoGeekan."

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"“Phoenix for the Amateur Chef” by Scott Huggins(Originally published in Sword and Sorceress 30.)The phoenix fell.Its sobbing death cry silenced by a coat of ravening flame, it corkscrewed to earth, bleeding dirty white fire across the dusk.What struck the cliff face above our heads was a ball of charred meat. We ducked the searing gobbet of flesh. Only a little pile of ash and bone was left, rapidly whitening, like charcoal.I looked at Tywin, who stood sucking his teeth and polishing his great stonebow. He dropped the remaining stones to the earth, unanointed by Trelesta’s unguent.“Well, shit,” I said finally.Scott Huggins grew up in the American Midwest and has lived there all his life, except for interludes in the European Midwest (Germany) and East (Russia). He is currently responsible for securing America’s future by teaching its past to high school students, many of whom learn things before going to college. His preferred method of teaching and examination is strategic warfare. He loves to read high fantasy, space opera, and parodies of the same. He wants to be a hybrid of G.K. Chesterton and Terry Pratchett when he counteracts the effects of having grown up. When he is not teaching or writing, he devotes himself to his wife, their three children, and his cat.About the Narrator:Andrea Richardson is a British singer and actress. With extensive stage and film performances to her name, she began narration and voiceover work in 2014 but enjoys using her existing skills in a different way. You can find Andrea at andrea-richardson.co.uk and on Facebook."

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"“The Sickness” by Valjeanne Jeffers(Originally published in Griots: Sisters of the Spear.)The Bini warriors crouched in the high grass of the savanna. They'd passed the Fula borders a mile back, and now were a hundred yards from the Adobe mud city. At the forefront they were armed with sword and shield, behind them the archers readied their bows.General Chinua led the army. To his right was Nandi, a tall woman with braided hair, high cheekbones and full lips and her ebony-skinned husband, Sula, his head shaved in the traditional Bini custom. To Chinua's left was Nandi's older brother, Tomi.A wide gateway led into the Fula kingdom. It was deserted.Valjeanne Jeffers is a graduate of Spelman College, a member of the Carolina African American Writer’s Collective (CAAWC) and the author of ten books: Including her Immortal series, and her most recent Mona Livelong: Paranormal Detective series. Her first novel, Immortal, is featured on the Invisible Universe Documentary time-line, and her novella, The Switch II: Clockwork, was nominated as best eBook novella of 2013 by the eFestival of words. Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies including The City: A Cyberfunk, 60 Black Women in Horror Fiction, Steamfunk!, Genesis Science Fiction Magazine, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (as Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson), Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, Liberated Muse I: How I Freed My Soul, PurpleMag, Drumvoices Revue, 31 Days of Steamy Mocha, Griots II: Sisters of the Spear, Possibilities, Black Gold, and most recently Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures and Sycorax's Daughters. Valjeanne is also one of the screen writers for the horror anthology film 7 Magpies (in production). Preview or purchase her novels at vjeffersandqveal.com. Support her on Patreon at patreon.com/ValjeanneJeffers.“The Heartless Boy” by Ed Ahern(Originally published in Strangely Funny II.)Tom Willman was born experiencing no strong feelings, in fact no feelings at all. No love or affection. No hate or dislike. Certainly no fear. The closest he came to emotions were pleasing or displeasing sensations.Tom’s parents, desperate for a smile, had him tested for a litany of diseases, but he proved to be uncaringly above average. They quit trying to show Tom affection by the time he was six, and by the time he was ten were providing only what was legally required of them.Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He has his original wife, but advises that after 49 years they’re both out of warranty. He works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of five review editors. Ed’s had 140 stories and poems published so far, and a series of articles on fly fishing. His collected fairy and folk tales, The Witch Made Me Do It, was published by Gypsy Shadow Press. His novella The Witches Bane was published by World Castle Publishing, and his collected fantasy and horror stories, Capricious Visions, was published by Gnome on Pig Press. Ed’s currently working on a paranormal/thriller novel tentatively titled The Rule of Chaos. Visit his website at swampgasworks.com and at Twitter as @bottomstripper.About the Narrators:Aminat Badara is a budding writer and aspiring on-air-personality. She loves reading and has a weird penchant for collecting hardcover notebooks and mugs. When she's not writing or trying to be superhuman, she's either looking for Xs to solve, seeing movies, or getting her heart broken by Arsenal FC. Every once in a while, she puts up posts on meenahsthoughts.wordpress.com. You can find her on Twitter as @09_Eleven.Anthony Babington is a voice in the internet’s head, who looks almost, but not quite, exactly how you expect him to. Having escaped from the sinister forces of Texas, he has retreated to an ingeniously disguised bunker in a secure, undisclosed location in Burnsville, Minnes...

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"“The Centaur's Daughter” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam(Originally published in A cappella Zoo.)As a little girl I never understood my father’s night self. It’s hard to be a kid whose father is two people. He changed every day with the sky. I cried at sunrise. I had trouble sleeping. Still do, and I’ve had seventeen years to process my father’s differences.When I was small enough that my hands didn’t fit around a soda bottle, I couldn’t be left alone. The babysitter would coax me from the safety of my closet with chocolate granola surprise shakes and a broom guitar upon which she sang classic Elvis. Despite myself I always laughed. I loved that babysitter, but babysitters don’t follow you into high school. Now when I think of her, I see the woman who, once I was old enough to understand, told me that my father was a monster, warned me that I had his blood, that even though I would never look half-horse like him, I could still develop the night terrors, The Confusion. “You better be careful, Ruby. It runs in families, you know,” she said.I didn’t know. I was twelve and too old for a babysitter, and suddenly I understood that some of the things I had loved as a child, some people, would not carry over into the grown up world.Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction and poetry has appeared in more than 40 magazines and anthologies such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Interzone. Her novelette “The Orangery” is a finalist for the 2016 Nebula Award. In 2015, she released the collaborative fiction-jazz album Strange Monsters. You can visit her on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle or through her website: bonniejostufflebeam.com.About the Narrator:Maurine McLean narrates is an Austin musician, plucking the bass with acoustic bands The Therapy Sisters and A Proper Cup of Coffee. She earns her keep in the courtroom, interpreting real-life amazing tales from Spanish to English. Find here on Facebook here."

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"“Spirit Dance” by Douglas Smith(Originally published in Tesseracts 6, this work is the prequel story to Douglas's novel The Wolf at the End of the World.)In the beginning of things, men were as animals and animals as men. -- Cree legendVera made a warding sign as I entered the store, my hound Gelert trailing behind me. She pretended to wipe her hands on her faded blue apron, but I caught the dance of her fingers.“Hello, Vera. It’s been a while,” I said.“Yes, yes it has, Mr. Blaidd,” she said too quickly, not returning my smile. Turning from where she’d been refilling a food bin, she addressed her husband. “I gotta check something in the back, Ed.” Almost running, she slipped behind the long wooden counter and into the storeroom at the rear of the store.Edward Two Rivers leaned on the counter beside the cash register, a newspaper spread in front of him, his long gray hair spilling onto the pages. He watched her leave then smiled at me.“Ouch,” I said.“You still spook her,” he chuckled.Douglas Smith is an award-winning Canadian author described by Library Journal as "one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction". His fiction has appeared in twenty-five languages and more than thirty countries. "Spirit Dance" was Doug's first professional sale, appearing way back in 1997 in the Canadian anthology Tesseracts 6. The tale was also the basis for Doug's first novel, The Wolf at the End of the World.If you enjoyed this story, check out that novel, available from all major retailers. Doug's work also includes the collections Chimerascope, Impossibilia, and La Danse des Esprits. His non-fiction guide for writers, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction, is a must read for any short story writer.Doug is a three-time winner of Canada's Aurora Award, and has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, CBC's Bookies Award, Canada's juried Sunburst Award, and France's juried Prix Masterton and Prix Bob Morane. His website is smithwriter.com and he tweets as @smithwritr.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."

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"“Bones of a Righteous Man” by Michael Ezell(Originally published in Fantasy for Good.)-- Has the life of a righteous man been taken?-- We find that it has, Excellency.-- And what shall become of the killer?-- He shall carry the bones of the righteous man until their weight does cause his death.The setting sun reflected in a million rose-hued sparkles across the surface of the Glass Desert. The slit in Traveler’s eyeshades cut everything down to a thin panorama. A glittering expanse of heat glass, marked only by the crushed tracks of the Apostates’ road. In those tracks traveled the wagon he’d been following for days. Weeks, really. With a start, he realized it was more like months. Wasn’t it?Through the shimmer to his right, he saw either a town, or a mirage that would lead him astray, wasting precious time.Michael Ezell is a former US Marine who now works as a project coordinator for an Emmy-winning makeup effects shop in Southern California. Michael's story "The Good Food", from Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge, was selected for Baen Books' 2016 Year's Best Military and Adventure SF, edited by David Afsharirad. For more, check out Sinisterwriter.com and follow @SinisterEZ on Twitter.About the Narrator:Graeme Dunlop is a software solution architect and voice actor living in Melbourne, Australia. He is the former co-editor of the fantasy podcast Podcastle, and former host of the YA podcast Cast of Wonders. You can find him on Google+, and he occasionally tweets as @kibitzer on Twitter."

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"Flash Fiction: “Never Leave Me” by Michelle Ann King(Originally published at Daily Science Fiction.)Katrine grew up with the stories, she knew them as well as her own name. First there was true love's kiss, then the fair maiden became the radiant bride, and she lived happily ever after.But the stories all stopped there, and Katrine hadn't realized just how much ever after there would be.Michelle Ann King was born in East London and now lives in Essex. Her stories have appeared in over seventy different venues, including Interzone, Strange Horizons, and Black Static. Her favourite author is Stephen King (sadly, no relation), and she also loves zombies, Las Vegas, and good Scotch whisky. Her first short story collection, Transient Tales, is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon and other online retailers.Main Story: “The Prototype” by Judith Field(Originally published in Stupefying Stories, August 2012.)When they let me out of hospital, I decided to rent somewhere with space to write. Jo, the social worker, helped me find a terraced house in the old part of town; the only one in the row not converted into flats. Gentrification had leapfrogged the area. There were no skips outside the tumbledown houses; no four-by- fours blocking the narrow streets. The shades of my immigrant ancestors spoke to me in the place they’d once made a crowded, warm world of their own.Judith Field lives in London. She’s a pharmacist and medical indexer and editor. The daughter of writers, she learned how to agonize over fiction submissions at her mother’s (and father’s) knee. In 2009, she made a New Year resolution to start writing and get published within the year. Pretty soon she realized how unrealistic that was but, in fact, it worked because she got a slot to write a weekly column in a local paper shortly before the end of the year. It ran for a several years and she still writes occasional feature articles for the paper. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in genealogy and general interest magazines. Her fiction, mainly speculative, has appeared in a variety of publications in the USA, UK, and Australia. She speaks five languages and can say, “Please publish this story” in all of them. When not writing she works at the day job, studies for a Masters in English, sings, and swims. She is Science Fiction Editor at Red Sun Magazine. You can find her work here.About the Narrators:Tatiana Gomberg is a critically acclaimed actress of stage, screen, and the audio booth. She has been nominated for dozens of fancy awards but hasn’t won a single damned thing. She lives in New York City. See more about her at tatianagomberg.com.Margaret Essex lives “the good life” on a small piece of rural New South Wales, Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, all the usual biting and stinging critters that make great horror stories for their visitors, and several rambunctious wombats."

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"Flash Fiction: “Mysterious Ways” by David Steffen(Originally published in Uncle John's Flush Fiction Anthology.)The afterlife was arbitrary, Sam Fichtner decided. There was no Heaven or Hell, only one place. He'd had plenty of time to ponder since he crossed over. The Hereafter was filled with endless rows of clear domes like the one he occupied, a space of infinite size covered with a grid of cake platters. When people died, they were each partitioned into one of these domes, to spend the rest of eternity.David Steffen is a writer, editor, and software engineer. He edits Diabolical Plots, which began publishing original fiction in 2015. He runs the Submission Grinder, a tool for writers to find markets for their work. He recently published The Long List Anthology, which is a collection of 21 stories from the longer Hugo Award nomination list last year. His own stories have been published in many nice places, including Escape Pod, Podcastle, Daily Science Fiction, and StarShipSofa.Main Story: “Stone Works” by Claire Davon(Originally published in Misunderstood.)The unblinking statue returned Raffaello’s gaze.It could never blink again. He wondered what the residents would think if they knew that their prized thousand-year-old marble statue was once a breathing human being. None of his creations had been visible from the Salerno building he’d been trapped on for seven centuries.He knew the statue maker’s work. You didn’t forget the person who imprisoned you in stone.“Take our picture?”Raffaello turned and focused on the voice. It was a woman of around forty years old, although these days it was hard to tell. She had what Raffaello understood to be a camera thrust out. He had learned about cameras in the short time he had been freed, but he still had much to understand. The world had changed in seven hundred years.Claire Davon has written on and off most of her life, starting with fan fiction when she was young. She writes across a wide range of genres, including romance, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Currently based in Los Angeles, she spends her free time writing and doing animal rescue. Claire's website is clairedavon.com.About the Narrators:Jack Calverly lives in Central London where he watches a very small patch of land struggle into gardenhood. In even quieter moments he has been known to narrate science fiction stories for Starship Sofa and horror stories for Tales to Terrify, and also hosted the now defunct Crime City Central podcast for its entire two-year run. He is a member of the T-Party genre writers' group, another group called WINOS, and critters.org, and (having attended two online classes from the Odyssey Writing Workshops) is a member of the Odyssey online critique group. A testament to perseverance if nothing else. He lives online at jackcalverley.com where he watches a very small patch of website struggle into nethood.Danny Kelly aka Shri Fugi Spilt was assembled from off-the-shelf components and deployed to a backwater planet for reasons that are not quite clear. He’s fully equipped with a palette of super powers that includes the ability to sleep almost anywhere, sustain optimal function by eating only leaves, and bridge time and space with just his voice. The stout of heart and keen of mind can travel with him to the hoary past and the almost future in the slightly explicit Daughter of Godcast podcast, all about the 11-year adventure making his scifi post-apocalyptic surreal romantic comedy featurette."

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"“Vendemiaire” by L.S. Johnson(Originally published in B is for Broken.)There was a time when Arianne could not see over the rows of her father’s grapevines. At the height of the summer the vineyard became a vast maze and she would follow her mother, watching her taste the grapes, her skirts swaying as she walked, a fine haze of dirt collecting on their hems. The world then was black soil and green life and her mother striding ahead, head held high, lips and fingers stained crimson from the juices.All of that was years ago. Yet there are days when Arianne goes far into the rows, searching for anyplace where the leaves are green and dense still, where the fruit grows plump, not mildewed and shriveled. When at last she finds a patch she goes down on her knees in the dirt until she can see nothing but blushing fruit and green leaves and the blue sky above.L.S. Johnson was born in New York and now lives in Northern California, where she feeds her cats by writing book indexes. Her stories have appeared in such venues as Strange Horizons, Interzone, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, and Year's Best Weird Fiction. Vacui Magia: Stories, is her first collection. Find her online at traversingz.com.About the Narrator:Josie Babin was lucky to grow up with wizards and fey mentors and hobbits and fawns for companions. Keeping her head in the clouds allowed her to always be looking up and out and ahead, leading to an over-developed curiosity that she freely indulges to this day. As a grown up, she gets to play in the ever curious sandbox of medical science, on a quest to cure evil diseases. In her spare time she can be found keeping company with the San Diego sun or tormenting her two cats with attempted belly rubs."

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